The Great Shift in Urban Mobility of Tomorrow

SHIFT Mobility, powered by IFA, together with pressrelations presented a study on mega trends of the mobility industry. Under the title "The Great Shift: Future of Mobility and New Urbanism", the most promising future topics in the field of mobility are identified.

Micromobility, Mobility & Sustainability, Autonomous Driving and New Urbanism are among the 10 trend topics that the study identifies as the mega trends of our time from current discourses. All of them will significantly change life, both in the city and in the countryside, and play a major role in shaping the urban future of mobility.

"The question of the mobility of the future inhabits us every day. Numerous aspects of our lives are defined by the technological limits of mobility. In order to understand, evolve or even revolutionize it, we must first and foremost identify the defining factors," said Hans H. Hamer, CEO SHIFT Mobility. "This study outlines the current trend topics in mobility based on current discourses and thus provides an up-to-date picture of the key trend topics.

After analyzing the collected data, the study concludes that conventional parcel logistics is at its end. The number of parcels for the end customer is increasing from year to year. The last mile in particular is becoming a bottleneck. Here, new mobility concepts such as autonomous delivery drones and microdepots are urgently needed to prevent "Shipageddon," as the New York Times titles it.

Alongside digitalization, sustainability and climate neutrality are the most important mobility issues. But today's e-mobility cannot be the solution in the long run. Without lithium alternatives and technology openness in drive types, there can be no sustainable and climate-neutral mobility. At this point, the study concludes that solid-state batteries and supplements such as e-fuels are needed to ensure that lithium does not become the "New Oil" and that electromobility also becomes viable from a sustainable perspective. If the Fraunhofer Institute's hydrogen power paste proves to be practical, this could be the start of the fuel revolution.

After 2020 being a poor year for autonomous driving, the topic takes off massively in 2021 and is at the top of the media agenda in the field of mobility. The Google subsidiary Waymo is considered the technology leader in the field of robotaxis: Waymo has already managed 35 million miles autonomously and accident-free. In terms of data analysis and system testing, Waymo could even set the industry-wide standard. Virtually all manufacturers outside Germany have already chosen Google as their software standard. The study concludes that a new monopoly is looming here, posing a major threat to German carmakers.

"Virtually all fields and areas of our mobile lives will be massively transformed in just a few years by new concepts and rapid technological developments," says Oliver Heyden, Chief Strategy Officer at pressrelations and co-author of the study. "In this context, it is more important than ever for companies in the mobility industry to develop a resilient strategic agenda right now and to position themselves clearly in the fields of the future. The most successful agenda will be one that seeks to always think digitization and sustainability together.

In the course of the evaluation, different weightings were observed for the topics covered in the various language regions. While sustainable mobility is the top topic in German media, the topic of autonomous driving is reported on in the UK and the USA by a wide margin. E-mobility follows in second place in both language areas. In addition, it is noticeable that in the English speaking area, there is significantly more extensive coverage of the technology-related areas of mobility.