OEM Smart Mobility Initiatives Competitive Assessment

OEMs are facing at least a decade of escalating disruption, as  their customer-base increasingly consume personal transit through mobility services, rather than through traditional car ownership.   Ridehailing operators have already demonstrated how effectively the passenger can be transformed from a simple consumer product into a truly monetizable asset, generating recurring revenue streams for the service operator. In the longer term, OEMs face competitive pressure from driverless technology trailblazer Waymo, who will soon be in a position to offer mobility services at a cost-per-mile lower than that of conventional car ownership. Therefore, in order to maintain their role as the cornerstone of personal transit, OEMs have no choice but to transform themselves from product sellers into mobility service providers, overhauling a century old business model while simultaneously playing catchup with much more agile competitors.

Very much aware of the scale of the challenge before them, some OEMs have taken the step of crystallizing their smart mobility ambitions into dedicated subsidiaries, which operate fledgling services while making the necessary research and investments in the core areas of CRM, curbside intelligence services, demand response, fleet management and autonomous driving.

This competitive assessment analyzes the smart mobility platforms of 6 leading OEMs; Daimler , BMW, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and Toyota. ABI Research ranked these platforms according to a proven innovation and implementation framework. With respect to implementation, each vendor was assessed according to their market share, geographic reach, the scale and strategic value of their smart mobility investments, and the partnerships they have formed with key industry partners such as ridehailing providers, fleet managers, and local transit operators. Concerning their level of innovation, OEMs were assessed according to their driverless vehicle development, connected car services (including investment in curbside intelligence), the number of car sharing modes their platform support and the number of use-cases they have targeted, including personal transit, goods delivery, and food delivery.