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The automobile industry has always been at the forefront of technological innovation. It is one of the industries contributing to the development of the economy and society. With the acceleration of digital transformation in the industry, many companies race to seize mobility as a service business model to their core capabilities. Mobility-as-a-Service refers to the concept of on-demand transportation service into a holistic mobility service that meets consumers' needs. The debate around smart mobility has grown in the last few years as cities are growing larger, faster, and becoming more densely populated.
While technology is changing the mobility landscape leading to a greener and sustainable mobility, here are the top innovations for the future of mobility.
Smart Parking
According to the United States, there will be 10 billion citizens and three billion additional cars worldwide by 2050. As this surge in vehicles will put a strain on transportation authorities, city parking infrastructure needs to be reimagined to address the expected growth. People in America spend an average of 17 hours per year searching for parking. This results in a cost of US$345 per driver in wasted time, fuel, and emissions. A technology-driven parking system can significantly reduce these costs and solve citizens' parking issues. Already, advances in-vehicle connectivity, smart infrastructure, and internet of things applications are transforming the possibilities for parking. Libelium, a wireless sensor network platform provider, harnesses integrated radar technology to find open parking spaces. The company's new Smart Parking node detects spaces with 99 percent accuracy.
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
MaaS is an on-demand, real-time consumer-centric model of transportation. It involves the combination of transport methods such as car and bike sharing, taxis, and car rentals/leases. The mobility also method provides everything for the consumer from travel planning to payments. As MaaS creates the space for multimodal transportation platforms, various key industry players are already working together to build new and unified services. For instance, automotive giant Toyota and ride-sharing company DiDi Chuxing in China joined hands to develop MaaS services such as fleet management, maintenance, insurance, and financing.
Autonomous Vehicles
Advancements in technology have significantly led automakers to introduce autonomous vehicles. However, the road to fully autonomous is still far away from the real world. Autonomous cars can help reduce the number of road accidents. According to the data, 94 percent of crashes happen due to driver behavior or error. The arrival of AVs on the road will offer greater independence and enable drivers to focus on other work. These vehicles can also minimize harmful emissions by 60 percent, according to Ohio University's Future of Driving report.
Connected Highways
With the development of intelligent cars and autonomous vehicles, the concept of connected highways is not far away. Integrated Roadways, a Missouri, United States-based provider of connectivity for mobile IoT and autonomous vehicles, introduces pre-cast, connected pavement slabs that convert any road into a real information highway. Cisco is also making efforts in connected highways. Cisco Connected Highways provides an end-to-end, highly secure network, from vehicles to roadways to surrounding infrastructure.
Shared Mobility
Shared mobility is the concept of commuting anywhere without owning a vehicle. However, the popularity of shared mobility is expected to slow down car ownership, but it doesn't seem realistic anytime soon. This is significantly owing to the strong expected growth of vehicle sales in Asia. Conversely, in the U.S., a majority of citizens prefer driving their own cars over shared mobility, a McKinsey report found. Shared mobility provides time and money-saving benefits, helps reduce environmental impact, addresses urban density problems, encourages social commute, etc.
In a broader sense, the future of mobility is largely driven by advanced technology including IoT, sensors, artificial intelligence, big data, augmented reality, and more. These technologies will continue to spark breakthrough innovation in automotive.