Will human mobility change fundamentally?

At and&, we are building an interdisciplinary space where bright minds bow their heads over 21 questions for the 21st century.

100 years ago, when people were asked what the future would look like, they predicted that we’d be at the steering wheel of self-driving cars, flying taxis and amphibious vehicles. Although some inventions might happen sooner than we think, we’re certainly not there. Yet.
 

Mobility deals with more than just the evolution of our vehicles. During the Covid19 pandemic, we saw that we can avoid mass-transportation to some extent. Queuing in a traffic jam doesn't make much sense when better alternatives exist. The bigger question remains: how can we evolve mobility into a future-proof model that aligns with our difficult climate challenges? And in what ways are we going to see those changes?

Many of you might not have heard of Uri Levine, but almost all of you will have used his incredible invention Waze. Uri is a passionate serial entrepreneur and disruptor. He co-founded Waze in 2007 and turned it into the largest traffic -and navigation app in the world, purely based on crowdsourcing. Countless hours were saved thanks to his vision, which is intended to disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services with a focus on solving BIG problems. 

Levine will be accompanied by Deloitte’s Aled Walker, Director in the Strategy practice of Monitor Deloitte. From the company’s Brussels office he leads the firm’s Future of Mobility™ offering. Walker has delivered strategy and innovation projects with leading players across the mobility ecosystem including automotive OEMs and suppliers, MaaS providers, motor insurance and vehicle recovery companies, leasing & fleet management companies, transport hubs, and mobility sector federations.

Anne-Marie Van Asbroeck is the project manager and program lead mobility & logistics at imec. She is convinced that smart mobility is more than just fancy vehicles. Van Asbroeck investigates how to optimize the efficiency of city transport, how we can better adjust different modes of transport to one another. Discover in her talk how we can make our entire mobility system more sustainable and safe.

When the future of human mobility comes to mind, ‘Uber’ almost instantly goes along with it. Laurent Slits leads the Rides business of Uber in Belgium. He is passionate about providing Flanders and Brussels with reliable, accessible, and innovative mobility that helps communities move. Slits will be providing insights on how technology will play an important role in making mobility safer, which for Uber is a top priority.

Optimile’s CEO An De Pauw completes the line-up. Optimile provides a range of applications in the field of mobility, and has developed a cloud-based platform that takes a Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) approach in order to connect the end-user with various means of transport. The platform enables users to smoothly combine different transport methods, find the most convenient way to reach their destination and pay for the various modes of transport in one go.
 

In the context of this question, Siemens will be hosting the breakout session “Who drives the self-driving future of urban mobility?” Autonomous technology is being introduced in the automotive domain very rapidly. Digital Twin technology enables design exploration, validation and verification across the entire supply chain. Reuse of test scenarios and reuse of the digital twins -of chips, electronics, embedded software, controls, sensors, vehicles and occupants-is key for efficiency and liability reasons. Together with local partners, Siemens presents a seamless development process and accompanying toolchain to develop autonomous systems. From Chip to City.

How about you? Can you see yourself living in a future where the car is driving you instead of the other way around?