Headquarters Report

Mobility’s next great inflection point

Edward P. Salek, CAE, Executive Director | TLT Headquarters Report June 2019

Will AI replace hp by 2030?

Back in the day when increased personal mobility meant that more people were able to afford a horse, city planners feared the unintended consequences of this trend. An 1894 study conducted by the London Times predicted that by 1940 the city’s streets would be layered with as much as nine feet of manure.

Fortunately for Londoners, and presumably others around the world, the period from about 1900 to 1920 gave birth to the rapid growth of vehicles powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE). In 1900 there were a mere 4,000 automobiles produced in the U.S. By 1920 there were 9.2 million cars and trucks registered in the country. Horse transportation and that particular environmental pollution issue faded away.

These statistics tracking the “first great inflection point” for mobility are taken from a recent white paper titled Mobility’s Second Great Inflection Point published earlier this year by four researchers at McKinsey & Co., the global consulting firm (www.mckinsey.com). While predicting the future can be tricky—witness the London streets scenario—they do offer evidence of how changes in technology and human behavior could present challenges to companies in the tribology and lubricants business sector and to organizations like STLE.

The crux of their argument is that there will be different types of vehicles in service by the year 2030 and that there will be far fewer of them than in the current time period.

McKinsey reports that OEMs and suppliers invested $125 billion in 2017 in ACES vehicle technology—an acronym for autonomous, connected, electric and shared. If this potential turns into a reality, we could begin to see things like a proliferation of VCCs (vehicle control centers). This is a sort of air traffic control system for AI-enabled driverless cars that have about an 80% utilization factor compared to about 4% for privately owned non-autonomous cars.

“Cars will become productive data centers and, ultimately, components of a larger mobility network,” the report states. “That’s already evident in e-hailing and real-time, data-driven navigation systems. Those technologies are among the first crest of a rising wave of mobility innovations, which itself is the remarkable confluence of technological breakthroughs worldwide.”

Social forces also are at work, as attitudes about mobility change from a desire to own a car to simply caring about getting from Point A to Point B efficiently and comfortably. Other factors supporting a possible decline in the automotive population include greater use of online meetings versus driving to meetings or appointments and the greater number of people working from home rather than in an office.

According to the McKinsey study, “Advances in design should help overcome some potential riders’ understandable resistance to sharing rides with strangers; in-vehicle pods will allow for greater privacy, more engaging entertainment and productivity capabilities that approach what one would have at the office.”

If these trends define the next several decades of the 21st Century, the implications for businesses and organization will be huge in terms of skills required and products produced. McKinsey describes the car person of the future not as a mechanical engineer or an oil-smeared wizard but, rather, someone with a background in software development, advanced materials or renewable fuels technology.

How accurate is this punditry? Time will tell, but the surest way to track and discuss trends affecting this industry is to build a network of informed peers from around the globe who also will be watching and adjusting to whatever the future brings.

Whether you will be doing that in person at one of our technical conferences, a local section meeting or through published material in our scientific journals and TLT, STLE is here to be your partner.

You can reach Certified Association Executive Ed Salek at esalek@stle.org.