More friends than foes? The impact of automobility-as-a-service on the incumbent automotive industry

This paper examines the scope for network platform business models offering 'automobility-as-a-service' to disrupt the existing automotive market and industry. The paper uses three examples (Getaround, BlaBlaCar and Uber) to illustrate distinct versions of the network platform business model concept. Despite expectations that automobility-as-a-service, enabled by digital platforms, may erode the market for new cars and the existing model of individual car ownership, the paper argues that it is not necessarily disruptive to the incumbent automotive companies. Rather, network platform business models via automobility-as-a-service are argued to be one mechanism by which the primacy of the car may be retained. In turn this has important implications for the durability of the automotive industry, and of the unsustainable aspects of platform business models.