Mobility as a service and autonomous vehicles: a perspective on the future of mobility

Mobility can be referred as the ability to freely move or be moved. During the last years, this word has taken a new role in the cities. The governments, local authorities, private companies and innovators have understood that the rights of the people to easily move inside and outside the cities and the countries could be improved, creating new possibilities and concepts for the cities of the future. The need to lower global pollution, create a more sustainable environment and the increase in the awareness about the social responsibility of the more developed countries on the health of the planet are pushing institutions to take concrete actions for innovating the mobility sector.
Thanks to this factor, new possibilities and concepts took place, and the most important and innovative one is the so-called mobility as a service, also referred as MaaS. This concept is analyzed during this dissertation, to better understand this shift in paradigm from the mobility commonly intended with the ownership of a vehicle to the view of mobility as a service. This innovation that could seem to be easy in theory, it is very complex for its real implementation, since it involves a very intricated and complex framework that included a high number of different shareholders.
The user centered approach that is taking a new dimension is analyzed also trough one of the most important example of MaaS implementation: the Finnish startup Whim.
Nevertheless, it is not possible to imagine the city of the future without taking into account the technologies that are shaping the autonomous vehicles. This new disruptive innovation is crucial for the mobility of the future and involves numerous innovative technologies such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, ICT technologies, Cloud Edge Computing, Blockchain, IT protocols, etc. The final aim of this dissertation is to understand the new possibilities that are shaping the future of mobility, with a particular interest in the Italian scenario.
The dissertation is structured as follows. The first chapter analyzes the mobility as a service concept, its business models and framework. The second chapter is focused on the autonomous and connected vehicles. In this case, the main aspects concern the complexity of this technology, all the actors involved and the complementary technologies that are required for the implementation of the automation in the cities. It also analyzes the importance of open innovation and the opportunities and risks for the automotive and technology industries.
In the third chapter the Waymo case study is presented. The company owned by Alphabet is one of the most important companies that are developing full autonomous cars and trucks. In this chapter it is also shown the actual patent race that is taking place in the autonomous driving sector, with a discussion on the risk of a patent war.
An example of MaaS is discussed on chapter four. The topic is focused on the case study of Whim, the Finnish application that operates in the Helsinki area through the innovative concept of mobility packages. In few words, it is possible in Helsinki to pay a fixed monthly fee in order to benefit of a multimodal well integrated system for moving in the area.
These cases are analyzed in order to better understand the Italian state of the art about the MaaS implementation and the current condition of the infrastructure for a future implementation of autonomous and connected vehicles, which is the focus of the fifth and final chapter.