GPS Business News

The fifth annual ConnecteDriver & Smart Mobility conference has opened its call for speakers. The conference will be held in Brussels (Belgium) on February 7th and 8th 2018, gathering more than 200 attendees.

Experts are invited to propose 20 minutes presentations in the following categories:

The rise of car sensors & on-board supercomputing

The car is increasingly becoming a sensor on wheels with ultrasonic sensors, radar, imaging, LIDAR, … Making sense of data from this wealth of sensor in real-time requires super computers, another trend in the industry. What is the industry landscape for car sensors & supercomputing? Shall we expect some sensor technologies to take over the market or a multi-sensors aproach to become the rule?

Software Defined Car & Automotive Cloud

As the number of line of codes embedded in cars grows exponentially, how is the trend towards a “software defined car“ affecting the car architecture, the car industry and ultimately the driver? What shall we expect from software updates and how shall we cope with cyber threats?

Digitization of car retail & Retailing of connected cars and services

Selling connected services at the dealership requires new skills and marketing tools: are car brands successful and how are they making it happen?

The digitization of cars is as much a change as the digitization of the customer and purchasing experience. If the Internet is the ultimate platform to sell cars, shall we expect the end of dealerships? What are the tools and strategies for car dealers and repair shops to face this revolution?

The end of OBD?

Some car makers have announced the end of the OBD (On-Board Diagnostic) port, shutting down the data data when the vehicle moves. What does it mean for aftermarket solutions in the insurance, fleet management & other verticals? How fast is this going to happen? Is it legal? What is the plan B for OBD device & solution vendors?

Investment strategies and M&A in the connected car industry

The connected and driverless car industry markets have seen a lot of interest from corporate investors and venture capital funds and significant acquisitions took place recently. This session will provide visibility on theses M&A activities, review the various trends happening here and highlight the current hot topics for investment in the industry.

Connected, Autonomous Trucks & Logistics

From Fleet Management Systems to autonomous trucks & connected logistics, the truck industry is driving on the fast lane. What are the opportunities in connecting trucks to logistics data? Shall we expect truck drivers to disappear or their work & skills to be completely reinvented? Shall we expect trucks to drive mostly in large convoys (platooning) in the near future? The conference is opening up to this topic for the first time with the goal to provide an overview of a revolution that is just getting started.

Connected Rider

Motorbikes and their riders are getting connected through embeded systems, smartphone apps & connected accessories (helmets, GPS, wearables, etc.) for saferty, convenience or entertainment purposes. This session will explore these new innovations and the opportunities of the two-wheelers market.

What is the perfect vehicle for urban mobility?

New mobilities are changing the way people are moving in cities, with a clear trend towards multimodal usages and a multiplication of available vehicles : shared, motorized or not, electric, connected, on-demand, 2, 3 or 4 wheels, driverless…What are the characteristics of the perfect vehicle for urban mobility?

How cities/governments can adapt their regulations and infrastructure to accelerate new mobilities deployment and adoption ?

Implementation of new mobility services by operators very often require for them to have proper regulations (parking permits, city authorisations…), as well as potential specific infrastructure adaptation (reserved space, signs, access systems…).Through these actions, cities/governments can have a strong influence and impact on these projects.

Mobility-as-a-Service: when automakers and transportation companies are working together?

The Mobility-as-a-Service concept, instead of opposing the different transportation modes, combines them to propose the best of each to the users, according to their current needs or situation. As such, car sharing, car on-demand, or autonomous cars are potentially bringing new solutions to transport systems.

How smart mobility applies to urban logistics?

Besides ensuring a smarter way to transport people, smart mobility is also about solving the logistics issues related to dense and large cities. The growing number of vehicles ensuring urban goods distribution, including related to the fast growing e-commerce deliveries, implies increased congestion, air pollution and noise. More and more cities need to develop smart solutions to the last mile delivery of goods.

How Artificial Intelligence/Data Analytics can help better understand mobility needs and habits, and help improve mobility services?

Understanding mobility patterns and issues require the analysis of increasing amount of data, but above all, more and more complex and various types of data. Artificial Intelligence technologies can bring to cities and operators new capabilities to understand and predict what happens in their territory as well as people behaviours, and from there bring continuous improvement to mobility services.

How Parking is evolving in the era of Smart Mobility and Smart City?

Smart Mobility in the Smart City cannot exist without innovative parking solutions. Thanks to location based services, IoT technologies, real time information or shared services, new solutions to extend and facilitate parking possibilities are rapidly extending. This session will review the latest, most innovative solutions.

Will Car Ownership survive in Large Cities?

Alternatives to Individual Car Ownership are growing fast, bringing a large choice and economically attractive solutions to users. In that respect, it is interesting to measure and understand the motivations and choices of large cities inhabitants…

Apply for the call for speakers here:

http://www.connectedriver.events/call-for-speakers

PSA Group has launched the Free2Move app which provides access to car-sharing services from approximately twenty operators in five European countries.

The app is the first step in their strategy to become a leading provider of Mobility-as-a-service (Maas).

Grégoire Olivier, Head of PSA Group’s Mobility Services, stated: "The Free2Move application simplifies our customers’ mobility experience by offering them solution choices through an intuitive platform.

The Free2Move application provides centralised access to the services of several car-sharing operators (Car2Go, DriveNow, eMio, Coup, Multicity, etc.) via a single application which brings together several types of transport solutions (one-way, round trip, peer-to-peer providers of cars and scooters).

The smartphone application is available in several cities in Germany, Italy, Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It will soon be offered in France, Spain and the Netherlands. It is free and available on the App Store, Play Store and Windows Phone.

According to marker research from Frost & Sullivan, the number of users of car-sharing services worldwide should grow by a factor of 4.5 in 10 years with an increase from 8 to 36 million people between 2015 and 2025.

For years I’ve been writing sentences like "this will be the year that indoor location will explode into the market." I, and many others, have been expecting indoor location technology to enable the huge range of location-enabled apps, which currently work only outside where GPS signals are available, to work inside. But until now the promise of indoor location has remained a promise.

But if we look at the reasons for this, we’ll see that it is about to change. 2017 and 2018 are poised to be the years that the challenges keeping indoor location from going mainstream will be solved.

First is accuracy. Most indoor location technologies until a year or so ago had accuracy in the range of 4 to 8 meters. This sounds good in principle, and in fact is better than GPS in many cases. But GPS systems are able to use road details to hide their inaccuracies, so that the blue dot seems to follow your driving car almost perfectly. But indoors, this sort of inaccuracy means your phone thinking you’re on the wrong aisle of a supermarket or in front of the wrong counter at the food court. Bottom line, the user experience we all want requires more accuracy.

Second is setup and configuration. Most indoor location systems on the market in the past few years have been based on Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, BLE beacons are fairly cheap, and can be installed throughout a site, every 30-40 meters, to give better performance (or so is believed) than Wi-Fi based systems. But installing this many beacons, and mapping the site to measure the Bluetooth signals at each point in the site, takes a lot of time. This is especially true for big sites.

Third, all the indoor location technologies reaching market recently have come from small start-up companies. Are these companies able to deliver the solutions that the market will want, and maintain them at all the sites at which their technology is being deployed? Can the companies developing the core technology also handle the load of deploying it at sites worldwide, integrating it with existing site applications, and maintaining it?

A new report from Grizzly Analytics shows that all of these factors are now solved in a growing number of solutions reaching market. First, accuracies of 2-3 meters are becoming increasingly common in the market. (This was shown in the 2016 Indoor Location Testbed) Second, several new technologies have reduced considerably the setup and configuration time required, including SLAM, crowdsourcing, infrastructure-free positioning, and more. Third, ongoing M&A is bringing indoor location technologies into the hands of major companies, and the ecosystem is maturing into a form in which one set of companies is delivering technology and another set is deploying it in the market.

All of these factors indicate that 2017 will be the year that indoor location technologies can truly deliver what the market wants. The real explosion may take until 2018, but it is happening.

Grizzly Analytics will publish a Guide to Indoor Location at the Mobile World Congress 2017. It will include all the indoor location vendors, developers and providers at the conference. Learn more here.

About the author

Bruce Krulwich is the founder and Chief Analyst of Grizzly Analytics, a technology analysis and strategy company focused on technologies still in R&D. Bruce uses his background in technology research and innovation to analyze technologies for differentiation, application and implications.

Mobile navigation software vendor NDrive has launched at CES in Las Vegas a new navigation solution called Karta Automotive. The software can be used as a built-in or brought-in solution by car manufacturers.

As a solution built in the dashbaord it connects the car to NDrive’s mobile services via a smartphone. As a brought-in solution it allows the in-vehicle display to interact with the NDrive mobile app via a number of possibilities: Bluetooth, MirrorLink, USB, Wi-Fi, Bosch mySpin and Ford Sync.

“Karta Automotive engine allows to develop, customize and change solutions quickly, helping partners provide advanced navigation solutions for infotainment systems,“ explained NDrive.

The company created a dedicated subsidiary, Karta Software Technologies, to support its automotive customers.

ConnecteDriver & Smart Mobility will start in 4 weeks in Brussels on February 1st & 2nd 2017.

Taking place for the fourth year, the event will gather 50 expert speakers and 180 decision makers in a comprehensive one and half day of presentation, panel discussion and networking sessions.

Among the speakers and participants, attendees will learn and network with:

– Leading car makers: BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, PSA, Renault, Toyota

– Tier one & tier two auto suppliers, content vendors & IT companies: TomTom, V-Traffic, RideCell, Infoware, Moovel, Zipcar, Coyote, PTV, Sierra Wireless, Pioneer, Harman, TeleNav, Yandex, Bosch, Garmin, Xee, NDrive, Oracle…

– Smart Cities, including representatives from Brussels, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Barcelona…

Check out the full program here:

http://www.connectedriver.events/program