A New Transportation Mode is Swiftly Arriving: What it Means for the Future of Auto
We are swiftly arriving at something magical, a new and disruptive transportation mode: driverless vehicles coupled with mobility services. We think consumers will want this. We think it will be fantastic for them. We think it will be transformative in the same way the smartphone and personal computer have been. Consumers embraced them so completely that they never looked back; flip phones and typewriters were all but gone from their thoughts. We think consumers will likewise flock to this new transportation mode, changing forever their relationship to cars and transportation.
But the embrace — the adoption of this new transportation mode — won’t roll out the same way as it did for cell phones and computers, instantly across the country and world. Instead, carmakers will have to think of its adoption as coming place by place, location by location — what we call islands of autonomy. These islands are cities but not only cities. They are cities across the world that fit certain demographic criteria, but they are also bounded concentrations of populations in places that range from college towns to cities-within-cities, and they include cities that push beyond their boundaries until they merge into other communities. Read More…
