“Smart cities are the future”
New mobility is a catch-all term for half a dozen technologies racing forward at their own speed. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, speaking at New Mobility World at IAA 2017 in Frankfurt, made sense of it all: “Smart cities are the future of mobility”. In other words: the urban environment is the platform upon which the diverse elements of mobility innovation will come together.
Tucked away in a separate corner of the vast congress halls housing IAA 2017, New Mobility World (NMW) billed itself as the place where “disruptors and innovators meet with representatives from the worlds of politics and economics”. And indeed, Frau Merkel came to Frankfurt in person this week to open Europe's biggest motor show, underlining the strategic importance of innovation for Germany's economically crucial automotive industry.
Smart as humans
NMW doubled as a mini-conference, with a Forum and a smaller Speakers' Corner from which experts (pictured) wowed audiences with visions of the mobility of the future. “Artificial Intelligence used in cars today is as smart as a mouse; in 20 years' time, it will be as smart as a human. And that means we can expect vast changes”, said McKinsey partner Matthias Käser, presenting his company's vision on the future of AI in automotive.
But for analysts, the golden future always seems to be 10 to 20 years away. Fleet decision makers have more practical concerns – they're looking for products and services that can benefit their fleet and their company today, not tomorrow. Fortunately, there was plenty of interesting stuff for them sprinkled across the six 'theme parks' at NMW.
Electric Mobility
The most prominent was Electric Mobility, with companies like ChargePoint, the “Apple of EV charging” and U.S. market leader, bringing its total solutions (from home charging over corporate charging to public and semi-public charging) to Europe. Nextdoor, Urban Mobility, featuring among others BlaBlaCar, who that same day announced the extension of BlaBlaLines, their pilot project for rideshare commuting in France.
The Connectivity theme park hosted Saferide Technologies, a comprehensive package protecting connected cars against hacking – out of mischief or for terror, but perhaps also for industrial espionage. In the Mobilty Solutions park, TrustedCars.com showcased its online used-car portal with money-back guarantee. In Automated Driving, BestMile proudly presented its cloud platform for operating and optimising autonomous vehicle fleets – the world's first such platform.
Carbon footprint
But there was much more: smart parking solutionsby RTB, a surprisingly wide range of products by Segway, the two-wheel electric personal transporter, a carbon-offsetting foundation shipping efficient wood stoves to Madagascar to save local forests and offset your carbon footprint, a clever navigation tool by What3Words to find any spot on Earth via a three-word code, a hydrogen-powered racecar making the point that electricity is not the only powertrain with a bright future, and so on.
New mobility, an umbrella word covering half a dozen industries racing in different directions, sometimes feels like the title of that Pirandello play: “Six Characters in Search of an Author”. Fortunately, a hands-on encounter with the industry in all its chaotic splendour can help bring a unified theory into focus.
Same ecosystem
As indicated by Rupert Stadler, and as confirmed by Miller Crockart, VP at mobility analysts PTV Group, the city is the place where all these strands can and must come together: “Each company aims to optimise its own vehicle fleet, but it is up to local governments to optimise the mobility environment in which they all operate”, says Crockart. “Cities and corporates are all part of the same traffic ecosystem. They need to talk to each other to move things forward”.
Image: Fleet Europe
