As the world steps into a brand new year, the question that is on everyone’s mind is how will 2023 pan out for the mobility segment. This is particularly a key concern given that the auto and mobility sector have been facing lots of ‘new’ pressure points.
Speaking at the IEB AutoTech 2022 in association with IHS Markit, Tom De Vleesschauwer, Senior Director – Mobility of S&P Global Mobility outlined the following challenges for the industry:
“-Climate Change: Energy security is a powerful driver coupled with ambition to drive a stronger mobility and energy transition.
-Sustainability: OEMs need to think out of the box as challenging geopolitical environment might restrict access to critical materials.
-Supply Chain: Need for greater transparency.”
In fact, if we see the current trend, many OEMs and service providers are looking at the potential of new mobility offerings and experimenting with portfolio. As the emergence of new channels of mobility gain traction, some significant drop of market share in conventional options is on the cards. According to Vleesschauwer, “Mobility services and personal autonomous cars will eventually dominate the new car market. While conventional vehicles like the personally owned non-autonomous car will lose market share.” According to him, the implications of these could be far-reaching ranging from dealerships to preferred vehicle types.
Changing vehicle usage pattern
However, the declining importance of conventional cars may not be all doom and gloom and could in fact unlock opportunities for Purpose Build Vehicles (PBV). Some of the examples of these would include:
–Volkswagen’s MOIA a dedicated MaaS business launched in December 2016. Featuring more than 100 dedicated VW BEV providing pooled ride-hailing services in Hamburg and Hanover.
-DiDi Chuxing & BYD co-operation for a dedicated MaaS vehicle (BYD D1) specially for commercial MaaS operation (and taxi service).
• Uber & Arrival collaborate on dedicated ride-hailing EVs.
Vleesschauwer believes that, “Vehicle usage patterns are set to change, leading to different requirements which will influence the vehicle material choices and/or manufacturing approach. By 2050 MaaS vehicle miles travelled per vehicle will be approximately 4 to 5 times higher than personally owned cars average vehicle miles travelled.”
Therefore he uses historical reference to elaborate that the industry is facing many new challenges, is not necessarily a bad thing “as historically it has been exceptional at engineering solutions to anything the sector faced. But this time around it might be less about engineering and more about co-operation and transparency across the value chain.”
However political decisions will play a lot more significant role going forward, as governments seek to control strategic resources and secure competitive advantage. He signed off saying that “increasingly the available energy-mix and level of self-sufficiency could become the key elements of future sourcing decisions” and how OEMs balance supply chain challenges with emerging innovation.