With mounting traffic congestion and increasing concerns about environmental issues, the focus of both public and private companies in the automotive and transportation industries is shifting to multimodal or intermodal transportation solutions.
Traveler information systems providing real-time public transport timetable information, multimodal journey planners, and smartphone-based pedestrian guidance applications are geared at facilitating knowledge of and seamless access to a wide range of mobility solutions.
?This is prompting car OEMs such as BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, and Ford to offer solutions beyond the narrow context of the vehicle itself, realizing their products will become part of an integrated intermodal system, offering a range of mobility modes,? said ABI research VP and practice director Dominique Bonte.
Key suppliers of multimodal in-car navigation solutions and journey planners include HERE (Jaguar, Land Rover), Google (Android Auto), and INRIX (BMW i brand).
Real-time parking space availability content providers, some of which rely on crowd-sourced data, are also important actors, playing a critical role in removing the friction points between different modes of transportation.
Parking Spotter, one of Ford?s 25 smart mobility projects (co-developed with Georgia Tech) is based on ADAS sensors, allowing information about open street-side parking spaces identified by roaming vehicles to be shared with other drivers via the cloud.
Telematics-enabled public transport allows integrating real-time transit-schedule information into journey planners, the report said.
However, the whole multimodal transportation environment is set for a dramatic shift driven by a wide range of disruptive technologies with smart watches accelerating a seamless in and out-of-the car experience (BMW i Remote Apple Watch application) and car sharing starting to blur the boundaries between public and private transportation.
Uber car sharing, including ETA information, is already offered as an option in multimodal journey planners by Google and mxDATA.
