Why Carmakers Want You to Stop Buying Cars, Someday

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.