Driving Innovation: The Future of Automotive Industry
What's the future of mobility, after Covid?
Covid-19 changed how people think about getting from one place to another. Lifestyles, daily routines, and transport choices shifted. Many regular travellers began favouring safer modes of travel.
Why Public Transport Still Matters
Mobility solutions have been a major theme in the automotive sector for years. Some are built for private and retail use, like autonomous cars, electric two-wheelers, and Segway-style vehicles. Others serve mass transit, including metro rail, high-speed rail, light rail, and dedicated bus lanes in cities like Curitiba, Brazil, and Delhi.
Public transport is hard to imagine life without. In the US, people made 9.9 billion trips on public transportation in 2018. On a typical weekday, that adds up to 34 million boardings. Public transportation ridership has grown 21% since 1997, outpacing the 19% growth in the US population over the same period. Many senior citizens depend on it to get around.
In the fast-urbanising markets of Asia-Pacific, mass transit carries people from home to work and moves tourists between destinations. In India, children use public transport to get to school and other activities. Because mass transit is often government-run, it also creates stable, well-paid jobs.
Efficient mass transport improves quality of life directly. When it isn’t a real option, cities become car-dependent. That leads to more congestion, higher fuel use, and more pollution.
How Covid Changed the Calculus
Covid reshaped all of this. Lifestyles, routines, and transport choices shifted as travellers looked for safer options. Social distancing made many people wary of shared transit, even though their choices were often limited.
India faced a particularly hard version of this problem. Mumbai’s suburban rail network moves an estimated 6 million commuters a day, and its bus service carries another 2.8 million. More than 70 million people use public transport in India every day. When the virus first spread, authorities in Wuhan shut down public transport early, since buses and trains are efficient vectors for transmission.
Many people shifted to working from home. But plenty of workers still had no real alternative to public transit.
What Commuting Could Look Like Next
- Personal vehicle ownership may keep rising in markets like India, adding to congestion.
- Two-wheeler sales could grow too, since they’re affordable, dependable, and already a status symbol in rural India.
- Carpooling, long a hard sell, may finally gain traction among close-knit colleagues and friends.
- Public transport will likely add contactless features: smart cards, fewer conductors, plexiglass barriers between drivers and passengers, and stronger hygiene protocols for staff.
- Freight and trucking will need new safety protocols for handling goods and perishables hygienically.
Public transport isn’t going away, it’s too essential for that. But precaution alone can only do so much. The path forward depends on governments and civil society working together to keep public transport both safe and clean. A lot of daily life still depends on it.