I recently participated in an on-stage discussion about the state of autonomous mobility at the Ride AI Summit in Los Angeles. During the event, I engaged in several conversations with other participants about the robotaxi customer experience. The essence of these discussions reaffirmed what I’ve long maintained—customer experience, rather than just vehicle technology, will determine the winners in the next phase of mobility.
The automotive industry’s path to new mobility has been slow and full of challenges, many created by the automakers themselves, that will not disappear in the new year or even the near future. Many of these challenges emerged in the last couple of years, while the impact of others that existed longer was only recently understood and appreciated. Geopolitics, tariffs, new regulations, labor unrest, increasing competition from Chinese automakers, and decreasing sales, including in China, make up the list.
The road to new mobility will not be a straight line. The twists and turns we encounter and will continue to encounter, will come as the result of economics, business models, industrial policy, politics, national security, but also culture. Mobility is impacted by at least three cultures: the automakers’, the dealers’, and the customers’.
AI has three roles in new mobility. It is an enabler, a differentiator, or a monetizer. The recent explosion of interest in generative AI begs the question: could generative AI contribute to new mobility and if so, in which of the three roles? This post attempts to answer this question by presenting a few ideas and identifying problems that may inhibit the broad use of generative AI in new mobility.
AI is viewed by many exclusively as a prediction technology. The availability of large, diverse, and information-rich data sets combined with the power of neural networks, and more recently with the addition of Foundation Models and Large Language Models, has been responsible for achieving incredible results even in complex, multi-faceted situations. Every aspect of new mobility has benefited from AI’s prediction power. New mobility will continue to reap even more impressive rewards. Getting there will be accomplished as new mobility’s AI systems play three roles.