Thanks to the smartphone, going from A to B is so easy
that it’s got some urban dwellers wondering...
Why bother owning a car when you can easily get where you want at the press of a button?
It’s an idea known as “mobility as a service”,
where travelers say goodbye to their own cars
and sign up instead for transportation-on-demand booked through their smartphones.
Imagine, for instance, a commuting plan that charges by the mile or through a monthly fee, like Netflix.
The demise of car ownership, at least in the world’s growing urban centers,
is a prospect that the world’s automakers are getting ready for.
But it’s not going to happen right away.
A major switch to subscription transportation requires two things to fall into place.
The first is already well under way:
the explosion of ride-hailing apps like Lyft, Grab and Careem.
The second part isn't quite there yet.
That’s driverless cars.
Removing the human from behind the wheel slashes the cost of a taxi ride.
That will make mobility as a service so cheap in many places,
it won’t make financial sense to own a car anymore.
A typical ride today costs $2 to $3 a mile,
but a robo-taxi is projected to cost as little as 70 cents per mile.
Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk reckons
he can lower that to 18 cents a mile.
That will turbo-charge demand for mobility as a service,
which is destined to become a $10 trillion business, according to Ford Motor Company.
That's why tech giants like Google and Apple are developing their own self-driving systems
to take on the world's leading automakers, including Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford and Toyota.
Eventually, a single smartphone app could connect us to a web of options:
robo-taxis, self-driving shuttles, subways, e-bikes and electric scooters --
that will whisk us through congested megacities,
where two-thirds of the global population is projected to live by mid-century.
Someday, urban dwellers may have to spend a day in the country
to catch a glimpse of that 20th Century show pony known as a private car.