Car of the Future Series

In our Car of the Future series, we started by attempting to explain and evaluate the global automotive technologies that will shape tomorrow’s cars — from assembly and safety to fuel. In identifying and evaluating these future technologies, we also put together a basic investor framework that evaluates the potential for each technology by asking some simple questions — things like “Is there a specific regulatory driver?” or “Is it reasonably affordable to consumers?” The next chapter in the series expands from a content-into-the-car theme into a new-economics-of the car-itself theme. Fully autonomous cars, driverless on-demand ridesharing networks, and eventually integrated mobile networks, connectivity, over-the-air, and big data are areas being pursued by automakers because of potentially game-changing business model economics.