Category: smart & green city

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Lead the coming global mobility business (..part 2)

On By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, Sharing mobility and beyond, smart & green city1 Comment

Assets management and revenue streams

I addressed in my previous post some of the relevant key topics to lead future mobility business cases. I move forward now to analyse which are the assets and the revenue streams of this new business model

Managing fleet of autonomous vehicles offers the unique opportunity to use a series of assets to increase the value of the business and develop multiple collateral business cases linked with the operations.

Each asset can be owned/acquired/leased/ to run the business case and create more revenues streams

Real estate.

AREXPO_BIRD EYE VIEW DAY_3
Area Expo MasterPlan – Courtesy CRA 

Storage and parking. Having access to storage hubs and parking infrastructures will be a key factors when we’ll have thousands of vehicles running.

Garages for car services. Traditional car dealers and services will shift their core business from privates or direct customers to fleet and an efficient and fast organisation will optimise the operations

Charging hubs (Renewable powered, smart grid, vehicle2grid applications). Grid balance in cities will be an issue and those players with direct access to infrastructures will be facilitated. Energy will be the new “oil” and its availability can be improved thanks to renewable power.

Big data

autonoAmong world top ten brands as per capitalisation (Amazon, Apple, Google,) and  in mobility also (Uber) there are companies owning huge amount of data. Big data will be a mainstream revenue stream for those able to monetise and create value from that. Transport and mobility provide a relevant amount, coming from the following areas:

  • Mobility patterns (Matrix o/d)
  • Mapping data (for autonomous driving software applications)
  • Driving data (travel behaviour, drivers behaviour in different environment, incentives for drivers, privacy policies)
  • Fleet data/Insurance
  • Artificial intelligence for mobility and user experience

Fleet

MOIA_Vehicle_Exterieur_02
MOIA ridesharing bus

Cars are not only the main asset for running the operations as there are multiple  options to get value from the vehicle:

  • Financial asset. Financing the fleet allows to have interest gain
  • Second life Battery pack strategies (link to storage business model). The batteries of the vehicles can shift into a second life plan to re-market them at the end of the first lifecycle for storage and other utilisations.
  • Marketing. On purpose vehicles are a branding tool (as Moia just proved with their launch few days ago)
  • Commercial (promotion and re-marketing). Vehicles can generate more revenue once we move them into the re-marketing plan and second sales.

Entertainment

rinspeed-xchange-concept-passengers-and-rear-entertainment-system
Rinspeed Xchange concept

What shall we do during our trips in autonomous cars? Many operators are raising this questions and pay per use services (entertainment/business) to be developed for self driving cars seems to be a collateral area of interest. Whether we use our subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify and similar), I bet many services will be integrated directly in the cars.

If those are some of the assets to be leveraged in future mobility business, there is an complementary strategy to address which seems to be the big umbrella where including the whole stack of innovation: MAAS: mobility as a service. Once the volume of ridesharing trips will really shift our cities mobility patterns we have to expect that large corporations will aggregate vertical players to create the biggest

shared-mobility-simulations-auckland
ITF Forum ride sharing simulation study

platform to really go from A to B with one touch. Many are competing already around the world and capitalisations will drive the winning ones.

East regions (China, Malaysia, India) faces deregulated market where new mobility services (ride sharing/ride hailing) have established brands like  DIDI (China) Grab (Malaysia) Careem (Middle east) OLA (india). Many of them have international growth plans or even to extend operations (Didi just announced 151M$ investment to enter the car sharing market).

West regions (USA/Canada). is the cradle of new mobility and player are competing at the forefront of innovation thanks to most famous brands Uber/Lyft, Waymo/Apple.

Europe:  is an highly regulated market and new mobility struggles to become real in terms of volumes. Further than direct business development a potential strategy to fast the process in the early stage is to link with public transport operators or car manufacturers that are familiar with regulations and they are entering in the mobility arena. Business development is  subject to local/national Government approval even if EU policies are expected within few years time to create the legal framework.

So there’s a lot to do and we can be sure that mobility, public transport industry and automotive will converge in a whole new competitive arena that we don’t know the boundaries yet.

 

Lead the coming global mobility business

On By Carlo IacoviniIn english blog, Sharing mobility and beyond, smart & green city1 Comment

Strategy, pillars and operations for autonomous driving fleet management business (part 1)

We are quite aware that future business model for carmakers is mobility oriented more than car focused. All brands are moving to become miles/km providers, much bigger market than struggling selling cars to dealers and customers.

Weekly news  support this future.. but the focus of this post is more about the business side. How to make money in this new shaping industry?

The convergence of electric and autonomous technologies, public regulations, tradeoff between public/private business, integration of fleet management, long-term and short-term rentals are disrupting multiple traditional businesses and shaping a completely new competitive arena where different industries want to play the game.

connected_carWe see car makers directly moving to mobility (brand like Moia, Maven, IMotion, Moovel, Lynk&co just to mention few ones) or huge public transports operators (Deutsche-Bahn, Transdev, Keolis) extending their offer to ride-sharing pilots, or big rental companies embracing sharing mobility (corporate or privately based) and don’t forget new players often heavily backed (Zoox) or leading forefront giants like Uber or Waymo.

Quite a crowded arena, specially if we consider that none of those players really own the whole stack of services that future business will require. Even more if we understand that final stage of this change will be the coming popular definition “Mobility as a Service” clearly described in this picture by Sampo Hietanen, pioneer entrepreneur running  his Maas Global company. MAAS_Sampo

Starting from here I outline some of the  most important topics to be considered addressing this market based on assumptions that only few companies will have the resources (money, team, assets) to scale globally and we’ll probably see many providers acting locally followed by an increasing number of M&A.

Full mobility service business case is based on a tailored range of vehicles according to client’s preferences. Vehicles will feature new design (cars/van/minibus/light-freight) sedricwith multiple mobility targets. Vehicles will be initially electric and autonomous in a short timeline of period (local deployment according to regulations). In some regions it’s possible to include 2 wheels in the game.

Fleet Financing (leasing/rental) will be a core business because even if we think about the future.. we’ll still need someone to own and rent cars for mobility. At least until we’ll move in 3 dimensions instead of 2 and flying car will hit the road.. (actually the sky) of our cities.

Business operations: the business case includes a broad range of operations:

  1. Vehicles management (maintenance, service, cleaning, warranties, storage/parking)
  2. Fleet management (software, on board unit)
  3. IT-Platform – Integration of API with third parties.
    1. Business user app (driver and backend system): Booking/Dispatching/Routing/Billing/customer service
    2. End user (consumer) app: expected to be up to Customer or fully owned if is directly operating
  4. Charging (fast charge daily, slow charge overnight, wireless and automated)
  5. Customer experience (riding experience based on entertainment/business time traveling with autonomous vehicles)
  6. Drivers experience (safety, eco driving, community approaches)
OLLIplatform
OLLI Self driving shuttle platform – courtesy Local Motors

In the near future we’ll assist to

  • Integration of IT-platform with autonomous driving software and hardware.
  • Integration of business case with MAAS aggregators (not only cars but also public transports and more)
  • Integration of business case with logistic/freights hub
  • Integration of IT platform with blockchain

Next post (Part 2) will address Assets, Revenue streams and market regions… coming soon, stay tuned

“Italian cities to ban cars* by 2030”

On By Carlo IacoviniIn Electric vehicles and Charging infrastructures, english blog, Sharing mobility and beyond, smart & green city

This provocative statement opens Citytech, the event gathering this week in Milan more than 800 international experts, key players and top brands showcasing some of the most relevant innovations in mobility aiming to shape tomorrow’s cities. It’s time to act and take strong decisions to lead the transition towards a more sustainable mobility system and urban environment.

citytech_logoPublic policies made a strong acceleration in the last few weeks. UK and France declared to ban ICE (petrol and diesel) cars from new sales by 2040, Norway, counting 40% new registrations in August as electric cars, sets this goal in 2024 as Netherlands did. Most of all China has declared to be working on the same regulation, just defining the right timeframe. (we remind that China equals to 28 millions units market). That’s a long way if we consider that we have 695.000 EV globally in 2016 in 84 million cars market.

If Government sets regulations, industry’s role targets technologies and manufacturing accordingly. After Volvo recently announced to produce only electric or hybrid cars in 2019, JLR just followed with a target date of 2020 and media are full jaguar_ipaceof releases from IAA show in Frankfurt from BMW, Daimler and VW on huge investments to electrified the whole production in the near future.

We finally know that revolution today.. needs money more than arms, so what’s the opinion from financial community about E-mobility? JpMorgan just declared that electric technology will disrupt the market with many losers, all those ones that will not drive the change. (CNBC credit video) They forecast 35% market share for EV in 2025, scaling to 48% by 2030. More conservative position from MorganStanley’s comparing multiple scenarios expects 16% penetration for EV (fully electric) in 2030 that can reach up to 60% by 2040. morganstanleyMeantime Dutch bank ING identifies the battery costs reduction and public incentives as the main opportunities to drive production fully electric in 2035.

Market is full of researches we don’t want to get lost in, the fundamental is that globalBMWIvision political, economic and financial community has complete knowledge about this changing. Now it’s up to management class (from politics, to industries and consumers, nationally and locally) to decide whether they want to lead the changes or get disrupted. Italy is far behind this trend as proven by the insignificant market share of Ev (0,03%) or the absence of commitment and specific policies, any autonomous driving initiative elsewhere in the country even if there are existing competences and technologies not only linked to the “old” motor industry. We don’t need discussions but facts, projects, trials, and investments. That will bring the country industry back to a primary role in the future of automotive…(oh no sorry I’am wrong, …in the future  of mobility).

*..combustion cars

Carlo Iacovini                                                                                                                 Marketing Director, Local Motors,                                                                                   Board Member, Clickutility on Earth

Fiat and Getaround partners to shape car’s sales

On By Carlo IacoviniIn smart & green cityLeave a comment

by Carlo Iacovini

As car sharing is re-shaping mobility market car manufacturers have very different approaches to this business. Daimler group takes mobility as part of their own business. Since few years ago Daimler mobility services gmbh is a full operating company within the group and it develops a wide spectrum of innovative services. Through the Moovel f8c2d04c-87fa-47c0-96ba-c9876a565dc1platform the group goes much further than cars sales, integrating services and booking for trains, bike sharing, local public transport and taxi. A long term vision is bringing the company to lead the industry. Other brand like BMW tested small-scale traditional car sharing (Drive now) making sometimes pilots to use electric vehicles (like Renault with twizy) or to pioneer corporate services. Most of the others prefer to push providing cars to make people drive them but not investing in running operations. FIAT started to look at carsharing since early stage of introduction in national market in Italy (early 2000). By that time car sharing was a valuable promotional strategy to sell small fleets to local operators. In the city of Turin (Fiat headquarter at that time) the company is formal shareholders of local operators running more than 100 cars fleet. When national oil company ENI decided recently to 96d408e5-1181-4fde-90f9-f5ec3f414051enter into the free floating car sharing market Fiat become main partner to strength the Italian flag against German brand Car2go. 500 is official Enjoy brand vehicle according to the long history the car has for Italians ‘60’ 70 generations.

But how is the company embracing innovative business models targeting private owners to share their car to reduce total umber of vehicles? “If you can’t fight your enemy… it’s better to become friends”. The

source: businesswire
source: businesswire

partnership recently introduced by Getaround peer to peer car sharing operator and FIAT seems to go in this direction. According to official website Fiat offers a discount in car purchasing if customers share it with Getaround platform. User can earn up to $10.000+ per year and gets for free the “Getaround connect” device (priced 100$). Getaround doesn’t manage its own cars and the partnership is a valuable strategy to build a styling and glamour fleet that would make more attractive the service to new customers too. Car manufacturers thank you too.

Sharing mobility is game changer, again!

On By Carlo IacoviniIn english blog, smart & green cityLeave a comment

$24M round B financing to US based peer-to-peer car sharing start up Getaround

By Carlo Iacovini

Since the last few years car sharing is changing personal and corporate mobility. Early start ups opened the market to rental models by hours and proved to became concrete businesses. Zipcar is a brand of AvisBudget group and keeps expanding operations in mi_car2goUS and Europe. Local and national traditional car sharing operators grew in small scale models or become part of bigger networks. Especially in Europe we still see companies operating in city areas or nation based, not always being profitable with public funds. The most relevant innovation came by the free floating scheme. In Italy car2go and national oil company ENI owned ENJOY played a complete revolution in major cities like Milan, Rome and Florence, with more than 100.000 customers and for instance in Rome 15.000 rentals weekly. Free floating car sharing is easy to access and technology makes it appreciated by customers who also like glamour cars (Fiat 500 and Smart). While Autolib in France is the winning scheme proving that electric one way car sharing can impact on urban mobility with relevant Co2 emission reductions northern Europe markets still keep traditional schemes. In my recent published book (“Car Sharing il Business si muove” Edizione Ambiente) I describe different international experiences and business case but the market is rapidly changing again.cover_Car_Sharing_iacovini

From US a new wave of innovation is facing the car sharing market, pioneering disruptive business models that combine high technology with unexpected individual behavior. Technology is the key driver of new application as new appls make simple sharing and operating services

Two different premises determined new businesses based on the concept of sharing personnel car:

  • Sharing private car as a driver
  • Sharing private car

UBER or Lyft represent best examples of the first approach, even if with different positioning. Uber is giant google funded key player to mobility services with a discussed overestimated financial evaluation that brings the company to be bigger than Facebook operating worldwide but with recent accuses of inappropriate strategies, against competitors, privacy policies violation for customers or even journalists. Law is also an issue as in almost every country transportation has specific rules and taxi regulations and private services need to operate in a new legal framework, still to be defined. Uber plan surely doesn’t focus only on the existing services and the goal of the company is to reshape overall mobility system in cities around the world. There might be the chance they will make it.

Looking at the future there are few new players facing the market with high potentialsuccess based on point 2. Relayrides and Getaround are 2 recent start ups

source: Techcrunch
source: Techcrunch

focusing on the opportunity for private people to share individual car to other members. For those who area familiar with sharing economy, it’s like AIRBNB for cars. While Relay rides targets daily (or longer) rental, Getaround seems to have found what in Italy we call “l’uovo di Colombo” (“Columbus egg” means something very clever). The GetaroundConnect is a device installed in the car allowing to open and to end the rental process with you phone. The keyless entry to vehicles makes easy to access even a private car because it solves the most inconvenient practical procedure (meeting to the owners and exchange the keys). This innovation increases numbers of vehicle available for customers, so the business itself. After few years testing in some cities Getaround just raised $24M round B funding from strategic partner Cox Automotive, to grow in US cities and improve operations. Considering number of vehicles parked on the streets for 80% of the day in bigger cities we bet that getaround is highly potential large scale business, not only in US but in Europe too specially where motorization index are insane (as in Italy).

Vivere la sharing economy è bello. Abituiamoci

On By Carlo IacoviniIn smart & green cityLeave a comment

Si parla tanto della sharing economy, chi ci scrive addirittura un libro (il sottoscritto), chi la osteggia e la critica e chi magari la sottovaluta. Pensiamo che la sharing economy sia figlia della crisi (in parte può essere vero) o che sia un divertimento nato da tech company che hanno inventato le più innovative app del momento. Bene in questo breve post, da “esperto” del settore racconto un’ esperienza di vita vissuta. Una lunga trasferta lavorativa negli states è l’occasione migliore per avventurarsi nel mondo della silicon valley e bay area alla scoperta di come funziona una società in “sharing”. La California non è in crisi, anzi il senso comune qui è di benessere diffuso, dinamismo, imprenditorialità e start up, il paese delle opportunità. Ma il tessuto sociale è pervaso di “sharing economy”. L’appartamento dove stare? l’ho trovato con Airbnb, comodissimo, nella posizione giusta e a metà prezzo rispetto a qualunque residence “tradizionale”. Mi devo muovere in città?: Uber, Lyft e Sidecar, sono più popolari delle metropolitane e dei taxi. Anche qui c’è stata qualche battaglia ma alla fine la domanda e il mercato hanno vinto. Le tariffe dei viaggi sono anche della metà rispetto ai taxi, potendo scegliere tra tanti livelli di servizio (black car, vettura “economy” o anche car pooling insieme ad altri passeggeri). C’è la scelta per tutte le preferenze e le tasche.

L’altra sera a cena con il CEO della più importante azienda di infrastrutture di ricariche per EV americana…ai saluti finali mi racconta come avrebbe chiamato Uber per andare in aeroporto. Mi ha mostrato la sua tessera ZIPCAR evidenziando come la miglior combinazione possibile sia avere tutti gli account dei servizi di sharing.

Parlando con i drivers di Lyft e Uber si scopre poi che sono studenti che si mantengono in parte gli studi, che sono dipendenti di aziende che arrotondano negli orari di picco o liberi professionisti che promuovono anche il loro business. Insomma tutta l’economia è quotidianamente permeata di questi nuovi servizi, che hanno il grande plus di avere migliorato la mobilità e non solo. Non è solo questione di economia, di leggi e di innovazione, lyft, airbnb, rappresentano un valore intangibile di comunità, di fiducia nelle relazioni che è uno dei migliori asset. Andare a casa di “sconosciuti” era una cosa impensabile fino a poco tempo fa, ma diventa normale oggi, anzi diventa curioso per la possibilità di conoscere nuove persone, che sai, a monte, condividere una filosofia di comunità e di socialità… che rappresentano un valore riscoperto.

Insomma, la sharing economy applicata è bella, comoda e nonostante i tanti ostacoli formali e normativi, non potrà che svilupparsi. Abituiamoci. Conviene.