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Transportation
Transport-as-a-Service will provide 95% of the passenger miles traveled within 10 years from the date of regulatory approval
This emerging business model has the potential to change the transportation landscape, ending individual vehicle ownership and reshaping the world’s energy economy.
Transport-as-a-Service will offer transportation four to ten times cheaper per mile than buying a new car and two to four times cheaper than operating an existing vehicle in 2021.
The Disruption of transportation
First, EVs will displace internal combustion engines. Then, A-EVs providing TaaS will transform transportation forever.
By the late 2020s, the first phase of the disruption will cause all new vehicles produced to be electric, as powerful feedback loops force ICE vehicle manufacturing to collapse. This first phase will be overtaken by a second phase of disruption: ICE and private vehicle ownership will be replaced by on-demand A-EVs owned by TaaS fleets, not individuals.
Race to the top
First movers who embrace and accelerate the coming disruption will allow their citizens and economies access to cheaper, safer and more democratizing transportation options, creating an upward spiral of prosperity and opportunity.
The best path forward for decision-makers is to embrace disruptions, and intervene as little as possible except to protect individuals and communities, and to allow the disruption to unfold according to its own internal dynamics.
Witness the transformation
Once available, autonomous technology and TaaS will remove the labor cost of ride service, leading to a cost-per-mile 10 times cheaper than privately-owned vehicles today.
As the utility of old vehicles relying on fossil fuels and a human driver rapidly approaches zero, most people will stop owning vehicles altogether. Instead they will access them when needed. Short-haul aviation will be disrupted by electric aircrafts and overnight road trips in A-EVs. Emissions from shipping will be disrupted by the electrification of ships, along with changes in commodity demand.
TRANSPORTATION REPORT
Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030
In Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030 (published 2017) we showed how the TaaS disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions in investor value — but also creating trillions in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.
Using TaaS, the average American family will save more than $5,600 per year in transportation costs, equivalent to a wage raise of 10%.
This will keep an additional $1 trillion per year in Americans’ pockets by 2030, potentially generating the largest infusion of consumer spending in history.
The TaaS transport system will reduce personal transport energy demand by 80% and tailpipe emissions by over 90%, reducing pollution, improving public health and saving lives.
By 2030, individually owned ICE vehicles will still represent 40% of the vehicles in the U.S. vehicle fleet, but they will provide just 5% of passenger miles. The geopolitical importance of oil will diminish.
TRANSPORTATION POLICY PRIMER
A Policy Primer for the Coming Transportation Disruption
In our Policy Primer for the Coming Transportation Disruption (published 2017) , we explain how the disruption of road transport by a new business model, Transport-as-a-Service, has the potential to give the economy its biggest boost in a century. TaaS will also help solve persistent social and environmental problems at zero cost. This Primer helps decision makers to make the right choices with regards to this disruption.
TaaS will be life-saving and life-giving for many, enabling people with disabilities, the elderly and low-income families to access more affordable transportation and to participate in the economy.
Road deaths and accidents will be greatly reduced and air quality will dramatically improve. Large expanses of cities devoted to parking and road infrastructure will be freed up, offering an opportunity to redesign cities for the ways we want to live. Transportation could largely be decarbonized by 2030.
A race is developing to lead this transformation. There are benefits that come from global leadership of an industry that affects the entire economy—jobs, taxes, prosperity and influence.
Policymakers will control the critical outcomes of the transformation. They will influence how it will affect existing infrastructure, the cost of TaaS, and the speed and extent of the benefits.
Transport-as-a-Service (TaaS) will offer transport four to ten times cheaper per mile than buying a new car
