50 Years Olympic Village Munich – A Future Oriented Urban Mobility Concept, Far Ahead of its Time

Born and raised in Munich, I lived almost five years in the Olympic Village. Decades after it was built to house the participants of the 1972 Olympic Games, I experienced it day by day as a both very likable and incredibly modern urban settlement. Unlike other residential areas built for Olympic Games, it has not degenerated to a bleak concrete suburb over the years, and until today, I love strolling along its green walkways and surroundings whenever opportunity arises.

Created in the late sixties by architects Behnisch and Partner (who also designed the Olympic Park), the underlying architectural concept was pioneering, future oriented and definitely well ahead of its time.

With regards to mobility, I see four aspects as important: 

 

1. Split Level Concept

When approaching the Village – as it is called by its residents – from the street, you can see how motor traffic is divided from other road users: Pedestrians and cyclist use ramps to reach the pavement on the upper level, while cars, trucks and motorcycles take the underground entry to the lower street level for access to buildings, parking, deliveries. or waste collection. Such clear separation makes traffic for all road users comfortable and safe.

Elevators and staircases in the buildings go down to the lower level for convenient and roofed access to houses and apartments. Domestic waste can be disposed through garbage chutes on each floor of the apartment buildings and is collected on street level, away from where people live or pass by.

Split Level Access to the Olympic Village

 

2. Everything in Reach

Various kinds of shops, schools, medical supplies, restaurants, and public socializing areas as well as a church are available in walking distance within the village, reducing primary mobility needs for the residents dramatically. The Olympic Parc with all its sports and event facilities can be directly accessed and serves as an extended recreational area, always good for a walk or run. 

At the same time, direct access to the subway and local busses connects the Village conveniently to the rest of Munich and the world. 

So, while today we discuss the vision of the 15-Minute City, the Olympic Village was already the 5-Minute City 50 years ago. 

Life Together: Restaurant and Community in the Heart of the Village

3. Accessibility

Barrier-free concepts were all but the rule 50 years ago. The Village however, with its wide ramps, handrails and elevators was designed from scratch to make everything accessible without steps. Thus, the Olympic Village has always been a preferred place to live for wheel chair users while this accessibility makes it very convenient for cyclists, strollers, or walkers too. 

Acces Ramps on Upper Level in Strassberger Strasse

4. Livability 

Apart from all these rather factual criteria, the heart of the early architectural concept was making it not another depressing concrete apartment block but a place people would love to live in. How successful this has worked out can be seen and felt until today. The plants and trees you see everywhere make it green oasis. Various socializing areas and pieces of artwork are distributed all over the Village, bring people together, and create a truly livable and lovable neighborhood. 

As cyclists were mentioned above: What I find absolutely remarkable, is the harmonic way pedestrians and cyclists have always shared their way in the Village. Without a lot of formal routing measures or regulations, there has never been a lot of problems from pedestrians and bicycles using the space on the upper level together. In fact, there is something like an undocumented code of conduct based on mutual consideration, that makes them getting along well.

Trees and Artwork in Nadistrasse

Downside

Is there a downside? Yes, but one you would’t see at first glance. In a settlement of this size with thousands of people living together, clear rules and responsibilities are needed. However, the contracts made in 1972 for the utilization of the Olympic Village after the games were just peppered with flaws, which put badly needed restructuring measures on hold for decades, waiting for courts to decide who would have to pay for it. When e.g. the concrete structure below the pavement had to be renewed, it took the courts about 15 years to decide which part of it belonged to the upper level walkway (and as such to the the privately owned buildings on its side) and which belonged to the public streets (owned by the city) it covers. 

Last not least: Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Olympic Village is not possible without also remembering the terrible terrorist attack that took place there during the games. The lessons to be learned go far beyond mobility. 

Data Driven Mobility – Improving Mobility Systems Through Holistic Data Utilization

Individual Mobility. What does it take to bring you from A to B?

From an individual’s point of view, mobility simply is the possibility to be mobile, to go from one place to another – no matter where these places are. Typical criteria to evaluate this possibility are availability, accessibility, possible destinations, time to destination, cost, safety, comfort, reliability, sustainability etc.

To do so, you can either walk or use a means of transport – which can be any kind of vehicle from bicycle to car, from boat to drone, from e-scooter to airplane, from subway to cable car or even horses and donkeys.

Dropping the relatively rare (and in the context of this article irrelevant) case that you employ a personal chauffer, captain or pilot and are a passenger in your own vehicle, this leaves you with two options: You must either operate your own vehicle or use one rendered to you through a mobility service – such as public transport, ride hailing, bike sharing, airplanes or whatever.

Infrastructure. What you just expect to be there.

A precondition for the proper usage of these vehicles is a functioning infrastructure. Mobility infrastructure comprises a broad bandwidth of things and services, e.g.:

  • The structure the vehicle needs to operate (such as walkways, bike lanes, streets, rails, tunnels, bridges, waterways or air routes)
  • Means to enter or leave the vehicle (parking spaces, parking structures, stations, ports, airports etc.)
  • Traffic control elements (such as road markings, traffic signs, traffic lights, barriers, access control, traffic and parking surveillance etc.)
  • Energy provision (such as fuel stations, chargers or overhead lines)
  • Structures and services to maintain and repair vehicles as well as infrastructure
  • Data networks (such as mobile internet access)
  • Regulatory framework including legal requirements for vehicles and mobility services as well for their operation, tolls and taxes

In Short: To be mobile, you need your own vehicle or access to a mobility service. And in both cases, you depend on the availability of the appropriate infrastructure.

Collective Mobility. Unfortunately, other people want to be mobile, too.

Securing all these requirements alone would be tough enough, but as we all experience on a daily basis: How well one person can realize his or her mobility needs also depends strongly on the mobility patterns of all others. Jammed streets, overcrowded subways, limited availability of sharing vehicles, scarcity of parking spaces, local and global emission limits keep you from doing what you would do if you would be the only one out there. Why the heck must all others use this road, bus or service when I want to?

How well everyone in a given area can fulfill their mobility needs at the same time is what we call Collective Mobility. Securing and optimizing Collective Mobility is one of the primary regulatory tasks of cities, regions or countries and means nothing less than controlling the interplay of all vehicles being used, mobility services being rendered, and infrastructure being operated and maintained in a given mobility system. And we all know how rudimentary especially big cities handle this challenge today.

From opinions to knowledge. Big Data helps understanding.

A promising strategy to improve in this endeavor is utilizing what I call the “Internet of Mobility”: Vehicles, users, infrastructure – they all are getting more and more equipped with sensors (and hence create more and more data) and become more and more connected to the internet. There’s hardly one person on the street without a smart phone, service systems share their data and most importantly the sum of connected cars out there on the roads, which – from a data analyst’s point of view – represent nothing less than a huge, densely distributed network of powerful, mobile, and somewhat over-motorized sensor clusters constantly transmitting really big data ready to be collected and analyzed.

Such data is already available und used today, but at comparably low quantity and quality, and we are only at the beginning of holistically utilizing it. To picture what you get from conventionally connected cars compared to having digital twins: Most cars out there today leave you a little sticky note at the fridge door saying, “I drove 54 kilometers today, my tank is half full, all doors are locked, and I am generally doing fine.” However, cars with state-of-the-art connectivity have you on the phone 24/7, telling you constantly about each and every feeling and perception they have.

It is this increase and improvement of available data and especially the consolidated analysis of vehicle, user, and infrastructure generated data that allows the holistic optimization of mobility systems in the future. Here, I see mainly five main dimensions:

1. Improve Vehicle Operations

Real-time knowledge of infrastructure conditions and availability

  • facilitates parking and fueling/charging,
  • enables the early detection and even prediction of mobility-inhibiting factors such as traffic jams, potholes, slippery road surfaces or any other hazards, and
  • is the basis for any kind of autonomous driving.

2. Improve Mobility Services

Time- and location-based knowledge of user behavior and service utilization allows providers to

  • select the optimum vehicle and features for their service offers,
  • optimize both number and distribution of the vehicles used in their sharing or ride hailing schemes (including public transport), and especially
  • make mobility services as a whole more attractive (e.g., than driving your own vehicle) by optimizing the interplay between various offers (e.g., ride hailing, public transport and parking structures).

3. Improve Vehicle Condition

Real-time knowledge of all vehicles’ technical condition allows

  • detection of technical problems and thus facilitation of their solving, and
  • prediction of maintenance or repair needs and thus keeping vehicles smoothly running whilst avoiding breakdowns.

4. Improve Infrastructure Operations

Environmental data provided by connected cars allows

  • detection and prediction of infrastructure maintenance needs (e.g., broken traffic lights, worn road markers, damaged streets, bridges, or structures),
  • detection and prediction of general traffic capacity overload.

5. Improve Mobility System as a Whole

Combining and analyzing data rendered by all users, infrastructure and vehicles in a given mobility system allows the responsible authorities to

  • monitor, predict and control traffic flow and emissions,
  • decide targeted measures to improve the mobility system with regards comfort, safety and costs based on the received insights, and
  • detect and follow up on traffic violations.

As with all other forms of digital transformation, this approach comes with a twofold challenge: Firstly, the technical realization of the data utilization cycle (generate, transfer, aggregate, analyze, act, measure). Secondly, the persuasive and convincing efforts required to get all people involved supporting this change – sometimes letting go processes they are not only used to for years but have helped to establish and thus are personally attached to.

 

Comparing Apples and Apples – Objective Sustainability Assessment of Vehicles and Mobility Services

“Electric vehicles are much better than other cars because only they have truly zero emissions.”

“Completely wrong, think of all the stuff going on during battery production and especially the emissions of the power stations.”

“There isn’t any, I use 100% renewable energy only.”

“But you have to build up all the solar panels and wind turbines first and put that on the bill. In total, diesel is still much better.”

“Then you must include building all the oil wells, docks, ships, pipelines, refineries as well. That’s a lot.”

“No, I don’t – because they are already there.”

“But not forever, and this infrastructure can’t even be used for hydrogen to run fuel cell electric vehicles.”

“Then make that hydrogen from your renewable electricity.”

“That’s nonsense. You would need five times more electric energy than for a battery electric vehicle.”

“But fuel cell electric vehicles give you a much higher range.”

“If it’s about range, plug-in hybrids are still the best solution.”

“Certainly not. They need two drivetrains and energy infrastructures in parallel, and most of them are never driven in electric mode.”

“But the market proves that plug-in hybrids are what customers really want.”

 

Sounds familiar? When arguing about which mode or drivetrain may be the most sustainable and promising choice for future mobility, we see even experts comparing not only apples and oranges but all kinds of fruit and even vegetables these days …

So it is certainly worth trying to structure this and cut the sustainability elephant into clear slices. As the fictional conversation above shows: to quantify and compare costs, emissions or social impact (the three pillars of sustainability), looking solely at a vehicle’s utilization profile and powertrain technology is certainly not enough. They are off course important but only one part of the system that is to be assessed. But what are the other elements of this system? I personally recommend adding the following five aspects of the life span to the basic vehicle or service usage:

 

1. Vehicle Provision

As development determines the properties of the future vehicle, we primarily hold them accountable for “their” vehicle’s impact during utilization phase – especially its emissions. But the development phase itself has a direct impact too, even if comparably minor. Replacing hardware prototypes by virtual ones e.g. significantly reduces not only time and costs but also emissions; choosing less complex technical solutions (such as a battery electric vehicle instead of an internal combustion vehicle) reduces the required testing and validation including its side effects; digitalizing work processes allows both globalization and teleworking and thus adds up to social responsibility.

In the same way, the direct impact during marketing, sales and finance is certainly smaller than the one that is caused during this phase but actually happens later on: At the end of the day, it is salespersons who have the biggest leverage on customers’ decision which car they purchase or which mobility mode they select. In relation to that, the sustainability potential during the marketing, sales and finance phase itself, e.g. shifting to online sales and marketing, is comparably low.

While development, marketing and sales play only a minor role, vehicle production certainly fills each vehicle’s backpack with ecologic and social impact stemming from manufacturing and logistics processes. Here, the complete value chain from material mining to delivering the complete vehicle or service must be taken into account.

2. Energy Provision

Gasoline, diesel, e-fuels, hydrogen, electricity – every form of energy must be generated, stored, processed and distributed before it is available in the vehicle and converted in mechanical performance. And all these sections of the well-to-tank-process – i.e. electrical power generation, distribution and buffering on one side, oil or gas extraction or generation, refining, transport and storage on the other side – contribute to a vehicle’s sustainability balance.

In addition, accidents in power stations, oil rigs, tankers, pipelines or hydrogen filling stations as well as political and military conflicts over resources and energy dramatically demonstrate how well-to-tank processes do not only have a direct impact, but also bear especially ecologic and social risks.

3. Maintenance and Repair

Wear and tear require service, technical complexity and errors lead to problems that must be fixed, accidents cause damage that must be repaired. In any case, occurrence and impact of these measures depend largely on the vehicle concept and utilization mode: As electric drivetrains have dramatically less parts and cause less thermal and mechanical wear than combustion engines, their impact in service and maintenance is significantly lower. On the other side, vehicles used in mobility services show significantly higher wear, accident rates and even vandalism than privately owned vehicles.

4. End-of-life

At the end of their usable lifespan, vehicle components or complete cars are collected, analyzed and disassembled. Whether parts can be reused or recycled or must be scrapped significantly adds up to the quantitative sustainability indicators. E.g., remanufacturing engine parts or reusing degenerated EV batteries in battery second live applications help reducing the end-of life impact.

5. Infrastructure

Last but certainly not least: Infrastructure is often forgotten because it is considered “already there”. But a fair comparison of technical concepts must also include the economical, ecological and social impact of providing, maintaining and eventually removing the facilities, equipment and IT-systems required for all parts of both the provision and usage phase. In this sense, creating hydrogen from electricity by electrolysis might look emission free at first glance but a look at the impact of providing and maintaining the required plant shows a different picture. The impact of infrastructure has to be looked at over a longer period of time. Developing electric vehicles for the first time e.g., might require building up a new test facility for lithium-ion-batteries but may also make unnecessary the renewal of an existing test facility for diesel engines at a later point in time.

 

In a nutshell, this approach requires looking at both processes and infrastructure for every phase of the product or service life cycle. The table below gives a very basic overview of the emerging tree model. Eventually, extending the system boundaries in this way allows comparing apples and apples again.

Talkin’ Bout a Transformation …

#emobility

Whether eagerly yearned for or grudgingly conceded: By now, you have probably accepted that electric cars are inexorably on the rise. And even though you are sure that at least in some places there will still be cars with combustion engines on the road by 2050, it surely looks like EVs and Plug-in Hybrids will prevail in the cities. However, what you still find far less clear – even though you witness more and more public chargers around – is how EV drivers will be able to cope with the limited range of their vehicles in connection with the perceived scarcity of charging stations. And while at the same time some nerdish engineers reiteratively broadcast that fuel cells and hydrogen will solve this problem for ever, you still cannot get rid of this uneasy mental image of a huge crater stretching over a highway after a car crash with a poorly maintained hydrogen vehicle involved.

#mobilityservices

Then, as you read through your business strategy journals, you are told over and over that car ownership, the century old mobility pattern number one, is in rapid retreat. Urban teenagers, whose fathers were dreaming of fancy sports cars when they were their age, don’t even go for a driver’s license anymore. If train, bus or bicycle is not an option, people would not buy or lease cars but rather share a car or call a ride hailing service like Uber, the affordable and app-steered successor of what has long time been known as a taxi. But what is worrying you even more is that new digital service providers are said to take over the complete mobility business soon, with automakers being downgraded to basic hardware providers and public transport companies begging for contracts.

#autonomous

On top of that, automakers claim they will soon bring autonomous vehicles on the road. Not just something like an extra-advanced driver assistance system, but cars with neither steering wheel nor pedals but lots of extremely expensive sensors and software that must be extensively tested and meet standards initially developed for military aircraft. And while in spite of all confidence in engineering you still wonder how these cars would ever make it safely through unsecured road works or snowstorms and – even more significant – who apart from ride hailing providers would actually want to buy them, you witness the heralded date from which on these robocars should populate our cities’ streets being postponed year by year.

#digitalization

And as if all this wasn’t bad enough, some of the young guys around you, the ones wearing sneakers, a full beard and watching e-sports, tell you that data is the new gold, that big data means even more gold, and that your company should work agile, fail fast, provide something you would call completely unacceptable but they call minimum viable product, scale and ultimately indulge yourself in a so called digital transformation. All that of course independently from whether you are in automotive, mobility services, energy, public transport, insurance, law, or whatever. After thinking it over, you are left with the feeling that this is not all new but still kind of frightening. If only you would understand all these fancy IT buzzwords.

#change

If your work was related to mobility for the last couple of years, all of the above probably sounds familiar. The battle-hardened manager, now somewhat disoriented and undetermined in this overgrown jungle called mobility of the future. How do all these bits and pieces fit together? The good news is: No one has ever been brought from one place to another by software alone. But the fact that vehicles and smartphones send and receive an exponentially increasing amount of data, that they are connected to back-end servers and with each other, and that artificial intelligence can create astonishing and valuable information from this data, will not only improve vehicle and service functionalities but dramatically change the way they are developed, produced or rendered, marketed and sold – and especially how vehicles and their private or corporate customers are served after sales.

The key for survival and success is embracing change. At the end of the day, the question is neither if you should proactively engage in a digital transformation nor when you should do it (the answers are yes and now). The sole question is how – and can usually not be answered sufficiently by the people who brought your company to where it is today …

 

First published on LinkedIn on 5. August 2020

Surrounded by Idiots – or Can the Mobility Change not be Looked at in a More Differentiated Way?

Mobility moves emotions too

A look at the comments on corresponding posts on LinkedIn or elsewhere proves: The change in mobility affects each individual very directly – and is accordingly emotionally documented. Comparable to issues such as nuclear energy or migration applies: anyone who takes a different opinion from myself and that opinion – whether actually or only assumed – threatens my own circumstances, attacks me personally, and I shoot back accordingly quickly and sharply. A factual debate often falls by the wayside.

It is obvious that the right solution for everyone does not exist, indeed cannot exist. In terms of mobility, it not only has everyone’s own individual preferences and priorities, but also everyone has to cope with their own framework of individual and general constraints – be it the personal life situation including the available financial resources, the local availability of certain mobility offers, including the necessary infrastructure or the applicable legal situation.

So anyone who asks the family man, who on the daily commute from his home with garage in a quiet community to his workplace in the nearby business park never had to stand in a traffic jam let alone worrying about a parking space, to think about giving up his car, will hardly find any understanding. Conversely, if you live in the city centre, where the monthly parking space rental in an underground car park is in the range of the leasing rate of a mid-size car, and you come to the office from your apartment in less than 15 minutes by subway, you are probably glad not to have your own car and to be able to use alternatives such as car sharing or ride hailing if necessary.

Change, yes, of course. But where to where? 

It is undisputed that driving your own car has been the standard in mobility for decades, and accordingly all other forms of transport have been referred to as mobility alternatives – despite the fact that some of these alternatives have been available for much longer and are also used by far more people than owned cars, especially in the big cities. The fact is, however, that the traffic situation resulting from this standard in the cities is perceived by the people living there – both by motorists and by other road users – more and more as a massive, multidimensional problem: on the one hand, due to traffic jams and parking shortages, on the other hand, by deterioration of air quality, increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and noise, deterioration of road safety and occupancy of the scarcer public space. The fact that more and more people want to move to the suburbs and want to be mobile there with their own car is constantly exacerbating the situation.

All those affected agree that the traffic situation needs to change. However, opinions differ clearly on how the problems could actually be solved and how a corresponding change should look like: those who want to continue driving hope for more roads and parking facilities, whether by expanding the existing transport infrastructure or by switching to mobility alternatives as possible. If you care about reducing emissions, you want the continuous replacement of internal combustion engines by electric drives. And if you want to have more green spaces and space for alternative mobility in your area, you might want inner cities without private cars.

Extreme positions of individual mobility

In the end, the real mobility situation is always the result of the sum of individual decisions made within a framework of personal possibilities and preferences, market-side offers, available infrastructure and last but not least regulatory/political conditions. The individual not only decides on his or her personal mobility mode, but also regulates the supply of mobility products and services via demand and also influences the promotion or rejection of different solutions by means of regulatory requirements through the election of a party or a delegate. The change in mobility is thus supported, at least in democratic conditions, directly and indirectly by the will of the majority – and is therefore often difficult for the individual to understand and endure.

In this situation, on the one hand, many people today have the impression that politics and society are interfering in more and more things that used to be a purely private matter. Of course, everyone is allowed to smoke – but not everywhere for a long time. Of course, everyone is allowed to wear whatever they want – but they are also confronted with the conditions under which their garments were made at the other end of the world. In principle, everyone is allowed to eat what they want – but they have to accept questions about fair trade, environmental protection and animal welfare. The same feeling now arises in terms of mobility: Can I not even drive a car now?

On the other hand, there are people with different personal values and priorities who, for example, attach great importance to ecologically and socially sustainable life and action, cope wonderfully without a car of their own and feel affected by the mobility behaviour of others in their quality of life. From such a point of view, it is often incomprehensible why someone wants to hold on to their own car around everything in the world.

How do we get to sensible and majority-capable solutions here as citizens with mobility needs, as mobility providers or even as politicians, despite all differences of opinion? An indispensable prerequisite for this is the fundamental assumption that people with an opinion other than their own do not generally represent them out of stupidity or malice, and the willingness to deal with conflicting points of view in a factual and differentiated way in a consideration of the overall system. A look at the motives from which extreme positions are represented helps. In this sense, figures 1 and 2 show different reasons, for which the positions “I drive with my own car and want to continue doing so!” and “I don’t own my own car and don’t want one!” are taken – each descendingly ordered by how easy alternative can be found.

In addition to the understanding of the “opposite side”‘s reasoning, this analytical analysis also reveals the shortcomings of one’s own reasoning or supply: those who want to sell cars would do well to understand why some people do not or no longer address this offer, and with which vehicles or services customers could be held or recovered. Those who offer alternatives to owned cars, on the other hand, should look very carefully at what drives people to continue to drive their own cars in spite of everything.

Let us not be under any illusions: in the end, this approach will not lead to a result that everyone is happy with. But it makes the debates on mobility change noticeably more constructive and thus leads it clearly towards an overall optimum.

Coronavirus and Mobility: Every Cloud has a Silver Lining …

Most of the measures taken to solve the problems caused by mobility aim to improve or enhance the available choice of mobility options, e.g. by designing electric cars with lower or no emissions, enabling autonomous driving, creating alternative vehicle concepts, generally improving publictransport or offering innovative mobility services.

Es wurde kein Alt-Text für dieses Bild angegeben.

Few measures however focus on the actual root cause of these problems, namely the individual mobility needs. Apart from the tremendously long-term and costly political efforts to transform monocentric into polycentric cities in order to keep people in their neighborhood and thus shorten the average trip distance, a short-term and effective measure is to reduce the overall number of trips by replacing on-site gatherings through means of tele-cooperation, e.g. tele-working, tele-learning or tele-diagnosis. But while the required technology has been available for many years, its application often stalled due to rather irrational hurdles: IT had not installed the required hard- and software, associates were reluctant to stay back home, managers were afraid to lose direct control, professors didn’t want to give up personal interaction with their students, patients were reluctant to measure blood pressure, pulse or body temperature by themselves. And after all, the pressure and need for this transformation has obviously not been considered that urgent.

But now, as the measures taken to staunch propagation of Covid 19 lead to companies having their associates work from home whenever possible, schools and universities closing down, doctor’s appointments being postponed, and face-to-face meetings being generally reduced to a minimum, tele-cooperation undergoes a true boost. As there aren’t any more alternatives, people get enabled, use the technology for the first time – and then realize not only how easy and comfortable it works but also how much time they can save that they formerly spent traveling. And furthermore, it becomes clear that hard- and software for tele-cooperation are part of the so-called critical infrastructure and that its availability and performance should be secured accordingly.

Aside from all the severe and worldwide impact the Coronavirus pandemic will have for a while, the boost of tele-cooperation and its positive side effects for mobility are certainly here to stay.

 

First published on LinkedIn on 15. April 2020

Business Travel in the Post-Coroniticum

Another new experience: Last month, I attended my yearly performance review meeting – the first time over Skype. And while reflecting that not too long-ago people in many companies would have flown in for something like that from wherever they are located in the world, I watch also recruiters doing job interviews online, agencies giving pitches via video conference, buyers negotiating and closing over the air, and even consultants interacting with their clients using web-based collaboration platforms.

After we all have got more or less used to attending team meetings or regular one-on-ones from our makeshift home office by now, this certainly is a next level of tele-working. While for this kind of personal encounters, meeting face-to-face has at least in the overwhelming majority of cases always been considered indispensable, our involuntary real-life experience imposed by the coronavirus situation now proves to us that all this is possible in a reasonable manner without meeting in person.

So, what does this mean for the hopefully near future when coronavirus will have eased its grip on us? Will anyone want to turn back time and spend hours in a car, train or plane only to meet someone in person for one hour? Rather not. But this then obviously leads to pressing strategic questions regarding the future of business travel. As an airline or railway company: Will passenger numbers fully recover, or will they rather follow an L than a U or V? And as a car manufacturer: Will range as the unceasingly uttered main advantage of combustion engines over electric drivetrains still be so decisive for the purchasing decision? I am convinced that a good deal of the changes we are now forced to implement in our routines are here to stay …

 

First published on LinkedIn on 8. April 2020