It is no secret that incumbent leaders in the global automotive and transportation industry are facing the largest disruption since the invention of the assembly line by Henry Ford in 1913.
Over the last few decades, these four trends – connected, autonomous, shared and electric mobility – have become movements leading to the transformation of existing value chains and the emergence of entirely new business models.
New opportunities in this rapidly changing global market have attracted a range of powerful tech players including Alphabet (Waymo), Apple, Amazon as well as new mobility focused players like TESLA, UBER, Lyft, DIDI and others.
A new digital Darwinism is here with a future that is electric, causing most OEMs to aggressively divert investment away from traditional combustion engines into the development of EVs. Where do they start? Given a limited amount of time before the majority of vehicles are powered by electricity, automotive companies must balance the requirement for positive cash flows to fund the transition through the sales of their most popular traditional models, while keeping costs under control and operations and distribution partnerships flowing smoothly.
Even as this tectonic shift to electric mobility is happening, industry leaders are battling the challengers by disrupting themselves, and generating new revenue opportunities including connected services, autonomy, and shared ownership models.
Adjacent industries, including automotive insurance companies, lenders, energy utilities and telecommunications companies have created open innovation communities and initiatives around the future of connected vehicles in what Rocket Wagon Venture Studios refers to as “New Mobility.”
We are working in the areas of data-driven IoT business models across not only the automotive industry, but across transformational ecosystems, helping automotive companies address the risk of missed opportunities by making the right strategic moves and placing the right bets, without being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of innovation around the future of mobility.
In our next post in this series on New Mobility, we’ll share the benefits of tapping into venture studios like ours to develop innovations in timely, less risky ways, and share specific examples of those innovations and benefits they render to automotive brands and the new digital partners across other industries supporting the transformation already well underway.
