6.1.1 COVID-19 Impacts on Shared Mobility

To combat the coronavirus outbreak, governments all around the world applied strict lockdown measures that resulted in harsh reduction in people mobility and consequently drastic reduction in personal transportation (Hattrup-Silberberg et al., 2020). As people begin to abide by the social distancing and quarantine guidelines, shared mobility services like ridehailing/ridesourcing and carpooling become less attractive due to their susceptibility to coronavirus spread and less profitable due to the harsh reduction in people mobility especially during the lockdown and curfew periods.

According to a survey by McKinsey (Andersson et al., 2020), 45% of the respondents rank “reducing the risk of infection” the highest priority compared to only 14% before the pandemic. In contrast, the number of respondents who care most about “time to the destination” drops by 14%. The same survey also shows that only very few respondents think public transportation and shared mobility are safe. Another survey by CarGurus (Gurus, 2020) shows that almost 40% of Americans wanted to use taxis/rideshares less or not at all, while 49% said they would instead use their own vehicle more. In China, 66% of Chinese consumers indicated a preference for private vehicles for commute post the COVID-19 crisis, as compared to 34% before the crisis according to Second Measure’s survey (Future Bridge, 2021). During the pandemic, people spent 21% less in ridehailing services like Uber and Lyft, and Uber made 70% fewer trips in cities hit hard by the coronavirus (Future Bridge, 2021). According to Uber’s financial report at the end of the second quarter of 2020, total revenue declined by 29% year-over-year, and mobility revenue declined by 67% year-over-year, which resulted in an 837-million-dollar loss, 28% more than last year (Uber, 2020). Despite this decrease in ridehailing services, shared micromobility services like bike sharing witnessed a relative increase in usage as these services provide open space with limited human contact.

Given the fact that most of the shared mobility services require people to share together a small and closed space that increases the chance of gathering together and contacting with others, this mode of transportation would increase the likelihood of both person-to-person transmission and surface-to-person transmission of the virus. Person-to-person transmission involves the inhalation of virus particles in enclosed environments, while surface-to-person transmission involves physical contact with a contaminated surface. This is why fewer users choose to use shared mobility services because of being afraid to get infected by strangers. In order to ensure passenger safety and guarantee the sanity of shared vehicles, ridehailing/ridesourcing/transportation network companies (TNCs) and shared mobility service providers are implementing very specific guidelines and strict public health measures. These measures include mandating that both drivers and passengers wear face masks, the use of protective shields, adding physical barriers between seats, controlling the number of passengers allowed in a shared ride or canceling the shared mobility services, the use of contact tracing, temperature scanning before use, providing drivers with disinfectant supplies, and thorough sanitization after each use. For example, DiDi is promoting the use of protective shields in cars (Future Bridge, 2021). Uber and Lyft have canceled the shared mobility services and only allow users to order vehicles for themselves. Moreover, several mobility players invested in new technologies geared toward guaranteeing the safety and sanity of the vehicles. Examples include antibacterial coating, antimicrobial surface protective shields, air filtration systems to prevent bacteria and other viruses from entering the car, air purification systems using nano-silver technology, and contact-free disinfection systems such as ultraviolet (UV)-C irradiation (200–280 nm). This UV-C can destroy vicious viruses without harming humans. Silicon dioxide–based nano-coating called “Liquid Guard” structured with sharp peaks and with a constant positive charge is used within the European project called “COVID Adapted Motosharing Services (CAMS).” CAMS explores the applicability of nanotechnology for physical removal of the novel coronavirus in SEAT motosharing services as a way to promote “virus-free” motosharing services. The coating is capable of attracting negative membranes, perforating and eliminating bacteria, fungi, spores, and viruses whose structure contains membranes. Liquid Guard has been tested for its effectiveness against E. coli, influenza A, and some forms of coronavirus including SARS-CoV-2. All of these measures increase the operating cost of the shared mobility services resulting in less profit compared to the pre-pandemic times.

6.1.2 COVID-19 Impacts on Last-Mile Delivery Services

The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed the shopping preference of the population and made them lean toward online shopping to minimize unnecessary contacts and to comply with mobility restrictions imposed during the pandemic. A survey of 1,000 Americans’ shopping behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that 87% were shopping online and 64% replaced traditional weekly shopping trips with online ordering according to TopData (Pastore, 2020). Another survey of 5,000 consumers from around the world conducted by Selligent indicates that 36% of consumers now shop online weekly, an increase from 28% before the pandemic (Selligent, 2020). According to Bazaarvoice’s survey (Bazaarvoice, 2020), 62% of US shoppers say they shop more online now than they did before the pandemic. Globally, 49% of consumers shop online more now than they did pre-COVID-19. This change in shopping preferences and customer behaviors helped grocery and food service providers in continuing their business and surviving the lockdown from the pandemic and also encouraged delivery companies to test and deploy innovative delivery methods such as contactless delivery, curbsides or dark stores, unattended delivery, front porch delivery or leave at door delivery, and robot delivery. Some shared mobility service providers also started to focus on last-mile delivery services. According to Uber’s financial report (Uber, 2020), the revenue of Uber Eats grew 103% year-over-year due to the pandemic.

The high contagiousness of the coronavirus results in one of the worst outbreaks. Social distancing is the main measure taken to reduce the spread of the virus through minimizing contact between people. Last-mile delivery robots played a crucial role in fighting the coronavirus spread as a contactless way to deliver medicine, food, or grocery. Contactless last-mile delivery systems and services can result in avoiding physical contact between caregivers and patients or between delivery workers and recipients. These contactless delivery systems benefit from the rapid proliferation of connected technologies and the recent advancements in semi- and fully autonomous delivery platforms that revolutionize the urban logistics and provide a safe and efficient delivery method for medical supplies (Niels et al., 2018), medications (Nianzhen, 2020), food, grocery, and other goods (Bangkok Post, 2020; Crowe, 2020).

The demand for food delivery has never been higher as most restaurants and cafés were closed during lockdown. The need for social distancing and surface disinfection has accelerated the development and adoption of robot delivery. Adopting robot delivery could eliminate the risk of person-to-person spread and by reducing human contact with the package reduce the risk of surface-to-person spread. Several delivery robots tested and deployed during the pandemic include Nuro driverless vehicle, Starship autonomous six-wheeled delivery robot, Unity Drive Innovation (UDI) self-driving vans, Dianomix Robox, Refraction AI REV-1 autonomous delivery robot, JD.com mini electric vans, Zipline drones, and Antwork delivery drones for medical supply deliveries during the outbreak.

The Nuro driverless vehicle has been approved for delivery tests in California in April 2020. This delivery robot uses its small fleet of road-legal delivery robots to transport pharmaceuticals to CVS customers in Houston, Texas. Customers who live in the service area can choose the autonomous delivery option when they are placing prescription orders via CVS.com or the CVS app. Nuro has a high security level as customers will need to confirm their identity to unlock their delivery when Nuro’s autonomous vehicle arrives curbside at their home.

Starship robots can carry items within a four-mile (6 km) radius. Parcels, groceries, and food are directly delivered from stores, at the time that the customer requests via a mobile app. Once ordered, the robot’s entire journey and location can be monitored on a smartphone. A UDI self-driving van uses LiDARs, cameras, and deep-learning algorithms to drive itself, carrying up to 1,000 kilograms on its cargo compartment, and is designed to deliver fresh fruits, vegetables, and other supplies. This unmanned vehicle provides a “contactless” alternative to regular deliveries, helping reduce the risk of person-to-person infection. Since the beginning of the pandemic, UDI has been operating a small fleet of vehicles in Zibo and two other cities, Suzhou and Shenzhen, where they deliver meal boxes to checkpoint workers and spray disinfectants near hospitals. Combined, the vans have made more than 2,500 autonomous trips from February to April 2020, often encountering busy traffic conditions despite the lockdown (Guizzo, 2020). Dianomix Robox is designed to drive on the sidewalk and deliver packages to one’s porch. Refraction AI REV-1 is used to deliver food. This delivery robot can operate in the bike lane and on public roads and can reach a speed of 15 miles per hour with the ability to slow down in residential areas, obeying traffic lights and avoiding pedestrians, cyclists, curbs, trees, and light poles.

Zipline, a US-based drone delivery company, is delivering medical supplies and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in Ghana and Rwanda. Their drones can be launched five to seven minutes after an order is received, with flight times ranging from 15 to 30 minutes. These drones can also help collect COVID-19 tests and samples.

Hutchinson Health in Minnesota has been utilizing a relay delivery robot named “Jim” to deliver samples for COVID-19 testing, from the collection tent to the hospital lab without human contact, which greatly improved the turnaround time of testing. As a way to minimize the contact, a robot named Rosé can bring almost anything to the guests’ rooms, including wine, pillows, towels, groceries, and so on, at Hotel Trio in Healdsburg, California. The robot is sanitized after each delivery. Several other robots are used for the same purpose at Marriott and Hilton properties.

Several delivery companies have implemented new protocols for PPE and contactless delivery in order to mitigate potential risks of virus spread. These companies are investing heavily in disinfection materials and protective equipment for employees such as gloves and masks to reduce surface-to-person transmission. Several retail stores have been converted into local fulfillment centers or dark stores to serve the customers during the pandemic. To combat person-to-person transmission, Amazon has made available an “unattended delivery” option for customers, in addition to a “front porch delivery” option for scheduled delivery. Uber Eats similarly adopted a “leave at door” contactless delivery as an option for customers. However, finding the right pick-up and drop off points (e.g., main entrance or parking entrance or service gate), parking fines and delivering packages to a wrong person or a wrong address are common problems in last-mile delivery. According to Mapillary’s Mapping in Logistics Report, over 95% drivers have faced problems with inaccurate mapping and over 71% drivers spend anywhere from 4 to 10+ minutes trying to find the exact drop-off location. In a city like New York, carriers typically pay millions of dollars in parking fines every year. For example, FedEx incurred 14.9 million in fines and UPS paid 33.8 million in 2018. Misdelivery and wrong delivery are frequently occurring problems in last-mile delivery services. The frequency of misdelivery or wrong delivery increases if the delivery worker handles multiple packages under time constraints, and these problems are more problematic in some last-mile delivery sectors such as medication and food delivery to multi-residential buildings.

This misdelivery problem results in customer dissatisfaction, negative brand image, and increased delivery cost for delivery service providers. According to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) Analysis of Postal Service Data (RARC, 2017), misdelivery is the first concern of all delivery customers (centralized delivery customers, small and medium-sized business or SMB customers, and customers aged 25–34). As a result of failed delivery, delivery service providers will have to refund the delivery charges to the customer, pay additional costs for redelivery, and sometimes offer the customer a discount as an apology for customer retention given the fact that 84% of customers who have a bad delivery experience would not buy from a retailer again (Magento, 2018).

Customer retention and margins were among retailers’ top concerns at NRF, RILA, LINK, and Shoptalk in 2020. Yet most brands remain reactive when it comes to last-mile delivery, despite two key facts: 84% of customers who have a bad delivery experience would not buy from a retailer again, and last-mile transportation costs amount to 53% of the total cost of shipping. Brands must recognize delivery as a critical touch point, evaluating the levers available to impact growth and drive a healthy bottom line. In 2018, 13.5 billion retail packages were shipped in the United States. As many as 11.5% of the shipped packages suffered exceptions ranging from damages to bad addresses and simple weather delays. The cost of reshipping a single package can wipe out the margin of many other sales, simultaneously disappointing a customer who may never come back, exponentially increasing negative impact on the business. So many of these exceptions are addressable, and the negative repercussions are avoidable. Retailers that want to preserve margins and retain customers need to act on delivery issues before they impact shoppers.

An informed delivery platform is used to digitally notify users in advance of delivery of physical mail and allows users to report mail that was previewed in an email but does not arrive. However, this system is limited to the correct delivery and cannot handle the misdelivery cases. Inaccurate drop-off addresses, lack of high-definition maps, limited precision of publicly available and phone-enabled localization services used by delivery workers especially gig workers, and human mistakes of inexperienced delivery workers are the major root causes of misdeliveries.

6.2.1 Commuting Patterns

COVID-19 may change the commuting pattern permanently. Some employees are likely to continue to work from home as a new normal even after the pandemic subsides. According to a survey conducted by Statista (Statista Research Department, 2021), almost two out of three employers state that some share of their workforce will remain permanently remote post-coronavirus. Several companies intend to allow their employees to work from home indefinitely (Paul, 2020). This will create an open opportunity for cities to better use the spaces (e.g., turning parking garage into green spaces and making the cities more walkable) and manage better the traffic. The pandemic showed the value of micromobility and soft/active mobility as a way to avoid spreading the virus. During the pandemic, many people replaced their daily pre-coronavirus commutes by what is called “pretend or fake commutes” such a walk around the block or cycling. In the post-pandemic world, the governments will likely invest more in making cycling and walking viable options. According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (Bert et al., 2020), the United Kingdom announced a £2 billion package to put cycling and walking at the heart of Britain’s post-COVID transportation plan—intended, in part, to protect the public transport network. Moreover, Milan relocated 35 kilometers of streets for bicycle and pedestrian use only.

6.2.2 Shared Mobility

In the post-pandemic world, demand for shared mobility might be recovering slowly (Future Bridge, 2021). People may be more reluctant to risk their health by using shared mobility and public transport. According to a Statista’s survey (Statista Research Department, 2021), survey respondents in the United States overwhelmingly named their own car as the preferred choice of personal mobility during the pandemic and thereafter. However, the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility expects shared mobility solutions, including public transit, to rebound and continue to capture increased market share after the pandemic (Hausler et al., 2020).

6.2.3 Last-Mile Delivery

In the post-pandemic future, ecommerce will likely continue to grow but not at the same incredibly high rate observed during the pandemic. The increasing tendency toward online shopping and the permanent closure of several restaurants, theaters, and other attractions will also likely contribute to increased demand for last-mile delivery services. This behavior will be ever-lasting in the post-pandemic world. As more people experienced the convenience associated with online shopping and contactless last-mile delivery services during the pandemic, last-mile delivery will be more important than ever. This growing interest in last-mile delivery will accelerate innovation in this field making last-mile delivery services more capable of handling challenging aspects such as surge in ecommerce, health, safety, theft, failed deliveries, and misdeliveries.

6.2.4 Electric Vehicles

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the only segment of the car market that witnessed growing was electric vehicle sales. The pandemic caused a 20% drop in global light vehicle sales in 2020, to about 70 million. However, global sales of electric cars accelerated fast in 2020, rising by 43% to more than 3 million during the coronavirus pandemic according to ev-volumes.com. JP Morgan expects electric vehicle sales in China to grow by up to 30% as China’s economy recovers from the effects of the pandemic. Cheaper batteries and longer-range vehicles, rather than government subsidies, are driving the growth according to JP Morgan analysts. The increasing societal interest in environmental issues will be another driver for electric vehicle market growth. COVID-19 has been a catalyst for interest in environmental issues and increased consumer interest in battery-electric vehicles. According to McKinsey’s survey, more than 70% of survey respondents stated that delivery of goods should shift from vehicles with ICE to BEVs or H2EVs (also known as hydrogen fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) for long-haul trucking and intracity transport and 40% of the respondents are even willing to pay a premium to enable this shift (Garibaldi et al., 2020).

6.2.5 Automated Driving Vehicles

In the post-pandemic era, transition to automated driving vehicles like robo taxis and delivery robots will likely accelerate as these vehicles support physical distancing in people mobility and contactless last-mile delivery. According to a recent McKinsey’s survey, the number of North American respondents stating that they would be extremely or somewhat likely to take deliveries from autonomous vehicles increased from 18% to 28% (Garibaldi et al., 2020).

6.2.6 Work Strategy

In the post-pandemic world, mobility players will have to apply offensive tactics and may have to update their outdated operating strategies in the future for better agility as a way to face the expected recession and to reset the business.

6.2.7 Digital Transformation

After the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation is no longer an option, and every company will be very soon in one way or another a digital company. This will result in broad adoption of digital technology and digital innovation. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced automakers worldwide to pivot and adapt the way they sell their vehicles at a fast pace. In order to achieve this objective, several players started to develop digital go-to-market (GTM) strategies and tools. Online shopping has become the go-to solution as a car-buying process in many places and as a way to replace the time-consuming showroom visits with a few minutes of online purchase. Beside Tesla, several other automakers and dealers launched online shopping platforms. Examples include GMC Shop-Click-Drive, Nissan@Home, and EZ Purchase Online. Tesla also plans to accept payments in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. According to Google Think Auto 2020, 29% of car buyers would consider buying their next car online, and 40% of the Millennials are very certain about buying their next car online. Eighty-eight percent of Millennials reported that they had first discovered the vehicle they purchased “online.” An auto financing survey conducted by McKinsey (Kempf et al., 2021) shows that online business–to–consumer sales for auto loans and leasing in the European market is expected to reach a market share of approximately 20–25% by 2025 reflecting the shift toward financing vehicles through digital channels. While these digital tools create opportunities to shop in new ways, the new norm in the post-pandemic era will be very likely a hybrid blending of online and store shopping.

6.2.8 Open Innovation

Innovation requires huge investment that is sometimes behind the capability of a single company due to austerity measures taken during the times of uncertainty. Companies are now more open to adopt open innovation policies through partnership. The McKinsey Center for Future Mobility (Heineke et al., 2021) shows that more than 420 partnerships in the area of self-driving vehicles, connected cars, electrified vehicles, and shared mobility have been concluded in 2020 compared to 110 in 2015. For example, Bosch came into collaboration with Microsoft in February 2021 to work on a software platform for vehicles. Toyota and Denso entered into a partnership with Aurora to design and build a fleet of autonomous taxis based on the Sienna minivan. Moreover, Cruise and GM announced in early 2021 a long-term, strategic relationship with Microsoft to further accelerate the commercialization of Cruise’s all-electric, self-driving vehicles. The three companies will combine their expertise in software, hardware engineering, cloud computing capabilities, and manufacturing. In the post-pandemic era, companies will expand collaboration and partnership and will work together more frequently to build and expand innovative ecosystems.

6.2.9 Sustainable Development

This pandemic has shown us and the world leaders the urgent need to invest more in sustainable development. The pandemic may accelerate the transition toward sustainable mobility as world leaders start to pay more attention to sustainable development. The Great Reset initiative launched by the World Economic Forum (WEF) provides an opportunity to shape the recovery and to rebuild society and the economy in a more sustainable manner. One of the goals of the Great Reset initiative is to ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. This means that governmental recovery funds and investments from private entities and pension funds should be directed toward building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics. This road map has the potential to amplify the mobility industry’s focus on sustainability and increase e-mobility investment and sales in the post-pandemic era.

6.2.10 Global Solutions to Global Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic played a decisive role in human evolution and created an unprecedented spirit of collaboration in the global science and technology communities and showed the need for open source knowledge, information, and data, resource sharing, and global solutions to the global challenges as a new norm in the post-pandemic world.

6.3.1 Employment

Most of the tasks in people and cargo mobility systems can be classified as routine manual or routine cognitive tasks. People who are handling any 4D (dangerous, dull, dirty, and dumb) tasks will be negatively impacted by the smart technologies. However, smart mobility has the potential to create new businesses and innovate the existing ones resulting in higher productivity and better quality of services (Khamis et al., 2019). This will create a high demand for highly skilled workers such as algorithm developers, programmers, data analysts, machine learning specialists, robotics engineers, technologists, drone pilots, system engineers, market analysts, business developers, and marketing and services staff. However, these occupational categories necessitate people to upgrade their skills to be competitive enough and ready to handle these non-routine cognitive jobs. Smart mobility already opened doors to create new business models based on sharing economy that replaces ownership with mutual arrangements to boost incomes and, sometimes, create jobs. Digital shared mobility platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, are based on sharing economy business models that intensively use AI algorithms for vehicle deployment, routing, real-time tracking, dynamic pricing, and driver and rider ratings. Thanks to this model and this technology, several transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft managed to establish a functioning market for car hire services that is governed largely by supply and demand and creates millions of jobs. According to MIT Technology Review (Condliffe, 2017), the number of self-employed drivers shot up by 50% after Uber’s arrival in each city it serves, but the number of regularly employed taxi drivers also had a small increase. Uber claims that its average New York City driver earns over $90,000 a year (Rogers, 2015). As explained in the previous chapter, several on-demand last-mile delivery services have been created based on the gig economy model. In order to provide services like same-day and instant delivery especially for food, grocery, and medication, delivery service providers have started to rely more on crowdsourced delivery through gig workforce to handle a big portion of the delivery tasks. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of this alternative workforce to deal with the sharp increase in online shopping. There is still a debate about the sustainability of the gig economy model as a unique source of income in the post-pandemic era. More formal studies about possible structural unemployment of smart mobility technologies and the alternative job opportunities these technologies create based on sharing and gig economy models are still required.

6.3.2 Privacy

Data is the food for the perception and automated decision-making algorithms that are used in smart mobility systems. Personal data needs to be collected by the service providers invisibly and passively and sometimes happens as a by-product of another service. We have almost lost our privacy tracked by web clients, Internet service providers, cell phone service providers, agents, and so on. We cannot decide who access our data, when they access it, and for what purpose. Sacrificing privacy is one of the dark sides of personal technologies. Some privacy questions are raised by Deloitte including Would the manufacturer of the vehicle own that data?, What about the person who bought, borrowed, or is simply a passenger in that vehicle?, How might our legal systems consistently define ownership?, What would happen when the vehicle crosses boundaries of jurisdiction?, How would a police agency handle logs from a connected vehicle involved in an accident?, and At the end of their lives, who would be responsible for wiping clean obsolete data recorders (Leon Nash and Hillaker, 2020)? These concerns apply to all connected, automated, and shared mobility technologies. As mentioned in Chapter 4, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology can help in improving EV affordability as it enables the EV owners to gain money through pushing the energy back from the battery of an electric car to the power grid. However, data privacy and cybersecurity are still challenges for V2G. Guaranteeing transparency (why should the data be shared?), trust (with whom will the data be shared?), and value (what are the benefits of sharing the data?) can help in the societal acceptance of V2G technology. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is developed to protect data and privacy in the European Union. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is also another important step toward enhancing privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California. However, more global measures and regulations should be developed to protect privacy and enforce digital rights. For example, a wide range of contact tracing, people tracking, and surveillance technologies have been applied during the pandemic in all aspects of our life, and mobility was not an exception. Measures have to be taken to protect digital rights, stop the surveillance once the pandemic is over, and ban new totalitarianism of surveillance technology and digital totalitarian states or digital Leninism.

6.3.3 Cybersecurity Attacks and Physical Attacks

NHTSA defines cybersecurity, within the context of road vehicles, as the protection of automotive electronic systems, communication networks, control algorithms, software, users, and underlying data from malicious attacks, damage, unauthorized access, or manipulation. The proliferation of technologies embedded in smart mobility systems opens the door to serious cyber threats and increases the potential of cyber-attacks. Ransomware infections, data breaches leading to the exfiltration of personally identifiable information, and unauthorized access to enterprise networks are among major self-driving vehicle cybersecurity concerns identified by the FBI. Deloitte highlighted two potential attacks in future mobility systems: hacking into manufacturer-to-vehicle communications and hijacking vehicle controls and sensors (Leon Nash and Hillaker, 2020). For example, attackers might conceivably have surreptitiously installed a surveillance device, leaving a transceiver to extract customer data or inject malicious data into the vehicle network, according to Deloitte. They can also steal sensitive vehicle data such as performance statistics or cryptographic keys. Hackers may also intend to gain control over safety-critical features such as steering, braking, propulsion, and OTA updates. Hackers can spoof traffic data to mess with traffic lights causing traffic jams and unnecessary rerouting. Michigan researchers were able to gain control of traffic lights to prove that an adversary can control traffic infrastructure to cause disruption, degrade safety, or gain an unfair advantage (Ghena et al., 2014). Cybersecurity vulnerabilities and mitigation efforts are summarized in Parkinson et al. (2017).

Other types of attacks may include robojacking, bullying behavior, or other unpredictable behaviors some people may show when they interact with smart mobility technologies. A pedestrian may seek to bully a self-driving zero-occupant vehicle (ZOV) through adversarial behavior or deceptive/cheating behavior such as showing rude gestures or stopping on the crosswalk in front of the vehicle for a long time. Other robojackers may try to vandalize the vehicle or steal high-value cargo from inside the vehicle. In a mixed traffic scenario, human drivers may show mischievous behavior and try to bully self-driving vehicles by driving erratically near them or zigzagging down the highway, weaving in and out of a self-driving platoon (Lipson and Kurman, 2016). Cheating on a mapping service or other GIS apps is another form of attack that can cause disturbance in the mobility systems. In February 2020, Simon Weckert managed to cheat on Google Maps’ AI algorithm by creating fake traffic using a cart full of 99 phones with Google Maps’ navigation turned on down the streets of Berlin creating massive traffic jam, even though there were zero cars on the road.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) developed regulations to improve automotive cybersecurity and software update management (United Nations, 2002). These regulations require automakers to implement measures to manage vehicle cybersecurity risks, secure vehicles by design to mitigate risks along the supply chain, and detect and respond to security incidents across the vehicle fleet and provide safe, secure software updates that do not compromise vehicle safety. Connected mobility stakeholders consider cybersecurity as a key to enable advanced communications and safety features. Robust authentication and authorization are provided to facilitate access to the vehicle using secured digital keys. Data encryption and anonymization are used to guarantee both the safety of the vehicle against cyber-attacks and the privacy of the occupants. Analysis of the data collected in an encrypted environment enables timely detection, recognition, and identification of malicious cyber-attacks that can lead to abnormal traffic signal behavior, vehicle tampering or intrusion, abnormal driving, and so on.