Mobility-as-a-Service and Electrification of Transport : A Study on Possibilities and Obstacles for Mobility-as-a-Service in Stockholm and Implications for Electrification of Vehicles

Abstract: Increasing urbanization drives the need for cities to make transport more efficient, both to meet climate goals as well as creating an attractive living environment for its residents, with less congestion, noise and local pollution. As vehicles are increasingly electrified, further innovations will be needed in order to meet environmental, social and economic sustainability targets, and a more efficient use of vehicles and public transport is central in this endeavor. As new generations are increasingly multimodal and digitalization opens up for innovative concepts, the possibilities for innovations to meet these challenges increases. Against this backdrop, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has emerged as a concept with the potential to increase sustainability and mobility in cities. MaaS is based on the goal to challenge private car ownership by gathering different mobility services in one application, thereby creating a service offering with the potential to be more attractive than car-ownership. However, many varieties of MaaS exists and intensive efforts are ongoing to understand how MaaS can work in practice. MaaS has been described as a phenomenon with potential to radically change how people move in the future. The purpose of this thesis has been to understand how MaaS can affect the electrification of sustainable cities, with a focus on e-mobility. Starting off by trying to understand barriers to increased car-sharing in Stockholm, possibilities and challenges for MaaS in the city is discussed and its potential effects on emobility there. Data has been collected through continuous evaluation and review of literature and conducted interviews with actors and stakeholders within traffic and sustainable mobility in Stockholm. The results have been analyzed from a sustainable innovation perspective to discuss opportunities and challenges for the development of MaaS and its impact on electrification of vehicles. Collected empirics indicate that Stockholm has good opportunities for facilitating MaaS in the future, mainly due to accessible and extensive public transport (PT). The success of MaaS largely depends on the understanding of the service among consumers and why increased attention and marketing is important. An actor’s logic in individually owning the customer contact to be able to improve a service offering can be an obstacle to the growth of future mobility platforms. This underlines the need for cooperation between involved players to create momentum for MaaS. At the same time, MaaS benefits from a wide range of underlying mobility services and progressive traffic planning. In this regard, the results indicate that there are a number of different instruments at a macro level that could facilitate the sharing services to be developed. A legal definition of car sharing is a first step to facilitate measures to stimulate MaaS. Measures that smooth the relationship between the private car and car sharing services can create momentum for these, for example through exemptions from congestion tax. Access to parking at reasonable costs appears to be a key enabler for flexible shared mobility services in the future, partly because it currently accounts for a large part of the costs, and partly because the degree of flexibility and accessibility is determined by access to parking. At the same time, tougher parking regulations for BRFs and companies have also created a market for mobility services. Long term, there is a consensus that the future of transport is electrified. However, the impact of shared services and MaaS is highly shaped by the technical development of vehicles. Ongoing electrification of vehicles highlights the need for charging infrastructure deployed at locations that fits the need of shared services. Also, the charging equipment and solutions has to be developed to fit the needs of shared services and have a shared customer in mind.