Smart Transportation: Mobility-on-Demand
A Vision for CityCars and Smart Cities from MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities’ Group
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO and Senior Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, March 12, 2009

NETTING IT OUT

MIT’s Smart Cities’ program has an ambitious and seductive vision for the future of urban transportation: Combine mass transit with one-way electric vehicle-sharing programs to provide mobility-on-demand so that many people won’t need to drive their own cars into and around the city.

Offer people a selection of bicycles, electric motor scooters, electric cars and vans that they can easily find throughout the city, pick up and drive to their destination, and leave for the next person to use. These shared-use electric vehicles automatically recharge themselves when they’re parked.

Network these vehicles together into real-time information systems to become mobility networks. These intelligent mobility networks can adapt themselves to respond to energy usage, traffic congestion, and parking capacity. Through dynamic pricing, customers can be encouraged to redistribute the vehicles to the places they’re needed most.

How close is this vision to becoming a reality? Can we really use this approach to reduce pollution, traffic, noise, and greenhouse gases in the world’s most congested cities?

In order to succeed, mobility-on-demand solutions should be designed as customer-centric ecosystems. All the players in a public/private partnership ideally need to align around end-customers’ moments of truth and success metrics. Otherwise, we can build it, but they won’t come.

MIT’S MOBILITY-ON-DEMAND PROJECT

At the MIT Smart Customization Seminar in November 2009, Professor William J. Mitchell gave a wonderful presentation about the design of mobility-on-demand solutions for urban transportation. He introduced three new vehicles: the CityCar, the RoboScooter, and the Green Wheel, an electric-assist bicycle.

These new electric vehicles are the fruits of the Smart Cities initiative that is underway at MIT’s Media Lab. The goal: develop green transportation systems for people who live and work in cities. As Bill Mitchell explains, the key is to think in terms of mobility, not transportation. “Match the mobility needs to the mobility demands in every circumstance.”

Innovations and Learnings

MIT’s Mobility-on-Demand project is a good example of cross-disciplinary innovation combined with customer-led innovation resulting in smart (adaptive, learning) green (sustainable) solutions. MIT’s Mobility-on-Demand program builds on the lessons learned from observing customer behavior in dozens of vehicle-sharing programs around the world.

In addressing mobility-on-demand, the MIT Smart Cities’ team has contributed at least three new innovations:

1. A robot wheel that includes an electric engine and all the electro-mechanics required to drive the vehicle

2. A collapsible design that enables cars and motorbikes to fold themselves up into a very small space for parking

3. Electric recharging stations that enable electric vehicles to operate with small, lightweight battery packs and to put power back into the grid once the vehicles are charged

MIT’s Mobility-on-Demand Solution: Combine Mass Transit with an Assortment of Electric Vehicles
in a One-Way Vehicle-Sharing Network

MIT CityCars: Electric Stackable Cars

© 2009 MIT Media Lab

1. CityCar Simulation

MIT’s Smart Cities’ cross-disciplinary design team collaborated with General Motors to design this lightweight, compact 2-person electric CityCar.

MIT’s RoboScooters: Foldable Electric Scooters

© 2009 MIT Media Lab

2. RoboScooter Prototypes

These electric scooters were demonstrated at the Milan Motorcycle and Scooter show in November 2007. The design partners were Sanyang Motors (SYM), ITRI, and Next.

MIT’s GreenWheel

© 2009 MIT Media Lab

3. GreenWheel is an electric motor that can be mounted into any conventional bike to offer power assist.

One-Way Vehicle Sharing Meets More Needs. One of the key learnings the MIT team gleaned from studying the behaviors of early adopters of vehicle-sharing systems around the world is that one-way vehicle sharing systems (pick up anywhere/drop off anywhere), like the Paris Vélib’, meet the needs of more people than do the more mature two-way systems (pick up and return to the same location) like Zipcars. Only 30 percent of urban trips start at one location and return to the same location. 70 percent of urban users ping pong around the city throughout the day. So the ability to pick up a vehicle, use it, and drop it off near your destination (or a subway station), attracts more usage.

INNOVATION: LEADING CUSTOMERS OR CUSTOMER-LED?

How to Create a Path of Least Resistance to Achieve Customers’ Outcomes?

A favorite topic of discussion among customer-centric execs is, “How do we make it the path of least resistance for customers to do what’s in their own self-interest?” Whether the topic is health and fitness, saving money, or saving energy, what customers say they want (vitality, plenty of money, less reliance on fossil fuels, and lower energy bills) and what they do are often at odds. Customers want to reach certain outcomes, but they take actions that will keep them from achieving their goals.

CUSTOMER-LED INNOVATION. Customer-led innovation presumes that, if you observe and co-create with lead users who are improvising new ways to solve thorny problems, you’ll come up with innovations that will be easily adopted by many customers who share the same needs and context. This is the kind of lead-user innovation that is practiced at MIT’s Center for Innovation, under Eric von Hippel.

CROSS-DISCIPLINARY INNOVATION. Cross-disciplinary innovation presumes that if you get a group of smart people together from different disciplines to solve a really thorny problem, with an impossible deadline and too few resources, you’ll come up with breakthrough results. This is the kind of cross-disciplinary innovation that is practiced at MIT’s Media Lab under William J. Mitchell.

CUSTOMER-CENTERED INNOVATION OF SMART SOLUTIONS. There’s a hybrid approach to innovation which is probably the most common form in actual practice. It combines ethnography and capturing intent^[1] with customer-led innovation and cross-disciplinary innovation to develop “smart” solutions which learn from the patterns of customer usage. What are customers doing? What are they trying to do? How can we get them to show us what they’d ideally like to be able to do?

DESIGNING TO PROMOTE DESIRED BEHAVIORS. As a society, we are currently confronted with complex issues and seemingly insurmountable obstacles: a global financial melt-down, an over-reliance on fossil fuels, over-population, global warming, urban congestion, to name a few. We know we need to design paths of least resistance so that we humans will naturally “do the right things.” How can we motivate people to do the things that are a) in their own self-interest in terms of achieving their goals, b) in the collective interest (benefit all of us), and c) are sustainable (from both a business and environmental standpoint)?

HOW TO WEAN URBAN DWELLERS AWAY FROM DRIVING THEIR OWN CARS IN THE CITY?

Example: Traffic Congestion in São Paulo

I just returned from a trip to São Paulo, Brazil, which is one of many cities in the world that is notorious for its urban sprawl and traffic congestion. Twenty million people live and work in greater São Paulo. There are several hours each day in which traffic is literally crawling, with diesel buses, trucks, and cars spewing pollution. Brazil has been aggressive in encouraging the use of corn ethanol to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Drivers in São Paulo are limited to the number of days and hours they are allowed to drive each week (based on their license plate numbers). As a result, many people buy a second car so they’ll have one they are permitted to drive at all times.

The congestion and pollution in São Paulo do not represent the quality of life to which most Brazilians aspire. Despite these issues, São Paulo is a thriving, bustling commercial hub and magnet for national and international business.

People try to live in the same neighborhoods in which they work. The most affluent can afford to do so. But even they need to attend meetings in other parts of the city. Or one spouse works in the neighborhood, while the other spouse has to commute to work. The less affluent usually wind up commuting for hours each day in cars or in buses. The subway system has not kept pace with the city’s expansion.

What if, I kept wondering, there was a better way for people to get to and from work, to their meetings, to school, and to pick up their kids at the end of the day? It rains a lot in São Paulo—torrential rains that last for an hour or two a couple of times a day—so the best form of urban transportation should take into account not only reducing traffic congestion and pollution but also protection from the elements.

This report continues...

**ENDNOTE**

1) Intent is often best captured through interviews as well as observation.

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