Fans of American comedy documentary filmmaker John Wilson would likely have noticed his “How To” advisor to locate a parking area in New York. Wilson’s comedian’s message of the odyssey was clear. Buy a car in the city and you will be condemned pain, with a life reduced to a continuous struggle to find places to park your vehicle safely. Over time, this will become an obsession. I think we’ve all been there. And whether you’re talking about London, Paris or Mumbai, it’s pretty much the same wherever you go.
But it’s not just a challenge for car owners. Large tracts of land in cities were faithful to parking spaces. Spaces that can be used to create green spaces or house new homes have been reserved for cars. Added to this are the challenges of pollutants caused. through millions of cars traveling at low speed. This will be less of a challenge when electric cars become dominant, but then they will have the new challenge of locating places to house all mandatory charging points. So how to decrease the number of cars on the roads?while keeping us all moving.
Now cities tend to have smart public transport and many city dwellers have made a conscious decision not to drive, especially here in the UK where I live. In 2020, an investigation through the DVLA, the UK’s vehicle registration authority, found that city car ownership degrees were declining, not just in London. The boroughs of Oxford, Brighton, Newcastle and Birmingham saw decreases in the number of other people owning and driving cars. This is a trend that has accelerated to some extent through local government allowing non-public shipping solutions, such as scooters and bicycles, while increasing parking fees.
Personal transport
But here’s the thing. There will be times when many of us will want to use cars. There are routes where buses, trams, trains or scooters simply don’t cut mustard. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to own them.
I spoke to two British salespeople who gave me other answers to control the negative effect of cars on the urban environment.
Michael Mangion is the founder of Trilvee. La company’s solution to the urban transport challenge is a vehicle-on-demand service. Customers who want a car will use an app to place an order. The vehicle will then be driven remotely to the designated location. Then the visitor takes the car. Once the consultation is over, the remote motive force “teleports” and takes the car to the next task.
As Mannon recalls, Trilvee’s inspiration was, at least in part, his wife’s party when the couple lived in the Scottish city of Dundee. car,” he says.
Mangion’s purpose was to make the use of automobiles more efficient. The company cites figures suggesting that the average car sits idle for 11. 4 years over a 12-year life cycle. At the same time, many trips are for a single occupant. Seeing a business opportunity, Mangion, a software engineer in the industry, began working on a formula that would reduce the number of cars on the road and ensure city dwellers can only access cars when needed.
Alex Kendall, CEO and co-founder of Wayve, has taken a different approach. Instead of offering a service, his company is developing the hardware and software that could drive the arrival of self-driving, driverless cars and vans. Essentially, the manufacturer-independent generation can be adapted and a combination of computer vision and AI allows them to safely navigate traffic. Above all, thanks to the learning of the device, the formula can be trained to drive on the roads in a remarkably short period of time.
The company has been conducting tests on public roads since 2018 and has signed advertising partnerships with delivery companies Asda and Ocado to conduct tests on their fleets. To fund the system’s hype, Wayve just raised $200 million in Series B funding. Its purpose as an organization is to see its generation used in a hundred villages around the world.
Urban spaces
So what are the benefits? Well, safety is important. Once generation is perfected, self-driving cars won’t make the mistakes drivers are prone to. But like Mangion, Kendall also sees an opportunity to create greener, friendlier cities. of cars on the road,” he says. For example, autonomy will be a catalyst for transit services.
Obviously, this is a hot domain for the automotive industry as a whole. But is it a domain for entrepreneurs? After all, the big names in the automotive industry are investing in autonomous systems. So, is it imaginable for a startup to gain market share?
Kendall says Wayve’s credit is its team of skilled studies and revolutionary camera technology and synthetic intelligence.
But marketers face the challenge of moving up in their generation. In the near future, Wayve’s delivery service partnerships will allow the company to put its generation on the street.
Trilvee’s technique has been to communicate with the local government who might be interested in accommodation to introduce an on-demand car service. Mangion says he has won two letters of intent (letters of intent to date, the forums in question cannot be named).
The plan is to focus on small towns. As demand is limited due to population, effective service can be implemented with fewer vehicles. Mangion emphasizes that the purpose is to temporarily advance beyond the testing stage. judgment. We have to move to the market,” he says. To date, he has secured the investment of angels, friends and family circle, but he is looking for more investments.
Mangion posits that Trilvee’s cars will complement another urban transport bureaucracy, such as electric scooters and electric motorcycles for hire. “We need to interact with them,” he says. They are usually last mile options. They don’t go any further. We can bring other people from the suburbs.
Kendall that a diversity of responses is needed in the smart cities of the future. “Cities want to take a broad view of transportation. We want everything: walking, biking, public transportation, micromobility, personal transportation. Last mile and first mile answers.
All those supply opportunities for entrepreneurs, however, regulation by local and national governments is very important. Kendall, a green light from the national government, will be very important for the progress of the autonomous vehicle market. He presents the law temporarily as promised,” he said.
Change is coming to the way we move around cities and will take many forms, with electric, autonomous and remotely driven cars as components of a much larger whole. How temporarily this happens is a question. Much of the generation is already in place, the speed of implementation will depend not only on engineering, software and investment, but also on the speed of regulatory support.