From Vienna to Munich: With the Mobility.Pioneers event, the Vienna Pioneers Festival made its second stop in the Bavarian capital. At the event, held at Munich's Muffatwerk, a selection of the world's largest OEMs and mobility providers met with promising startups working on innovative technologies.
Mobility.Pioneers came to the Isar River last Thursday with relevant topics from the field of mobility: automation, connectivity, shared use, electrification, regulatory landscapes, and new business models—to name just a few. In his keynote speech, Dominik Schiener, co-founder of the cryptocurrency IOTA, spoke about distributed ledgers and explained how IOTA's technology can, for example, process free micropayments that enable payments between machines.
“In a few decades it should be illegal for a
person driving a car"
Mate Rimac, innovator in the field of electronic supercars, whose
Pursue Rimac Automobili the Rimac Concept_One, took part
the panel discussion on electrification with gyroscopeCEO Walter Kreisel
and spoke himself at a keynote speech towards the end of the day.
Mate Rimac:
"Autonomous driving and new mobility will enable widespread electronic vehicles. In a few decades, it should be illegal for a
person driving a car. In an autonomous environment, a human driver would be a weak link in the chain."
While Facebook’s Christoph Stadeler gave a keynote speech on the giant’s contribution to the mobility sector, Assaf Harel spoke about the technology of Karamba Security and the increasing need for cyber security.
"We're entering an era where autonomous vehicles are controlled remotely. Attacks are already occurring today, and that's a concern for OEMs."
“So let’s all change lanes.”
But exciting discussions and presentations took place not only in the arena, but also on the Grand Prix stage, where a total of 20 startups pitched. Pitches were presented in four tracks: Shared Use Pitching, Electrification Pitching, Autonomous Pitching, and Connectivity Pitching.
The Swiss startup could win embotech in the autonomous field. embotech offers motion planning software. This is designed to control the steering, braking, acceleration, and parking of a self-driving car through calculations performed 50 times per second.
As a prize, the startup around embotech CTO Alexander Domahidi was able to win a place in the Pioneers Challenge Top 50 at Pioneers'18 It also received an invitation to Brussels to meet with European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, who heads the EU's Energy Union.
“Thanks to your ideas, today’s children may never have to learn how to drive,”
said Domahidi the audience.
"They may only learn about car accidents in history books. Air pollution might sound like a medieval epidemic to them. So let's all change lanes, and may 2018 be the year we accelerate toward clean, connected, and autonomous mobility."
