Car ownership is ending: Perspective from the Automotive Sector

The auto industry is currently on a bumpy road, as supply chain issues and chip shortages have resulted in price mark ups for new and second-hand cars. Meanwhile, the advent of hybrid working has led to lowered demand as daily commutes lessen. All the signs are indicating a move away from vehicle ownership to embracing alternative modes of transportation.

While cars will stay on the road in urban areas that lack infrastructure, alternatives to ownership are on the rise once more largely in cities, following a first wave of car-sharing and car-pool schemes at the start of the century. Global research from R/GA around the future of mobility shows there are expected to be 38 million members of car-sharing schemes globally by 2025 and that usership of ride-hailing and taxi services alone has grown to 1.4 billion customers. Consequently, global mobility service revenue is expected to grow to US$1,298bn by 2024 from US$616.1bn in 2020.

Mobility is no longer defined as access to a single mode of transportation. It is defined by giving people choice and freedom to use a series of different modes of transport. Ford is a great example of a business recognising this shift, after the brand recently recalibrated its purpose around mobility by removing the words “automotive” and “vehicle” from it.