The near future of mobility
How we move from A to B is changing fast. Technology makes multi-modal travel easy and the mentality shift from owning to using is creating momentum among travelers for new services. A look into the near future.
To say that mobility is heavily influenced by technology is hardly a remarkable statement. Mobility is largely made up of technology and has always been an indicator of change. Smart services made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT) are mainly inspired by mobility issues. Take the car-sharing system that has been around for some time already. A Greenwheels car can be unlocked by every registered user thanks to the connection between the car and internet. At Car2Go that connectivity is even more important for the service in view of the so-called dockless concept: the cars are not at set locations and so their locations must be monitored. The same goes for the ‘shared bicycle’ (a name that is disputable) concept introduced from China to the Netherlands in 2017.
The next iteration is, of course, the self-driving car. Slowly but surely we are coming to terms with all kinds of safety services that assist the driver. They are still rather basic things like parking assistance and lane departure warnings — all somewhat passive systems. The premium cars go a step further and can even drive autonomously on the highway. Technically, a lot can be done but legislation lags behind. Yet there are many pilots starting to stack up. The speed of developments appears to be flattening out but if a few things start to converge in terms of technology and legislation, things could move fast.
Another interesting development is multi-modal travel, which is increasingly becoming established. You select a means of transport that suits you at that moment, depending on your point of departure and destination as well as the purpose of your journey, appointments, family activities, the weather, etc. As a user of an NS Business Card, I get the best out of this flexibility. Where I can, I travel by train between towns so that I can work when I’m traveling and, depending on my final destination, I take a public transport bicycle, public transport or a Greenwheels car. I also have a Car2Go subscription, my own bike and a (classic) car, and use Uber now and then for my urban travel needs.
I am certainly not your average traveller but I am proof that you can already travel multi-modally. By checking in on account, you are free of the friction that comes from buying a ticket to pay for trips. The same goes for Car2Go and Uber where there is a time-shift between the moment of use and payment.
Multi-modal travel and the fact that people are less concerned about owning than using are two ingredients for the mobility shift. So how does it look in practice? To get a good picture, let’s first identify the landscape:
- There is an infrastructure we all use, be it road or rail.
- Then there are the means of transport, the mobility-pods. These can be for one person (bicycle), more than one person for private use (car, taxi) or for the shared transport of many (bus, train, etc).
- Subsequently, you have the service providers who give you access to the means of transport. This now tends to be through a direct link to the means of transport, like a leasing company for your car, Car2Go for dockless car hire, Swapfiets for your lease bike, etc. But the NS (Dutch Railways) allows for a mix of train, public transport bicycle and — if you have an NS Business Card — the car share.
- Then there is the driver, who still matters so long as everything is not yet self-driving. You can be the driver yourself, or an Uber driver or train driver.
- Finally, there is the user, who takes on various roles depending on the purpose: commuter in a shared transport environment, private consumer in a solo-pod or conference partner in a self-driving car.
Another way to look at mobility is by analysing various levels of experience. This becomes more important if we decouple the layers referred to above and link them in new ways. Just as you experience the difference between travelling first or second class by train (normally), a difference may also arise in the number of people with whom you wish to share a mobility-pod or the response time you demand of a service. These are all variables that affect new services. As already occurs with your Ziggo internet subscription, it may soon very well be the case with a private car that you lease — you then share it with people in your neighbourhood, people you know or people linked to you by their profile. This is what Snappcar does: you can lease a Fiat 500 including the promise of its availability for sharing via Snappcar a couple of times a month. As the infrastructure and mobility-pods become more flexible, parties like Uber and Snappcar are counting on the difference in the service and trust between provider and user becoming evident. Precisely because they have a bilateral model in which both the current human provider is digitised as much as possible (think of the optimisation app of the Uber driver) and the demand is readied for a disconnection between the physical service and price (such as yielding supply on the basis of intensity), such providers are well positioned. Another interesting example is Volkswagen. We see this automotive company as a manufacturer and seller of cars. And a focus on ownership therefore. That is, of course, not the case to a large extent any longer since much of the fleet is supplied through lease constructions. Often there is a middleman involved but you can also lease direct from Volkswagen.
Volkswagen (together with Pon) also owns Greenwheels and so they provide a shared car service, although it is not experienced as such by the user who has a contract with Greenwheels. However, it is not inconceivable that in the future you will be able to buy a mobility guarantee subscription from Volkswagen, which will then cater for this in various ways. Diversification by level of luxury would then be an option, for example. If you prefer not to share your car with more than ten people, you can opt for a premium service that uses the same platform but provides access to other cars. Volkswagen could quite easily develop such mobility services, with or without cooperating with the Ubers or Snappcars.
The bottom line is that the world of mobility is changing significantly through the decoupling of services and physical objects, and that these will be able to be purchased flexibly, with or without different user levels. Here lies a major challenge for designers to come up with concepts that fit the needs of users and generate profitable constructions for the various platform players. Platform makers will have to develop increasingly generic systems that also enable the different solutions to be more easily linked with each other.
Last December the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment took up this issue when market parties were asked how such services could be facilitated in a Mobility as a Service document. We don’t believe the answer lies in a large umbrella system but in different systems that can cooperate optimally with each other and whereby you can develop very specific services across the various layers.
The role of cities in this is an interesting consideration here. Will they just provide the physical playing field or will the data layer that is generated by all the transport movements also become part of the public space?
The process is starting now and in the future a lot more will change once the different infrastructure and physical components begin to behave autonomously. Parking, for instance, will become separate from destination and may even disappear as all the pods drive around constantly. The pods may also become nuclear, smaller units. The advantages of traveling by train or bus will disappear if the pods can drive in a kind of platoon, bumper to bumper. I often use this film to illustrate the changing street scene.
One of the key questions is who will develop the infrastructure, who will assume the operation and under which conditions. And yet there will still be a mix of own transport, self-driving and assisted systems for a long time to come.
The fully flexible ‘end station’ creates possibilities to develop context-driven concepts that will ultimately be composed on the basis (literally) of the customer journey of the mobility consumer of the future.
This article was previously published on Emerce.
Illustrations: NewBrighter.studio
