Expert Analysis

TEAM 5

Research goals

Our team focused on interviewing and researching ‘experts’ opinions’ or pre-existing future visions of ride-sharing.

Research Goals:

  • Researching what experts are most relevant to ride-sharing.

  • Reaching out to them to schedule short interviews.

  • Asking open-ended questions to learn more about their opinions of the future of the ride-sharing industry.

  • Synthesizing the interview to gather multiple insights.



Key findings

Insights

  • The current ride-sharing business model is not sustainable.

    • Profit margins are inherently low in the taxi business.

    • Ride-sharing companies have been squeezing wages from drivers in preparation.


  • Utilizing idle sharing vehicles to create on-the-way services.

      • Idle sharing vehicles can be used for animals, FedEx, Parcel, and Pharmacy delivery.


  • Mobility as a service

      • It is possible to reimagine a future transportation system without vehicle ownership.


Opportunities

Opportunity areas:

  • How can we re-position the drivers and the oil industry - use other natural resources like solar, wind, etc to fuel our cars?

  • Self-regulation - Who’s responsible for a crash with 2 autonomous vehicles?

  • How to measure the car's reliability? People are not used to seeing a car driving without a driver.

  • Self-driving cannot be compared based on Mileage like fueled cars.

  • Remove humans - can drive longer distances - human needs to rest.

Hypothesis statements:

  • The future gig economy will be a one-stop shop - where the self-driving cars will be delivering a parcel and pharmacy delivery, grocery, food, and people?

    • The closest provider (Uber, Lyft, Via, or Cruise) to the service can reach out to pick customers.

  • An autonomous ambulance with an human attendant will be taking patients to the hospital.

  • We will trust autonomous cars more than human drivers.

  • We will enjoy sleeping while our cars will take us to different places :)

  • People will prefer to commute in the shared autonomous cars instead of owning a car.

Research Method

Industry experts were consulted via virtual interviews. We conducted surveys to get a pulse of the market currently.

We collected and analysed the data by affinity mapping and categorizing the open ended interview answers under broad groups. Synthesizing the information helped us understand the key opportunity areas and ultimately derive hypothesis statements from them.

Team

Kimaya

Shruti

Jinpei

Frank