Download We focus on two relevant innovations in future visions.

Futures of Personal Mobility:
A Tale of Two Innovations
Dr Noam Bergman
Innovations for Sustainable Mobility
Nottingham
25 November 2016
Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
Introduction – context and project overview
Imagining the future – people, behaviour, mobility
Incumbent strategies – what can we deduce or infer
Conclusions
Future Visions of Personal Mobility
A CIED project which focuses on the questions:
1. How do visions of the future portray changes in UK
personal mobility?
2. What innovations are considered in these visions?
3. How are people and behaviour portrayed?
Dr Tim Schwanen, Director of TSU,
University of Oxford
Context: UK personal mobility,
sustainability and behaviour
• Current car-based personal mobility is unsustainable
from a climate change / emissions perspective.
• Other issues include congestion, air quality, accessibility.
• Changing the (personal) transport system is notoriously
difficult: system is locked-in to automobility.
• infrastructure of cars, roads and fuel
• car owning and driving norms & practices
• cultural representations, institutions, expertise
We focus on two relevant innovations in future visions.
1. Electric Vehicles (EVs)
• technical emissions reduction if electricity is low-carbon.
• potentially maintain other aspects of automobility.
• challenge the system in terms of usage (range,
recharging), infrastructure, and supply chains.
• have grown exponentially in number in the UK in the
past few years, reaching 90,000 in 2016.
2. Car Clubs (car sharing)
• offer systemic change; product-to-service shift with
access to mobility over ownership, integrated transport.
• reduce total miles driven per member through slow
modes, public transport and even less travel.
• breaking the link between car use and ownership.
• 220,000+ members, 80%+ in London. Growth irregular.
Visions of future transport
• We looked at imagined futures in documents
including visions, forecasts, pathways etc.
All address road transport in the UK.
• They come from a variety of actors/stakeholders –
government, industry, consultancies, lobby groups.
• Written 2002-2015; projections to 2020s – 2050s.
20 documents chosen, focusing on:
car clubs, EVs, low C cars, UK road transport, UK economy.
Far more documents address EVs than car clubs, the study
focused more on EVs, with car clubs as a ‘counterpoint’.
Visions as tools & strategies
• Visions are powerful political tools that can:
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•
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create expectations that help develop technologies;
generate support from a wide array of stakeholders;
develop trajectories suiting authors’ interests;
allow action in the present based on the past.
Most of the vision documents we analysed represent
incumbent actors; they have resources to produce broad
systemic visions.
Imagining mobility
Incumbents’ ‘central vision’: future as past, present.
• Most aspects of automobility remain unchanged:
• high demand: car travel as a right and a necessity.
• cars linked to technological progress, economic growth.
• Sustainability narrowly defined as emissions, with
technological progress seen as solution: ICEVs improve,
low carbon cars (probably EVs) gradually introduced.
• Full potential of electric mobility is hardly explored – EVs
must copy conventional cars to succeed.
Powerful business-as-usual message.
Imagining people
• Strong similarities across studies in how people are
imagined: independent individuals (or households)
making choices.
• People are portrayed as consumers or users.
• Roughly identical, interchangeable consumers.
Heterogeneity is used to segment population or highlight
range of models & brands to serve needs, preferences
• Little consideration of public as stakeholders, partners or
holders of knowledge.
Imagining behaviour
• People are portrayed largely as economic rational actors:
consumers whose travel behaviour is a set of choices
that maximise their utility.
• It is acknowledged that other factors affect vehicle
choice - habits, brand loyalty, familiarity, image…
• Consumers portrayed as having a passive role in any
transition, their main ‘job’ is buying (green) cars.
• Behaviour sometimes reduced to choice of car purchased.
• Focus is often on how to increase demand and uptake, i.e.,
financial incentives, awareness and overcoming barriers.
Explaining low uptake
If we had perfect knowledge of each consumer, we
could obtain an accurate model for each consumer’s
utility score for each vehicle and so be certain of
their vehicle choice. – EST 2007
While there is no doubt that
consumers do care about fuel
costs… evidence suggests that
consumer behaviour does not
people tend to discount heavily...
follow a rational economic
future cost savings from fuel economy
model. – AEA 2013
at the time of purchasing a car, even
though it would seem to be in their
own interests... – King, 2007
‘there is a list as long as your arm of reasons why people might
not be rushing out to buy green. Those reasons include
concerns about: price, reliability, resale value, range and
practicality, desirability, fuel efficiency. – Ecolane 2011
Alternative visions
• Car club based visions assume:
• society benefits from moving away from car ownership;
• greater behaviour change is possible (e.g., modal shift).
resulting in an integrated, service-oriented system:
• imagining changes to norms and behaviour;
• access to mobility: reduced mileage, number of cars.
a broader view of sustainability and possible change.
• Radical change – Foresight visions: What if low carbon
transport doesn’t deliver? What if people reject
intelligent infrastructure? Stronger agency for users.
Incumbent strategies in the visions
Visions are used to create expectations and legitimacy for
future trajectories. Incumbents use this to press for limited,
gradual change that allows them to adapt and retain power.
We see this in the documents in several ways:
• Future similar to present and past, smooth(ish) shift
• Significant behaviour change, i.e., reduction in demand &
modal shift, are portrayed as unrealistic.
• Low carbon travel is portrayed as a local, complementary
measure for reducing emissions (no effect on car sales).
What strategies are in the visions to pursue this agenda?
Regulations
• Gradual tightening of emission targets – allowing for
improvement in conventional vehicles and increased
uptake of EVs / ULEVs.
“This gives the industry the required long-term security for
investments in low-carbon car technology and infrastructure.”
• Regulations should capture ‘well-to-wheel’ emissions – this
could be a delaying tactic, as EV lifecycle emissions depend
the electricity grid and the wider manufacture process.
 strategies inferred:
delay tactics; agenda setting; minimising risk
Industry and government
Different views on government’s roles and responsibilities.
• Some support involvement, with government and industry
shaping the future of the ‘automotive strategy’ together.
• Others suggest government should focus on regulation and
fiscal policy, leaving markets to the industry.
• Strong support for government ensuring RD&D funding.
• Industry and government argue for technology neutrality.
 strategies inferred:
agenda setting; minimising risk; public-private alliances
People
People are seen as users and consumers, so there is a lot said
about uptake and creating & sustaining demand.
• Financial instruments including guaranteeing long-term
support to ensure certainty for the industry
• Raising awareness, improving image of EVs
• Forum of ULEV users - understanding demand side – so
focus is on maximising uptake.
• Over time we see a shift to focusing on the demand side,
such as reframing limited range as range anxiety.
 strategies inferred:
shifting responsibility; minimising risk;
Strategies roundup
agenda
setting
shifting
risk
delay
tactics
visions
shifting
responsibility
alliance
building
Conclusions (1): people
• People portrayed as consumers, often as rational actors
despite evidence this is inaccurate. This leads to
dissonance regarding low EV uptake.
• Behaviour seen mostly as consumer choice (of vehicle)
to avoid difficulty of changing car-based behaviour?
or because change is undesirable?
• Other roles, e.g. citizen, knowledge producer, ignored –
not to complicate/undermine ‘business as usual’ future?
Imagining people as more than consumers making rational
choices is not only possible, but highly desirable in a search
for a future of sustainable personal transport.
Conclusions (2): the future
• The central vision is portrayed as the only future.
Aspects which don’t align with it are ignored (peak car),
marginalised (car clubs) or problematised (behaviour).
• Imagining EVs as a simple substitute for ICEVs could
perpetuate ICEVs as they are the norm against which
alternative mobility forms compete.
• Visions suggest various incumbent strategies are at play.
Alternative visions (from non-incumbents) are vital to
present a range of options and highlight assumptions.
Incumbent tend to focus on limited - and limiting - change.