Mobility 4 All in Saxony and Beyond
Last week was the day of bringing seamless, intermodal mobility to life! Together with the other partners from the Mobility4All initiative including University Mittweida, WIR! Projektregion, mocci, and Blockchain Showcase Region Mittweida, the bloXmove team kicked off the mobility roaming project for Mittweida.
With this strong set of partners both from the public as well as private sector and the immense support the initiative is getting from the city of Mittweida itself we are confidentially starting to work towards our shared goal of seamless and connected mobility.
The initiative is about rethinking and connecting mobility in Mittweida, not only within the city itself, but also within the entire region of Saxony. To achieve this, the project will be divided into two phases. In a first step, the partners will set up a pilot project in the city of Mittweida and gather data and experience to take into step 2, where the real mobility roaming will begin and cities in the region such as Dresden, Chemnitz, Zwickau, Jena, etc. will be integrated and together form a seamless mobility network.
“People may ask: why Mittweida? Two key arguments: firstly, there is a great group of entrepreneurs here who are looking for solutions rather than objections. Decisions are made quickly, small tests are carried out, and innovation can be experienced. Secondly, the region has a great need for mobility that we ourselves have experienced already when there is no longer any way to get from the train station to the hotel at 10 pm in the evening. Unlike cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Munich — regions like Mittweida are not oversaturated, they can learn from past mistakes and take technological leaps. And this leap — we are taking together in Mittweida!”, my 2 cents, as the CEO bloXmove about the partnership.
This concept is a perfect blueprint for connecting urban and non-urban regions and showcases how it is possible to bring new mobility everywhere. The project team will learn a lot about hotspots, movement pattern, and user acceptance in those specific regions.
The workshop last Wednesday was the official kick-off of phase 1 and the team not only had a close look and test drive with the mocci e-pedal vehicles and the University’s scooters but is also eager to test and learn how the blockchain integration of these devices will work. During this first test phase, the scooters and e-bikes are provided with a digital identity and can communicate automatically with the blockchain using wallets. In addition, also the customers, in this case mainly the almost 7,000 students at the university city, need to be able to identify themselves via decentralized technology and book the first e-services using a mobility token. All this will be integrated and thoroughly tested with the support of the University Mittweida. In the second test phase, bloXmove will connect the front-end and back-end systems and represent every party with a ledger node. This will make a ‘mobility roaming’ experience possible for the end-user and will offer the new way of automated, consumption-based accounting. The manufacturing startup mocci brought first test devices of their smart pedal vehicles which the project team enjoyed riding, checked the hardware, and defined the interfaces to the software — bloXmove’s ledger technology.
“Mittweida is a well-known player in the crypto world, at least since The DAO hack in June 2016. Through the innovative blockchain ecosystem and the networking of the university of applied sciences, city, Volksbank and startups, we create the ideal conditions for novel blockchain applications with real added value. With Mobility4All, a very technical, abstract topic becomes tangible for the local population. mocci and bloXmove are the fitting pieces of the puzzle and important hardware as well as software enablers,” emphasises Michael Ascheron, Cluster Manager of the Blockchain Showcase Region Mittweida.
We love ‘remote’ as bloXmove’s usual working mode, but it was great to kick off the project together with our existing and possible future partners in person. And it was even greater to see the bloXmove vision of a mobility ecosystem come to life with partners that strive in the same direction. We’ll continue working so ‘Mobility 4 all’ may soon grow in Saxony and beyond!
