Driverless technology, through the Car as a Service, or CaaS, paradigm, will be the defining factor for the success of on-demand mobility, offering consumers the possibility to summon transportation on the fly. MaaS will result in more environmentally friendly transportation through the deployment of fleet-based, alternative powertrain vehicles and reduced congestion through improved utilization rates of available resources.

—Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research

Autonomous operation will eliminate the need for paid drivers, cut insurance costs, increase utilization rates to more than 70%, and enable Over the Air-based self-servicing and preventive maintenance. This will drive down the total variable cost per mile to a level that significantly undercuts the cost of car ownership and enable MaaS ecosystem development. Vehicle-to-Grid, demand-response charging of electric powertrains and the economies of scale of fleet-based deployments will further enhance this.

The MaaS ecosystem will breed a competitive environment full of dynamic transportation marketplaces, public private partnerships, and aggregators moderating and managing supply and demand according to government policies and frameworks. While the multimodal character and complex interdependence of different transportation models is at the heart of MaaS, CaaS models will remain the dominant contributor to on-demand mobility though 2030, ABI said.

Bicycle rental revenues will remain small, according to the forecast. Transit as a Service—on-demand buses and driverless shuttles—and Aviation as a Service—autonomous passenger drones and flying cars—models will only start to become significant by 2025 and 2030, respectively. But rail-based and other fixed route and fixed schedule transit will become part of the MaaS paradigm, as well, with digital technology and open platforms allowing seamless and automated multimodal routing and single account billing.

MaaS will fuel economic growth through lower transportation pricing. But it will have to overcome resistance from both private and public entrenched players before it begins to progress. Pioneers like MaaS Global and the public-private MaaS Alliance, with smart mobility leaders Xerox and Siemens among its members, are paving the way for this new uber paradigm to gain a foothold.

—Dominique Bonte

These findings are from ABI Research’s Mobility as a Service. This report is part of the company’s Enterprise IT & OT Convergence sector, which includes research, data, and analyst insights.