Our Work

Personal Mobility

Personal transport is being disrupted everyday by new business models (Uber, Lyft), changing attitudes of young people to car ownership, population growth in urban areas and the possibility of autonomous vehicles.

Approaches to transportation taken 50 years ago seem outdated and out of sync with our modern needs. But whether any of these disruptions contribute to resolving problems like air emissions, congestion, and high personal transport costs remains to be seen. And with transportation contributing 27 per cent to Canada’s GHG emissions there is an opportunity to direct this disruption towards less carbon-intensive approaches. Ideally, the future of personal mobility will see less traffic, less accidents, more convenience and, if done right, less emissions.

The Accelerator is working to define the pathways that can speed up electrification of personal vehicles—as part of integrated transport solutions—and influencing the longer-term deployment of autonomous vehicles. Exploring these pathways can also open new economic opportunities in future vehicle and battery manufacturing potential that draw on Canada’s comparative advantage.