Rapid change in automotive industry drives new mobility, says sector expert

Anyone looking for a steer on the future of mobility or ‘new mobility’ should point their business in the direction of James Carter, principal consultant at Vision Mobility and an automotive expert with 20 years’ experience in OEM at Toyota.

Founded by Carter in 2016, Vision Mobility specialises in ‘new mobility’ consulting for OEMs, dealerships, suppliers and startups with a strong emphasis on sales and marketing.

The automotive industry is currently being transformed with the rapid development of electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, connected cars and car/ride sharing. Vision Mobility aims to guide businesses through this change and secure a profitable future for the automotive industry.
Mobility may be the new buzz word but for Carter it exactly sums up the current zeitgeist for transportation needs. Flashback a decade ago and it was a very different story, he maintains.

“Ten years ago industries were much more siloed than they are today. There were buses, cars, taxis, cycles etc but they were distinct silos, operated on a sales basis. Now they are all morphing into one big industry – a mishmash of everything or ‘mobility as a service’,” he says.

“People have started to adopt that word,” he continues. “Today, it’s not just about getting in the car or jumping on the tube, it’s mobility.”

What’s more, thanks to the emergence of services like Uber and other forms of shared mobility, people are availing themselves of an increasing amount of transport options than they were 10-15 years ago, Carter says.

An Australian by birth, today Carter is based in Toronto, Canada, his home for the last 15 years. His career with Toyota spanned more than a dozen different roles including product management, business improvement and transformation, brand launch, B2B/B2C, sales/marketing and forecasting and across three continents: Australia, Asia and North America.
It was during those operational and product-led roles, that Carter built a strong understanding of consumer needs and what was happening in the OEM pipeline but it was also an insulating experience, he says.

When he left Toyota four years ago, he began to question how the world was going to change and what distributors would look like in future with the advent of autonomous vehicles etc.
“I always had a very strong interest in the future and particularly product and I wanted to understand the implications of what the future would look like,” he says.
The Vision Mobility consultancy was founded and the business built from there.

It has three major areas of focus: consulting with companies and organisations ranging from governments and OEMs to smaller start ups on the impact of mobility on their businesses and what they need to be thinking about now; new mobility tech and partnering with other companies in Toronto to help them connect with OEMs and other major corporates; and a research project, an Annual Global Mobility Study, conducted in partnership with LEK Consulting and CuriosityCX with assistance from HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and the Broad School of Management at Michigan State University.

The 4th edition has just been published: view it here, and it is the longest-running study of its kind. Initially focused on the US, it now features the responses of consumer panels in nine countries: the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, India and China.

“People had not been thinking about mobility or tracking mobility on a time basis,” Carter says. “We have four years of insights, so it is starting to be important,” he says.

Respondents are asked about their views on mobility in the future. Combined with demographic data and Vision Mobility and LEK Consulting’s trends knowledge, it enables researchers to paint a picture about what consumers are thinking.

And there are some fascinating highlights and variances between markets, Carter reveals.

For example, consumers in the two developing countries that were surveyed – India and China – are much more forward thinking attitudinally about mobility and especially towards shared and electric, Carter says.

He compares this acceptance of new mobility to that for the mobile phone, where consumers in these countries jumped over the landline generation.

“We are starting to see the same thing happening with mobility. New mobility in India and China has the potential to leapfrog ownership,” Carter says.

“It’s what the future of mobility looks like and, as consumers are more likely to jump for electric and shared electric vehicles, costs will come down.”

Canada’s appetite for electric vehicles is one of the highest too, Carter adds.

That presents a huge opportunity since Canada has a very clean electricity grid in terms of CO2 emissions, one seventh of that of the UK; and adopting electric vehicles has a dramatic impact on CO2, Carter says.

Across all markets surveyed, the key concerns around ownership of electric vehicles are related to cost, then range and lack of charging infrastructure. On cost, Carter maintains there’s a need to teach consumers to think about purchasing vehicles as the total cost of ownership rather than the initial outlay. He suggests the cost of ownership of his own Tesla model 3 and a mid-range Toyota is comparable over a five-year period, for example. “We need to shift the thinking,” he says.

As for himself, Carter prefers to view the Tesla purely as a car – albeit a very good car that drives and handles very well, has plenty of luggage room and is one of the safest cars you can buy – versus an electric vehicle. And, while it is not cheap to buy, on an OPEX measure, there’s been a dramatic reduction with his energy bill slashed from 100 dollars a month to 20 dollars a month.

Range is hardly ever going to be a regular issue, particularly in the UK where the average commute is rarely over 50 miles a day, Carter says. Vehicles can be charged overnight on a standard household plug for that type of range, he adds. The only issue would be with apartment living or when people are travelling.

Major cities like London, for example, may need to address concerns about charging ability but many consumers can easily cope with the range and infrastructure that’s available today, Carter says.

One area not included in the current mobility study but could be a massive game changer is the adoption of electrification to medium and heavy duty vehicles. High power charging for commercial vehicles is gradually getting close to standards, Carter says and cites UPS in the UK and DHL in Germany as early adopters.

The commercial benefit of electric fleet vehicles is going to be huge and with massive OPEX reductions versus running a diesel vehicle.

As with light vehicles, the purchase costs may be 30% higher but they will work out much cheaper over a five-year period.

“We are forecasting that anything in a fleet will have a much higher electric uptake rate, when the infrastructure is in place, compared with light vehicles. Huge trucks can be recharged in half an hour. The batteries are just so much bigger and they are getting charged extraordinarily faster. It will be a huge win.”

According to Carter, Tesla’s largest battery provides 500 miles on a charge. That’s sufficient to cover off 80-90% of most truck routes; and other manufacturers are right behind them.

There is also some discussion about hydrogen coming through, Carter adds. “It may be appropriate for long haul but the infrastructure and efficiency is not there, which will be a problem for anyone backing H2,” he says.

As for the next 20 years, Carter anticipates a world of automated and shared electric vehicles will be a common occurrence.
“As we build up to that utopian vision, there will be a falling interest of people wanting to own cars and a reduction in ownership rate as we move to shared mobility. Both technology and the consumer sentiment point towards shared, electric autonomous vehicles,” he says.

“It will take a while for autonomous technology to roll out and by 2030 we will see around 30% of new vehicle sales electric but only 12% level 4 or 5 autonomous but by the end of the decade two thirds will be autonomous and electric.”

What’s remarkable is that just 20 years ago no one was thinking about them, Carter smiles. New mobility indeed.