Martin Saps

The Convergence Ecosystem in Mobility

September 12, 2018

Contents

All you need to know about the impact of the internet of things, blockchains and artificial intelligence on the transportation and logistics industries

To read the paper download here

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By Vangelis Andrikopoulos & Lawrence Lundy-Bryan

An Existential Crisis

Electric vehicles and lithium battery costs are falling quickly; autonomy software is improving at a rapid pace and ride-sharing platforms are leading customers to question the need to own cars. The industry is struggling not just to adapt to these changes, but even to have a coherent framework to understand what is happening. Without a vision of the future, the industry is destined to be reactive and lose the critical customer relationships to technology companies.  

 

From Integrated Mobility…

Electrification, autonomy, and access-over-ownership consumer preferences are reshaping every part of the industry and moving the industry into a new era of so-called integrated mobility. This is the concept of a seamless transit experience incorporating multimodal, public and private transport. As the transport value chain expands to become the mobility value ecosystem, the old way of doing business won’t continue to work. Citymapper calls this ‘floating transport’.  

 

To Open Mobility 

In this paper, we use our Convergence Ecosystem framework to understand the profound changes disrupting the transportation and logistics industries. The Internet and mobile technologies are changing the way consumers and businesses access and buy transportation services while on-demand services and autonomy will challenge the fundamentals of ownership. Previously airlines only competed with airlines; car makers with car makers; and Apple just made mobile phones and laptops. However a new era of what we are calling ‘Open Mobility’ is upon us: movement is decentralised, multimodal, automated, it aspires to be increasingly sustainable.

 

Building a Decentralised,Mulitmodal, Automated, and Sustainable Transport System 

Without fundamentally rethinking our approach to infrastructure for this emergent integrated mobility landscape, we will face a tragedy of the commons. Without shared infrastructure and a collaborative approach, siloed operating systems and data will limit the transformational impact of multimodal mobility. The consumer will have to navigate a range of different systems as they move from a car to a bike to a plane. Businesses will not be able to fully utilise their assets. Smart cities will remain only a dream. However for all parties to rely upon any one entity to control this system would be to submit to a monopoly that would gain from increasing data and intelligence advantages, becoming almost impossible to remove.

We need a mobility ecosystem based on shared infrastructure in which resources, data, and value can be exchanged seamlessly. The Convergence ecosystem is a valuable framework for understanding how this decentralised, multimodal, automated, and sustainable infrastructure can be designed and built.

“Transport and mobility are a remarkable example of a complex system with too many moving parts. Managing such a system in a centralised fashion is both figuratively and literally a journey to nowhere. Our project, Fetch AI converges digital autonomy, decentralised ledgers and AI bring those moving parts to life and allow them to make their own decisions, free of human and centralised control.” Toby Simpson, CTO, Fetch.AI

 

Download the paper here to understand more:

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