Peak car ownership will speed up peak oil demand

The car of the near future?

Technological innovation and disruption are relentlessly eating into traditional businesses, offering similar or superior service at a fraction of the cost. Uber’s spectacular rise challenging traditional taxi monopolies, of course, is everyone’s first example. Airbnb and countless others are doing the same to other established industries.

But Uber’s ultimate goal goes deeper than challenging taxi monopolies. It is about the future of mobility, especially in growing urban centers as described in 1 Oct 2016 issue of The Economist. The subject is Maas Global, a Finnish enterprise offering mobility-as-a-service or MaaS.

The future of mobility, according to The Economist article will be in developing intermodal yet integrated business models that allows typical passengers to get from point A to point B with speed, convenience and a reasonable cost. It highlights 2 major trends, among many others: “The new approach to transport as a service relies on two interconnected trends. The first is the spread of smartphones, which both generate the data required to manage a system that combines a wide variety of public and private transport options, and allow firms to offer the information via an app. They have already made navigating a city by public transport much easier. “Intelligent” journey planners, which use live information about congestion, disruption from accidents and the like to suggest the best route, are proliferating. Around 70% of Londoners regularly use an app such as Transport for London’s journey planner. Live travel information shows whether trains and buses are running on time.”

Read the EnergyPost story - “Peak car ownership will speed up peak oil demand.”