Mobility Matters Daily #67
What is important in the world of transport
Does the destination drive everything?
Should your end goal define everything that you do, and is the end goes the only thing that matters in the end? A similar debate is currently happening in the UK with the Government’s Bus Strategy, where local authorities and bus operators have raised numerous concerns that the Department for Transport’s (or, depending on who you believe, Number 10’s) deadline of October to adopt a Bus Service Improvement Plan for each area is unachievable.
This is the balance that must be struck when aiming for a goal. How to make it challenging, but not impossible, and to push for something radical, but not insane. Even moonshots, which are goals that are pretty much like they sound they are, are based in some sort of rational thinking. The October deadline will be very challenging for most authorities to meet given cuts to bus services and teams in local authorities.
The Minister sounds very bullish on Bus Service Improvement Plans | A good counter from Nick Richardson
Powering micromobility is causing local authorities all sorts of problems
Having recently been involved in developing and launching e-scooter projects in the South of England, one of the worst sticking points wasn’t anti-social use of scooters, but how they are charged. Simply, we had situations where local authorities wanted charging through docking stations (to be honest, they just wanted docking stations to deal with ‘nuisance parking’), but operators favoured battery swapping to keep scooters charged and on the road.
To be honest, neither is really the best. The advantage of battery swap is keeping e-scooters on the road and mechanics on the move and fixing more issues. Docking stations give a sense of security. Both solutions are blighted with the issue of lack of interoperability and propriatery technologies. Whatever is lower cost and gives assets in use will win out eventually.
A good write-up of the issue on The Next Web | Next generation battery technology for micro-mobility
What’s going on in the world of driverless cars?
Its been a couple weeks since we touched on this, so what is going on in the world of autonomous cars? In summary, while the tech is still several years (and several billions of pounds in investment) away, the automotive sector’s long term vision of automated transport is still very much alive and kicking.
But what is clear is the shape of the market is likely to be different to what was expected some years ago. New market entrants are finding that without a very strong cashflow (either directly or of a parent company) the necessary investment in developing the technology is hard. So maybe the established players could be there in the future after all.
GM sets out its view on when personal automated mobility will be a reality | Lyft sells off its self-driving unit