Mobility Tech
Besides autonomous vehicles, ride hailing, e-scooters and e-bikes; mobility technology also includes: electrification (electric vehicles, charging/batteries); fleet management and connectivity (connectivity, data management, cybersecurity, parking, fleet management); auto commerce (car sharing); transportation logistics (freight, last-mile delivery); and urban air mobility (Sipe, 2019)
E-scooters and e-bikes are thought to be the solution by micromobility companies to the ‘first-mile last-mile’ problem, as they will enable people to move quickly and easily between their homes or workplaces and a bus or rail station. But this will strongly depend on having safe and segregated bicycle networks and frequent and widely accessible public transport services. Though ride-hailing services might relieve people of the need to own a car, there is evidence to suggest these services are adding to traffic congestion because more of their time on the road involves travelling without any passengers. The enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles has cooled and some now believe we won’t see many of the social benefits for decades.
Autonomous vehicles (AV), are envisioned to reduce road fatalities by switching control of safety-critical tasks from humans to machines. Realizing safety benefits on the ground depends on technological advancement as well as the scale and rate of AV adoption, which are in turn influenced by public perceptions and ethical concerns. At the individual level, young males report higher perceptions of current AV safety and predict fewer years until AVs are safe enough for them to use. Urban, fully employed individuals with higher incomes and education levels also report fewer years until AVs are safe to use (Moody et al., 2019).
One of the newest entrants in the mobility tech field is known as mobility as a service (MaaS). MaaS could be defined as a platform to make better use of existing infrastructure and transport modes by linking journey planners, payment systems and a range of mobility services. This idea seems to be creating great enthusiasm among both private entrepreneurs and in the public sector.
Innovation and technological advances are always at the core of marketing campaigns or communication actions associated with mobility. New potentialities are presented as success factors and net contributors to mobility and progress. Organisations pursue brand empowerment by presenting selected innovation cases, achievements, experimental products, and stories about the impact of their innovation activities. In fact, actors associated with a particular innovation might strategically inflate expectations or technological promise to attract resources and attention (Rufe and Markard, 2010). This over-optimism can lead to a period of hype, during which attention (from media and the public) and expectations peak.