On May 11, we heard the conclusions of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union in which he analyzes the nature of Uber's activity, pointing out that it is a mixed service, in which the provision of transport constitutes the element main, while the service of putting in contact of passengers and drivers through an application installed on smartphones would be a secondary element. (1)
Apart from media controversies and positions faced in judicial proceedings in which the nature of the services provided through platforms such as Uber or BlaBlaCar is debated, and therefore the regulations that apply to them, what no one disputes today is that the future of mobility on wheels passes through its inseparable relationship with the new technological applications made available to users.
It is no coincidence that at the Barcelona International Motor Show that just closed a few days ago, a benchmark in industry trends, the number of participating technology companies exceeded that of automobile companies, showing an increasing integration between connectivity, technology and the automotive industry. , and a correlative interest in such integration on the part of potential buyers: 47% of visitors who wanted to buy a car were interested in the connected vehicle, the organization reported. (two)
For years now, car manufacturers have been facilitating this integration, introducing eCall systems in vehicles, which allow rapid and geolocated assistance in caso accident or mechanical incident, driving aid technologies such as collision risk alert, active lane departure alert or active blind spot monitoring system. All of them, technologies that provide greater security in our displacements.
This reality and its potential, which mark the evolution of the vehicle connected to the autonomous car, has not gone unnoticed by companies that, until recently, we did not associate with the automotive industry, such as Google and Apple, which we also now see betting on the obtaining patents that develop these technologies.
On the other hand, the confluence and participation of different actors (manufacturers, software developers, etc.) in this mobility/technology binomial means that at the moment it is not easy to define who should be responsible for the use of these technologies. Last February, a European Parliament resolution was published that considers that the rapid evolution of robotics requires the establishment of common rules throughout the EU, to impose, for example, ethical standards and determine responsibility in caso accidents with driverless cars. (3)
This new technological reality is also transforming mobility business models, favoring the rise of services such as carsharing, which allows with just a couple of clicks on our smartphones, the use of vehicles at the moment for specific routes, paying only for said route. And it is that the concept of mobility is in full evolution. Currently, more and more users show their predilection for more flexible systems, which put at their disposal a means of mobility for specific trips, where and when it is needed, thanks to geolocation systems, which allow to reserve the vehicle closest to our location, open it through the app downloaded on our smartphone, move to the desired destination and park it at any point in the area of use, without the need to do so on fixed rental bases. In addition to factors such as flexibility and cost, the use of electric vehicles contributes to environmental sustainability, reducing CO2 emissions, an undoubtedly essential added value in this new mobility concept.
A study published by the technology provider Vulog (4) shows that more than 50 cities around the world already have these services, with more than 30.000 vehicles shared by more than 3 million users. Notable cities include Berlin, Vancouver, Milan, Seattle, Hamburg, Vienna, Rome, Madrid, Montreal and Munich. According to published information (5), in Madrid, one of the cities where this model has developed most rapidly, the two carsharing companies with 100% electric vehicles, Car2go - from the German Daimler - and Emov - from the French PSA and the Spanish Eysa - they have already exceeded 250.000 users. The advance is unstoppable.
- https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-05/cp170050es.pdf
- http://www.automobilebarcelona.com/
- http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/es/news-room/20170210IPR61808/robots-e-inteligencia-artificial-el-pe-pide-normas-europeas
- https://www.vulog.com/potential-market-free-floating-carsharing/
- http://www.eleconomista.es/ecomotor/motor/noticias/8259024/03/17/El-crecimiento-del-carsharing-continua-imparable-en-Madrid-entre-Car2Go-y-Emov-ya-superan-los-250000-usuarios.html
Juan Jose Lahiguera
https://es.linkedin.com/in/jjlahiguera
@John JoLafig tree
Lawyer. For more than 15 years he has worked in the PSA automotive group (Peugeot, Citroën, DS), where he has held the position Secretary of the boards of directors of different companies of said group. In 2015 he founded Lahiguera Abogados, a law firm specialized in automotive and mobility. He is currently Secretary of the Board of Directors of the company carsharing emov.
