These Boots (and Shoes) Were Made for Sharing

With people sharing everything from vehicles to electric scooters in this age of mobility as a service, automotive-industry researcher Glenn Mercer playfully adds another potential product to the list of sharables: footwear.

He calls his spoof of a next-generation mobility service “Shoe-ber.” At a recent J.D. Power automotive conference, he explains how it might work.

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Pedestrians who want to use such shoes they see lying about would scan a code on each pair, renting them by the yard or minute.

Some out-there prognosticators claim shared automotive transportation services such as Uber and Lyft could steer consumers away from personal vehicle ownership.(Glenn Mercer, left)

Poking fun at that presumptuous prediction, Mercer thinks his back-to-basics Shoe-ber – if it ever became a reality – likewise could keep Nike executives awake at night.

That’s because there would be “no need to own personal footwear ever again,” he proclaims, or at least quips.