Those jumbles of electric scooters piled up on sidewalks in San Francisco, Seattle, Beijing or other digitally minded cities are more than just a mess. They’re the primordial ooze from which a new transportation ecosystem will arise, one expected to lead to the extinction of the model that dominated the 20th century: the individually owned automobile.
Something that’s known as mobility as a service, or MAAS, according to carmakers and urban planners. That means a network of coordinated forms of transportation that each handle the parts of a journey in the cheapest and most convenient way. From a smartphone app, a traveler can book ride-hailing services, public transportation, e-bikes, e-scooters and, eventually, robo-taxis. Car payments and parking fees will be replaced by buying transportation by the mile on a subscription service similar to Netflix.
