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Old 03-18-2021, 07:10 PM   #11
wdc330i
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Old 03-19-2021, 09:00 PM   #12
Terri Kennedy
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The Ultimate Driving Machine is now The Ultimate Living Space Machine.
It's certainly big enough. Now they just need to make them affordable enough for homeless people and fix the outside ugliness so they're not considered a blight on the neighborhood.

And to think I remember when people were discussing whether the Bangle Butt was a step too far...
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Old 03-20-2021, 09:56 AM   #13
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“Mobility” is a term being used in the auto industry around getting people places. Lots of players beyond the automakers — and the automakers are worried about being disrupted.

With autonomous cars on the horizon, services like Uber disrupting taxis and rental cars, and fewer younger people getting drivers licenses, everyone in the industry is thinking about “mobility” and providing transportation that differs from traditional car buying and leases.

The automakers have experimented with subscription pricing and car sharing services, although they seem to be pulling back from these experiments.

And it’s not just the automakers. Rental car companies are offering alternatives to company cars via subscription. If you provide a company car to your sales team, why pay to have it parked at the airport when they go visit customers? Why not just give them a rental car both when traveling and at home (and get help with the mileage reporting for personal use tax compliance?). Other providers are working on providing multiple modes of transit for one price - use a public transit, scooter or bike share in the city, but be able to use a car sharing when you need to run weekend errands for example... Some of these are even linked into rail networks for intercity travel...

I’m not that surprised that BMW is using the term in their customer communications. But seems like they need to help explain that it’s not a mobility scooter!
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Old 03-20-2021, 12:16 PM   #14
SARAFIL
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BMW: "Mobility needs"? WTF

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Originally Posted by ZBB View Post
“Mobility” is a term being used in the auto industry around getting people places. Lots of players beyond the automakers — and the automakers are worried about being disrupted.

With autonomous cars on the horizon, services like Uber disrupting taxis and rental cars, and fewer younger people getting drivers licenses, everyone in the industry is thinking about “mobility” and providing transportation that differs from traditional car buying and leases.

The automakers have experimented with subscription pricing and car sharing services, although they seem to be pulling back from these experiments.

And it’s not just the automakers. Rental car companies are offering alternatives to company cars via subscription. If you provide a company car to your sales team, why pay to have it parked at the airport when they go visit customers? Why not just give them a rental car both when traveling and at home (and get help with the mileage reporting for personal use tax compliance?). Other providers are working on providing multiple modes of transit for one price - use a public transit, scooter or bike share in the city, but be able to use a car sharing when you need to run weekend errands for example... Some of these are even linked into rail networks for intercity travel...

I’m not that surprised that BMW is using the term in their customer communications. But seems like they need to help explain that it’s not a mobility scooter!

+1

My employer (large insurance company) is all in on “mobility” concept - we even have a group internally called the “mobility pod” that supports some of our unique insurance programs for Uber, Lyft, Turo, Care by Volvo, etc. Our biggest single product line today is regular personal auto insurance and our leadership team has been pretty clear that we need to embrace this transition or we could go the way of Kodak and Blockbuster some day.
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