Does it actually make sense to think about the future of mobility? Aren't there enough proverbs to prove that a future is coming, and in a way that one would not have expected as a rule. Or in terms of mobility, a future with fewer changes than expected?

And there, for example, the Dutch government can prescribe for their country that from 2030 only purely electrically powered vehicles will be newly registered, whether this will really happen is still very much a question. We all still want to see that politics, with its laborious unification procedures, would be the pioneers for shaping the future.

It's best if we only refer to road traffic, which is difficult enough as it is. A quick look into the past reveals how quickly nothing happened. About 90 years ago, for example, the BMW company opened a representation in Berlin with a large window to the outside on the occasion of the presentation of its first model. Has anything changed at it?

Sure, a shop has become a glass palace or shop with vehicle demonstrations using augmented reality. The still partially printed price lists for the extras have sometimes grown to over 100 pages. But the car sales system has not really changed in terms of content. Attempts have been made to offer new vehicles in supermarkets, but in the end there was always a car dealership behind it.

Even Tesla's attempt to completely replace sales structures with purchases per internet has already been partially reversed. Somehow, not only does a car seem too expensive to be sold over the virtual shop counter, but it is also the relationship to the product that sometimes seems to be almost more important than the relationship to the clothing.

When it comes to car ownership, a segment, such as young people or residents of large cities, might secede and do without. The question remains, however, what happens when these young people start families. Whether they move to the countryside depends on the transport links to the city. Which suggests a slightly higher proportion of people who both own a car and use other transportation options.

However, there are considerable doubts as to whether you want to use your own car as an object for car sharing in order to earn a few euros. Firstly, you would then have to do without certain somewhat unusual personal requests when buying a car, e.g. rather buy a vehicle without many special features. Secondly, despite the use of smartphones, it is a question of organization, which is difficult anyway for young families these days.

And thirdly, the question remains unanswered as to the condition in which the car lent out for relatively little money will be returned, although it is not enough that in 95 percent of cases this may not be a problem. The remaining 5 are enough to take away the desire for this experiment, especially since it can probably be ended relatively easily. Older people may be most skeptical.

So it's hardly about people who don't have their own means of transport at all, and even the (hopefully intact) bicycle is one such thing. As the current car sharing shows, the vast majority of users have one. What is disturbing is that people are always talking about so-called 'tailor-made mobility solutions'. As if a tailor would take measurements and then offer different solutions.

For example, if you plan to transport something that should not be transported in the luggage compartment due to its size or because it is not clean, then you drive to a trailer dealer, take the rented one with you and possibly bring it late in the evening back and throws the associated papers in the mailbox. Isn't that a perfectly adequate answer to a specific transport task?

Certainly, at the moment it is still inexpensive because it is heavily subsidized to request transport in certain cities via smartphone, which is then organized in such a way that it may be combined with other transport tasks. But what if at some point the actual costs incurred have to be paid? Sure, a robotaxi could still be cheap there, but that would probably require its own lanes throughout the city.

And what if you just want to go home to the suburbs and the robotaxi can't go there? Of course, it could be that public transport takes over the problem and thus saves a bus line, as is already the case today, but how far can one shift the border line to the taxi trade in one's favour? Politicians would have enough to do to take care of such conflicting border issues at an early stage.