Transforming the mobility landscape through collaboration and innovation

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The way we move from A to B has to change. Economically, the increased congestion on our roads is costing the EU nearly €100 billion annually. And the environmental impact is just as big, with the extended transport ecosystem causing 22 percent of Europe’s greenhouse emissions.

Thankfully, things are changing. Converging forces are driving innovation and change in the way that people and goods move around. Regulators are supporting a shift toward electrification, with President Von der Leyen’s recent State of the Union address confirming Europe’s ambition to reduce carbon emissions by 55 percent by the end of the decade. Both consumers and businesses are demanding more choice, more flexibility, and more sustainable mobility solutions. And new technology innovations are making a more connected, autonomous, shared, and electric mobility landscape a reality.

It is becoming clear that increased collaboration is required to realise the Future of Mobility. In Deloitte’s latest ‘State of Mobility after COVID-19’ study, we found that one in two organisations in the mobility ecosystem started new partnerships during the crisis and intend to continue them in the mid- to long-term. With this in mind, Deloitte is partnering with scaleups.eu to facilitate the Future of Mobility track at The Big Score on December 1. Our aim is to connect leading CIOs and CTOs with the brightest and best tech scale-ups that could help to solve the specific business challenges they face.

To learn more, we brought together one of these corporates and one of these scale-ups to exchange views and answer a few key questions on this hot topic.

What is your vision for the Future of Mobility?

Johan Van Langendonck, Head of Strategic Initiatives, Mobility Solutions at Bridgestone Europe: At Bridgestone, we believe in a future that is context-specific, multimodal, and fleet-driven. In the future, the zone in which people and goods move will determine which means are available for the job. As people and goods move from one zone to another, they will have to change modes in strategically-located multimodal hubs. With ownership of context-specific vehicles becoming more expensive, mobility will increasingly be operated by fleets, especially in the urban environment.

For this vision to become a reality, we also believe that there is a need for a strong phygital backbone to properly orchestrate supply and demand in a cost-efficient and sustainable manner. On the demand side, multimodal applications, freight brokerage platforms, and traffic management systems will become pivotal to deliver a good customer experience, while enabling fleets to maximise their utilisation rates and keeping our cities livable. On the supply side, Internet of Things-based fleet management systems that are digitally-connected to vehicle service providers and parts manufacturers will be necessary to minimise the fleet’s total cost of ownership (TCO) and maximise the vehicles’ uptime.

Jonathan Weber, CEO Urbantz: With the explosion of e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic, last mile delivery is putting traffic pressure on those urban zones that Johan mentions. Inefficient routes, half empty vans, and multiple players are all contributing to unnecessary pollution, congestion and noise.

At Urbantz, we believe that the future of mobility is to have city-run consolidation hubs, strategically placed, from which eco-friendly (electric, cargo-bikes, walkers) last mile delivery can be executed, with service quality and environmental key performance indicators (KPIs) as key drivers. Shippers should have the ability to optimise deliveries not only for cost but also for low emissions.

Why are partnerships and ecosystems important?

Johan: Many parties participate in and are involved with mobility, making it an ecosystem play by definition. These parties include governments, fleets, insurers and vehicle service providers, just to name a few. Elevating our current mobility experience to the next level, in an attempt to reduce stress, pollution and wasted time, will require all of these parties to work together, as each of them has a piece of the puzzle.

Jonathan: Ecosystems are a cornerstone in realising the Future of Mobility. Indeed, courier services such as DHL, TNT, UPS, etc. will be required to drop packs in distribution centres, so that smaller, last mile, players can take over the distribution to homes. In this context, a central digital platform will be required to enable all these players to work as partners, seamlessly.

How can corporates and scale-ups work together to realise the Future of Mobility?

Johan: As part of our transformation journey, we are continually looking for strategic partners that can enable our developments, accelerate our time to market, or scale our existing and emerging mobility solutions. Young technology companies are typically great enablers or accelerators for our bold vision, as they experiment more with future technologies, take a different approach to solving big and recurring business or technology problems, and are not afraid to challenge our thinking.

At the Big Score, we very much hope to meet young technology companies that can help us to better integrate our vehicle services network into our digital mobility solutions, as this is an important milestone in our journey to become the trusted partner of fleets and help them minimise their TCO, maximise their vehicles’ uptime, and streamlining their operations.

Jonathan: At Urbantz, we’re often faced with the old corporate tendency to build instead of buy, which has become even more prevalent with recent paradigms such as SaaS. What many corporates fail to understand are the actual costs of building such a solution, the delayed time to market, risk in not getting it ready within time and budget and the additional costs of maintaining and evolving the solution.

We offer a platform that has been developed over a few years, with over 15,000 days of development investment in it, with over 1,000 man R&D days invested in it yearly – why not license it and benefit from all that past and future investment? We’re excited that 25 leading corporations will be raising specific challenges like these to tech scale-ups at The Big Score on December 1.

Featured image credit: Kumpan Electric on Unsplash

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