Radical Innovations for the Future of Mobility: Insights from Prof. Hermann on the Role of Behavioral Changes, Intermodality, and Autonomous Technologies in Regional Transport

Dear Mr. Hermann, you head the Institute for Mobility at the University of St. Gallen, where you research and promote radical innovations for sustainable and modern mobility. What do you understand by radical innovation?

Of course, there are numerous definitions of what radical innovations are. For me, it becomes particularly exciting when an innovation leads to a substantial behavioral change on the customer side. Often, it’s not the technology that is the main obstacle to accepting new products, but rather our own habits. This is particularly evident in the field of mobility. For example, the spread of electric mobility or even autonomous driving depends largely on whether we succeed in changing our behaviors, even just a little.

What do you see as the key levers to promote radical innovations in regional transport, particularly in terms of scalability?

We always need to think from the market and the customer’s perspective. As mentioned earlier, radical innovations often fail when the necessary behavioral change on the customer side is too substantial, and there is not enough patience to allow these changes to occur. It’s about changing human behavior step by step. For this, demonstration and experience are key.

A typical example is autonomous driving. Everyone has an opinion about whether they would get into such a vehicle or not. Many reject it because they have concerns. However, those who have experienced it themselves – I’ve driven autonomous vehicles frequently, including on racetracks – quickly realize how well it works. This experience builds trust and often leads to a willingness to reconsider one’s mobility behavior.

For radical innovations, this is exactly what matters: demonstrations and experiences that enable people to accept the innovation as part of their own behavior.

What role does collaboration between universities and industry play in developing sustainable mobility solutions? Which examples or models do you consider particularly effective?

That, of course, depends on the type of university – whether it is technical or social science-focused. At St. Gallen, we are, naturally, purely focused on the social sciences. We don’t develop new technologies, but we help companies achieve a better understanding of the market. This includes, for example, conducting workshops with customers, designing surveys, or developing business models to figure out what might actually work. Our focus is on designing mobility solutions for the markets. That is our contribution – individual pieces of a puzzle that contribute to the bigger picture. However, we do not undertake any technical developments here in St. Gallen.

What kind of support or initiatives would you like to see from the Swiss railway industry in the development and implementation of new mobility solutions?

I would like – and this also applies to car manufacturers – for people not to always view the world solely through the lens of their own mode of transport. The rail industry essentially does the same: they only see the rail. And car manufacturers only see the road.

The solution to our mobility problems, however, often lies in intermodality – in integrating the various modes of transport much more closely. I would like all these manufacturers to start by looking at people’s mobility behaviors and then thinking: Okay, we are just one element of this. Perhaps the car is needed, perhaps micromobility – but the goal is to offer a complete system. Not just rail transport or car transport, but an integrated solution that meets people’s needs.

What is your vision for the regional transport of the future, and which technologies or concepts do you think will be decisive?

I really hope that we finally move beyond these small-scale approaches in our country. In San Francisco, 250 autonomous shuttles are already in regular operation.

We also need to implement larger solutions in Switzerland. For example: 50 autonomous shuttles in a city, intelligently connected to the train station and micromobility. Regional transport has an enormous opportunity to reinvent itself through these technologies. This way, we could take those long diesel buses off the roads and replace them with small, electrically operated shuttles that react flexibly, can be called via an app, and no longer require a fixed schedule or rigid route.

I am convinced that regional transport has the opportunity to completely reinvent itself through these new technologies. That’s what I hope for – but on a large scale, not just a small shuttle here and there, as we have been doing for the past ten years.

The leverage we can achieve in transport is when we have 50, 60, or 100 of these shuttles in cities, interconnected and able to be called via an app. This could then replace other means of transport, rather than offering these shuttles as isolated solutions. These small shuttle projects replace nothing; they are only for demonstration purposes. I think we are now at a stage where we must truly integrate these technologies into our mobility to improve it. And we are still far from that step here in Switzerland.

Oslo will soon introduce 500 shuttles into the city, with the goal of deploying a total of 30,000 such vehicles by 2030. Now that is commitment!

Thank you very much for this interesting discussion.

This interview was published in the December 2024 edition of Swissrail's magazine “express.”

You can read the full issue here.