Boyd Cohen is committed to making the future mutlimodal. The founder and CEO of Iomob is building a next generation mobility on demand platform. At SHIFTX he will explain how he wants to reach his goal: to decarbonize transport. We caught up with him just before the event to get a sneak peek of his vision of future mobility.
How do you see the future of mobility?
BC: The future of mobility will be intuitive, seamless and multimodal. Fewer vehicles will be owned by the end user, and instead, we will have easy access to any type of vehicle for single and multimodal journeys inside cities and also for journeys between cities. And this seamless experience will travel with us as we move around the world.
How will we overcome „car pride“, the desire of people to own their own car, to see it as a status symbol?
BC: I believe a percentage of the population may “always” seek to have a car as a status symbol. One thing that is promising about this: it seems that those who feel this way are at least viewing electric cars as the ultimate status symbol. So at least such car pride is increasingly tied to low-carbon vehicles. Yet as we know, it is not enough to just switch to private electric car ownership if we are to achieve our climate and quality of life objectives. Another promising trend is the change in mindset amid a growing part of our population. Owning material possessions is not always desirable and paying to access things “as a service” is becoming mainstream. The sharing economy has exploded globally and has landed in a big way in the automotive and mobility sector. Finally, there is an important role for local, regional and multinational regulation and infrastructure changes to help accelerate this transition too. Amsterdam reducing 12,000+ parking spaces in urban areas, Milan removing 35+km of car lanes to shift to supporting active mobility (walking, micromobility), plus the growth in road pricing schemes, and more are all policy tools that will make it harder to be car dependent and proud of it.
How do you plan to integrate different systems of transportation, different mindsets of people in different countries to generate new mobility?
BC: Iomob is an agnostic, open, interoperable mobility on demand platform. This means that our goal is to integrate the broadest range of modes of mobility and suppliers across the modes. Our journey planner can provide truly multimodal journey options to users and allow the users to customise the results to their preferences (e.g. fastest, cheapest, greenest). Currently Iomob already has 3 million+ vehicles deeply integrated into the platform (supporting discovery, routing, booking and payment) across a range of modes including: taxis/ridehailing, micromobility (scooters, bikes, mopeds), demand responsive transit (DRT), parking and of course rail and public transit. We will be adding in other modes such as carsharing and car rental and EV charging networks in the coming months. This means that the Iomob mobility on demand platform can fairly easily be leveraged to support global and regional differences in mobility ecosystems and user preferences.
Why do you look forward to SHIFTX?
BC: I attended and spoke a few years ago (pre-Covid) and I found the event inspiring given the range of automotive and mobility visionaries present who were helping to shape the future of our industry. I expect no less this year as well!
Register for the event here: event.shift-mobility-ifa.com
