IAV’s future experts observe the megatrends of our time and evaluate what is changing in technology and society. One thing is clear: Nobody knows what the future will bring.
The future, that is a funnel: a space of possibilities that, seen from today, becomes ever wider the further we look into the future. Full of different scenarios - possible futures.
IAV’s experts consider three such scenarios to be likely: Persistence, Transformation or New World.
The focus of these observations is Europe. Changes in China or the USA, for example, often have a different pace. In our globalized world, these different developments are interrelated and influence each other.
Which scenario becomes reality depends on many factors:
- What possibilities does technological progress offer - how does battery technology improve, when will systems for the application of cognitive artificial intelligence be available, when will quantum computers reach market maturity?
- What will society accept, for example in the use of autonomous vehicles?
- What does politics dictate - will increasing pressure to do something about climate change more quickly lead to large-scale driving bans and other restrictions?
- How is the Corona pandemic changing our mobility behavior - will we also stay at home more in the medium term, is trust in public transport returning?
- And then there are the “black swans”, extremely unlikely events that can have major consequences if they occur anyway - acute climate catastrophes, for example, or a hacker attack that turns entire autonomous vehicle fleets uncontrollable.
Futurologists monitor these factors, identify trends and their potential “tipping points”: transformations that mark an irreversible new situation.
We have compiled twenty such potential tipping points on the path to 2030 and beyond here. To assess whether and when they will occur, we evaluate signals that express the speed and extent of a change.
The result is a overview of what could come. Raise the curtain for a look into the possibility funnel of future mobility!