Automotive as it has evolved over the last 100 years is perceived by many as leading to massive problems over the world. Driven by wealth, urbanization and increasing car-park pollution and congestion, effects have increased globally and need to be addressed.
Technological development seems to offer solutions: electric mobility leads to much cleaner mobility, car sharing will decrease the number of vehicles in use worldwide and autonomous driving will help boost the capacity of streets - whether this is urban or on highways. Really? To assess the impact of those key trends, we have conducted a 360-degree study incorporating perspectives from customers, industry players and regulators. Here’s our conclusion:

Transformation of the automotive industry is no longer driven by customers alone – it will be driven by regulation. In light of the further urbanization worldwide, countries and cities, as the main regulators of mobility solutions, are starting to act stricter in order to maintain environments that are worth living in. On the other side, there are key customer requirements they will need to incorporate into their concepts, including:
 

• The majority of people worldwide claiming ownership of a car as highly important – mainly due to status.
• Limitations of electric mobility due to limited operating reach, higher purchase price of electric cars compared to internal combustion engines, and insufficient charging infrastructure.
• The fact that autonomous vehicle concepts (mostly) will be introduced in a brownfield environment with legacy car parks, pedestrians and customers willing to accept autonomous and shared concepts as an additional mobility option, not necessarily replacing owned cars.

Nevertheless, the introduction of new mobility concepts will significantly change the car park: we expect a share of up to more than 50 percent electrified vehicles (full battery electric or hybrid) by 2030 - depending on segment. We expect the rise of mobility platforms offering mobility on demand through vehicles either produced specifically for this purpose or privately owned and temporarily put into the mobility system by the owner.

It is frequently reported that the overall market size will significantly shrink. This is theoretically true due to effects such as complete car sharing. However, realistic scenarios we have calculated on real urban data and statistically relevant customer preferences suggest a total production volume worldwide of between 110 and 120 million vehicles – which is more than many experts predict.

The advantages of the coming new mobility options attract customers: almost one-third of those customers using public mobility modes such as trains and buses today would change their behavior and switch towards the above-described mobility modes – adding further capacity requirements to the system. We therefore expect, depending on the initial urban status of a city or region (e.g. comparing the completely different public transportation statuses of Hong Kong and Houston), that three key mobility scenarios will prevail:

• Regions which progressively move towards autonomous vehicles based on mobility on demand (“disruptors”)
• Legacy-constrained cities incrementally introducing new automotive mobility systems
• Cities Market scenarios 2030regulation tovolume estimations applying focused and respective seamlessly integrate new automotive mobility modes into their public mobility system, which they consequently extend (“smart cities”).