Who owns the fleet?

Part 8 showed that continuity needs paid expertise, equipment and time before it can deliver a reliable service. The same timing problem appears at a larger scale in the fleet. If customers buy mobility rather than vehicles, someone else must own the vehicles. MML changes the allocation of capital and responsibility; it does not remove either. A fleet must be purchased, maintained and financed through periods when some assets earn no revenue.

For scale, one million vehicles at an illustrative average acquisition cost of €30,000 would represent €30 billion of gross acquisition expenditure. Ten million would represent €300 billion. These are arithmetic illustrations, not estimates of MML’s funding requirement: a real fleet would contain different ages and prices, accumulate over time and generate revenue while new assets were added.

The useful question is therefore how ownership, financing and operating obligations could fit together, including who absorbs losses when the expected lifecycle does not occur.