Dear AUTOPILOT community,
your favourite interview series is back! This month we sat with our partner NEVS to speak about Automated Valet Parking, CAD market opportunities and IoT benefits for final users.
Enjoy the reading!
Meeting NEVS: introduction of the company
NEVS stands for National Electric Vehicle Sweden. The company was founded in 2012 with a combination of the Swedish engineering heritage from Saab and the Chinese entrepreneurship in the green energy sector. NEVS’s vision is to shape mobility for a more sustainable future, in order to address issues such as air pollution, climate change and congestion. We focus on building vehicles following three core trends: electric, shared, and digital & autonomous.
NEVS in AUTOPILOT: what is your role in the project?
As an OEM partner, NEVS provides a secure interface between IoT and a vehicle for a safe remote operation. This allows other project partners to have full access to our vehicle controllers, while being assured that all internal safety protocols are followed on the vehicle end. Therefore, NEVS maximises the scope of IoT and helps in maintaining safety at the same time. We are able to readily adapt our software, so that the car can be tested for many new upcoming functionalities, like platooning and other remote driving services.
You carried on a live demonstration at the Automotive Campus in Helmond during the last 13th ITS EU Congress in June. Can you shortly explain us what was it about?
NEVS was demonstrating the AVP (Automated Valet Parking) use case, very relevant with respect to integrating IoT with vehicles. With AVP, a user can request the vehicle to park automatically through an app on his/her mobile phone. The vehicle will drive itself from a designated location (for example, an office reception) to a parking lot, and later back from the parking lot to that location, on request. All the critical aspects, like the route to/from the parking lot, the exact parking spot, speed and steering of the vehicle are provided in real-time by IoT based services.
In your perspective, what elements of the project have the highest impact on the market and business exploitation possibilities? Which of them is the most interesting from your clients’ point of view?
Collaborating with different companies to achieve a common goal opens up a new range of possibilities when it comes to strategic partnerships. The AVP use case works in a controlled environment and at low speeds. Therefore, its implementation in the real world is not too far in the future. However, the concept needs to be made safer and adaptive to new unforeseen conditions. There is great potential that this can lead to real life applications that are safe for everyday users.
IoT and final user: could you share with us your view and suggestions?
IoT has applications in many fields and industries. For the automotive area, it can provide a unified database that vehicles can access in real-time to perform navigation tasks and much more. We are just now starting to investigate how the final user can fully benefit from it, how people can access it and what type of actions can be automated. In a world in which almost everyone has a mobile device, connectivity will be the key to develop commercial features that will make users’ lives easier and more comfortable.
