Private passenger vehicles are essential for meeting people's mobility needs, so any changes in consumer behavior with regard to mobility have a direct impact on the industry – affecting vehicle sales, vehicle production and the entire supply chain. For a number of years, the consensus in the industry was that people were turning their backs on private vehicles and switching instead to shared mobility solutions. The general belief was that automotive players were going to rapidly turn into little more than "mobility service providers" – a drastic redefinition of roles that caused players to begin rewriting their long-term strategies.
The good news for automotive players is that, although change is coming, it is coming more slowly than expected. Our analysis of the global automotive industry finds that current changes in mobility patterns are mainly limited to large urban areas, which account for less than ten percent of the miles traveled by private vehicles overall. Even in these areas, the hype around new mobility offerings has not delivered on its promises and has proven overoptimistic with regard to the speed of change. The massive disruption of the sort that was widely being predicted is now not likely in the period to 2040.
One way to determine overall demand for mobility is to look at the total number of miles traveled. This is actually forecast to continue growing in most regions of the world at a rate of two to three percent a year in the period to 2040. What lies behind this development? The main factors are economic and demographic (GDP growth, increasing population size, aging populations, growing urbanization), while changes in technology and society (more remote work, more online shopping and so on) have a much weaker impact overall.
In large urban areas, a number of developments will reduce private vehicle usage, although the overall impact on vehicle sales will be minor. Micromobility, such as bicycles, e-bikes and electric scooters, will grow in terms of the number of trips made, but our research shows that this type of mobility complements trips in private vehicles rather than replacing them. Shared mobility services such as car sharing will continue to grow, but challenges around profitability will likely limit expansion. Autonomous on-demand mobility is something of a black box at the moment: If and when it becomes widely available, it is likely to replace other shared mobility solutions such as conventional taxis and buses. Urban air mobility such as drones and electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs or "air taxis") are currently a limited phenomenon.
More important for urban areas will be the impact of tighter controls on vehicle access. Regulation, such as congestion charges and no-car zones, has a direct impact on vehicle usage. Congestion charges, for example, have led to a 33 percent reduction in car traffic in London. However, restrictions such as these are currently a city-by-city game. In the United States, for example, no cities have major restrictions on vehicles, and this situation is unlikely to change fundamentally by 2040, while several European cities have completely banned private cars from entering downtown areas.
We expect the overall situation with regard to mobility behavior to remain largely constant in the period to 2040, with only a slight decline in private vehicle use, and this will be largely limited to large urban areas. On a global scale, factors such as downtown congestion charges and micromobility are largely irrelevant in terms of their impact on vehicle sales, and consumers' preference for private vehicle-based mobility will remain to a great extent unchanged. We therefore advise automotive players against building their strategies for the period to 2040 on the expectation of a sudden shift in overall mobility behavior. Although they should keep an eye on developments here and prepare themselves for future change, their focus over the next decade and a half should be squarely on the four PACE changes reshaping the industry: Polarization, Automation, Connectivity and Electrification.
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