GIM Update archive

The Future of (Auto-)Mobility - Flexibility instead of size and horsepower

The automotive industry has to kill two birds with one stone. Driving a car should be a fun experience. At the same time, car manufacturers are increasingly faced with political environmental guidelines. Therefore, new mobility concepts emerge and new opportunities on the mobility market open up for service providers and automobile manufacturers.

Dr. Kerstin Ullrich, trend researcher at GIM Heidelberg, Andreas Knie, managing director at InnoZ and Jochen Pläcking, founding partner of Kleinundpläcking discussed in W&V Praxis how modern forms of mobility influence consumers' everyday lives, and what developments automotive manufacturers and mobility suppliers will have to face in the future.

The three experts agreed that the significance of a car as a prestigious consumer good is decreasing. Although cars still play an important role within the mobility mix, and are still a status symbol for many, the meaning of status will change significantly. As Dr. Kerstin Ullrich points out, status indicators like size and horsepower will be replaced by understatement, intelligence, modernity and flexibility. Taking into account this trend, it is not surprising that in Germany BahnCard 100 and IPhone have already become established status symbols.

Some mobility suppliers have already detected this trend and started to adapt their product portfolio to emerging needs of the target group. The company Better Place, founded by former SAP manager Shai Agassi, offering an intelligent mix of electric vehicle services serves as a good example.

According to Knie, Pläcking and Ullrich, in future, those companies will succeed that provide all parts of the mobility chain within one brand. Mobility service providers like public transport, call-a-bike or car sharing are already seen as serious competitors on the mobility market, especially when it comes to young target groups.

Even the Smart, Daimler's microcar being smiled at 10 years ago, has endured and today proves the current trend. At least for the German market it leads the ranking of car registrations. It is most likely that traditional car manufacturers will need to develop a totally different brand philosophy in order to meet the new mobility requirements. "An automobile manufacturer has to accept that - even then - the car will just cover a small part of the value chain," says Andreas Knie.

Change is in the air. Automobile manufacturers are developing numerous alternative concepts and technologies, and the way of addressing the customer has already changed remarkably (as can be seen at BMW for example).

The trend is thus ground-breaking. And the answer of automobile manufacturers as well as other mobility providers to this will be most intriguing.

Want to know more?
For further information, please contact Dr. Kerstin Ullrich
(k.ullrich@g-i-m.com) or check out our website on GIM Trend Research (www.gim-argo.de).

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