In June’s TaaS magazine the drive towards connected vehicles and services is more urgent than ever before.  As Graham Gordon from LexisNexis Risk Solutions highlights in his article:

“There are already an estimated 20 million cars in the US with connectivity capability, 11 million between UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain and this volume is set to grow with 100% of new cars expected to have connectivity by 2025[i].  The growth in connected car data is on a steep trajectory.”

This data needs to be accurate, so testing in a virtual environment saves both time and cost as discussed in Claytex's article 'The importance of accurate sensor models for the Virtual testing of Autonomous Vehicle'.

Mobility-as-a-service is gaining more popularity as the way forward but as Boyd Cohen & Phil Williams from Iomob discusses, there are thousands of mobility providers, but they don’t connect together well, if at all.  Maybe we need to look at On-Demand Mobility Service Design as Raphael Gindrat from Bestmile discusses.  But with all of this there are risks, so who is going to take this risk? But then is 'MaaS, a river or a cheese?' one of the stranger questions to be asked, but asked by Markus Aarflot is a Business Developer at UbiGo.

From what I see connections and shared ideas always seem to push things forward.  With the TaaS Technology Conference now less than two weeks away, this is the ideal place to get connected, meet other industry experts and highlight your solutions.  We have a packed speaker and sponsor line up, and we look forward to welcoming you all there 9-10th July in Birmingham.

Among experts, there’s a very wide range of opinion about when driverless cars will be “ready” (leaving aside what that even means precisely), and as big a gap about how long they will take to become widespread. But alongside the prestigious race to launch the self-driving car, there’s a very important “warm-up” race - to deploy and commercialise other autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, not necessarily designed to carry individual people.

The primary focus of these typically smaller vehicles is on the delivery of items to consumers. From food to essential supplies, several startups and established companies are unleashing myriad robots onto our roads, sidewalks and even skies as beach-head devices flying the flag for autonomy ahead of their better-known cousin, the self-driving car.

Benign Bots?

It’s easy to see why delivery vehicles comprise an attractive category - there’s far more design flexibility than with cars, far less regulation and a lower threshold for consumer acceptance compared to replacing their beloved and trusted means of conveyance. A 20kg (44lbs) robot trundling along the sidewalk at a non-threatening 6kmph (4mph) is much less controversial than a 2 ton car without a human at the wheel, however poorly some humans drive.

But delivery bots are not without their opponents. Questions over their presence on sidewalks, their interactions with, for example, wheelchairs on a narrow pathway and vulnerability to anti-social behavior mean not everyone is welcoming them - while Virginia and Idaho have rolled out the welcome mat (or more exactly welcome legislation), there’s a ban in most areas of San Francisco.

Tentative Steps onto the Road

Larger capacity vehicles clearly don’t belong on sidewalks, but also may not need to mix with highway traffic. One interesting interim solution is the Nuro - this autonomous delivery vehicle is designed for suburban use and only about half the width of a compact car - operating on the road but at slow speeds of only 40 kmph (25 mph). Currently being tested in Texas, the R1 can carry loads up to 100kg (220 lbs) - so much more than sidewalk bots - and the success of its initial operations has seen investments in the startup of nearly $1 billion. 

Out of Sight

There are plenty of other examples of autonomous technology slowly moving out from the labs into the outside world. But much of it is avoiding direct interactions with unpredictable humans for now, while learning to navigate simpler worlds. But if you look hard enough, you can find autonomous sweepers out early on the streets of Disneyland Shanghai, or indoors in Seattle-Tacoma airport and at some Walmart stores. Swedish startup Einride has just announced trials of a freight solution that can haul 26 tones.

Many companies are currently developing sensors for autonomous driving applications and each system made available will have unique specifications and thus capabilities. To gain enough sensor measurement in the real-world in order to confirm that a given sensor meets certain requirements, will be both time consuming and expensive. The virtual environment in rFpro allows one to bypass the costs associated with purchasing equipment and acquiring a test facility whilst also incorporating real roadside factors such as the behavior of other vehicles. Simulations within this environment can be both run continuously and concurrently, which allows a large amount of test data to be acquired in a relatively short period of time. Whilst in the early stages of the development of ADAS and AV systems, it may be acceptable to utilize simple models that react and give a perfect output to the system under test; the introduction of random noise and the response to weather conditions should also be considered, both of which can improve and make the AV simulation closer to reality.

“It’s the introduction of these two characteristics that will help gain competitiveness and allow Autonomous car manufacturers to test their AI algorithms for any kind of road” says Maurizio Bevilacqua, Project Engineer at Claytex.

He continues: “To investigate this idea, we constructed a new library of Virtual Sensors for the Autonomous Vehicles Simulator rFpro”. The Library currently includes the following sensors and is being continually expanded:

Lidars

• Ibeo Scala B2
• Velodyne VLP-16
• Velodyne VLP-32
• Velodyne HDL-32E
• In development Ouster OS1-16 and Quanergy M8

Radar

• Generic Radar short and Long Rage (Ainstein)
• In development Continental ARS430

GPS

• Generic GPS generation NMEA sentences

Ultrasound

Cameras

“We then simulated these sensors with different scenarios and started developing the non-idealised response that an actual sensor has” Maurizio confirms; “we have started a calibration acquisition campaign with an actual Lidar and Radar creating a database with different weather conditions, thanks to which we are able to model a coherent and realistic response to be integrated within the virtual sensors”.

ADAS systems that rely on AI devices for cognitive behavior require a large amount of training data prior to deployment and the sensor catalogue developed at Claytex can be used alongside rFpro to achieve this.

“The big challenge”, continues Maurizio, “is to define a standard and unique calibration procedure, since there is no unique standard or regulation regarding this topic”.

As explained before, some implementation and comparison of performance have been done as shown in the following two cases; the first one compares the performance of different radar sensors and the second one concerns the implementation of a virtual Velodyne HDL-32E.

Radar

The systems simulated here are range-doppler radars that scan in the azimuth plane. This type of sensing allows the range, angle and velocity of detected targets to be estimated and hence can be used to construct an image of the scenario being measured. The important parameters set for each device are the:

• Minimum and Maximum: Range, Velocity and FOV (Field-Of-View)
• Range, Velocity and Angular resolution
• Output image refresh rate

The following example uses the manufacturer specifications of three commercially available radar systems and simulates the output produced by each. One of these systems (Model C) has two modes of operation to meet the requirements of short, medium and long-range applications whereas the other two devices (Model A and Model B) operate in a single mode.

The table below shows the range, angular and frame rate parameters of the three radar systems under test: 

The video shows the raw output in real-time when using Model A and Model B devices on-board a moving vehicle driving around the model of Paris in rFpro.

The color of each detection within the radar plots relates to the relative velocity between the ego vehicle and the detection. Moving vehicles become distinct from stationary objects due to the doppler effect and are visible as different coloured points in the plots. Any deacceleration/acceleration of the ego vehicle will also cause the relative velocity to change.

Analyzing the performance of a cognitive system that makes use of the output produced by a set of simulated sensors will tell an ADAS system designer if the configuration under test meets the requirements set. In terms of the sensors simulated in Table 1, if the two-mode system from Manufacturer 2 is deemed adequate then a cost and packaging saving can be made. A virtual environment with accurate sensor models makes analysis of a range of sensing systems possible at a much lower cost compared to physical testing.

Lidar

Here, it will be shown how to insert a state-of-the-art Lidar device within the virtual environment of rFpro. This will allow a user to easily stream and visualize the sensor output on any PC or storage device.

The Velodyne HDL-32E is the latest Lidar device to be added to the ever-growing database of ADAS sensors at Claytex.

Figure 1 – Velodyne HDL-32

The Velodyne HDL-32E model uses 32 laser beams to produce an asymmetric vertical field of view (figure 2) that prioritizes the detection of ground-based objects such as pedestrians, cyclists and automobiles. 

Settings on rFpro Admin Console

The setup procedure is simple, and it can be summarized on the following picture. Figure 3 shows the setup procedure for the ego vehicle, map and sensor.

Figure 3 – Configuration settings

The following checklist must be adhered to in the order shown:

1.     The map to be used in the simulation. The simulation footage shown here was realized by selecting ‘Paris Streets’ which simulates a 2km section or road around “Les Invalides” in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris. Many real-world locations from around the globe are currently available for rFpro.

2.     A car model in the Vehicles section of the Physics tab. A red hatchback was used for the results presented here. The required physics model includes the model type and the frequency of the physics model execution. The ‘Internal (rFpro) Physics Model’ was used for the results shown here with a ‘Physics Rate’ of 1 kHz but interfaces exist to all the major vehicle dynamics tools.

3.     Simulation nodes must be connected and ready for execution.

4.     The video settings on the Video Config tab must match the parameters of the sensor instance with the settings of the HDL-32E sensor. Also, it is important to check the video sync option is unticked; the resolution is set as 120×300 in this case.

After these settings have been applied, the simulation can be started by pressing the play button in the session tab:

Figure 4 – Execution of the simulation in rFPro

The strength of this approach is that you can visualize the sensor output using the visualization software provided by Velodyne called Veloview. Veloview will not be able to tell the difference between the real and the simulated sensor outputs.

Opening Velodyne’s software Veloview and having selected the HDL-32 in the sensor calibration with the Lidar port set to 2368 (figure 5), the acquisition is ready to start.

What is coming next?

Due to the fact that new Lidar sensors are continuously being developed to improve the capability of autonomous vehicles, new sensor models are constantly required to simulate the performance of the latest sensor configurations being considered by car manufacturers (e.g. JLR) and service providers (e.g. Uber).

“If you would like us to help you to create a customized model for a particular AV or ADAS sensor that is not currently available”,  Maurizio kindly says, “please get in contact with us at Claytex, so we can help you realize such a model and thus allow you to access the benefits of simulating in a realistic virtual environment”. www.claytex.com P: +44 1926 885900

There are already an estimated 20 million cars in the US with connectivity capability, 11 million between UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain and this volume is set to grow with 100% of new cars expected to have connectivity by 2025^[i].  The growth in connected car data is on a steep trajectory.

Connected car data is set to change the course of motor insurance globally and the UK with Italy has a head start, leading the world in car connectivity. 

Today, 10% of the UK car parc is connected.  Half of this is young drivers with telematics insurance policies, with data collected through aftermarket devices.  The other half is built-in connectivity in high end vehicles. By 2020[ii] all new cars in the UK are expected to be connected with the potential for data about the vehicle and how it’s driven to be used for insurance pricing and risk reduction. 

Telematics insurance, a solution developed to solve young driver insurance costs is one of the first forms of connected car data and will prove fundamental to the insurance industry’s ability to meet the needs of its customer in the future. 

Everything the insurance sector has learnt about risk mitigation and pricing based on real-time data will help shape the way it delivers insurance in a world where consumers will demand Usage Based Insurance (UBI) from their car.

UBI provides access to insurance priced on actual - rather than presumed - road behaviour.  In the decade since telematics insurance was first introduced into the UK, claims loss ratios have reduced for insurers and premiums have come down for younger drivers.  But most importantly there is now firm evidence of the efficacy of telematics insurance in reducing road risk.  Our own analysis identified a 35% reduction in road casualties over the past seven years^[iii] amongst 17-19-year olds as telematics adoption amongst young drivers increased[iv].

But although telematics is still very much a niche proposition, it is on the cusp of expanding to a broader market. Through the advances in technology, the cost of data acquisition has fallen by around half and there is now wider consumer appetite for UBI.  Based on our research of over 3000 motorists - 60%^[v] of consumers want telematics insurance.

At the same time, other types of vehicle data are now being explored, such as ADAS data to help inform insurance pricing.  60% of the UK car parc has some form of ADAS feature so this data is ubiquitous. 

Fundamentally connected car data takes a variety of forms today, but the commonality is that with the right infrastructure in place it will enable the sector to deliver usage-based insurance.

Therefore, with volumes of connected car data growing exponentially, the process of gathering, normalising, understanding and utilising this data in a fully compliant manner has become a major focus for both the insurance sector and the car manufacturing markets.  Both markets share a common customer and both markets want to serve that customer with mobility solutions that help improve their road safety and manage their motoring costs.

This is very much in line with the UK’s Government’s Future of Mobility Urban Strategy^[vi].  This report set out nine key principles and the approach to working with innovators, companies, local authorities and other stakeholders to harness the developing benefits of new urban mobility technologies including driverless vehicles.  The ninth principle states that going forward, sharing data from new mobility services - where appropriate - will improve choice and the operation of the transport system.

This will not only require collaboration, trust and consumer education, it will also put demands on mobility providers to find a way to share their data in a meaningful way and in a fully compliant manner.  As the Government has stated, the principles in the Data Ethics Framework and the General Data Protection Regulation provide a starting point for this.

Insights from data can help create safer roads and support consumer choice, we have seen this in what telematics has done to cut road risk in young drivers^[vii].  However, data from a wide variety of sources will need normalising to create a common understanding of mobility use to ensure these services benefit the consumer.

The challenge with connected car data is that as connected car volumes grow, there will be more and more data from many different aftermarket devices, many types of vehicles from many car manufacturers.  This will demand data normalisation delivered by a neutral sever taking data from both the insurance and car manufacturing sectors.  This central hub of data will help ensure consistent scoring of driving data and enable data portability, all with the consumers’ interest front and centre.

Car manufacturers are therefore looking for partnerships to help them leverage connected car data.  This involves creating links with the insurance sector to help better serve their common customer.  It’s already happening in the US, where major car manufacturers have joined the LexisNexis® Telematics Exchange and the first agreements in Europe are on the horizon. 

Therefore, our focus right now is enabling insurance providers and car manufacturers to share data through a common platform to promote a greater understanding of risk.  We see this as the starting point for the development of semi and ultimately fully autonomous vehicles.

However, Kim Jong-Uns decision follows a global shift in the usage of means of transport. Factors such as increasing ecological awareness, readily available on demand services and unstable fuel prices, as well as a desire for more comfortable and time-efficient ways of traveling are altering the way people use and experience commuting and traveling. Comfort and time-efficiency are exactly the keywords for why we founded Enroute.

As a consequence of this shift in consumer behavior, less people than ever before even bother to use an own car; Only 69% of todays 19 years-old Americans have a drivers license, compared to 87% in 1983, according to the University of Michigan.

As a result, room for new technologies and companies that are trying to capitalize on the adjacent trends, accompanying new chances and evolving markets are opening up. Four main mobility trends will reshape the future of mobility.

On demand & sharing services

While on the one hand public local transport is having a hard stand in some regions, such as Chicago, where CTA, Chicago’s public transport service has experienced ridership losses, other alternative means of travel, both on long distance tracks and short distances are flourishing - their keyword: On demand!

Ride hailing services have seen record breaking rises in the recent years. Companies such as Uber, Gett or Ola have all set new records in 2018 in terms of revenue and passenger numbers. The ride hailing market is expected to be valued at $1.5 Trillion by 2030, and just recently, Uber was valued at around $120 Billion by Forbes. With global penetration rate (currently 8.1%) being expected to hit 10.6% by 2023, equaling nearly 835 Billion ride hailing passengers in 2023 this market is set to revolutionize the way people use and own cars in big cities.

Another driver of this shift in consumer behavior is the availability of car pooling and sharing methods, both peer-to-peer and through B2C services. Nearly all big car manufacturers have started to prepare themselves and offer their own car sharing services, such as Daimler with Car2Go. Susan Shaheen, America’s leading professor in the field of transportation study from Berkeley University conducted a survey on this service in five American cities, amongst them Washington D.C., with remarkable results. Firstly, on average, every Car2Go vehicle added to the streets of these cities can replace 7-11 private cars, significantly reducing people’s greenhouse emissions (on average 10% per person). Secondly, this could not only help to reduce environmental damage, but also help to reduce traffic and thus drastically reduce the time it takes to commute in big cities.

The idea of sharing does not only occur in the context of the physical car itself, but also during actual rides. Major cab apps, like my taxi, Europe’s biggest cab app, offer the possibility to connect with other people that share near destinations and so reduce on the costs per person and the environmental impact through sharing a cab.

Concerning long-distance rides, the use of private cars still is the unattainable market leader. However, established alternatives, such as the Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s rail service, have seen record-breaking years in terms of passenger numbers as well. In the case of the mentioned, special offers and reduced fares have helped propel the number of Deutsche Bahn’s passengers above the record of 142 Million passengers, set in 2017.

And, in line with the shift towards shared rides in cities, comparable services for long-distance rides, such as BlaBlaCar have experienced years of growth, having reached 70 Million members.

All of those alternative means of travel have one thing in common: They can improve on a current, major market inefficiency - private cars, sitting unused 95% of the time seem to be more and more replaceable by such services in cities. Besides, most western countries rely on politically unreliable and instable partners for their supply of gas. With the price stability of gas being volatile, and dependent on such countries, this just gives a further incentive towards reducing on the need of this resource.

Besides the ecologic opportunities that arise through this global shift in passenger behavior to new, shared transportation services, many of these means promise a more comfortable, passenger-friendly way of traveling, allowing its customers to focus on other things during their journey.

Electrification and inter-connectivity of vehicles

The electrification of fleets, be it shared or privately owned vehicles is another trend in progress - Tesla, the worlds most famous builder of purely electrically powered vehicles has just become profitable and also established players like Volvo, BMW and more are increasingly building hybrid cars, a step towards electrically powered vehicles.

However, not only the fuel is being electrified, but also the exchange of data, i.e. interconnectivity between vehicles and between different adjacent systems within the car is relying on an increasing automatization and electrification of cars. With 116 Million connected cars in the US alone by 2025, each generating roughly 25 gigabytes data per hour, the total amount of generated and usable data in the US alone will amount to roughly 25 Billion terabytes per year by 2025.

Autonomous Vehicles and the creation of a new market

One of the most prominent use cases for the created data is the development of autonomous vehicles. With cars being able to communicate, the security concerns about fully automated drivers may eventually prove to be ungrounded - Rather opposite, the electrification of cars is a crucial step towards increasing security through enabling autonomous vehicles to predict traffic situations far before human drivers could. And so, being on the edge of technologically allowing for autonomous driving, with many test rides already having taken place, the eventual arrival of the driverless future is not a question of whether or not, but of when. Requiring and further causing the creation of cloud stored data, autonomous vehicles will be the last to mention major driving factor of the creation of a new market: Car data monetization.

Looking at the global amount of data to be created, it gets clear, that these huge amounts of created data will need adjacent and vertically integrated sub-technologies to be processed, secured and eventually used in a benefiting way, not only by car manufacturers, ride hailing services and other directly involved parties, buch especially by subsequent sectors like AM, insurance companies and commerce and more.

According to McKinsey, the revenue pool of car data monetization aggregates to $450-750 Billion.  As the requirement of a more vertically integrated supply chain for this market, consisting of mobility services, car manufacturers and all sectors that can use this data, is obvious, it is yet unclear who will possess the data. It seems likely, that strategic partnerships will eventually be key to controlling and processing this data, and thus to creating as much revenue as possible out of it. The race for laying the foundation for this has already started and, given the many opportunities that arise for the customers out of the developments in mobility, can be thought nearly indefinitely broadly.

Promising though it theoretically is, the capitalization still is subject to the customers appreciation for the use and processing of the generated data, which itself depends on whether or not they recognize a value. McKinsey’s survey found out, that for a majority of the customers, this happens to be the case as soon as there are clear security- and/or convenience-related benefits. That means, the market must mature in so far as that technologies need not only create a benefit, but advertise and lobby for the benefits - As all features of the mobility market seem to be broadly supplied, the visibility of one’s benefit to the customers is crucial to one’s competitive advantage.

While the possession of the data and the availability of it still need to be regulated in general, it seems likely that the directly involved mobility services and car manufacturers will be among the main stakeholders. That theoretically puts them in a very promising position, however, as with every groundbreaking change, there can be expected winners and losers. The necessity for laying the foundations now, through strategic partnerships, technological innovation and the most reliable market predictions has started a race against time, and most importantly against competition.

In car time monetization trends

The other market, also supplying and consuming the created data and being based on the electrification and connection of vehicles is the in car time monetization. With the autonomous vehicles being expected to create 600 Billion hours of free time for passengers, the market for in car time monetization is estimated to add up to a value of $472 Billion annually!

This is one of the examples where the foundations are being laid now through strategic partnerships. While the possibility of working from home is currently being promoted in broad parts of the population, at least partly driven by the desire to not lose working time in commute traffic, better connected, autonomous cars may soon allow the optimal use of the commute time for working, but also for other productive activities. One of those activities is shopping, for some a necessity, for others a fun activity. In any case, already now shopping is the preferred activity for around 20% of all commuters, as different studies around this field indicate. As a such, a study by CEBR UK, a business consultancy showed that 20% of all UK eCommerce is happening during the morning commute, suggesting the “commuting mCommerce market“ to be worth GBP 29.04 Billion as of today, and underlining the huge potential of this new market on a global scale.

Furthermore, an adjacent study by Enroute, an Israeli startup targeting this market confirms these figures with data on the USA, where 20.3% of Washington D.C. commuters mentioned to use their time commuting for shopping.

Enroute in general is a good example of what the displayed mobility trends lead to: Using and creating car data that is analyzed by internal algorithms, Enroute creates a personalized shopping platforms for its customers, that, in cooperation with Enroute’s mobility partners in the ride hailing and sharing segment, allows passengers to reduce their costs of traveling - a visible and easily understandable benefit to the customer and the mobility services. Reducing the costs of travel is, after all, the decisive factor for whether or not, private cars can and will be replaced by shared and alternative means of transport. We believe in the environmental, but especially social and economic opportunities created through this shift in transportation behavior and subsequently aim to do our part in supporting and driving this new era of travel, enabling our customers to enjoy  the newly created “enroute-time“. Working together with Deutsche Bahn, we have already achieved this: With a staggering average basket of 119€, our customers have been able to enjoy their ride with a fun activity, while traveling for much reduced fares; The retailers they shopped at paid for a share of the price of the journey, according to the value of purchases in their stores - up until the ride was free.

In the future, “Enroute“ will be understood even more literally by our service; Setting up a click & collect system, we will allow passengers to stop by shops that indeed are “en - (their) route“, which will help to reduce e.g. on emissions caused through the complex delivery processes of online bought articles.

To conclude, it is clear that in the future we will see more of these interconnections. Mobility has evolved to a complex and multi-facial market, and will further do so in future. The more of the new technological opportunities companies will be able to supply and use at the same time, the better they seem positioned in a world of increasing complexity of services and interconnection of businesses. And while complexity will be reflected in many core businesses accompanying this trend, sometimes easier ideas can make a difference - such as shopping on the way and riding for free…

We all know that the current mobility marketplace is broken. There are thousands of mobility providers, but they don’t connect together well, if at all. How are people supposed to discover, book and pay for so many different mobility services in the cities they live in or visit? And how can they possibly combine together in the most convenient way, when it usually takes more than one mode to get to their destination?

Enter Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions. Instead of fragmentation, MaaS aims to support the transition from car dependence to mobility access, in a seamless way with one application.

There are at least four categories of MaaS. 

1)    Journey planners. Services like Google maps help people explore different modes of travel from A to B.  As the dominant mapping app for most smart phone users, Google certainly has a strong share of the market. But they don’t provide truly multimodal (or intermodal) routing combinations, they have a limited number of mobility services, and Google does not enable users to book, onboard or pay for services. While Google has been adding a few new mobility services to its discovery engine, it’s very far away from giving users access to the full diversity of services in cities.

2)    Vertically integrated mobility services. Big providers like Uber, Lyft and Grab have begun to offer access to services beyond ridehailing. Uber’s new additions include Jump scooters and public transit ticketing inside their app.  This offers users a benefit of having seamless access to discover, book and pay for some services. But this is heavily limited to the services they already own and operate, and a few others they have chosen to partner with. It’s monopolistic and doesn’t create a healthy marketplace.

3)    “Traditional” MaaS. When we say traditional, we’re not referring to long lifespans… we’re referring to the classical understanding of MaaS, driven by pioneers such as Whim. They operate a B2B2C marketplace, through their own branded app. This model started with the idea of negotiated agreements with the largest provider of each mode of service in the market (e.g. the largest scooter sharing company, largest taxi fleet, the public transit agency) to offer users access to plan, route, book and pay for these services as they go, or with a subscription fee. The services created are useful, but still closed systems. They also disconnect MSPs from the customer, because brand loyalty transfers to the MaaS brand.

4)    The Internet of Mobility, or “open MaaS”, is a new concept Iomob advocates. In an Internet of mobility (IoM), every mobility device can be connected to a protocol, and connected to any end user app connected to the protocol. The benefits of this approach are that it democratizes access to the ecosystem for startups, small businesses and any legal provider of mobility services. Cities and transit operators keep their brand relationships with customers while offering a full range of mobility services. The network effect is open.

If the internet of mobility were to expand on a global scale this means any mobility service could connect to an underlying IoM protocol anywhere in the world, regardless of their size or current user base, and gain equal access to travelers who are using any app connected to the protocol.

This supports more innovation and equity in the mobility ecosystem. Providers can easily launch a new service, even if they only have one or a handful of vehicles.

It will provide a superior user experience, by combining any services connected to the protocol. The best routing options are provided to the user, by the best available vehicle for them based on criteria such as speed, price and user preferences. The marketplace can’t be skewed by a central private operator to favor one type of travel, in order to raise profits. Routes shown are fast and fair.

The city of Madrid just approved 18 licenses to operate scooter sharing services in Madrid.  This free market approach in mobility is great, as it encourages companies to continue to innovate and offer competitive pricing to keep customers happy. But do we really expect residents to download and onboard 18 different scooter apps, then open each one of them to find the nearest one? Then open yet more apps to ride the metro, once they’ve finished with the scooter?

The internet of mobility solves this problem. It still allows mobility companies to compete for users. But it also allows them to collaborate in a seamless, behind-the-scenes way. Imagine the benefit not just for locals, but for visitors of the city. They can access any local scooter, and a full range of other public and private services, without having to download 18 apps.

Lastly and most powerfully, the internet of mobility can enable “global mobility roaming”. Because the same mobility protocol can be spoken everywhere, each person’s home city or country app can discover services when they travel to a new city. They don’t have to sign up for dozens of new services… they just use the app they’re already familiar with, and pay for them in the same way.

The world of mobility is full of promise. We’re just beginning to build out the digital infrastructure that will connect all the exciting new services together. But we need to ensure that the new digital infrastructure is open, so that users can find the right services, at the fairest price, any time.

Only if the future is open will the full promise of MaaS be realized, accelerating the transition towards a lower carbon, less car dependent multimodal ecosystem.

However, the industry consensus in 2019 is that autonomous technology is much harder to deploy on public roads than once thought. As published by the California DMV, autonomous vehicles encounter situations they cannot handle on their own, requiring the intervention of safety drivers.

What if we told you that it's possible to fully realize all the benefits of autonomous mobility, in 2019, without having a safety driver behind the wheel?

The Three Major Benefits of Level 4 Fleets

There are three major benefits to level 4 fleets:

1. Increased Safety - According to NHTSA, 3,166 people were killed in the U.S. during 2017 due to distracted driving. Previous research by NHTSA shows that up to 94% of accidents are caused by human error. By taking human drivers off the road, we can effectively take human error and human impatience off the road as well.
2. Reduced Costs - Compared to all other cost factors, driver wages are the #1 cost for fleet operators, be they fleets of taxis, busses or trucks. According to KPMG, a driver represents up to 40% of the operational costs of running a fleet. Therefore, taking the driver out will result in more affordable mobility.
3. Improved Accessibility for Under-served Populations - On-demand driverless shuttles might mean a better way of life for the visually impaired, a way for the elderly to keep their independence, and a cheaper, more responsive method of getting to the hospital in times of emergency.

While a driver behind the wheel will ensure safety, it won't reduce costs or improve access. The only way to unlock all three benefits of level 4 fleets is via Advanced Teleoperation (ATO™), a platform that enables remote human operators to intervene in a safe and secure manner when needed.

Why Advanced Teleoperation (ATO™) Wins Where Direct Teleoperation Fails

In direct teleoperation, a remote operator manually drives the vehicle as though he were in the vehicle itself. However, not being in the vehicle means that direct teleoperation suffers from multiple problems:

●      Vehicle blind spots and hampered situational awareness make it impossible to drive as well as an in-vehicle driver.

●      The safety of direct teleoperation depends entirely on network conditions. High latency and low bandwidth could make the difference between life and death.

●      Human operators can and will make mistakes due to distraction or misjudgement.

In advanced teleoperation, a remote operator provides real-time insight and instructions, which the vehicle translates into specific actions. An example of this system is path choice, in which the vehicle sends all executable paths for the teleoperator to choose from:

Path choice: multiple executable paths presented to the teleoperator

Another method is path drawing, in which teleoperators draw out a desirable path for the vehicle to execute. In the rare event that remote driving (via steering wheel and pedals) is necessary, Ottopia’s proprietary and patent-pending Advanced Teleoperator Assistance System, or ATAS™, maximizes safety and security. For example, if a teleoperator misjudges the distance to a nearby obstacle, or when cellular network conditions cause high latency or communication failures, Ottopia’s vehicle-side algorithms ensure zero collisions. We will cover Ottopia’s ATAS™ in future articles.

ATAS™- Advanced Teleoperator Assistance System - maximizes the safety and security of every ride by preventing vehicle collisions even when network connectivity is suddenly lost.

So how do the benefits of advanced teleoperation compare with alternative methods of fulfilling the promise of level 4 fleets?

Advanced teleoperation allows for human intervention to happen smoothly and safely. Ottopia provides the most advanced teleoperation platform, which is comprised of 3 core technologies necessary for maximum safety - ATAS ™, network optimization and bonding, and an ultra-low video transport. 

Our cities are growing. The United Nations predicts 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, up from 54% in 2014. This means increased congestion and demand for transport services. By contrast, rural areas with falling populations are already experiencing public transport cuts due to the cost of maintaining low-demand routes.

In parallel, people are increasingly demanding personalized mobility that adapts to their needs, not the other way around. Apps integrating multiple modes of transport into a single platform (Mobility as a Service, MaaS) are changing the way we access services. Similarly, the ‘sharing economy’ and the ability to easily request, track, and pay for trips via mobile devices have led to an explosion in ride-hailing services.

Shared mobility should mean fewer cars on the roads. However, a recent US study found greater numbers of single- or low-occupancy ride-hailing vehicles are actually causing increased congestion.  

Transport accounts for around a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in Europe alone. To tackle the challenges of pollution and scarce urban space, we need sustainable solutions that improve on current models of car dependency and inflexible or inefficient public transport.

Shared occupancy, demand-responsive transit (DRT) is being hailed as one answer. A recent report from Frost & Sullivanpredicts DRT shuttles will account for 50% of the shared mobility market by 2030. They forecast DRT market growth from $2.8 billion in 2017 to $551.61 billion, and an increase in fleet size from 24,100 units to 5.8 million by 2030.

DRT uptake will be driven by smart city initiatives, governmental and mobility policies, reduced car ownership and a shift towards multimodal and intermodal transportation.

Much of this growth will be in Europe–currently the largest shared mobility market–and China. With shuttles already substituting public transport, the Asia-Pacific region constitutes one of the biggest DRT markets and will account for over 60% of growth in fleet size.

The US is also experimenting with different models and should see strong mid to long term growth. In other regions like Latin America, however, shuttles compete with existing shared transportation, while the potential market in Africa is even smaller. 

DRT shuttles combine the affordability of public transport with the convenience of single-occupancy rides. Accessible transport promotes social inclusiveness as citizens of all income levels are able to commute to work within a reasonable time. Flexible scheduling, stops and routing in response to user demand also make them cost-effective to run.

The ITF Forum suggests substituting all car trips for on-demand shuttles would also have a positive effect on the urban environment by freeing up parking space and road lanes. This could then be repurposed for public use.

Since DRT shuttles generally complement public transport, Frost & Sullivan recommend public-private partnerships to expand the market and effectively deploy resources. They suggest asset-heavy services could be run in collaboration between different service providers, or through custom-built technology platforms.

Shotl is working to make this a reality by providing Shotl On-demand Shuttle services to transportation professionals and users. Our platform matches multiple passengers traveling in the same direction with an available vehicle and allows users to book a ride via their smartphone. We aim to help public transport authorities replace low-ridership routes with efficient, optimized mobility and reduce dependence on private vehicles.

Shotl is helping revolutionize mobility with services in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK, Switzerland, Portugal, Finland, and the US.

This article explains how technology platforms help kickstart new transportation services, such as free-floating and station-based sharing, ride hailing & pooling and last-mile deliveries.

The author shares criteria for choosing the right technology platform and shows how a modular architecture allows businesses to respond to market dynamics.

New mobility services don’t have it easy starting out in a competitive market in which it’s about eating or being eaten. Reducing time-to-market to get ahead of the competition and the ability to rapidly expand and adapt to new market conditions are essential factors determining long-term success. A strong technology partner is the best way to ensure that your focus can stay on the business side of things, such as acquiring new customers, while maintaining a strong product-market fit along the way. The question is, how do you identify which technology platform works best for your venture?

The power of technology platforms

With the right technology partner you have the choice of utilising a technology platform as the backbone of your business and even build large-scale transportation services without an own dedicated engineering team. It’s your technology partner’s job to provide the infrastructure and systems your business needs to launch and scale a competitive product. This doesn’t mean however that the technology powering your new mobility business has to be built from the ground up. In fact, apart from the obvious financial difference there are several reasons that speak against starting from scratch and instead relying on established technology platforms to launch your business.

Technology platforms help you launch your business faster, with tried and tested components and apps that can get you up and running within weeks. With the right technology platform as the backbone for your business, you can rely on a complete technology solution, from hardware, mobile and web apps to integrations with your existing software systems.

Choosing the right technology partner and platform can be a difficult process, as it’s not only important to look at your short term requirements and goals, but also your long-term strategy to determine the best fit. And this is where it gets tricky. Every business will evolve over time and although it would be nice – iterations of your business won’t always adhere to a pre-planned roadmap. And as such, there won’t be one technology solution that fits all of your current and future requirements without hands-on collaboration with your technology provider. That is why flexibility matters to ensure that you and your technology partner stay aligned along the way.

A problem with many technology platforms is that you are forced to adapt to a premade solution that in turn doesn’t adapt to your requirements. This can result in your business lacking a unique selling proposition, distinctive customer experience and the ability to adapt to new market conditions. Standard solutions only make sense up to the point at which they hinder your competitiveness. In a sea full of copycats, in which high growth and customer satisfaction are key, these can be make-or-break factors determining your long-term success.

Here are important short- and long-term factors we’d recommend you to look out for in the search for the right technology platform:

Time to market and customisation

The right technology platform should offer a balance between off-the-shelf set-ups, prebuilt components, configurable branding and custom feature development. With the right mix development time can be held at a minimum, without making compromises that restrict competitiveness.

For most new mobility services an off-the-shelf set-up can create a strong basis that can be up and running almost instantly. These solutions should already include the main components you need, such as mobile apps, web dashboards and depending on your business hardware, such as telematics systems. It’s important that these components offer the necessary amount of customisation and white-labeling options, from adapting onboarding and booking flows to ensuring branded customer touchpoints. Additional integrations to tools, such as CRM systems, analytics platforms and customer support software, transform your service from a purely technological stack to an end-to-end business solution.

Long-term competitiveness and the ability to expand your service over time

The success of your new mobility service is determined by the strength of your product-market fit and the ability to adapt your business over time. Paying customers and high retention rates aren’t easily obtained overnight –  they require testing out your service in real market conditions as soon as possible. Customer feedback and real-world learnings can then be leveraged to iterate all parts of your business, from your marketing strategy and target markets to the service offering itself. This is also invaluable for building up a sustainable USP to differentiate your service from the competition.

That is why technology platforms that are designed with a modular infrastructure that can be changed and expanded are so powerful, as they can keep up with this kind of active/reactive behaviour. It’s also important to ensure that your technology stack isn’t a closed system, but open to collaboration and in support of your business development. As you scale up your business, this kind of flexibility gives you the freedom to expand your offering by building and launching additional services.

The delivery of a successful Transport as a Service (TaaS) capability hinges on a number of complementary parts. These include:

1.     Ready availability and suitability of transport options to the travelling public

2.     Trust in the digital services and the information that support these options

3.     Seamless payment mechanisms

4.     Integration of the transport services

5.     Personalisation to reflect the group and individual needs of the travelling public

Traditionally, the immediate consideration for transport provision has focused on physical elements. The first step in the delivery of transport has consisted of the building of new roads, the laying of new tracks and the creation of new vehicle types.. Now, digital infrastructure has become an equally important element which must be considered in parallel to physical assets.  in order to make transport fit for purpose for the needs of the travelling public.

The creation of a mobility platform will play a key role in this. It will look to address the requirements of seamless integrated transport by creating a digital infrastructure that will act as the foundation to the delivery of new services that complement the physical elements. This can include the following:

Policy Based Operating Model

Policy and legislation are central to successful deployment. Without these, there is no co-ordinated mechanism to either manage or take advantage of new technologies and routes to job creation for a growing industry.

A mobility platform can establish an integrated operating model for the different players in this diverse ecosystem and create an environment where testing of new concepts, sharing of knowledge and development of customer focused solutions is possible.

The operating model can utilise new developments in technology in order to allow private organisations to share information in a safe and secure fashion. This requires both leadership at an individual organisation level and national level. Policies need to be put in place to incentivise this change of behaviour as well as ensuring that a sustainable deployment is feasible.

Governments can play  a role to develop a technology-driven policy position that protects the needs of the travelling public and encourages economic growth of a diverse kind due to the creation of a systems-based approach to TaaS deployment and job creation.

Governance and Trust

For the delivery of services in a public operated environment, there is a need to ensure that the data exchanged is fit for purpose. It will be a requirement of the overall system that this data is continuously checked, managed and governed in order to ensure a consistent and auditable data trail in the event of an emergency or other scenario where the data flow is unclear and needs to be established. Checks and balances need to be put in place through an independent body. This will secure the trusted operation for the travelling public as well as guarantee the privacy and ownership concerns of the relevant bodies.

In a Governance framework, there are three important parts;

• Governance – ensuring that the overall goals and objectives of traffic management are being supported by safe and secure communications. These objectives may be derived from an overall transport strategy to ensure better traffic flows. Congestion management and suitable communications will help to deliver on these objectives. This will help build trust between the organisations sharing information and also Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be developed to help track progress. The progress or lack thereof against these KPIs can trigger for changes to the communications processes.
• Risk – the application of an appropriate risk management process linked to governance and compliance needs. Appropriate management initiatives and measures need to be implemented to manage relevant risks. The application of these measures is appropriate to the impact and probability of each risk.
• Compliance – in any business and technical infrastructure that shares information, relevant European and local regulations such as data protection must be adhered to and shown to be adhered to. As with Governance, relevant KPIs can be developed to demonstrate and track compliance.

Digital Services

Data is at the heartbeat of the revolution underway within transport. Linked to this, Digital Services is the ability both to create as well as digest data in order to provide timely and correct information. This data to information capability will be the backbone of ensuring that transport is adapted to meet the needs of the travelling public but also so that the services the operating companies provide are fit for purpose and add value.  A number of key areas must be addressed including:

• Customer Experience – ‘Data-to-Information’ must be shared in an intuitive and seamless manner, regardless of the digital medium used. It is absolutely critical that the visualisation and user experience is interactive. Needless to say, it (the digital interface) must also be is an easy one to steer which creates and offers content that is of value to the travelling public.
• Operations Focus - Whilst the digital experience for the travelling public is key, so too is the ability to feed suitable metrics back to the operators so that they can learn and develop solutions that match the user need.
• Choosing Sense from Nonsense – Huge tracts of data will be generated in this new wave of Mobility. As such, it is important to understand what data offers value to the business and travelling public and what data can be discarded. Storage, management and access to data all have a cost and as such, it will be increasingly important that this is serviced in a financially sustainable way. 

It’s no secret that the automotive industry is focused on a future that is connected, autonomous, shared and electric (CASE). But whilst untold resources have been put into realising this future, there does remain a question mark over consumers’ perceptions of and willingness to adopt these technologies.

When it comes to electric vehicles (EVs), recent data does suggest that consumer appetite for alternatively fuelled vehicles (AFVs) is growing. Indeed, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reports that there was a year on year increase of 20.9% in new AFV sales and 26.9% increase in used AFV sales between 2017 and 2018. This trend is also supported by Auto Trader’s search data which reveals a 40% annual growth in searches for AFVs during the same period.

But the good news doesn’t stop there. When we start to look at EVs our data also shows a rapidly growing interest from UK consumers with, according to our recent survey of 3,000 consumers, 71% considering an EV as their next car. This represents a near threefold increase from September 2017 where consideration was only 25% among consumers.

Despite a clear softening of consumer attitudes towards EVs, there are still a plethora of challenges to be addressed before we see mass adoption. Chief among these is the upfront cost. Whilst great strides have been made in reducing the sticker price of EVs, they do remain more expensive than their petrol or diesel equivalents, for example the VW e-Golf coming in at around £5000 more than a mid-range, petrol powered equivalent (after the UK government plug in grant has been applied). Our research shows that the upfront cost was the primary barrier to consideration among those not considering an EV as their next car. Indeed 74% of consumers would consider buying an EV if the up-front cost was on par with the petrol or diesel equivalents. A further 77% would buy an EV if the cost of running was cheaper.

This cost has been somewhat negated by government grants designed to stimulate adoption of AFVs. However, in the UK the Government’s decision to scrap the grant for new plug-in hybrids and to cut the discount on all-electric cars from £4,500 to £3,500, have the potential to slow adoption on a large scale and threaten, its 2040 ambitions. Our analysis revealed that 41% of those consumers who had heard the grant was available and were looking to buy an AFV in the next three years are now less likely to do so as a result of the amendments.

It is indisputable that EVs are cheaper to run than their petrol- or diesel-powered equivalents however this message is clearly not getting through to consumers. Indeed, despite the juicy appetite, EVs remain a source of confusion for car buyers. Our 2019 poll revealed that 49% of consumers found messaging about fuel types confusing. This is further compounded by the ever-present range anxiety and use of complicated jargon that most people simply don’t understand. After all what consumer knows their cost per kilowatt or the compatibility differences between the variety of charging stations?

As an industry, we can address some of these issues through a revamping of the sales and marketing approach we currently have for EVs. Critical to this will be using finance to bring the affordability of EVs to life and to better showcase the true total cost of ownership compared to petrol and diesel. To help enable such a comparison by the consumer, EVs also need to be better integrated into existing OEM and retailer sales and marketing strategies rather than being treated as an siloed alternative to what is considered the mainstream option.

Should the industry adopt such practises and given the ever-evolving capabilities of EVs, we would predict that the sales of EVs will overtake petrol and diesel by 2030 and represent 16% of the UK car parc by this time.

But whilst there is a clearly emerging consumer appetite for AFVs, there remains a lack of consumer demand for full autonomy. Our research showed that 8 in 10 people would be wary of using a car (84%), taxi (83%) or bus (82%) without the safety net of a human driver, though this is less of a concern for trams and trains (72%). In fact, when asked whether they’d use a self-driving car that they couldn’t take control of, nearly half (48%) said they ‘absolutely wouldn’t use this vehicle’. However, it’s perhaps not surprising. If for many drivers the switch from fossil to electric is a leap of faith, it is at least a leap into widely tried and tested technology. Yet, the transition to self-driving cars is a leap into science fiction. Their application in a real-world scenario will be incredibly challenging and in order for them to become a reality on our roads, the deep-rooted silos that we as an industry tend to work in will need to be addressed. Whilst many argue the government’s cuts to grants demonstrate a lack of understanding of the complexities of the automotive industry, those on the other side of the fence could say the commitment to driverless technology shows a misunderstanding of the huge challenges and disruption it will cause.

On the immediate horizon though, we believe the semi-autonomous technology that many cars already feature offer a far more exciting and profitable opportunity for the industry. One which is currently being largely overlooked. Our research illustrates a clear correlation between consumer understanding of this technology and the opportunity to upsell and build all important brand loyalty. Whilst most car buyers don’t fully understand the technology (61% of car owners believe a rear-view camera is an autonomous feature, and 74% believe lane departure warning also is) when explained to them during the sales process, the immediate and long-term impact can be significant. However, underlining the scale of the missed opportunity, just 35% of car buyers whose car has semi-autonomous features said these were clearly explained to them during the sales process, and only a third (33%) received a demonstration. Should the features be properly explained and demonstrated, our consumer research found that 72% of consumers would be more likely to buy the car on the day and 73% would be more likely to buy the same brand of car in the future.

But it’s not just the front end of retail where consumers are being put off: the use of marketing jargon and acronyms, as with EVs, is also an issue when explain autonomous systems. In fact, when presented with the various manufacturing brand names for their sophisticated semi-autonomous features, the majority of[IP1]  car buyers either miscategorised its function, or simply failed to appreciate its advanced capabilities. Far more effective is language that clearly explains how the features help them in their everyday lives.

The surge of technological advancements shows no sign of slowing down and consumers will need to be ready for new waves of technology coming to their cars. The onus is on us as an industry to ensure that consumers are ultimately ready and fully informed about the technology now available in their vehicles. By ensuring this we create desirability for these features and ultimately ensure that the great efforts being made in realising the future of the automotive industry i.e. CASE is able to both deliver on changing consumer expectations, as well as profitable and sustainable for the automotive industry.

1. Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders new car registrations, January 2019

2. Society of Motor manufacturers and Traders used car transactions, February 2019