The utilization rate of shared cars will jump from five percent this year to over 50 percent by 2030, according to a new forecast from Fujitsu America.

According to the firm’s analysis, the trend points to a shift in the car’s value proposition: Over the next several years, consumers will see it less as an end and more as a means. Fujitsu America cites Frost & Sullivan in asserting that the number of cars on the road could diminish by over 20 million each year, so car makers need to figure out how to pitch their vehicles based on their utility for particular tasks, and not as things to own; to that end, working with IT vendors could prove fruitful.

In its report, Fujitsu America Global Head of Automotive Paul Warburton said providers of ‘Mobility-as-a-Service’ will have to “find innovative ways to maximize the uses of their autonomous fleets going beyond providing passenger services by expanding into areas such as parcel delivery and environmental services.”

Attendant to this trend is the disappearance of physical car keys, with Fujitsu America predicting that biometric authentication will become “the standard for accessing and operating vehicles.” Such technologies will also enable instant personalization of car settings, and could also be used to authorize car-based payments made at transaction points such as drive-thru windows.

Fujitsu’s predictions arrive on the heels of a new market forecast from Goode Intelligence predicting that the automotive biometrics market will see a CAGR of 96 percent over the next five years, reaching a value of $969 million by 2023. And with the increasing overlap between the IT and automotive sectors, it appears that these predictions are on track.