As the latest round of the Climate Change conference gets underway at COPS26 in Glasgow, it is a very pertinent time to be discussing the future of personal mobility. 

The next generation in Toyota technology, the production photos of the 2022 Toyota bz4x - an all electric SUV. 

This article is as real as it gets from the perspective of a company that has been in the business of providing transportation solutions to the top of the South Island for nearly 80 years.

The simple fact of the matter is that we all need to move about from place to place, sometimes transport heavy things, or move families of either very young people, or very old people, longer distances than they can comfortably walk. The arguement with the last point can be made for a more efficient and better functioning public transport infrastructure, but the realities of our present system make this somewhat unrealistic in the top of the south. Our region is very large, and our relatively small population is spread far and wide, and spread very thinly in some areas. 

Personal mobility is at the core of this conversation. As a culture we have become very time sensitive, and most of us feel we have the need or urgency to do things immediately. Car pooling is certainly a positive step toward enabling that a single trip is as efficient as possible but getting into work or school and home again is just one of the many uses we all have for cars. Once you add in the commercial sector into the conversation it begins to get very complicated very fast. 

If we want to address the elephant in the room, that being the changing climate, maybe it is time to start looking at our own options when it comes to the choices we are making around personal mobility. This is a BIG conversation, so let's jump into it.