Hop, Skip, Go : How the Mobility Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives

ADVERTISEMENT

Human mobility, dominated for a century by cars and trucks, is facing a dramatic transformation. Over the next decade, new networked devices—from electric bikes to fleets of autonomous cars—will change the way we move. They will also disrupt major industries, from energy to cars, give birth to new mobility giants, and lead to a redesign of our cities. This represents the advance of the Information Revolution into the physical world and raises troubling questions about surveillance, privacy, dangers from hackers, and loss of jobs. But it also promises startling efficiencies, which could turn our cities green and, perhaps, save our planet.

In Hop, Skip, Go: How the Mobility Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives (HarperBusiness; Nov. 12), John Rossant and Stephen Baker travel to mobility hotspots, from Helsinki to Shanghai, to scout out this future; and visit the companies that are shaping it. Divergent 3D, for example, is devising a system to manufacture cars with robots and 3D printers. Pony.ai, a Chinese tech startup, builds autonomous car software that perceives potholes, oncoming trucks, and wayward pedestrians, and guides the vehicle around them. Voom, an Airbus subsidiary, is racing with dozens of others to operate fleets of air taxis that fly by themselves.

Hop, Skip, Go is about us: billions of people on the move. Underlying each stage of mobility, from foot to horse to cars to jets, are the mathematics of three fundamental variables: time, space, and money. The coming mobility revolution will be no different. As Rossant and Baker unveil the future, they explore how these changes might revamp our conception of global geography, the hours in our days, and where in the world we might be able to go.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John Rossant is the founder and CEO of CoMotion, the Los Angeles-based event and media platform on new mobility. CoMotion is the organizer of CoMotion LA, the prestigious annual gathering in Los Angeles of public and private sector leaders of the Mobility Revolution. CoMotion is also behind CoMotion MIAMI, a new annual event on new mobility in the Americas and is preparing the launch of the CoMo3000 EV Rally—a New York-to-Los Angeles Electric Vehicle rally that will be the first and longest such rally in the world.

In 2010, Rossant founded the NewCities Foundation, which he continues to chair. He believes it is imperative that different stakeholders work together to improve the quality of life and work in 21st century global cities. From the outset, NewCities mission has been to shape a better urban future for all by generating and scaling ideas and solutions through events, research and urban innovation projects.

Stephen Baker is author of The Numerati, Final Jeopardy, and the dystopian novels, Dark Site and The Boost. For ten years, Baker was a technology writer in Paris and New York for BusinessWeek magazine. He worked earlier as a journalist in Mexico City, Caracas, and El Paso, TX. He was born outside Philadelphia and lives in Montclair, New Jersey

This giveaway is brought to you by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. We have 20 copies available.

Entries are now closed for this giveaway.