Learning from Automobiles and Mobility Services: Modularity, Ecosystem Structure & Value Migration

From the automotive sector – long fertile ground for management research – we have the opportunity to observe and to learn how the gradual transition from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) to battery electric vehicles (BEV) and associated changes in related technologies plus the expansion to mobility services is shaping the sector’s evolution. Recent evidence challenges early predictions that BEVs would be much more modular than ICEVs, whether in product, process, or industry architecture. If the physical vehicle remains somewhat persistently integral, what does that mean when vehicle-as-platform strategies bring modular and digital innovations from the tech sector – along with the active interest and investment of tech giants in the mobility sector? This morphing of a product grounded in physical realities into a platform for all-digital services provides us with lessons that extend well beyond automotive. Scholars whose recent research raises these questions will debate what the early tea leaves show and project the future trajectory of mobility ecosystems along with implications for relevant theory.