Digital Platforms for Automobility: Technology’s Promise for Cars, Transit and Cities
For years, I've been fascinated both by car culture and the magic of bicycles. I wrote my thesis on how bikes make us low-tech cyborgs and teach us about our cities, our bodies and the land. Car magazines like Road & Track have long been my mental bubblegum, and our clients have included carmakers' C-suite executives, top telecoms and other key players in the Internet of Things space. But nowhere we looked offered a clear view of the future beyond the connected car or better smartphone integration.
In preparation for our upcoming workshop and panel discussion at the RSA conference, we at Causeit have released a guide to the future of personal mobility—not just cars, not just transit, but digital platforms for true automobility.
We've also crafted a speculative fiction piece on a day in the life of a smarter city so that you can try on this future of automobility for yourself.
The smart cities of our future promise efficiency, safety and ease—in exchange for entrusting our most critical infrastructure to highly-networked systems.
Cities will require the creation of secure, accessible, multi-sided platforms which connect many modes of transit and form new networks of mobility.
One way we can conceptualize this change from automobiles to automobility is by considering shifts in ownership, things, individuals, technology and autonomy.
We must think about how to solve for the issues inherent in implementation of not just 'robot cars,' but also multimodal, 'door to door' transportation and the potential shift in the automotive industry from vehicle production to automobility as a service.
- Read about the challenges humans have faced in mobility and the technological shifts taking place
- Learn which companies that are disrupting the automotive industry
- Experience what a commute to work will look like in a smart city of the future.