A Glimpse into the Future of Mobility

Shared the stage with Antoine Blondeau, Joseph Tsai, Mike Perlis, and Rich Karlgaard during the #ForbesGlobalCEO Conference recently. For one hour, we focused only on the future, putting aside our daily preoccupations and discussed trends that will shape our homes in the next 20 to 30 years.

I learned a lot from my fellow panelists, and despite coming from different countries and industries, our collective optimism for the future is unanimous - machines and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not take over the world.

What’s more likely to happen in the next 20 years is this - a safer, cleaner, less polluted and more efficient world where human connections and wisdom are even more vital.

3 super trends shaping the future of mobility

This future will be shaped by three super trends: i) Increasing digitalisation, ii) Advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and iii) Declining battery cost.

These trends are likely to converge and bring about the next revolution in urban mobility.

In the next few decades, we are likely to see the mass adoption of centrally optimised electric self-driving fleets in cities. Mass transportation networks such as trains and buses will continue to be necessary but will be complemented by fleets of electric self-driving cars, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles for last mile journeys. Fleet utilisation and routing will be optimised according to aggregated demand and traffic conditions.

This will be a future where we no longer need to associate door-to-door mobility with private car ownership. The rise of ride-sharing and carpooling will mean less congestion on the roads. Combined with the impending popularisation of electric vehicles, carbon emissions from ground transportation will be reduced vastly. And here’s the part I am most pumped up about - our rides and roads will be safer with fewer accidents! Self-driving fleets will make fewer errors of judgment, have ZERO fatigue, ZERO ego and road rage issues.

Driving the future of mobility in Southeast Asia, one "Lorong Tikus" at a time

Successful mass adoption of self-driving fleets hinges on:

• Accurate and real-time traffic information and maps.
• Data systems and network infrastructure that can process copious amounts of data real-time.
• AI systems that can interpret and act upon these large amounts of data.

These are the crucial underpinnings of a self-driving system. The process of building these underpinnings will, however, be particularly challenging in Southeast Asia.

Poor road discipline and haphazard driving practices. Hawkers standing in the midst of traffic. Road flooding during heavy rains. In addition, there are hundreds of undocumented back alleys, small lanes and “Lorong Tikus” which commuters use daily.

(One of the many “Lorong Tikus” in Indonesia. Source.)

The complexities increase when you take into account different vehicles’ speed profiles. For example, motorcycles and cars move through traffic differently – this affects routing recommendations and ETA calculations.

This is the challenge faced by Southeast Asia in embracing the next evolution of mobility, and it is something Grab has been working on for the past few years. We collect more than five terabytes of detailed location data generated by our 2 million Grab car and motorcycle driver-partners on the road each day. This data enables us to map out undocumented locations and roads, thereby improving mapping and routing computations.

Real-time driver location data will also be a key building block of the centrally optimised traffic management system I touched on earlier. Just last year, Grab started providing driver location data to the OpenTraffic platform, a collaboration with the World Bank to provide Southeast Asian governments with access to real-time traffic information. With our data, governments can make planning decisions, identify choke points and respond immediately to congestions and accidents.

Nothing can replace the human touch

As exciting as these new technologies promise to be, my discussion with the panelists ended on a very poignant note: the simple, real value of human connections can never be replaced by AI and machines.

Humans are emotionally driven. Droids and AI cannot replace real human connections, but they can relieve drivers from having to focus completely on traffic and give them the opportunity and bandwidth to provide more personalised, localised and value-added services that improve passenger comfort, convenience, and safety.

In the future, when you are picked up by a GrabCar in a foreign country, not only will our driver-partner be able to act as a guide and a source of the best local advice, he might even be able to dispense you a local SIM card and cash in the local denomination.

This is just a glimpse of the future we are part of, and the vision that drives Grab. It will take time to build, but I am confident we will get there. I am privileged to be working with sharp, driven and humble individuals focused on solving local problems and making a positive impact on our cities and communities. Let us work towards a sustainable future that is safer, cleaner and more efficient, a world in which the human connection will remain ever so vital.