New mobility and the shift from ownership to sharing (1): What does the future hold?

Scenario analysis; the trends of Uber, Didi Chuxing, Google

2017/02/02

Summary

Uber app's screenshot
Uber app's screenshot
Source: Uber Technologies

  New automobile services like ridesharing (carpooling/pick-up services driven by non-professional drivers) provided by Uber Technologies and Didi Chuxing, taxi dispatching, and car sharing are growing rapidly. According to Uber, the company's services were used 15 million times globally on New Year's Eve 2016 (taxi services across Japan averaged 4.4 million a day in 2014).

  There are two potential reasons for this state of affairs. First, consumers, particularly younger generations, do not have the desire to own automobiles, and merely want to use mobility services for transportation. Another is that thanks to the popularization of the smartphone, everyone is now in possession of an advanced, networked information device that enables access to location information, which when combined with the improvements in big data processing technology, makes one-on-one (P2P) supply and demand manageable.

  At the same time, autonomous driving technology continues to advance, and in the future, the combination of fully autonomous vehicles with ridesharing services, or robot taxis, is to be expected. If such transportation methods become a reality, this will have a massive effect not only on the automobile industry's business model of selling vehicles to consumers, but also on various operations related to mobility, such as public transportation, urban planning, and road administration.

  For example, Ford has anticipated that the size of markets it has yet to enter like mobility services amounts to USD 5.4 trillion. In anticipation of turning these markets into major sources of income, the OEM has announced its vision of becoming “an auto and a mobility company” in its mid-term business plan in September 2016. Daimler has also noted that new mobility services such as car sharing projects have emerged as a response to socio-economic changes seen in the continued growth of urban problems in areas including congestion, air pollution, and parking spaces; as well as the popularization of digital media and a decrease in the desire for material possessions; and it projects a high probability for these new mobility services to expand in the future.

  The first part of this report will provide an overview of the newly emerging mobility society, as well as what sort of services are provided by ridesharing companies such as Uber and Didi Chuxing.


Related Reports:
BMW's Car Sharing Service: Planning expansion to 10 cities, starting with 3 U.S. cities in 2016 (Dec. 2016)
Ford: Aiming to achieve volume production of driverless vehicles in 2021 for ride-sharing (Jan. 2017)
TU-Automotive Detroit 2016: Advancement of Mobility Drives Automotive Changes (Jun. 2016)

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