Smart applications and new forms of mobility may make urban commutes easier in the near future, which is going to be dominated by electric scooters, motorcycles, buses and bicycles, industry officials and analysts said.
Urbanisation has wrecked the infrastructure of Indian cities and mobility has taken a hit, Amit Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Yulu, an IoT-based bicycle share provider. “Traffic congestion has affected the productivity of people and has also had a major impact on their physical health and emotional well-being.”
Bengaluru, India’s technology hub, has the lowest pace of traffic, slower than New Delhi (25 km/hr) and Mumbai (20.7 km/hr), a study by ride-hailing firm Ola, found. The city’s traffic pace had dropped close to 3km/ hr in one year in 2017.
Yulu is trying to solve the last-mile connectivity problem, Mr. Gupta said. The firm has installed bicycle stations in the city and plans to connect buses, bikes and e-scooters through an app. “The aim is that different transportation points can talk to each other.”
“Where is urban mobility headed? Somebody has to fix the first and the last-mile problem.”
Tarun Rambha, assistant professor at the Civil Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Science said the “future is shared.”
“Vehicles that transport you are parked 95% of the time... Sharing a car will lead to lower congestion, cheaper travel and a better environment,” said Mr. Rambha, who researches in real-time traffic of traffic networks. “Ride-sharing can help reduce the oversupply (of cars) we [now] have.”
Four technology-driven trends — electrification, shared mobility, connectivity and autonomous driving — are leading the disruption in the auto industry, according to a McKinsey & Company report.
These trends will shift markets and revenue pools, change mobility behaviour and build new avenues for competition and cooperation. The real growth lies in services, which are poised to grow by an average of up to 40% a year, globally.
Sirish Batchu, head of advanced technology division at Mahindra Electric Mobility, said, “Electric technology is at a tipping point.” About 3 million EVs will be on Indian roads by 2030, he said.
By defining regulations on emissions and fuel efficiency, exploring incentives and subsidies, the Centre can support EV adoption and develop a supportive ecosystem, according to McKinsey.
Power, fuel and charging infrastructure firms can innovate on business models such as leasing of batteries, swapping infrastructure and deploying fast chargers, to drive EV adoption, according to the report.
Savings galore
India can save 64% of anticipated passenger road-based mobility-related energy demand and 37% of carbon emissions by 2030 by pursuing shared, electric and connected mobility, government think-tank NITI Aayog said in a report.
This would help reduce 156 Mtoe in fuel consumption by that year and implies savings of about ₹3.9 lakh crore by 2030.
R.K. Shenoy, senior VP, Embedded Solutions and Product Engineering at Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, said automated mobility had resulted in a series of new inventions such as intelligent lights, auto wipers, collision warning, auto pilot and highway assist.
“It is something like eyes off, brains off and driver off. The economics of such vehicles has a long way to go.”
