5 trends transforming the future of green transport - and ideas from Singapore

At the Oliver Wyman Global Mobility Executive Forum (GMEF) in May 2023, 600 business leaders gathered in Paris’s Station F – an iconic former freight station now home to corporates and startups – to discuss the future of sustainable mobility. 

Here are five key takeaways:

1) Demand for sustainable mobility solutions is set to accelerate

Cities and businesses will have to take steps to meet greater public appetite for greener modes of transport. Guillaume Thibault, Partner at Oliver Wyman, and co-lead of the Oliver Wyman Forum’s Mobility initiative, notes that shifts from gasoline value chains to electric ones necessitate infrastructural changes like multi-modal hubs, charging stations, and building new shared mobility models. 

Cities such as Singapore, London and Paris have already undertaken initiatives to make transportation more carbon-light by reducing personal car ownership while increasing shared mobility and the use of bicycles.

Companies are also using more sustainable materials and energy to produce vehicles. Faurecia, a French automotive tech supplier, is developing compounds and metal foils from sustainable materials like hemp, and cars with more modular designs to allow easy assembly and post-sale retrofitting to extend their usability.

Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group, via its innovation centre in Singapore, is using eco-friendly energy sources like solar and hydrogen energy to achieve carbon neutrality in its production.

2) Public-private innovation partnerships are crucial

Leaders in aviation, energy, logistics, and public transit emphasised that building infrastructure to support greener transportation must be a collaborative effort.

In land-scarce Singapore—ranked within the top five cities globally in the Urban Mobility Readiness Index—city planners have encouraged public sector agencies and companies to develop, test and commercialise innovative mobility solutions. 

Navya, a French self-driving solutions company, partnered with both public and private partners to launch Asia’s first fully operational autonomous vehicle at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay in 2015.¹

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is working closely with the private sector to implement 60,000 EV charging points by 2030, a goal under the Singapore Green Plan 2030.² They sought the industry’s views on commercially sustainable business models for charging infrastructure in carparks.

LTA also launched a National Electric Vehicle Centre to promote public-private partnerships to accelerate the deployment of a nationwide EV charging infrastructure, regulations and standards.

3) Cities should offer a “living lab”

There is no shortage of innovative ideas to make transportation greener – from new EV battery technologies, to advanced traffic management solutions, and the use of AI in autonomous vehicles.

But successful deployments require a testbed to scale their solutions – a living lab – and support for innovation, whether through regulations, funding for research and access to talent, said business leaders.
 

Singapore has aimed to meet these needs. In September 2022, a Taiwanese mobility company was awarded a sandbox pilot by Singapore to deploy and validate battery swapping as a means for next-generation smart mobility.

Under the pilot, the company will partner with leading businesses in Southeast Asia in mobility and logistics to develop sustainable business models that can be implemented in Singapore and other regional cities.
 

4) Customer experience is key

Want to get commuters to make the switch from cars to trains and bicycles? Improve the customer experience, said leaders from France’s national railway company SNCF and French public transport operator, Transdev. This can take the form of “all-in-one” mobile applications that give riders information on different transport options or expanding public transit to connect cities to suburbs.

Choy Yong Cong, Head of Europe at Singapore Economic Development Board, noted that Singapore had embarked on a “45-20-10” approach to mobility.

Public transport has been designed and built so most residents can:

• Complete peak-period journeys in 45 minutes
• Spend less than 20 minutes to travel to the nearest neighbourhood centre
• Access an integrated transport hub in 10 minutes from their home

5) Local partners are crucial for success and to scale

Companies looking to scale their mobility innovations will need local partners to successfully launch a go-to-market strategy.

Sinay is a French startup that provides a proprietary AI-driven software platform to gather, analyse and monitor complex maritime data on a single interface. The company was able to expand through the support of investors with strong regional connections.

Yanis Souami, CEO of Sinay, notes: “Connecting with investors with a Singapore presence, such as Shift4Good and Motion Ventures, helped us to secure the funding needed to go global.”

Yann Marteil, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Shift4Good, a mobility-focused venture capital fund highlighted the growing demand for mobility innovation in Asia. 

“Southeast Asia is a great opportunity for businesses. The region has the open-mindedness and willingness to adopt innovative solutions, and the will to change. So, look east!”

At the GMEF, EDB shared its views on the role governments can play in sustainable transport and hosted a workshop on “Sustainability and Mobility Opportunities in Singapore and Southeast Asia” together with the French Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, Sinay and Shift4Good.

Footnotes:

¹ ST Engineering, “ST Engineering Unveils New On-Demand Autonomous Shuttle Service at Gardens by the Bay”, accessed 14 June 2023, https://www.stengg.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/st-engineering-unveils-new-on-demand-autonomous-shuttle-service-at-gardens-by-the-bay/.

² Singapore Green Plan https://www.greenplan.gov.sg/.