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Navigating with a paper map, carpooling by phone - it all sounds almost nostalgic today. But anyone who thinks that the great revolutions in the world of mobility are already behind us is mistaken. The next innovations are just around the corner: connected vehicles, smart infrastructure, autonomous driving and mobility platforms that offer everything from a single source - this is no longer a distant vision, but part of a rapidly advancing transformation.
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler, mobility expert at Bayern Innovativ, talks about how much mobility has already changed in the last 30 years, which innovations have really made the difference - and what questions arise when we look 30 years into the future.
Which developments in the world of mobility have been the most significant in the past 30 years?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: 30 years sounds like an incredibly long time and yet I don't think 1995 was that long ago. If I think back, I would clearly say that digitalization in the automotive industry, the topic of electromobility and digitalization in mobility in general were the most important developments. I still remember the time when I got my driver's license, around 1999, when vehicles were much more analog, there were fewer electrical components in the vehicle, for example, there were no navigation systems installed as standard, instead you navigated using a map. Over the last few years, vehicles have become much more electronic. And this has also made them much safer. There are new technologies that keep vehicles in their lane or provide emergency braking when there are dangers on the road, or that simply offer more comfort and can follow the vehicle in front when you want to sit back and relax on the highway. And of course, cars are much more connected these days. They can communicate with the environment and also with other vehicles or the infrastructure. The second very important topic is electromobility. This has developed incredibly over the last 20 to 30 years. In the beginning, there were more hybrid vehicles, then later with the Tesla Model S, electric mobility became suitable for the masses. These were the first electric vehicles with a longer range. The charging infrastructure and storage technology have adapted, and there has been a huge leap forward. The digitalization of mobility is a very exciting topic in general. If I think back to the 2000s, when I arrived in a new city back then, I got a map and used it to walk around the city. Today, it's all digitalized. There are digital maps, you can book different mobility options on your smartphone and choose whether you want to use public transport or rent a bike or e-scooter. This has changed mobility dramatically.
Was there a moment in your personal past when you knew that the world of mobility was going to change from the ground up?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: I would say it wasn't necessarily a moment, but rather a gradual development. A feeling that something significant was happening. For me personally, it was the digitalization of the mobility world. There is one person who is relatively well known in the mobility world: Sampo Hietanen. He developed the Mobility-as-a-Service concept. He once said "Mobility is being hit by a digital tsunami". I think that sums it up well, because this digitalization has changed a lot of mobility options. Take carpooling, for example. There used to be options like Blablacar or the carpooling agency. For example, you could see that someone was driving from Nuremberg to Berlin and then call them to share a ride. Today it works very differently. Today, you can book everything digitally via your cell phone. In the best case scenario, you can even use it to pay. This has been a major development over the last few years. Of course, it all started with the smartphone. When smartphones came onto the market around 2007, there was a huge surge in development.
How have these developments affected the work of your team and the wishes of your customers?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: The two topics of connectivity and electromobility have changed the mobility sector at Bayern Innovativ beyond belief. Initially, we only dealt with the vehicle industry, but later we expanded the topic. Electromobility is so big that you can't just look at it from the vehicle side, you also have to think about the infrastructure. After all, electromobility will only develop if there is an infrastructure for it and people can use it. There is another major area for us. This is connected mobility, which deals with digitalization in mobility in general, i.e. with all the things I mentioned earlier: Connectivity of vehicles, digitalization of mobility systems as a whole or Mobility-as-a-Service.
What will be the next big technological breakthrough?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: It's always a difficult question whether you can predict innovations. I have to think of a saying that Henry Ford is supposed to have said. He said that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said they wanted faster horses. This raises the question of whether innovations arise from people's needs and whether they could be predicted in this way. I'm not sure about that. Things or events often come around the corner that you didn't expect.
I don't think anyone expected the smartphone either; it was not something you could have imagined. However, I think that we will see many more developments in the areas I mentioned earlier, i.e. digitalization and electromobility. There will be a lot more to come. In the area of electromobility, for example, I believe that storage technologies will continue to develop, that the range of vehicles will continue to increase and that vehicles will become much more part of an overall system. I also think that the vehicles of the future will be able to charge and store sustainable energy and then release this energy again when it is needed. You could call mobility and energy an overall system. In the area of digitalization, I believe that automation and networking will continue to develop significantly. We already have semi-autonomous or autonomous vehicles today. I believe that these can develop further, that cities can develop further through autonomous vehicles and thus better connect rural regions, for example. Cities will perhaps continue to develop in the direction of hyper-networked systems. For example, through a lot of sensor technology in infrastructure and a lot of sensor technology in various vehicles, autonomous delivery robots, autonomous cleaning machines and so on.
What will be the next big challenge in terms of sustainability and how will you, as an innovation network, support corporate mobility in meeting these challenges?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: I think that sustainability is an ongoing issue. We really need to make more of an effort here and continue to drive sustainability forward. On the one hand, I believe that "design to recycle" will play a very important role here. This means, for example, that the components of the vehicles are designed in such a way that they can be taken apart again at the end so that they can be recycled. In this way, the parts can be returned to the value cycles. You have to look at where the raw materials come from and how they are processed and produced. It is not only important to have CO2-efficient vehicles, but also to consider the entire service life. Of course, I also think it's important that the service life of vehicles is getting longer. For example, I recently read that every seventh Porsche ever produced is still on the road today. And that is basically a good thought. On the other hand, it can also slow things down if vehicles have a long service life. Because you naturally want to have innovative technologies, the latest innovations in the vehicles. Perhaps we can find a way of combining the two.
It is important to us to always think outside the box. We think about how we can combine our own industry developments with innovations from other industries. In this way, we bring different innovations together and perhaps find completely different solutions for our topics. And that is one of Bayern Innovativ's core competencies: thinking outside the box, bringing together different players, involving large companies, small companies, start-ups, SMEs and local authorities.
What are the most important changes in customer requirements that have forced companies to adapt their strategies?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: I would say that consumers today want to consume much more. I think the smartphone has had a big impact on us in this respect too, because it gives me everything I need. When I think about mobility, people would prefer to have everything from a single source. Nobody wants to download a different mobility app in Hamburg than in Munich, for example. Maybe I want to be able to borrow a bike and an e-scooter if I feel like it, or maybe a completely different mobility device. Things have definitely changed in this area. I can still remember when we spoke to transport companies a few years ago. They said that cooperation would be very difficult because they would have to give up their customer interfaces, so cooperation was out of the question. Today, there are many great examples where this is already working well. In Berlin, for example, there is an app with many different integrated mobility services. Or here in Nuremberg there is a great app where I can book public transport, I can also find out about departure times and journey times, but I can also rent a bike for 30 minutes or ride an e-scooter for 15 minutes if I have a subscription. It's precisely this overall integration that we're also seeing in the vehicle industry. People also want to be connected in a private car. Ideally, you would like to have your playlist in the car immediately, as well as your contacts, you want to be able to make phone calls, maybe even have the office applications at hand so that you can go to the next Teams call while driving. Companies have also adapted to this. It is now possible to integrate the smartphone in the automotive industry. The devices can be seamlessly connected there. There are also many new business models in the mobility world. These collaborations that I mentioned earlier did not exist on such a large scale in the past.
Which trends and/or developments will have a major impact on the transportation of the future over the next 30 years?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: What could already change are the topics of digitalization, data usage and mobility in general. For example, vehicles will communicate with each other and with the infrastructure, and data will record the vehicles. For example, through movement data that is used intelligently to improve traffic and perhaps also to further develop cities.
Imagine you could travel 30 years into the future in a time machine and ask the mobility world one question, what would it be?
Jennifer Reinz-Zettler: 30 years is a really exciting time. In 30 years, my son will be the same age as I am today and I think the first thing I would want to know is how he is personally mobile. Whether he lives in the city or in the country. If he lives in the country, I would like to know how the country is connected? Do you still need your own car or are there autonomous shuttles that connect the countryside with the city? What technological innovations have made it possible for the country to be better connected? And then I can think of another really exciting question: I would like to know how we as Bavaria or Germany have managed to become the heart of the global mobility industry. We are more of a "car country". But I firmly believe that we can become a country of mobility in the future and would like to know how we managed to do that.
The interview was conducted by Barbara Groll, Media Relations, Bayern Innovativ GmbH, Nuremberg.
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