Topic: ride-sharing

September 2021 brought something of a milestone to the smart mobility movement. Historically, Germany’s legendary IAA was a celebration of the automotive industry. Held in Frankfurt, it attracted petrolheads from all over the world who wanted a first-hand glimpse at the state of the industry. However, times have changed, and the IAA has evolved with it.

If the science fiction writers of the 1950s had been right, most of us today would travel around in flying cars and pneumatic trains. We would commute to work on high-speed moving sidewalks and zip across town in horizontal elevators. For short hops, we would wear personal jet packs or anti-gravity belts. Well, here we are in the early 21st century and we’re still waiting for buses, stuck in traffic jams and trying to walk across busy streets without being hit by a cab. Transportation has changed, but not in the ways predicted by science fiction. Many of the most important changes have been invisible.