Dramatic changes will be coming in the automotive area ...

First of all thanks a lot to all the best wishes and feedback for the 1st birthday of my BLOG. It was really difficult to handle the huge number of comments and Guestbook entries in the last two days. I am just joking. Just one small wish for the 2nd year from my side --> would be really great to make this a little bit more interactive, from a one- to a two-way communication. What do you think, just my proposal and all voluntary, you should not feel any pressure at all . 

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. —Marcus Aurelius
Waste No More Time Arguing What A Good Man Should Be. Be One. —Marcus Aurelius

Late yesterday evening I came back from Berlin from the ConCarExpo 2017 (https://www.concarexpo.com/en/). Due to another appointment today, I could only participate on Day 1. My summary of the 1st day below:

• The day was opened by Johann Jungwirth, the VW CTO (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannjungwirth/)
  • The current automotive environment as we know it, will change shortly towards Electric Cars, Driverless solutions and a Car Sharing community
  • After software and platforms, artificial intelligence will be the next driver for change
  • We will see the Triple S for the digital future - Smart Customer, Smart Products and the Smart Enterprise
  • 8 key factors are the basis for the so called Human Thinking Model - Emotion, Beauty, Innovation, Intelligence, Integrity, Life, Society and Sustainability
  • By 2021 SEDRIC the new self-driving car of VW (a solution supporting all the 8 key factors) will be changing our cities - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ6SvfOx528
  • For more details about the to be expected changes, have a look at the RethinkX study at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/591a2e4be6f2e1c13df930c5/1494888038959/RethinkX+Report_051517.pdf
• The day was closed by Kent Melin, Senior Technical Leader at Volvo Car Corporation (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentmelin/)
  • By 2020 nobody should be killed or injured in a Volvo Car
  • Zenuity - a joint company of Autoliv and Volvo was created to develop next-gen software for autonomous cars - https://www.zenuity.com/
  • Starting 2019 all new Volvo Cars will be electrified !! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/05/volvo-cars-electric-hybrid-2019
• In between I learned a lot about
  • Different Car Sharing approaches like
    • Ridecell https://ridecell.com/
    • Invers https://invers.com/
    • Drivy Germany https://en.drivy.com/
    • Mobi AG http://mobiag.com/en/
    • Free2move https://de.free2move.com/en
    • Viamaxi GmbH http://viamaxi.com/
  • During a Start-Up pitch battle I heard some insights about new companies like
    • Nunav navigation by graphmasters http://nunav.net/
    • Inno2grid - Microsmartgrid https://inno2grid.com/
    • Ubeeqo MaaS, a 100% subsidiary of Europcar https://www.ubeeqo.com/en
    • Third Space Auto - technology has to serve the customer https://www.thirdspaceauto.com/
  • And some other interesting companies
    • Security checks - http://www.reply.com/en/
    • bemyapp - Hackathon organization http://events.bemyapp.com/
    • https://www.kumpan-electric.com/
  • Finally Finland as the Digital Frontrunner (http://www.epc.eu/pub_details.php?cat_id=1&pub_id=7701) in Europe with companies like
    • http://maas.global/
    • http://www.foreca.com
    • http://www.rightware.com/
    • and many more ...

A great day with a lot of interesting ideas and the confirmation that the automotive future is much closer than we think, so be prepared and open minded.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future. Walt Disney