New Means of Private Transport
Hands Off the Steering Wheel: Autonomous driving and flying redefines how people get from
A to B.
In the next decades, new technologies and mobility concepts will revolutionize established mobility patterns and modes of transportation. The future of private transport will be electrical, autonomous, ground-and airborne, and operated as a service.
Thanks to rapid progress in autonomous driving technologies, passengers will be more and more liberated from operating their vehicles themselves. Car driving will change into being driven and cars will become rolling work places and cozy social rooms.
Developers increasingly also look skywards to solve current mobility issues (e.g. congestion and noise pollution). Several companies (e.g. Airbus) work on electrically operated flying taxi prototypes, that can be fully integrated into the infrastructure of future smart cities. Once regulations are in place, urban congestion might be a thing of the past. Then obsolete roads and parking lots might be freed up to be converted into recreational or housing areas, for example.
Mobility will also become more flexible. Thanks to digital technology, all means of transportation will be better connected, allowing passengers to change seamlessly between them. More convenient sharing concepts, also organized peer-to-peer, could drastically reduce the need of individual ownership, with huge impacts on industries such as insurances and carmakers.
FUTUREFACT
Private transport volume in the EU has increased by one third since 1990. The European Commission predicts growth rates will accelerate significantly by 2030, with volumes forecasted to rise by another 29 % by then.