Motorists' desire to use alternative modes of transport will see the overall car-sharing vehicle parc grow 26% from 983,000 last year to 1.237 million in 2018, predicts Frost & Sullivan.

The industry consultants and analysts says the increase is also due to the rise in employee mobility options and environmental concerns.

Geraldine Priya, mobility team lead at Frost & Sullivan, said: "The highly dynamic market for new mobility solutions is expected to follow an emergent growth paradigm that leverages novel business models, sectoral partnerships, and consolidations.

"As business models diversify, we will see substantial investments in electric vehicle (EV) and autonomous vehicle (AV) pilots. Indeed, the ranks of operators offering self-driving cars for ridehailing services are swelling, with Waymo following Uber and Lyft into this market."

Frost & Sullivan said some providers of recent mobility solutions like car-sharing, ride-sharing, ride-hailing, on-demand responsive shuttles, and integrated mobility are already scaling their operations through consolidations and partnerships. 

This trend is illustrated by the latest example of BMW and Daimler merging their car-sharing units to become the global market leader, commanding more than 30% of the overall car-sharing market.

Smaller players are trying to retain their market share by either forging partnerships with bigger players or by expanding their business models.  New synergies in the market are fostering converged mobility solutions, creating a new space for mobility integrators and mobility-as-a-service (Maas) providers.

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Global Mobility Industry Outlook, 2018, examines seven business models—traditional car-sharing, peer-to-peer (P2P) carsharing, corporate car-sharing, ride-hailing, ride-sharing, dynamic shuttle/demand responsive transit (DRT), and integrated mobility.

It identifies emerging growth opportunities, including:

  • Car-sharing: Increased adoption of EVs, improved regulatory support, and integration of carsharing operations with other mobility modes are all driving growth within this segment.
  • Ride-sharing: Increased competition for market share, strategic partnerships, and investments will drive market growth. The corporate ridesharing market, specifically, will begin to pick up as companies are looking to move to more sustainable ways of transport.
  • Ride-hailing: Greater support from governments, bundled services, and growing online population will allow for greater penetration of Ridehailing services into the traditional taxi market.
  • DRT: Big data analytics and algorithms for real-time and flexible operations will disrupt the current market, while transit authorities and agencies will be key to restructuring the traditional bus transit model.
  • Integrated mobility: Greater synergies between private operators and OEMs will support expansion of operations. In addition, cities and local transport operators are opening up to the idea of offering MaaS to ease the congestion and pollution issue in cities.

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