Why the Future of Mobility WILL be Shared, Autonomous, & Electric
3/27/2017
Mobility — the ability to move freely and easily from point A to point B. That sounds nice, but when was the last time your work commute was described as “free” and “easy”? Yeah…. that’s what we thought. If you are like most Americans — your commute has actually increased by 20% over the past 35 years. Free and easy mobility is officially becoming a luxury of the past.
As we move further into the 21st century, it is going to be a significant challenge to ensure we can all get to where we need to go (and get there on time!). With more and more people expected to be living in and around urban areas in the coming years, the question becomes — how will we get from point A to point B in our daily lives as things get more crowded?
In Shared, autonomous and electric vehicles!
This is the vision held by many in Silicon Valley for our future transportation needs, but what does this actually look like in execution? And how close are we really to this seemingly “Jetson-like” reality?
Shared
On the shared front, we are looking pretty good. Uber and Lyft did a lot of the leg work here in order to get a large portion of the population comfortable with the idea of sharing vehicles. The real question is how many of us will be able to comfortably move away from car ownership altogether and rely exclusively on shared fleet vehicles run by a ride-hailing services?
The Big 3 auto manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) are already anticipating that millennials will continue to not buy cars in the same volumes their parents did. But they’re scrambling to understand what the future will actually look like and investing heavily in these answers. For example, Ford recently bought the ride-hailing service Chariot for $65M, and GM has invested over $500M in Lyft and other ride-sharing companies.
Will these solutions be enough to push future generations to give up the concept of car ownership completely? I mean we are Americans after all. The answer to that question is one part dependent on the density of where people will live and one part dependent on how well the second, autonomous, part of this equation ends up working out.
Autonomous
A fully autonomous vehicle where you never touch the steering wheel, brakes or gas pedal, is still at least a few years out, but not as far out as you might think….2021 is the year Ford claimed it would roll out such a vehicle and Tesla has made even bolder goals within the next year. Although Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Tesla have been the leaders on the autonomous train for some time now, the pursuit of the technology is truly catching momentum as vehicles are starting to be officially tested on our roads and highways.
But, as the reality of autonomous technology hitting the road sinks in, the gap in policy and regulation has become more evident. The policies and regulations put in place on the state and federal level will greatly impact how soon we see fully autonomous vehicles on the road by. Most industry stakeholders are betting that once the technology (and corresponding policies) are in place there will be rapid adoption of shared, autonomous vehicles in fleets throughout the U.S. However, the adoption of a fully autonomous vehicle as a personal automobile will be further out due to cost limitations.
So, ‘shared’ is largely already achieved and ‘autonomous’ is well on its way. That leaves us with electric — the cherry on top of an already pretty picture of the future — vehicles that you don’t have to own, will take you anywhere you need to go AND will cost you less than gas to get there.
Electric
The advantages of pursuing electric in conjunction with shared and autonomous vehicles is the ultimate trifecta and here is why. Not only does it reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, but when you bundle an electric vehicle with the shared and autonomous components, you make it even more appealing by solving many of the challenges associated with electric vehicles today. For example, some electric vehicles are out of the price range of many, but if an electric vehicle is shared and utilized more often — the cost of ownership is reduced substantially by more people using it. In addition, the idea of taking more than 10 minutes to charge becomes less of a barrier, because when the vehicle is low on charge it can just be dispatched to the nearest charging station and another fully charged vehicle can take its place.
Overall, with shared and autonomous vehicles hitting the streets, fewer vehicles will be on the road, thus increasing mobility and making it easier for more people to get from point A to point B. Add electric vehicles into the mix and not only we will be getting places faster, but we will breathe easier with cleaner air. Now that’s a future everyone can get behind.
Written by: Kelsey Johnson
