Reinventing the wheel: what’s driving change in 21st century mobility

In the coming decades, the world will become even more urban and populous. The second quarter of the twenty-first century will be dominated by the need to retool economies to serve more people, decarbonise, adapt to climate change, and improve resilience in the face of viruses, cyber threats and other sources of fragility. 

Leaders across the private and public sectors – including local governments – will, in turn, grapple with how the automotive, aerospace, and transport and logistics sectors can innovate and grow in the face of these headwinds.  

The mobility industry is experiencing a major transformation in operations and mindset. It is moving from the ‘heavy footprint’ model of the twentieth century, characterised by physical, mass-produced, carbon-intensive assets, to the ‘light footprint’ model of the twenty-first, characterised by personalised and shareable mobility technology and software, alongside integrated, interconnected systems.  

Trends and changes encompass not just the movement of people but goods, services and data as well. Navigating the tension and evolution of both legacy and emergent systems will require agility, adaptation, and a wide range of expertise.  

Noisy debate will continue to play out across the industry, asking: How can the mobility sector respond to evolving consumer expectations to influence and lead a transformation towards cleaner, more connected and collaborative systems? 

To make sense of the debate, we have created three interconnected article series focusing on interrelated aspects of mobility transformation: 

Mobility in a sustainable, post-Covid world  

The first series, Mobility in a sustainable, post-Covid world focuses on how the world of mobility can offer safer options in light of Covid-19 and more sustainable options considering increased expectations from governments and consumers for resilient, net-zero carbon economies. 

Mobility as a service 

The second series, Mobility as a service, looks at how the mobility sector is moving away from a product mentality, to a more holistic understanding of mobility – as a multi-modal, multi-platform service which gets goods and people from A to B, whether the journey is personal, shared, public, information-enabled, or not. 

Mobility and the next wave of disruption 

Mobility and the next wave of disruption, the third series in the campaign, will explore how data, analytics, robotics, 5G and other technologies will shift the mobility landscape in the coming decades, and how mobility players should prepare for the changes to come.