Frost & Sullivan: Micro Mobility To Provide Alternative Mode of Transportation and Change the Concept of Vehicle Ownership

SINGAPORE, Sept. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Micro-mobility will become a future mobility solution to provide short distance travel and the first and last mile connectivity, says Frost & Sullivan.

Mr. Masaki Honda, Consulting Director, Automotive & Transportation Practice, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan said that micro-mobility is likely to provide an alternative mode of transportation and may change the concept of vehicle ownership.

He added that Frost & Sullivan's latest mobility study, Micro Mobility as a Future Mobility Solution, interviewed 5,000 respondents in 8 cities globally - London, Paris, Stuttgart, Milan, Brussels, New York, Yokohama and Beijing - to understand the potential of micro-mobility.

He said that micro-mobility is a new mobility concept which is designed for personal mobility with one or two passengers. The study evaluated potentials of four types of micro-mobility solutions – standing-type, chair-type, cycle-type and car-type.

He added that the study showed that respondents in the 8 cities interviewed prefer to share, rent or lease a car-type micro-mobility solution for 32 per cent of their trips and chair-type for 41 per cent.

Mr. Honda said that 66 per cent of the respondents interviewed said that they will not replace their cars with micro-mobility solutions, confirming that micro-mobility solutions are suitable for first and last mile connectivity to another mode of transportation such as trains, and they still need cars for other occasions.

He also said that the study also reconfirmed Frost & Sullivan's earlier conclusion that commuters in cities with serious traffic problems showed a higher acceptance of micro-mobility solutions as compared to cities with less traffic problems. "This implies that people in cities suffering serious traffic problems are looking for new mobility solutions.

He added that the study highlighted that a considerably high 81 per cent of people in Beijing are very interested or interested in using micro mobility. As the previous study showed, people in Beijing are not satisfied with the city's current transportation system and are looking for new mobility solutions. That would be a reason of the high percentage of acceptance for micro-mobility solutions in Beijing, he said.

Mr. Honda said that the study conducted showed that 63 per cent of journeys are made by individual modes of transportation such as car, while 31 per cent of journeys are made by using public modes of transportation such as train and bus.

"Many people still prefer to travel by cars even though the cities surveyed have good public transportation. Whenever there are choices for either public or private transportation, many people would factor in comfort, convenience, cost and time to choose their preferred mode of transportation," he added.

Mr. Honda said that car is probably the preferred best choice for most of the cities because travelling by car is comfortable with private space, convenient to take people door-to-door, and can be faster than public transportation.

"Commuters in Yokohama and London use less individual transportation modes, at 50 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. Travelling by car in these cities may not be as good as other cities because of traffic jams which are more stressful, high costs for parking, congestion charges and tolls, and time to reach destination is unpredictable," he added.

He also said that the Frost & Sullivan survey showed that overall, 35 per cent of the respondents are very interested or interested in using micro-mobility solutions in their daily life if it is available, while 27 per cent of the respondents are not interested and 19 per cent responded that they could not imagine using micro mobility in their daily life.

"Although micro mobility is not yet commonly available, the awareness of micro mobility is relatively high. Among the respondents who are very interested or interested in using micro mobility, 70 per cent of the respondents surveyed said they understand about the concept of micro mobility relatively well or somehow know about it," he added.

If you would like more information about the micro-mobility solutions' study, please write to alice.chia@frost.com with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country.

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Media Contact

Alice Chia
Corporate Communications – Asia Pacific 
Email: alice.chia@frost.com