Automobiles are the world’s biggest manufacturing and retailing sector, with nearly 90 million units produced in 2023. Cars are at the core of mobility, where ecosystem reconfiguration and business model reinvention are most visible. As technologies evolve, for example, the concept of individual car ownership may be replaced by the notion of mobility as a service (MaaS). The ecosystem that is developing around electric mobility is drawing in incumbents and upstarts alike, and is inspiring hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, and new products and services.

Uneven progress

Because of the volumes of capital required along with other forces of inertia (for example, slow technology adoption), the development of ecosystems such as those surrounding electric mobility is highly spiky across countries and geographies. For instance, battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales in 20 key markets rose 28% in 2023 from the year before, as analyzed by Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business. But China alone accounted for more than two-thirds of BEV sales in the markets analyzed. For 2024, projected volumes, penetration, and growth diverge among the most developed economies.

Similarly, a look at the development of electric mobility infrastructure and support reveals very different rates of progress and preparation across countries and territories. The Strategy& eReadiness Index measures readiness in key markets across a range of KPIs in four dimensions: government incentives, infrastructure availability, supply, and demand.

Mobility isn’t just about cars, of course. Other modes of transport—notably, aviation, rail, and shipping—are on their own net-zero transformation journeys.

Flying sustainably

Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), made from biomass, fatty acids, or from power-to-liquid processes, can reduce life-cycle CO emissions by up to 80% compared with conventional jet fuel. In 2024, SAF production is expected to triple from the year before to 1.9 billion liters from 600 million liters. Production will have to rise dramatically in the coming decades to meet net-zero goals, necessitating the creation of hundreds of facilities and huge quantities of storage and feedstock, as well as the required distribution infrastructure. Since 2019, Airbus has used SAF to operate its Beluga transport aircraft for internal logistics purposes. The company is working to make all its aircraft capable of flying with 100% SAF by the end of the decade.

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Decarbonizing the iron horse

Many trains already run on electricity—which can lead to zero-emissions trips when the power comes from renewable sources. But where electrification isn’t an option, hydrogen fuel cells have the potential to turn the 19th-century iron horse into a zero-emissions workhorse. Alstom’s Coradia iLint is the world’s first passenger train powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The regional train with zero direct carbon emissions has been running since 2018 in Germany, and has been tested successfully in several other European countries. The keys to further progress include policy assistance and incentives, as well as cross-industry collaboration.

Casting off carbon

The route to shipping decarbonization requires the creation of a vast new ecosystem surrounding chemicals, batteries, ship construction, and port operators. But batteries designed to work for electric vehicles (EVs) won’t have enough power to accommodate long-distance sea transport. Japan-based Ocean Network Express (ONE) is currently exploring how carbon-free methanol or ammonia could play a role in addressing this challenge. The company is ordering ships that are built to run on fuel oil but can be retrofitted to be run on methanol. It is part of a joint venture between the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore and six founding partners, aimed at increasing the supply and infrastructure of green fuels.

1. Understand the future ecosystem

For the mobility transition—and for the necessary transitions in sustainability, technology, and other industries—harnessing ecosystems will be critical. The scale of investments required is so vast, and the range of capabilities and resources needed to drive change is so expansive, that only a network of actors collaborating intensely can succeed. If you’re running an organization, or supervising its management, the task at hand is to envision the future ecosystem in which you intend to operate. Beyond understanding what types of companies will perform what roles, you have to develop a clear view of how value pools are going to shift. Then, determine your target position in this future ecosystem:

What parts and geographies of the value ecosystem are you going to focus on? Where does your organization have a right to win based on existing capabilities? What value are you going to create for whom? And with whom will you best partner to compensate for your own lack of relevant capabilities and resources?

Be ambitious when staking out your future position.

2. Get reinvention ready

Answering questions about how you will participate in ecosystems will probably lead to the realization that you have a lot of work to do at the organization, team, and individual level. That may mean resetting expectations with investors about the timing and pace of investments and returns. CEOs may need to expand their executive teams to include experts in emerging areas that are critical for their company’s future success, such as climate regulation or AI. And in an age of widening skills gaps and rising employee expectations, they’ll need to focus intensely on making sure their workforce is reinvention ready.

3. Own the change—and the uncertainty

In a world as complex and interdependent as ours, you will need to have the entire executive team own the change, rather than putting one or two functional leaders in charge. You will also need new mechanisms that account for the fact that the answers to many questions don’t yet exist. How precisely will electric vehicle charging be monetized in a profitable way? Where will all the green minerals necessary to build millions of electric cars come from? This puts even more emphasis on collaboration, both within organizations and within ecosystems, to solve problems—rather than simply presenting plans and solutions and mandating action. CEOs who are serious about reinvention must find approaches for acknowledging concerns, prizing curiosity and openness to learning, and encouraging managers to help people adapt.

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

—Dr. Emmett Brown (Back to the Future)

For ages, the concept of fully reimagining how things and people move around has been regarded as the very definition of an exercise in futility. You can’t reinvent the wheel, as the saying goes. But a deep look into the multiple coincident transformations surrounding mobility reveals that, in fact, we are well into the process of reinventing how the wheel moves, how it might communicate with other wheels, and what powers its motion. The result is an exhilarating set of opportunities.

Further reading: Go deeper on mobility

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