Premium Networked Mobility, Fleet-as-a-Service, and the Digital Infrastructure of Sustainable Urban Transport

John M. Albright

Authors

John M. Albright Global Institute for Urban Studies, University of Lisbon

Keywords:

Premium mobility, Fleet-as-a-Service, serverless computing, telematics

Abstract

This article synthesizes theoretical perspectives and empirical insights on the emergence of premium networked mobility, Fleet-as-a-Service (FaaS), and the digital infrastructures—particularly serverless and function-as-a-service

paradigms—that enable contemporary transformations in urban transport systems. The paper integrates geographic, psychological, technological, environmental, and systems-design literatures to construct a coherent framework for understanding how novel vehicle concepts, shared mobility business models, telematics systems, and cloud-native compute paradigms interact to produce new mobility ecologies. The study first situates premium mobility networks within the geography of demand and urban form, showing how spatial concentration of services and premium positioning shape access and equity dynamics (Groth, Klinger & Otsuka, 2023). It then examines psychological and socio-technical barriers to shared mobility uptake, including privacy concerns, perceived autonomy loss, and normative resistance, grounding these issues in observed acceptance patterns for carsharing and ridepooling (Burghard & Scherrer, 2022; Hunecke, Richter & Heppner, 2021). The technological core of the article explores telematics and fleet management requirements for modern road freight and shared vehicle fleets (Heinbach, Kammler & Thomas, 2022), alongside serverless and stateful functions approaches that promise scalable, on-demand analytics and control (Hellerstein et al., 2019; Sreekanti et al., 2020). Environmental and sustainability considerations are woven throughout, relating vehicle electrification and life-cycle impacts to policy frameworks for sustainable development (Helmers & Marx, 2012; Brundtland, 1987; Goodland, 1995). Drawing on interdisciplinary evidence, the article proposes a design-oriented conceptual model that links premium mobility strategies, FaaS operationalization (Deshpande, 2024), telematics architecture, and cloud-native computation. It discusses trade-offs, potential unintended consequences, policy levers, and research directions, and concludes with prescriptive guidelines for practitioners and policymakers seeking to foster equitable, resilient, and sustainable networked mobility.

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International Journal of Next-Generation Engineering and Technology

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