Predictions, like resolutions, are made each New Year – their relevance tested by time. It is an understatement to say that 2020 has been a tumultuous year, for industry as well as for society. Few could have predicted the massive impact of the Coronavirus epidemic. It has upended not only the way we live, play, and work, but how we get there.
Transportation and mobility have greatly impacted the way in which communities have been able to mitigate the impact of Covid-19. The data gathered from vehicles driven has delivered critical insights for managing traffic, accelerating smart city services, and launching new concierge services.
It is clear that 2021 will continue to present Covid-19-related challenges, among them the need to manage swift and constant change. I believe in response to societal needs, mobility-related technologies like connectivity, data utilization, automotive IoT and urban transport will quickly advance in development and adoption.
The global smart city market size is exploding. It is expected to grow from an estimated $410.8B in 2020 to over $820B in 2025. Smart cities use big data to make decisions, and the automotive IoT revolution is enabling the collection and communication of such data. Transportation is a major factor affecting urban areas, and a key use case for smart cities. Intelligent transportation systems, often using a traffic management center to monitor and coordinate a large network of sensors, will find even more innovative ways to improve traffic congestion and urban mobility.
Mobility is a far reaching concept for cities, encompassing everything from traffic management to public transportation to infrastructure systems. IoT, and specifically automotive IoT, is helping cities to gather and analyze data at an unprecedented rate, and smart cities are utilizing both real-time and historic traffic data to make critical decisions. While many of the cities pioneering intelligent transportation systems currently rely on sensors embedded in infrastructure, we see that these costly methods will continue to be replaced or supplemented with connected car data to take advantage of embedded modems and V2X technologies.
But, rather than share only my predictions for 2021, I thought I might ask leaders from the mobility sphere what they think the New Year has in store for us.
Below, you will find the mobility trends a diverse group of academics, analysts and start-up entrepreneurs expect to unfold next year.
I would also like to take this opportunity to wish you and all of our community a happy and healthy New Year!
2021 Mobility Trends
“As the transportation sector recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, public-private partnerships with public transit and shared mobility companies could create new opportunities to address social equity in service provision, provide first- and last-mile connectivity, and fill critical service gaps such late-night and low-density transportation.”
Susan A. Shaheen, Ph.D.
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center
University of California, Berkeley
“I think 2021 will be the year we will see the first truly successful data monetization strategies from Automotive OEMs. Some key drivers behind this are:
- The market for connected car data is maturing – with use cases catching the eye of fleet operators, insurers and retailers
- There will be even more cars with embedded connectivity on the roads
- Better connectivity infrastructure (5G rolled out in leading countries in 2020/2021)
- We’ll see some level 4 autonomous vehicles on the roads (as promised by Tesla, Ford, GM, and Volvo among others).”
Einar Michaelsen
Manager | Leading AI & Emerging Tech Capabilities
KPMG Norway
“Increased data regulation, including privacy, provides a catalyst and an impediment to sourcing location data. Greater scrutiny pushes marginal data producers & aggregators out and reinforces compliance practices at established companies. Trusted brands, such as OEMs, have a real opportunity to meet the burgeoning need for mobility data.”
Lynne Schneider
Research Director, Data as a Service
IDC
“Fleets are in the very early stages of tapping into the value of connected car data insights. This activity will gather pace in 2021 to enhance compliance, uptime, safety, and efficiency.”
Roger C. Lanctot
Director, Automotive Connected Mobility
Strategy Analytics
“Automotive is strongly impacted by, but also a key contributor to, structuring trends of our society, such as sustainability, life in city centers, and possessing versus consuming behavior. Data will be the key to understand and address these challenges. 5G will bring a deluge of new data from vehicles, connected territories, people, city services. Two issues will need to be solved: understanding how to get value out of this data and how to manage privacy.”
Michel Guiga
VP, Automotive
Capgemini Invent France
“As the proportion of vehicles on the road that is connected continues to rise, and as 5G continues to expand, the utility of vehicle data will grow accordingly. The post-COVID environment and the expansion of the sharing economy will also present new opportunities! Go Otonomo!”
Michael Granoff
Founder and Managing Partner
Maniv Mobility
“In 5 years, hands-free driving will be a standard. Buying a car without autopilot will be as outdated as buying a flip phone! In 2021, we’ll see auto industry players ramping up their safety technology to make this happen and achieve an NCAP 5-star rating in the process.”
“With the US, EU, and China set on the technology, 2021 will bring widespread deployment of traffic signals equipped with V2X. Smart Intersections equipped with V2X and cameras will become more commonplace, allowing vehicles to maximize V2X benefits from the get-go. This will lead to safer roads and less congestion.”
“From our view of the market, fleets are undoubtedly a huge area of growth for 2021 as further advancements in insurance and telematics are made possible and come to market at scale. We are excited about scale overall in the marketplace, especially for the connected car and the value we can unlock.”
Ben Boutcher-West
Head of Mobility
appyway
“Electrification of transportation introduces an opportunity for our generation to create a greener world. I believe that digital services platforms are the “glue” between the mobility and energy worlds, and are a key in driving progress towards the 2030 Climate Target Plan.”
Doron Frenkel
Founder & CEO
Driivz
“In 2021, AI will transform data into powerful key-value for the new mobility and auto insurance. Equipped with AI predictive analytics and insights, they’ll reach and capture their full potential offering, which also includes benefits for end-users, safety, and the environment.”
Sten Forseke
Founder
Greater Than
“With the changing administration, I believe that climate change will re-emerge as a major consideration in the mobility space. I also expect that connected vehicle services will play a larger role in cities’ efforts to better understand driver behavior and improve traffic safety.”
“The usage of connected car data in smart city applications outside of the automotive and transport industry [will be a trend in 2021], for example, environment, insurance, road infrastructure, safety etc. In addition, there will be a growing need for visual analytics tools to help the everyday analyst to extract the necessary insights easily.”
Interested in the future of mobility?
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