2021 – TECH PREDICTIONS
Happy New Year to you all! 2021 is the Year of the Ox in the Chinese Zodiac, an earnest and hardworking animal. Those characteristics sum up some what we’ll need to recover from the hardship that was 2020.
When I thought through potential trends this time a year ago, ‘global pandemic’ and ‘lockdown’ somehow weren’t terms at the top of my list. Indeed, my first response to offering predictions for this year was to simply submit a blank page as it’s hard enough to see what might happen this month let alone this year! So on the grand assumption that we start to see the beginning of the end of Covid’s impact this year with the rollout of vaccines, here are my predictions…
GET MOVING AGAIN
Research by Moneysupermarket suggested that two- thirds of Brits saved an average of around £7,000 over the course of 2020 by spending less on socialising, commuting and travelling. Notwithstanding the finan- cial impacts on those who’ve sadly lost jobs, there will be pent up demand for the public to go out, travel and for some, even return to an office whenever lockdowns finally subside, as moving around is a core human need.
Some of the in-cab travel habits will stick around for a long while even as vaccine adoption increases. Hand sanitisers will become a permanent expectation in the cab as will be a disdain for handling cash payments. Even though office commutes will somewhat return, the shift to remote working from the regions means there should be relatively more cab business in the suburbs vs. the largest city centres.
Business cab travel domestically and for airports may take time to recover, albeit at lower levels. However, this should be largely offset by a boom in leisure travel with a public who’ve spent more time on a Zoom screen than with sunscreen. A cab may provide an alternative for those still hesitant to take public trans- port, even for intercity trips.
GREEN RECOVERY
A key area of focus for the government and local authorities that emerged last summer was on a ‘green recovery’. Quieter city and town centres during
6
lockdown revealed the benefits of less air pollution, increasing momentum for decarbonised transport. This has resulted in more trials being rolled out for ‘micromobility’ (the posh term for e-scooters and bikes) offered as an eco-friendly substitute for typi- cally sub-two mile trips currently taken by private car, cabs or even public transport.
Whilst I believe it will be a longer-term trend with the younger generations as more cycle lanes sprout around town, the UK’s cold weather patterns means it’s a viable option for only six months or so of the year.
Perhaps a much larger impact on decarbonising transport will be the drive of existing transport modes to reach net zero carbon emissions. Many of the UK’s airports have pledged to achieve this in the 2030s, possibly with the introduction of Low Emission Zones. Given the damage caused by Covid-19 to airport revenues, watch out for more airports to introduce drop-off charges this year to deter, if not then monetise, private car and cab travel into their sites.
PETROL/DIESEL BAN
But perhaps the biggest impact will be from the government announcement to ban the sales of petrol/diesel engine cars by 2030. Since taxis in the UK have increased their carbon emissions by over 25 per cent in the last ten years alone, the push to zero emissions cars was inevitable. Many of the ‘workhorse’ cars used for private hire are already plug-in hybrids
JANUARY 2021
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