Changing Automotive Industry landscape- End to End Mobility
With the onset of new car technologies and changes in vehicle ownership models, automotive companies off late have changed their focus from just concentrating on car production to solving the problem of end-to-end mobility.
This change is clearly visible with General motors launching its new peer to peer car rental service Maven, Volkswagen is planning to launch its all electric vehicle sharing platform WE. Ford and Toyota are partnering with US based car leasing website Getaround. Tesla is also launching it’s own car sharing platform Tesla Network
Why are carmakers looking towards end to end mobility?
I currently travel to my internship office in Udyog Vihar to reach my destination I first take an auto to the nearest metro station, then I travel by metro then after reaching the Destination metro station, I travel by Uber to finally reach my office.
This is what so many other people are doing as it saves time and money, hence end to end mobility becomes something which we actually need and Automotive OEMs are thus investing in the same.
Also thinking about the long term, the EV charging infra is still below par in most of the countries, renting an EV then leaving it at a charging station (after battery gets drained, and charging is slow) then renting another would be a more effective way of EV commute in future, unless we get some very fast chargers. Currently DC charging which is considered the fastest means of charging also takes around 20 mins to charge the battery to 80%.
Also if Uber without producing these cars can thrive on the end to end mobility model then car manufacturers can definitely gain much more.
Several other factors include:
- Public transport developing everyday with technological milestones like Hyperloop
- Ever increasing world population
- and mounting pressure on the roads.
- With Ride-hailing apps like Uber people are preferring more and more to use a combination of 2 or more transport modes to reach their destination this is optimizing time and the cost.
- Parking woes and lack of space is another problem that people face .
These might be some of the many reasons why Automotive OEMs are shifting their focus to end to end mobility the most important being point number four.