Skip to main content

Report predicts how future mobility solutions will affect automotive OEMs

Global management consultancy, Arthur D. Little (ADL) has released a new study, The Future of Automotive Mobility, based on a global survey of 6,500 participants, including customers, industry players and regulators. The report examines how the megatrends of electric mobility, car sharing and autonomous driving are likely to impact on the global automotive ecosystem and future OEM sales. The report notes that the future of mobility will no longer depend primarily on the preferences of customers, but wil
March 31, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
Global management consultancy, Arthur D. Little (ADL) has released a new study, The Future of Automotive Mobility, based on a global survey of 6,500 participants, including customers, industry players and regulators. The report examines how the megatrends of electric mobility, car sharing and autonomous driving are likely to impact on the global automotive ecosystem and future OEM sales.

The report notes that the future of mobility will no longer depend primarily on the preferences of customers, but will increasingly be driven by regulation as cities seek to resolve traffic-generated problems such as congestion and poor air quality. Electric mobility, car sharing and autonomous driving solutions all have an important role to play in meeting these challenges. However, ADL believes the effect on traditional OEMs’ production volume may not be as severe as some experts have predicted.

As an example, the report says a key component of autonomous driving will be “mobility-on-demand” solutions, in which customers use “robot taxis.” Based on real mobility data from almost 100 mega-cities, ADL simulated the effect of robot taxis upon mobility behaviour and car sales. The findings revealed that even with total market coverage, their effect was not as bad as the predicted worst case scenario.

The report details how new roles are being created in the automotive-supplier pyramid, with the shift to the electric drive train and the increasing importance of software being additional factors to consider. However, a major challenge for manufacturers is the loss of direct access to the mobility customer.
 
Wolf-Dieter Hoppe, author of the study and associate director at ADL, warns: “Millions of individual customers will be replaced by a few very large, multinational fleet operators. These could take over the dominant role of OEMs in the ecosystem, as they would have direct customer access as well as considerable volume power. In particular, this would be a problem for today’s premium manufacturers.”

Related Content

  • October 12, 2018
    Trust me, I'm a driverless car
    Developing C/AV technology is the easy bit: now the vehicles need to gain people’s confidence. So does the public feel safe in driverless hands – and how much might they be willing to pay for the privilege? The Venturer consortium’s final user and technology test (Trial 3) explored levels of user trust in scenarios where a connected and autonomous vehicle (C/AV) is interacting with cyclists, pedestrians and other road users on a controlled road network. Trial 3 consisted of experimental runs in the
  • November 23, 2017
    Mobility pricing offers new tools for managing mobility
    Mobility pricing is the best way of sustaining and enhancing mobility, argues Moving Forward Consulting’s Josef Czako. Mobility pricing (MP) is effectively the culmination of the ‘user pays’ principle and has been referred to in many policy discussions about electronic toll collection, road user charging (RUC), and pricing. MP not only reflects the ‘use more, pay more’ nature of RUC, it also takes account of the external cost of journeys including pollution, noise, the cost of congestion and accidents.
  • June 4, 2015
    The future looks bright for ITS
    Professor Eric Sampson talks about the past successes of ITS, its potential for the future and the challenges the industry faces. If anybody should know when Intelligent Transport Systems started that person is Professor Eric Sampson, a visiting professor at both Newcastle and London City Universities. Having spent 40 years working for the UK’s Department of Transport and other public administrations, Professor Sampson now supports the European Commission on ITS systems and advises ERTICO ITS-Europe and ITS
  • July 20, 2023
    Demand-responsive transport keeps things flexible
    Mobility needs change: Elena Ziller of OpenMove explains why demand-responsive transport is emerging as a hot mobility trend – and why it’s not without challenges