We will be able to drive without a license in the future

In the future, we will say 'mobility' instead of 'automobile'. Is it a dream to say that the importance of the word 'automobile' for our civilization at the point we have come from the invention of the wheel and an indispensable element that we all have together for some part of our day, a word that will be removed from dictionaries in the future?

Five Trends That Are Revolutionizing Mobility

According to the latest research from PwC, these five words define the mobility of the future: EOPBG. Automotive industry players have to determine their future strategies according to these 5 trends: Electric, Autonomous, Shared, Connected & Updated.

Electric

The car of the future, or in other words the element of mobility, is definitely electric. By 2030, 55% of new car sales in Europe will be electric vehicles. The new generation, who is young and has a good understanding of technology, will play a critical role in the radical change of the automotive industry. The mobility of the future will be much easier, more flexible and much more personalized. The car of the future will be used and shared only when there is demand.

In addition, the electricity required for charging cars will be obtained from renewable sources. In other words, the charging unit in your home will have its own solar panels.

In fact, Honda introduced its new electric vehicle, the Urban EV, at the Frankfurt motor show, which I visited last time, together with the solar power unit that you can use in your home when you buy the vehicle. When you buy a Honda Urban EV, this power unit comes with it. You can use the excess energy you produce in this power unit in your home or sell it to your neighbor.

We will be able to drive without a license!

The car of the future will be accessible to everyone, not just license holders. You can also see this as the revolution of public transport to personal transport. Automobile will now be a service that can be more easily obtained. On top of that, when we add that the car of the future will be 'autonomous', we can understand why we will not need a driver's license. This means that people from almost all walks of life can have 'personal mobility' solutions. The automobile, which is currently only available to people with a certain income level, is now a shared service that everyone can own.

Guess how public transportation will evolve in this sense… Do you find it more attractive to take the metrobus or call an autonomous vehicle that will pick you up from where you are?

Autonomous

About a year ago, Mercedes-Benz Turkey invited me to a big organization where I could test all its new cars. While driving the new E300 AMG Cabriolet, I decided to test its semi-autonomous driving. After setting the vehicle's speed to a maximum value with a single finger movement, I left the road completely to the E Series. When I said 120km, 140km, 185km, I realized that I am in a vehicle that turns the steering wheel itself, adjusts its acceleration and deceleration according to the conditions of the road and other vehicles, and gives me a full 60 seconds to spend by literally turning my eyes to my smartphone. He warned me with a voice when I took my hand off the wheel from time to time, even though he was doing this because of the current traffic safety laws, it was not difficult to understand that autonomous driving is already in our lives.

On top of this experience, we can say that autonomous vehicles that will take you from your door without any driver behind the wheel will be in our lives very soon.

Shared

The fact that a vehicle is autonomous supports that it is also shared. You would naturally expect a car traveling from one place to another by itself to serve more than one person. Otherwise, you will use that mobile resource below its capacity. Therefore, as autonomous driving increases and the driving experience gets smarter, it will result in more shared mobility.

In developed countries and China, you can currently have a car service that you can go to city centers and subscribe to for a few hours, but the biggest change in the near future will be: you will not go and look for a car, an autonomous car will come to you wherever you are!

Connected

"Connectedness" of cars means cars networking with the outside world. Being connected represents two concepts at once: First; car-to-car and car-to-X communication. That is, if the car is in communication with other cars or with the transport infrastructure, for example with the traffic flow or with traffic lights.

The second is; the passengers in the vehicle are in constant networking with the outside world. So, in the future we will be communicating, working, surfing the internet and consuming digital services more than we have ever done before on car journeys.

Updated

Your car is electrified. It goes on its own without even having to have a driver's license. It is constantly connected and shared. All this will speed up one thing: innovation in the automotive industry!

Although 5 of the 20 companies with the highest R&D spending in the world come from the automotive sector, there is only one automotive company among the 10 most innovative brands in the world: it is no surprise that this is Tesla.

Therefore, the biggest impact of 'EOPBG' will be to trigger and accelerate innovation in the mobility sector. The non-innovative will perish!

Currently, new car models are renewed every 5 or 8 years, so when you buy a car, you change it after a maximum of 8 years. In the near future, the models will be updated every year. This is due to the need to be able to integrate the latest software and hardware developments into new models in a modular manner. Vehicles that are constantly updated and renewed with shorter innovation cycles will become the reality of our lives.

Automotive companies are no longer about cars!

So, what will be the change effect of these 5 trends on the auto industry? What and how will they need to change so that they can survive?

For one thing, the first thing they accept is that they accept that their job is not about cars anymore. Now it's all about mobility.

Automakers and suppliers, who until now have concentrated only on the production and sale of automobiles, will hardly face the restructuring of the industry.

It's not just about the technical product anymore, it's about mobility services anymore. So what does this mean? This means that they will now have to tightly connect the hardware, ie the tool, and the software.

In other words, the car of the future and the mobility of the future mean the same thing.

The word 'car' will change with 'mobility'!

Rather than just concentrating on new car buyers, the automotive value chain of the future will have to involve and integrate all mobility users.

In other words, it will not be enough for them to focus only on the production and sales of vehicles in the future. The automotive value chain will not end at the exit door of the production factory, but will cover the entire life cycle of the car produced, up to its recycling.

Customers and target groups of the automotive industry will no longer be just people who will buy cars, they will be all mobility users, that is, anyone who needs to get from one place to another.

Software-based 'direct interaction' enriched with brand experience

Therefore, the goal of every mobility service provider (future automotive brand) is; There will be software-based "direct interaction" with each user enriched with brand experience. Mobility brands that can do this will have higher revenues throughout the lifecycle of their customer relationships. I write again: mobility brands that interact directly with the user will survive! Those who say that I have manufactured the vehicle, sold it, I also provide maintenance services, and that I am finished will be buried in history.

On the other hand, auto brands will need to shift their investments into software solutions rather than investing in product lines. PwC predicts investment in product lines could fall as much as 19% by 2020. According to the same research, brands that spend 25% of their R&D budgets on software applications are rewarded with high growth.

As a result, 'EOPBG', i.e. Electric, Autonomous, Shared, Connected and Updated, every mobility service (the word will no longer be car, its new name will be 'mobility') has to focus on the mobility needs of the customer. The focus will no longer be on the automobile as a technical product. In other words, if the hardware is as good as the software you offer, it will exist. If the hardware does not talk to the software that came with it, it will not be able to talk to the customer, and it goes without saying what happened to those who do not speak to the customer.