Do you own a car? You might not need one soon
Mobility has always been transforming but in the past 10 years it has sped up rapidly. Plan your future purchases considering the technology around us and the future scenario.
How did you get around in 2010?
If you are like most people, you likely used a fossil fuel vehicle spending almost the same amount of time getting to your destination than finding a spot to park your car.
If you prefer to use public transport you might remember having to wait for 20 minutes for the bus to come not knowing when it will arrive at your stop.
By bike? Oh, that would be assuming you owned a bike and had enough space to keep it at home.
What about now?
While you may still own a car or a bike, you might now be tempted to relax in the back of a ride-share or zip along the sidewalk on one of the electric scooters. These new forms of transportation are all from this decade, new ones keep appearing yearly and that’s not stopping any time soon.
The reason for this transformation can be attributed to CASE mobility.
CASE: Connected, Autonomous, Shared, and Electric.
Connected
The reason why you did not know when the bus would arrive at the bus stop 10 years ago and now you plan your route days ahead with the precision of minutes is that now mobility is connected. Ten years ago, the bus driver knew where he was and could say how long it would take him to get to your stop. You knew you wanted to take that bus but there was no connection between you and him. Now, you and the driver are connected so the information flows in both directions.
Vehicles are now manufactured with the technology to be connected. To send and receive data from different systems.
2. Autonomous
“An autonomous vehicle is one that can drive itself from a starting point to a predetermined destination in “autopilot” mode using various in-vehicle technologies and sensors, including adaptive cruise control, active steering (steer by wire), anti-lock braking systems (brake by wire), GPS navigation technology, lasers and radar.” Source: Gartner Glossary
Autonomous vehicles are still in an early stage but will play an important role in mobility in the next years. For now, let’s focus on what is actually out there in the street without losing sight of this technology.
3. Shared
The concept of shared mobility is very simple. It is the shared use of travel modes like vehicles, scooters, motorcycles…And it is definitely around us.
Using as an example the city of Madrid, these are some of the other options of shared mobility available:
- eBikes: BiciMAD
- Electric Scooters: Lime, Bird, Wheels…
- Motorcycles: Movo, Acciona Mobility, Cooltra…
- Electric and Non-Electric Vehicles: ShareNow, Zity, Wible, Ubeeqo…
4. Electric
“Electro mobility (or e-Mobility) represents the concept of using electric powertrain technologies, in-vehicle information, and communication technologies and connected infrastructures to enable the electric propulsion of vehicles and fleets.” Source: Gartner Glossary
We’ve been reading and hearing about electric vehicles for quite a lot of time, but it seems like the transition from fossil fuel vehicles towards a more sustainable, clean, and green mobility is something that is taking a lot of time to take off. However, there are reasons to believe that we are getting closer to it.
The increase in R&D around EVs and their batteries combined with an increase in green funds and restrictions in pollution levels is causing an acceleration in the transition towards electric mobility.
What is the impact of our movement?
According to the World Economic Forum,
“Transportation is currently the largest producer of energy-related CO₂ emissions accounting for 24% (information based on global transport emissions in 2018, which totalled 8 billion tonnes of CO₂).”
Regarding the European Limitations on emissions, the EU Green Deal foresees the reduction of CO₂ emissions by 55% by 2030 and aims for a 100% reduction by 2050.
This does not mean that we have to move less. It means that we have to move differently.
Thanks to globalization, poor countries are having access to better and cheaper technology which is helping them develop faster and become richer. We cannot stop people from moving but we can help them move better, in a more sustainable way, and with less impact on the environment.
There is a lot of room for improvement in mobility
There are various studies that conclude that “cars are parked 95% of the time”. Why would I need to buy a vehicle if I can just use it whenever I need to move from point A to point B through a shared vehicle on demand?
Going back to the initial question, why do you own a car? Probably because of the flexibility and comfort it gives you to have it available whenever you need it. However, this perspective is considering a scenario from the past in which this was the only option. The present is different.
CASE Mobility is here to satisfy our need of getting from point A to point B. However, our habits have not changed as fast as technology and there are still more vehicles produced than the ones needed. The key to sustainable mobility will be to adapt our habits to the new mobility services available.
A shift from product-based to service-based
Having different options to move around will not be enough, at least if we treat them as individual services. These will have to be combined in a platform, known as Mobility as a Service Platform to offer a single mobility service that offers the flexibility and comfort users are looking for. These platforms enable them to plan, book, and pay for multiple types of mobility services.
These platforms give us hope that someday we will pay for a subscription to use every type of transportation available on-demand without owning the vehicle itself by paying for the use of it as a service.
In other industries, this shift towards services has also happened and younger generations are growing up with them. Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime are some examples. These generations have a lack of attachment to physical products that also makes us hope that a subscription model in mobility is possible.
MaaS platforms as enablers for future mobility
There are countries where MaaS platforms are working with subscription models like Whim: a service available in Austria (Vienna), Belgium, Finland (Helsinki, Turku), Japan (Tokyo), Switzerland, United Kingdom (Birmingham).
Whim is an app from the Finnish company MaaS Global that provides people an alternative to owning a car — an alternative that is not just equally good, but much better. By fulfilling people’s every travel need, complemented by attractive value-added services, they are enabling a future of easy, efficient, and sustainable mobility.
“Whim, the first all-inclusive MaaS solution commercially available on the market, gives its users all city transport services in one step, letting them journey where and when they want with public transport, taxis, bikes, cars, and other options, all under a single subscription”.
Continuing with the example of the city of Madrid, even though there are multiple mobility services, there is no centralization of them. Citizens download multiple apps and use one of them for each service. Therefore, citizens still have no alternative to owning a car.
The main challenges to make a MaaS platform work is the ownership of the data and the integration of different mobility services in a single app with the end-to-end experience.
Mobility companies must realize that MaaS Platforms will transform their industry and they must adapt to it. At IBM, we are developing a Point of View around eMobility and MaaS Platforms to help our clients find their role in the mobility ecosystem, an ecosystem with multiple players from different industries. We are providing them with the technological support and the end-to-end user experience necessary to become the main players to lead the mobility transformation.
Thank you for reading and please, feel free to reach out to me!
