Building Scenarios Effectively – Zipcar, I-go, Hertz, Enterprise, Gm, Chrysler, Ford

How many cars do you own?  Odds are, it's at least 1 more than you need.  There are more licensed vehicles in the USA than there are licensed drivers – so it's clear America is loaded with cars. Now it looks like a permanent shift is developing, to less auto ownership, and it will change competition significantly.

In places as far ranging as Detroit/Ann Arbor, Chicago and San Francisco increasingly people are opting for a new approach to transportation.  Take the bus and train – yes.  Take a cab – sometimes. And for a lot of folks they are joining car-sharing companies.  According to Freep.com, "Service Lets Users Borrow a Car Whenevery they want."  Pay a flat annual fee, as low as $30 to $150, then you rent a car in your neighborhood for as little as $8.00/hour.  Right.  No monthly insurance fee, no gas charge, no parking bills.  You rent cars when you need them, and only as long as you need them.

To those of us, mostly older, this may seem heretical.  How can you give up your car?  It's long been a status symbol.  What you drive is supposed to say something about who you are.  But this is getting turned upside down.  People, lots of people, are renting by the hour and they want something very cheap and easy to park.  Cars have a place, but not in your personal parking spot at an enormous cost.

Implications are powerful.  Firstly, recognize that the USA is increasingly an urban country.  Every election we are reminded that while most the people live in cities, the electoral map is by state.  Thus, a President can be elected while losing the popular vote!  Just like the tendency across the globe, as agriculture makes less and less importance to the economy people gravitate to major urban centers.  Likewise, as manufacturing jobs move offshore from America, people shift to office work which is more centralized in urban areas than the former "factory towns."  These demographic trends have been developing for over 30 years, and show every sign of accelerating – not decreasing. 

Thus, watching what the "early movers" are doing in urban areas is really important.  We have to develop our scenarios about the future, and we can see that what happens in cities is becoming even more important than it was just a couple of decades ago.  And in cities, people are opting not to buy cars.  Nor even rent them for a day or two.  Nor are they relying on ever more costly taxis.  They are going for hourly rentals they can preschedule.

GM, Chrysler and Ford are getting very little of this business because the renters, 80%, prefer small hybrids. Hertz and other big rental car companies were being shut out, because their model was the daily rental — largely from an airport location for a traveling business person or vacationer.

In a real way, this shows all the signs of a classic Clayton Chrstensen "Disruptive Innovation."  An unserved, or underserved, customer who cannot obtain personal transportation is able to get it.  An unconventional solution, perhaps, but it's working.  What does that tell us?  As the business grows expect the leaders to develop better and better solutions, leading to more and more people accessing the solution.  This is how we get to a very large market shift – not from the people currently served suddenly changing, but rather from the underserved market creating a new solution which gets improved and refined until it meets the needs of the majority of customers – who shift much later – but cut the legs out from under old Success Formulas.  Meaning we could get back to families having one car (circa 1948) and when a second is needed they rent by the hour – even in the suburbs!!  With insurance costs often topping $100/month for a second car, plus the cost to license and maintain it, it's less clear that multi-car ownership is as beneficial as it once was.  If a viable new solution comes along – well it just might work!

This, of course, is not a good thing for auto companies dependent on a demand rebound to fix their recent woes.  Their "good case" scenarios have people returning to adding to their personal fleets, while also returning to new car acquisition every 2 or 3 years.  If instead buyers go the direction of less ownership and less frequent purchases it will be impossible for these companies to repay the government loans.

Markets shift.  Often quickly and violently.  Far too oten, we ignore these shifts.  Because they look so different, so odd, that we believe it must be a short term phenomenon.  We expect that things will soon get "back to normal."  We have future scenarios – they are extensions of the past.  But in the post-millenial global economy people are starting to do a lot of things differently.  They aren't trying to return to old patterns.  They are developing new ones.  And if you want to compete, it's becoming crystal clear you have to change your assumptions about the future, your scenarios of the future and your approach to markets.  Before you get left so far behind you fail.