In modern reality, “freedom of movement” can and should be considered a basic human right – the freedom to access secure, convenient, accessible and affordable means to run our lives.
By GIL LASERUber(photo credit: REUTERS)
In the past few years, “sharing economy” has been transformed from a novelty to the new normal as we look for ways to have a better and more efficient way of life.Today, major urban centers in Europe and the US boast dozens of shared mobility services aimed at providing a way for people to move in cities without private cars. However, research shows that even though car ownership has shown early signs of decline, people still choose to own a private vehicle.Why are people still hesitant about giving up the car instead of fulfilling their daily commute needs with shared mobility solutions?We ran a series of surveys and customer interviews that indicated that the confidence gap is the number one reason for this phenomenon. When it comes to commuting, we want to be fully assured that we will always have a solution to move smoothly from point A to B.In the late 15th century, John Locke introduced the concept of “human rights,” which included the right to life, personal security, equality, freedom of thought and other basic needs that were later incorporated into the Bill of Rights and inspired human rights pillars in other countries.In modern reality, “freedom of movement” can and should be considered a basic human right – the freedom to access secure, convenient, accessible and affordable means to run our lives. However, it seems that thus far we have only partially realized it. As more people moved into cities and cities expanded, more and more people started using cars to commute. Convenient and reliable, the car answered all our needs. It also brought negative consequences to our cities: air pollution, accidents, parking burden, and ever-increasing city congestion. In fact, inner city car speed often does not exceed 4.7 mph (less than 8 kph). Even though we do not admit it, for the past 30 years we have been living an urban transportation crisis.New opportunities are born from crises, and that is exactly what happened, many creative entrepreneurs started thinking about the ways to ease the city congestion. They looked for ways to provide citizens with fast and affordable solutions that would make abandoning car ownership natural for the modern urban lifestyle.Mobility Revolution 1.0 – On DemandWith the rise of smart phones, the car moved to our phone. Now we can order through our phone mobility services on demand for short-term rentals (e.g Zipcar, Car2Go) and ride-hailing trips (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Grab and others).This revolution created some of the largest Unicorns of 2000s and changed our mobility habits, but unfortunately it failed to provide a solution to the transportation crisis, which actually got even worse! More cars flooded the streets as ride hailing went mainstream, increasing overall traffic as drivers often drive around, waiting for passengers. Congestion and pollution levels did not become lower, but rather intensified.Because crises create opportunities, entrepreneurs have been thinking about disrupting the transportation world as we know it.Mobility Revolution 2.0 – Mobility as a Service (MaaS)Car owners usually use cars as their main means of transportation. The new mobility entrepreneurs have been focused on unbundling the car by providing us with a variety of solutions tailored to our immediate commute needs and desires (e.g. bicycles, electric scooters and motorcycles).This makes it possible to commute from point A to point B faster, without having to own different (or any) vehicle types. Cities today are filled with many mobility services (e.g. Bird, Lime, Mobike to name just a few).While micro-mobility pioneers raised billions of dollars in venture capital and have achieved great success, if we look at the transportation landscape, we still see large car ownership.Mobility Revolution 3.0 – Ride them All: Multimodal MaaSToday, we finally have a variety of transportation services that can be viable alternatives to private cars (at least in major cities), but in order to use them we need to manage dozens of apps, subscriptions and multitude of monthly bills.Managing the relationships with so many MaaS providers may become a huge MesS, which simply decreases the value of these solutions and causes people to stick to their private cars.GoTo Global was born out of the Israeli Car2Go, a mobility operator with 10 years’ experience, from the realization that in order to facilitate a real revolution, we need to give users the confidence and convenience to be able to go anywhere, anytime. With that, Mobility Revolution 3.0 was born: MMaaS (Multimodal Mobility as a Service).GoTo Global is one of the MMaaS pioneers with the vision to offer people the confidence to move from point A to point B through its multimodal vehicle sharing service, which offers users bicycles, eco-friendly electric kick-scooters, motorbikes and cars, and even peer-to-peer vehicles. This multimodal mobility service combination provides users availability, simplicity, and most importantly – the peace of mind and the long-awaited “mobility confidence.”Our goal is to provide the new standard for shared mobility, becoming the “go-to” provider for citizens’ travel needs, so that they could finally give up their car.Mobility Revolution 3.0 has just started. It will leverage numerous concepts and technologies, including connected cars, machine learning and AI, and of course autonomous vehicles. The shared mobility market is estimated to reach over $350 billion in just five years and presents a huge opportunity not only for entrepreneurs, but also for us to make cities more livable.It is the beginning of the end of the private vehicle ownership and the beginning of the new shared mobility era.The writer is CEO of GoTo, a Shagrir Group Company.
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