Thank you for joining us on our Gather Day 04 on Friday, January 6th. For those who missed it, the event highlighted the next big milestone for holoride and a nice kick-off for holoride’s Cloudbreakers NFT collection.
Our fourth Gather Day, fresh off the new year, delved into two main info silos: The release of the holoride retrofit at CES 2023 and the first major Cloudbreakers utility with a raffle of 20 retrofits to our Cloudbreakers NFT community.
Kicking off the year at CES 2023 in Las Vegas
First things first. CES is known as the most influential tech event in the world. Held in Las Vegas, brands showcase their latest innovations in consumer electronics. Interesting fact: It has also become one of the best stages on which to shine a light on automotive brands exhibiting their latest in-car tech. CES is a special event for holoride. Back in 2019, holoride was officially introduced in Las Vegas in collaboration with Audi gracing the public with first-ever demos! It was back then that TechCrunch named us “the best thing at CES 2019.”
During his keynote speech about tech trends at CES 2023, Steve Koenig, VP of Research at Consumer Technology Association (CTA) quipped, “The metaverse is closer than you think.” To which our CEO Nils Wollny added, “Yes! And holoride contributes to the advent of the Metaverse with our vision of the Motorverse. We’re moving away from screens and entering the era of spatial computing. Cars are set up perfectly for this next computing age because they are spatial devices.”
Revealing the next big milestone in holoride’s journey: the holoride retrofit solution
The other highlight of Gather Day #4 was the reveal of holoride’s retrofit solution. It is a compact device that allows any car in the world to become holoride-ready, regardless of model, make, or year. The retrofit solution provides the motion and location data of the vehicle. Instead of data from the car’s sensors, we have built a device that provides similar data while training our algorithms to work with such statistics.
And there’s more: To enable creators to experiment with holoride compatible content, we’ve developed a dev kit for them to try out what they built. Since the VR experience was so good, we refined it and decided to turn it into a consumer product. Wollny explained, “In Germany, there are close to 50 million cars on the road. However, the average age of those cars is 11 years. In the US it’s 100 million passenger cars, and the average age is 12 years. The retrofit will definitely help us to scale!”
It’s part of holoride’s long-term strategy to seamlessly integrate the system into cars, simply because you get more data from the cars if holoride is fully integrated. Car brands all look for new business models to monetize their car data, so holoride is highly attractive. If anything, the retrofit increased the pressure to integrate holoride. Adoption of new technologies always takes a little longer than everyone expects. What you can clearly see, though, is that all car brands put a lot of effort into in-car experiences.
Overall, CES 2023 has been a huge success for holoride. The release of the retrofit was met with enthusiasm by experts and the public. It also garnered a lot of attention from the international press being covered by the likes of TechCrunch, engadget, Forbes and even CoinDesk.The cherry on top: holoride was named @CES ® 2023 Innovation Awards Honoree in the category In-Vehicle Entertainment & Safety!
But let’s get real. For holoride to go mainstream it’s crucial to show our solution. People also need to get their hands on VR devices! You really need to try it out, reading about it does not come close to the actual experience.
Wowing its holders with a major kick-off utility: Cloudbreakers NFT Collection
holoride also kicked-off a special raffle with 20 holoride retrofit packs to our Cloudbreakers NFT community. To reward our loyal members, only those who held at least one unlisted Skyjack at the point of the snapshot on January 6th are eligible. The winners of the retrofit pack will receive a gift worth 899€. But more importantly, they will be among the first people worldwide to experience the in-car entertainment revolution! The lucky victorious individuals will hence become the first official holoride ambassadors. A perk that comes along with the prize: Our winners get an exclusive line to CEO Nils Wollny to co-shape product iterations.
From the get go, we envisioned Skyjack as an entity able to grab things in the real world: This will continue! The fusion of physical and digital experiences will create completely new games. The retrofit raffle is just the first kick-off utility with many more benefits to come for holders. It marks the beginning of strengthening the bond between Web3 and holoride’s tech, between Cloudbreakers and the Motorverse.
Once again, we’d like to thank all of you — the community — who took part in Gather Day 04: Your questions, the answers to which you find down below, were insightful and definitely proved your growing passion for the product. Stay tuned for Gather Day #5!
Community Questions Gather Day No. 4
What’s the difference between the Pioneer’s Pack and retrofit?
The Pioneers’ Pack is what you need for a holoride-ready car. If your car is not holoride-ready, you need the holoride retrofit Pack.
For holoride retrofit, if I order now, will it work here in Asia?
Technically, the retrofit works from everywhere, but we don’t ship to all countries yet. More markets will follow this year.
When can we buy a holoride T-shirt or hoodie?
This is one of our next initiatives in 2023 as we get so many requests for shirts.
Why didn’t you add BTC and RIDE to payment options?
Crypto payment options will be added soon.
When do you plan to enter on other exchanges in 2023?
This is a priority for this year.
Is anything already in planning to partner with or to equip ridesharing providers like Uber?
There are no concrete plans, but the holoride retrofit offers exactly this option, so we’ll definitely explore this.
Cloudbreakers is just beginning with the prototypes. Will there be an evolution along with a new part in the story?
We have sketched out different plotlines and as Gen0 holders you’ll benefit from the evolution of the story.
What can you tell us about the upcoming NFT sales? Will current holders get whitelisted and receive a discount?
We haven’t decided on the specifics yet. But we will definitely give existing holders priority access.
The whole world is getting ready for holoride and we’re very excited for what is to come. Will holoride organize events/meet-ups?
Yes, stay tuned. In the second half of this year we’ll definitely do something.
About holoride
holoride creates an entirely new media category for passengers by connecting Extended Reality (XR) content with data points from the vehicle in real-time. These data points include physical feedback, like acceleration and steering, traffic data, as well as travel route and time. holoride technology provides a new type of immersion into any kind of VR content, creating a breathtaking, immersive experience, and significantly reducing motion sickness.
The tech startup was founded at the end of 2018 in Munich, Germany by Nils Wollny, Marcus Kuehne, Daniel Profendiner, and Audi, who holds a minority stake in the startup.
In April 2021, holoride raised €10 million in its Series A funding round led by Terranet AB, earning the company a €30 million valuation. That same year, holoride won the prestigious SXSW Pitch and was also named Best in Show. It has been hailed “Best of CES 2019” four times, recognized as one of the “100 Best Inventions of 2019” by TIME Magazine, and is part of the global innovation platform “STARTUP AUTOBAHN powered by Plug and Play”.
