Intelligent Mobility Goes Beyond Driverless Cars

How the Netherlands is futureproofing its transport technology strategy and infrastructure by looking at the bigger picture.

The problem of moving people around efficiently is a bit of a ticking time bomb. The global population continues to grow and concentrate in already overcrowded urban centres. Add to this the fact that we’re all getting older and living longer, and the urgent need to cut down carbon emissions, and we’ve got a serious challenge on our hands. Technology will no doubt play a huge role in addressing that problem, but many of the people working on that at the moment are not doing so from Silicon Valley, but in Holland.

It will probably surprise nobody to learn that the Netherlands has the highest bicycle usage rates in the world. Much less known, however, is the fact that they also have a long and proud history of pioneering automated driving technology going back to 1995, or that its electric bus manufacturers are thriving due to the government’s directive that by 2025 every public transport vehicle sold in the country will have to be zero-emission.

I learned all this while touring Holland last month as a guest of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, who were keen to show off their innovation in the area of automotive technology and mobility.