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

8 
Financial Times interview in 2014
1
. This term refers to the situation in which a traditional 
sector, such the taxi service, was suddenly compromised by a new company that exploits the 
new technologies. Lévy called it “Digital Tsunami” because, in a very short period, has 
drastically changed an entire sector. This happened so fast since the new service could offer 
more features at a lower price. In the case of Uber, for example, the company has been able to 
offer the service almost in real time through the mobile application, and at a competitive price 
by reducing both resources and a percentage of costly infrastructure such as offices and support 
services (Bertrand et. al, 2016). The linkage between the mobility as a service concept and the 
sharing economy principles is the digitalization factor.  
In fact, services like Uber and Airbnb, work through a digital platform that links the customer 
demand with the supply, in a customized and efficient way. Coming back to the MaaS, it is 
possible to better understand this concept as a unique platform that merges both private 
companies, such as Uber, with public transportation. This unique platform, that can be also 
used as a mobile application, is able to let the customer to move inside or outside the city, 
combining private and public transports. It is possible to give a simpler definition with the 
words of Finger et al. (2015) that envisioned MaaS as an integrate transport modes through the 
internet. The possibility to have all these services in one platform emphasizes the differences 
between Uber and MaaS. Clearly, this integration is very difficult, since it is necessary to have 
a concrete and stable collaboration between private and the public transportation, considering 
that they should act in a completely integrated environment (Flood, 2015).  
 
1.2 Business models in sharing mobility 
To create a complete and more complex environment, it is necessary to consider in this system 
also the sharing mobility services, like car-sharing, ridesharing or bike-sharing.  While the 
business model of Uber, for example, is based on the lack of the company’s ownership of the 
items that are used for running the business (such as cars or motorbikes), in the sector of sharing 
mobility the most common and famous approach uses an opposite business model, based on 
the acquisition of vehicles from the company. Cohen and Kietzmann (2014) identified three 
different business model related to car sharing, six related to ride sharing, and five related to 
bike sharing.  
 
1
 https://www.ft.com/content/377f7054-81ef-11e4-b9d0-00144feabdc0