Robert Kopitsch, Sorin Moisa, Isabelle Vandoorne, Arwen Smit, Klaus Schaaf, Thomas Cocirta, Simon Schwerin, Kurt Nemec Discuss Blockchain For Mobility at Blockchain for Europe Summit (EU Parliament)
HIGHLIGHTS
- Who masters the data and makes decisions when it comes to in-vehicle data?
- Who should control the data and what we legislate about it?
- The rapid changes in the automotive mobility sectors presents many problems which may be answered with Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies
FULL COVERAGE
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Robert Kopitsch, Director of APCO Worldwide, Sorin Moisa, Romania International Trade Committee for European Parliament, Isabelle Vandoorne, Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport for European Commission, Arwen Smit, Mobility Fellow at MOBI, Klaus Schaaf, Director DLT at Volkswagen Group, Simon Schwerin, Founder/Director of Business Development of XAIN, Kurt Nemec, Director General at EFMDET and Thomas Cocirta, CEO/Founder of MOBOTIQ
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 00:00:00
I’m the moderator of the last panel today. My name is Robert Kopitsch. I, I’m basically responsible that you’ll hear today. So, I’ve made you come here and Mr Moisa who is sitting next to me is a, our current host for tonight or for the last panel today. Thanks for that by the way. Sorry. Is this working? And yeah, so that’s the panel on mobility. Briefly want to introduce our panel to you so you get an idea of who you’re facing here before we kick this off. So I’m just starting with the men to the left to make this very simple for you to visually quit limits is a director general of the European Forum for mobility, digital and economic transformation. Next to him is our host Mr Sorin Moisa. He’s a member of this house for quite some time already is a member of the international trade committee and a non-expert on blockchain in this house from Romania.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):00:00:57
Next to him is Thomas, I’m really sorry if I pronounced this wrong. Cocirta. He is the CEO and founder of Mobotiq. Okay. Okay, great. Next to Thomas is sitting Klaus Schaff, he’s the director for DLT at the Volkswagon one group which I think everybody knows. It’s a small company in Germany and then the next to him is Arwin Smit. She’s a mobility fellow at the Moby foundation. Thanks for coming Arwen by the way. Then we have Isabella Vandoorne. She’s the deputy head of unit for a sustainable and intelligent transport to European Commission, DG move. And last but not least our late comers Simon Sherwin, I’m the CO founder of the XAIN Foundation, which is a working along the mobility solutions in the blockchain space. And as it’s custom today, we give the first word to our host.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:02:01
Yes. Thank you Robert. Speaking of organizing things, I would also like to thank my team who has worked very hard to put this event together. Actually today we had two events. I had to participate in two conferences. I’ve just come back from the commission speaking on trade issues. And I yeah, I would like to spare you the usual boring introduction by politicians and try to tell you why I was eventually persuaded and even fascinated by the end of it to, to host this this panel I had come become quite accustomed to blockchain issues, but mobility was one of the issues I had never really thought of much before. Let’s say last month and I realized how wrong I was because there is quite a bit in term of the promise for a blockchain mobility.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:03:00
And this is one of the issues we will obviously be discussing today. And I’d like to touch briefly on some of the things that I find fascinating and interesting. And then of course there’s the issue, which is more maybe directly concerning some of you have the in-vehicle data and who masters that data and to what extent we do make important decisions in Brussels in order to you know, to address that one way or another. So a few words on the, on the promise of blockchain. I think together with the AI obviously 5g and technology there are a number of things that could truly change the world as we know it. Blockchain can provide for solutions for instantaneous vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to object communication and coordination which is crucial for the ultimate success of the autonomous vehicle.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:03:57
And also, I have discovered recently a project on autonomous drones, a company from project from Australia, which, which essentially puts together turnkey ecosystems and okay. And there is another one in Austria and it as I have drawn projects still to discover this but they, the, they create ecosystems fully reliant on blockchains, which allow for instant communication and coordination between rounds as will be you know, the case for vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to object communication on security. Blockchain systems are comparatively very secure compared to other it systems wallets maybe broken, but no major blockchain has been attacked and rolled back to the best of my knowledge so far. So, in terms of the solidity, that’s a funny word in this context. Given the language of the notability of blockchains provides a type of security that is I think is extremely important, is very sensitive area where human life and, and many other social and economic stakes.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:05:13
Yeah. and at stake, there’s the guarantee traceability from spare parts to full vehicles in relation to everything. Service stations, insurance that can help streamline the value chain of the industry. Reducing friction and the need for a resource can some consuming reconciliation processes digital identity where vehicles and the wallets attached to them that will allow vehicle to object transactions. So new economic models may emerge and will emerge for sure. And of course there’s the ultimate dream or nightmare. I don’t know if self-owned cars which at least as a, as an intellectual milestone. It is interesting. And I like to thank Tom for having sent me some literature on that among others as well, which has educated me a lot. So, this would be about the promise in general blockchain for mobility on the issue of in-vehicle data.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:06:13
Who should control the data and what we legislation say about it? I guess this is a more direct interest for, for many of you. Obviously there is this tension and we should, you know, call a spade a spade between vehicle manufacturers or on the one hand and other actors on this market such as technology and AI startups, which may like to use that data in order to train their learners and offer IB services which could be innovative but also car rental or leasing companies, insurance companies. So we have this debate and this tension or who and in what shape and form should be able to, to use this data and who would, should be able to monetize it. It’s not an easy question. I’ve been thinking a lot about it these days. At least. Innovation can be stalled if data is kept in silos on the one hand and you have few monopolies who have most of the data, but it also is not fair to free ride on other people’s efforts and investments.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:07:19
Perhaps. I mean, we have this, you know, never ending discussion for instance, with intellectual property rights for medicine, you know, generics versus research-based medicine and Peyton’s. So, you know, it’s a, it’s always a painstaking effort to actually to find the right balance. And I would like to offer a potential idea solution which is not mine actually. I have discovered it in a foreign affairs article dedicated to a world where web to internet words of this generation back in September I would call it data and bundling and bundling. You know, I use this I mean I, I have done quite a bit of work on, on energy and infrastructure in energy and you may know that we have eventually come to force our energy companies to, to unbundled, to treat in a distinct way the infrastructures from the other economic assets that they have and to allow free access to all actors based on pay on fees, on, based on the market.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:08:27
So that infrastructure, so if I have a guest or oil pipeline, I’m supposed to in Europe at least in the name of competition, to allow other actors to access my own infrastructure and of course they would need to pay and afford to pay for it. But this way I cannot squeeze them out of the market because I control the infrastructure. So now data and bundling, maybe something that we could think of for the long term future given the fact that we have a few large and perhaps in new sectors they will be either few large companies in the automotive sector as well, which will gather huge amounts of data. I guess if you, and you know if you look at the what happened in the past decade, especially in the United States, a lot of data has been, has been gathered by the state and also by the large companies there.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:09:17
That’s okay. But probably it would be fair if this data were to be made available for a price for a market-based price in an anonymized fashion to other entities, small or large on the market. And this way everybody can, can benefit from this progress. Not only the pioneers, there may be the, you know, the honest pioneers who have you know, invented a, you know, an autonomous vehicle and they’re collecting data on it. But there may have been, you know this doesn’t cover the automotive sector. I’m not sure that some of the data collected by the large companies before the major issues and scandals with prism and then Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and so is all the time legitimate by definition. So maybe the right way for the, for the, say the public authorities in a democratic and transparent way and proper negotiation would be to encourage and maybe force people who have hoarded huge amounts of data to share it with others.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:10:18
Again, upon the market basis, an approach, which would mean also revenue. So you have collected data, you make them available to others. That’s also a cashflow for you. Nobody’s nationalizing the data. Nobody’s abusing power in any way. And you know, it will be interesting to have any feedback from you on this idea, which I’m sort of trying to put on the market, let’s say, but it belongs to other people. I’ve just been torn it. And I have a question for the commission and I conclude with this on this I mean, I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it. There’s this famous delegated act on cooperative, intelligent transport systems. On the one hand in the pipeline, it appears somewhere in the commission. It would be great if you could give us some details on whether this is happening and when or are we rather going to have on their recommendation on connected and automated mobility sometime early next year there is a public consultation which closes on the 4th of December. Is this likely to inform the recommendation only or the delegated act is, the recommendation may be a way to skirt and abandon the need to now to have to make up our mind as you know, as, as the you on, on this choice on who controls in vehicle data. So it would be great if you could give us some idea of what’s happening there. And what is the role of this public consultation? Is it only for the recommendation? Is it for the delegate to that? When is the delegate? It act like it’ll come up to surface from the commission. Was it just a rumor? Thank you.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):00:12:05
Thank you, Sorin. Maybe to just lead over to with this question to the European Commission. So please, Isabelle. We’re looking forward to hearing your opinions about sustainable and intelligence and intelligent transport.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:12:28
Thank you. I’m not so sure that I will be able to reply to your question because a blockchain and the CTC, the detector, it’s a, I don’t see the direct linker so far, so maybe I could start with me and I was therefore not prepared to answer this question, but I will try to answer it after my intervention. So first of all I, oh, today I’m not there to talk about connected and automated driving. Otherwise I am the wrong person because maybe blockchain the benefit of blockchain is somewhere else. I at least I would like to look at the bigger picture. And that’s what we do. Wherein did you move. So we are not looking at a Ducasse. We are not looking at the data. We are looking at the mobility system.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:13:19
And why? Because we are looking at all the challenges, the morbidity and the transport sector is facing and we all know them. Very soon everybody will be meeting in Poland. And we have tried to work on, on, on all the activities we could have to have a, an efficient transport system. So, so I would like to step back first. That’s so everything we do, we try to do it with that objective in mind so that we have a safe and clean sustainable even socially inclusive mobility system. And blockchain is one of the innovation that have a lot of promises to contribute to this. But it’s a, we need also to see when we see these big pictures, we also need to see other Oda trends, not only the digitalization and decarbonization challenge.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:14:32
But we need also to see the shared economy and the, but you have referred to it already. And also the changing behavior. I don’t know for you, but I know that my children who are heard young adults are going to my, to the mall to go to a demonstration this Sunday for the climates and not only them, so everybody’s trying to, with their smart phone to have a mobility, a new mobility solution, a moving from a Catherine or ship. We all know that. But so this is the big picture of we have a, and it’s not only about one delegated regulation, we have also an a, you have been discussing that during the whole day. We have banks quite interested in mobility immobility. We have plenty of new mobility service providers with I don’t know if you have seen it, but in Brazil, the last two week we have no on pedestrian area east scooter in front of us.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:15:34
So, sharing a shared mobility is quite huge. So it’s not about car. So I would like to if you have to retain one statement from Miami today is that we have also platforms on, we are in the world of platforms doing a lot also. So the, so we have a new I, I hate this this word, but it’s quite trendy to use it. We in the mobility and transport sector, and I guess at my colleague earlier today also refer to it. We have a complex ecosystem with so main needs stakeholders. And so this complexity I will come back to, on that point, a letter home because all these stakeholders will need to interact with each other. And it’s really not easy. Let’s use an old fashion topic. I had last week, one week ago, a meeting on what we call multimodal passenger services.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:16:34
If you want to use a trendy word, mass mobility as a service for me, the same concept, but with a new label a new logo on it. So that is brand new. But we have new players on it. And when we discussed that we discussed about the ticketing, we discuss about payment, we discussed about revenue sharing, we discussed about invoice. When you look at it, you see that more and more, we’ll have plenty of interaction between plenty of companies, big, small, traditional ones, new players. And so the one of the two key words of this conference was fears entrust. And so this is the situation of the mobility ecosystem today. So if we want to deliver a clean, safe, a marvelous, efficient mobility system, we need something. And blockchain has this potential because for many reasons, and I have to admit that I am not an expert at all of blockchain.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:17:42
So, you don’t ask me specific question on it. I know nearly nothing about it. But what I know is that it will be, it will help to, to work, to record the transaction, to, to work on a I joined the meeting of it before to work on this identity management, to work on these smart contracts. So all these will be needed between all the stakeholders. And we have on the one hand the front runners. And on the other hand we have the traditional players. And I know that there are some use cases on which we are working now on mobility. But we need also, I think from our side, from the mobility club we need to, what we see is that we need to raise awareness of the advantage of blockchain because we are normally not aware of what it can provide.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:18:41
We know little we know little about it. And when I say we, I represent the mobility community w because we have to, we have to understand what it is good for. We need to understand what the issues that blockchain could address. Then another part is that, and we see that for all digitalization stuff. So even the basic stuff, capacity and skills of the public authorities, of the public operators, because blockchain will not come will not come in mobility if public transport operators and public transport authorities will be out of the game. And so they need to understand. What else should I say? I should also say that another part of the public sector is also the traffic manager. Last week or two weeks before I was in a meeting with topic managers. And I see also that for addressing congestion, so not only the, the linguist mobility as a service, but also to improve congestion blockchain has a lot of potential, but we need to see a, we need to see how we do it so much, much more research are needed in the mobility sector to see how we can bring bloodshed that also the perception I have.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission): 00:20:07
Then to come back to your question on the CHS delegate detects I think that we are talking about apples and peer peers. So that’s why I don’t see the direct link with blockchain. Because the CHS direct detect are quite about exchanging messages between different vehicles between different vehicles and between the vehicles and infrastructure then when it will come. So it’s not a, a rumor in the corridors. So we have had our interim service within the commission and even if everything goes well in the coming days, it will be out on the Beta regulation bottle on the recommendation. So, because you refer to items of the communication, we had in the third mobility package. And the recommendation is another one. And I agree with you that there is a pubic consultation on it right now. Our colleagues from DG connect are working on it. So I don’t feel the, the, let’s say the not the right, but I don’t it’s a, it would be better that you ask them my colleagues in Digi connector, what they intend to do with it. Well, I hope that you have received some information from my side.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 00:21:28
Thanks a lot. Going into the use cases. I would like to start with Arwen Smit from Mobi. She’s basically the one that’s probably best to address this right now.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI): 00:21:46
Thank you, Robert. And thank you for having me Mobi at this event. So I would like to start with stressing the urgency. Like, yes, we’re in a complex ecosystem. Yes. Right now we’re facing many data silos. There are many stakeholders involved. So I would argue that the time to rethink mobility is now, and let me illustrate this by sharing a statistic. So today, approximately 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. This is a statistic from the United Nations, a proportion as expected to increase to 68% in 2050. So I strongly believe that disputed ledger technologies have a role to play in making mobility more efficient, more effective, and elevating a strain on our urban areas. So I’m here today to represent Mobi. Mobi is a nonprofit organization working with forward thinking companies, governments, and NGOs to make mobility services more affordable, greener, safer. And we do that by helping to accelerate the development of blockchain and related distributed ledger technologies and we see a dire needs for open standards and open ecosystem with competing standards. Just results in new walled gardens. So this is something that I would advise to avoid.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI): 00:23:24
The rapid changes in the automotive mobility sectors presents many problems which may be answered with Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. We’re seeing growth in trading and sharing of high value assets such as luxury vehicles while at the same time trusted middleman are being smart. Connected vehicles need to balance the need for security and control of data with the market’s desire for connectivity and data access for the first time, oh yams, service providers and cities are having to collaborate and open standards to provide safe sustainable services. Mobility is involving from a walled garden to a web of interconnected relationships. Blockchain based identities for machines and individuals will be the key puzzle piece to unlock mobility services. That skill because the lines between mobility services blurs where you can customize virtual identities to unlock permissions for the required service.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI): 00:24:36
Imagine one vehicle that would have different people using it for different purposes at different times of day. This will become the standard and not the exception value of flow bilateral from you and me to autonomous economic agents such as a party parking meter or a vehicle, able to dynamically set a price check conditions and accept payments. The economy of things only requires an embedded identity and a profit function, which is a lot easier than teaching a car to drive by itself. And this effort lies at the very heart of Mobi. So starting with vehicle identity and history, Moby’s use cases spend the entire mobility services value chain. The Moby alliance includes over 70% of the world’s tier one OEMs, many governments, many universities and leading startups. Some of them sitting on this panel today. So, in the words of Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, there are new and evolving requirements for money as well as essential public policy objectives.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI): 00:25:53
What a case for digital currencies is not a universal, we shoot investigated further, seriously, carefully and creatively. I would echo the sentiments for blockchain based data identity and payments in particular. And let me conclude with this. In the Silicon Valley of the early 2010s, the u s created an attractive environment for Web 2.0 companies they could flourish because of the combination of regulation, funding and talent. Today, Europe faces a unique opportunity, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, Harold and new wave of innovation. And you has a decision to make. What role does it want to play on the next technological frontier? What did you decide to do matters? Very much Moby accents and invitation to work with us. So, we might learn from each other and shape this next phase of mobility together.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 00:27:00
Apologies. Thank you, Arwen. I’m maybe going from a, an initiative to an existing, a world player with forks one. So please close Klaus.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group): 00:27:14
I can say a little, a lot of things which I’m Arwen already said, but most of the car companies are now changing their business model to a more, a, more from a car developing and car selling company to a mobility selling companies. So we’ll we in the future we will do be more a mobility company than anything else. And this will be a short time until this reaches the world. So we expect this to be in 2025 to be the case. And that goes together with some other developments. For example, the self-driving cars, which also B will reach some parts of the world. Some parts earlier, some parts later in around this time in 2025. And this is also something I would like to, to tell the European Commission and the parliament be careful that Europe is not falling behind on that.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group): 00:28:23
Currently most of the companies see the United States and Silicon Valley as the starting point. Asia as the follower and only then they see Europe as the next place where this will happen. And with a, all this goes together the, the tools for offering this blockchain technology or distributed ledger technology is a big part of that. And because especially when we have self-driving cars, they cannot sign a credit card. Yeah. Credit Card receipts and a, so we need something else which makes it possible that transactions, either financial or just transactions of data of it’s also can happen and will be trusted by the people who use these services. And something else. We are working on this in on a lot of things already. And this is for the, for electrical cars, we need to charge the cars and we need to pay for the for this and we need to reserve park, not parking charging spaces.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group): 00:29:45
And all this needs a new economy, which we which is a little bit different than what we have now. You call, you just go to a gas station, but since I’m charging takes a little longer, you don’t want to stand in line behind 10 other cars. And so you need to plan this at least at the moment, much better than before. So this is one of the things we’re doing. Another thing which will be an example of blockchain very, very early. And I know that a lot of companies are already working on that. That is trusted mileage. So we can put the data of, of the which the cars have taken the, the kilometers onto the blockchain and that’s put out certificates so that used cars will not be yeah, we’ll be trusted much more than in a, at the moment at the moment, about 10% of all used cars have a wrong mileage reading and for that reason this is one thing which will be out very early as an as a, yeah, not only a proof of concept, but as a first try out for or how blockchain can work in this market as something else.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group): 00:31:09
Where we have been working on is software over the air. We now have the ability to put new software into the cars, not only to repair existing software, but also to offer new services in the cars. And with this there, there comes more danger that the software is tempered with or that the wrong software is on there, that not the software, which should be in the cars and the car and this has to be controlled. And blockchain offers a possibility to check if the right software’s on the car. So, when you go with your car to control and you, you, they can see what kind of software’s in there and you can prove that you always put the newest software into your cars. For this we also need a mobility ecosystem. And I think Mobi is, is really an important part of that. Because we need a lot of standards so that all these companies can work together with us. Of course, we would like that folks. One would, would be the company of choice for a lot of services. But of course we see that there are some yeah, some other companies around the world who also want to take this. And so if we go to a, let’s say a smart city like Hamburg, Paris or Brussels we cannot force them to use our system. We need a way to standardize all these systems so that everybody can use them and offer their ability and the competition will be in a way who uses or who offers the best, usable, the best, you access them for these and the, the highest number of services.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group): 00:33:21
So, we will not put our services into a silo so that if you cannot get out of this, but you, you need to take a lot of different services and combine them. And for that you need a lot of standardization a lot of different cooperation. And especially also in, in the field of the different ledgers we have etherium we have a quorum. We have iota and, and they all somehow have to work together because a lot of services will be on different chains. During a hackathon in the summer in, in Munich, we tried this out and we combined the Iota Tangle with an etherium blockchain because etherium was offering smart contracts, which iota couldn’t do at, at the time. And there’s a lot of things. Each ledger has their advantages and disadvantage and if we combine them and put them together and we can develop completely new systems, which are based on new ideas of contracts and a lot of new services. And I hope that we get help for that from the European Parliament, from the European Commission. Thank you.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 00:35:01
Thank you very much. Going from a big player to two very engaged entrepreneurs I would say like Thomas could you maybe start and then we go to Simon right after that?
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:35:08
Yes. Hello. So I am the founder of a startup started in Romania, will continue in France because they have the double nationality. And I, I would like to place the, the, our concept in a larger context and speaking about the autonomy of machine in general. So not only autonomous cars, but the autonomous machine tools, which will help us obtain, achieve a, a dream, which is to be autonomous as an individual. That means being able to work from home. Three d printing our house, put some solar panels on it, being independent energetically where they have washing machines. We’ll have robots in, in the kitchen cleaning the floor. And I claim that those machines are not autonomous enough, so they still need us to configure. They cannot make transactions yet. So, the blockchain is the perfect tool to, to, to render those machines autonomous.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:36:30
And again, this will help us become autonomous individually. So blockchain is about decentralization. I would say blockchain is about autonomous. So we are placing our startup in this context of trying to be autonomous. This is why we are trying to decentralize everything starting with the manufacturing. So we are trying to build the fab cells hosted in, in container and shipping container so we can send them fast. We are building a very, very small autonomous vehicle. And I insist on small because I don’t think that that solution, it’s a car built by our friends from, from full target. We are more closer to to a bicycle than a two to a two a car. But we put a cabin on it. So, we have the safety and the comfort of the carpet with the agility and nimbleness of, of a bicycle.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:37:48
And we should watch carefully cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen who solved a part of the traffic problems with bicycles. So again we, we see, we see the blockchain are the perfect tool and we see it as a missing link that we, it’s a technology we didn’t have before. So now we should use it fully and not only in, in some fields. So, this is why we are trying to use it in all the, the, the fields of our business starting of course with the funding. So, we are going to issue tokens in a six month when the regulations will be a little clearer. So, by definition we are going to have a tokenized economy in the I, in the, in the, in the startup, then we are going to use those tokens to attract talent and we are going to try to build a meritocracy.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:39:04
So, the engineering and the design of the vehicles and manufacturing cells are going to be done in a community of peers. So, peer-to-peer, the blockchain will help us of course align the interests of every peer then balance contribution, each contribution, each value-added with the right retribution. As I said, we can, we hope to attract global talent let’s say engineers who are trying to, to, to work from passion instead of working for a salary. So, they will keep jobs in Audi and hopefully come to us. Then the manufacturing, as I said, it has to be distributed locally. So we’ll, we’ll try to create jobs, jobs locally. The, the, the actual technologies additive manufacturing, it’s allowing us to do this. But I think those fab cells, those manufacturing cells have to be part of a network of autonomous machines. So exactly like, like the vehicles who are who are going to be able to bid for rides for, for services and ask for Montanans or ask for, for swapping and charging batteries. The machine tools, fabricating those vehicles have to be autonomous also. So, ask for a bid for, for raw material and take money in their wallet out of delivery of parts.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:41:05
So of course, blockchain is mandatory in this, in this architecture. When we are operating fleets of cars again, the, the best tool we found is blockchain. So I insist on the fact that we are not coming from the blockchain. We are not coming from the software field. We are, we are, we are building hardware. But, but we found in the 2012 the blockchain and then we realize that this is the, the perfect, the perfect tool. From the operating point of view, what we are doing, it’s decentralizing Uber because everything Uber is doing, it’s, it’s doable in, in a with a blockchain. So, we can automate everything without taking the 30% they are taking.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:42:10
I think you heard that about the, the, the, the cases of paying the parking or paying the swapping of the battery, the charging of the battery, thanks to the blockchain. And of course then you have the user and the, in our philosophy, the user, it can be the designer or the manufacturer or the operator. And we this, this is a, this is a principle called presumption. So we are, we are a mixing supply and demand in the same ecosystem. In order to do this we, we started and the, we build the prototypes of the manufacturing cell and we already have two prototypes of the vehicle. We are building the third and the project is to obtain enough funding to [inaudible] to manufacturer build an, operate a fleet of 4,000 vehicles in Paris. So again, I insist on the fact that the, the right vehicle for the urban areas is an individual, very small vehicle, some kind of a chair on three wheels.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ): 00:43:22
Autonomous of course. So we are preparing a, this deployment of 4,000 vehicles. We are supported by the Paris townhall. So with those four Phelan vehicles, we are trying to make a proof of concept of all the, of the whole ecosystem, not only the vehicles or the manufacturing, all the operations, all the functioning, all the concept. We are trying to prove them to, to, to, to the world and scale very quickly only by, by giving the example and sending the software we develop to the two entrepreneurs around the world. Again, we already started. Hope we’ll succeed. Thank you.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:44:12
I think I’m going to just start with a very general observation I made today just to give a bit of food for thought and then tell a bit about where we are, where we come from, what we kind of thinking. And then I have a few concrete questions and perhaps propositions for the European parliament as well. So, don’t know like I had made a weird observation this morning when I flew in from Berlin where we are from that I went to the taxi line. And basically there was like I think a 150 people waiting for taxis and guess what? They probably took about 150 different Texas. Right? So why couldn’t they just basically move into a fifth of that? Right. why isn’t there sufficient sharing infrastructure for those simple cases already in place by comfy and forced those better? I think that’s really a first step with regards to sharing economy.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:45:09
So, what do we do at XAIN and so we have been founded a few years ago after three, a research project from the Oxford University? We are 30 people now, so we are maturing I guess as a company a little bit. And we have always been looking at the intersection between Blockchain, data privacy. How do those interrelate with the other cutting edge technologies mentioned before, like AI, like big data, what does, what does it mean when we can bring trust back to data and you can then use that data for AI or when you can trust your shared use cases. We are ourselves focusing a lot on creating a new kind of computer language. It’s really deep technical stuff. I’m not going to go into too much detail otherwise I’ll lose all of you. So, what we’re doing is essentially just, yeah, trying to create a standard or a standard computer grammar for granting access to specific data points to specific devices.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:46:19
So we essentially turning out, trying to turn them on the paradigm in which basically a centralized entity defines the walls in which you can move in by turning in a wound and saying, okay, you yourself can define your own walls by which I want to move in this digital world and in the sharing economy. So we are really focusing on shared use cases on yeah, on mobility. We have done successful use cases as Porsche, this kind of company. But also looking at mobility in a broader space. We have also built a drone use case, but we think that’s far from going anywhere because of the, yeah, regulation in the space. We have our, we’re looking a lot into trains and I think that’s a really valid use case. I think there should be a lot done to make people use trains more frequently also across the EU.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:47:13
I think there’s a lot of potential for making those autonomous for making automated booking billing systems. For example, we have worked with, just to give a small example of the complexity of a starch, a ban, and they have 1,500 sub companies sub-team be ages that manage all kinds of different track systems and so on. So I mean it’s, it’s an insanely complex systems. If you think about it, it’s still almost everything is menu of work, which you couldn’t even believe. As though I think where I want to get to is essentially trying to look at the, at the bigger picture. So as you were asking, what does blockchain do? How does it help us? I think with regards to mobility specifically it’s really, it’s really crucial to make us as users, me stepping into an autonomous, autonomous driving car, me using a shared car or shared mobility for public transportation, trusting that over with ear without even me knowing, trusting that it will take me from a to B, there won’t be an exit and they won’t be a mess up that maybe hurts me, my family or my friends.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:48:29
I think that’s essentially what blockchain will do. And then we won’t even think about it. I think it’s the same as we had was the internet, but no one thinks about TCP IP. Like how does it work? I think that’s similar to blockchain. Yeah, I mean honestly I didn’t prepare that much before, so I’m just trying to pick up every here and there. So I think for us as a startup where we have a lot of things to do, we all work extremely hard. A lot of us, yeah. I guess six days a week. We really want to make sure that we can move fast enough and the specifically in this innovation space, what we realize of what we joke around with the say, okay, one month for us it’s like a year for the other industries. And I think that’s is unfortunately the speed that globalization has brought to us.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:49:25
So, to give you an example, in that case we have looked a lot in how to work with European OEMs was yeah, all paradigms with all thinking. But in the end we realized okay, to really do anything fast enough in order to keep up. We are now talking to companies from China for example. To give you an example there we are working there with a company who started putting charging stations for east scooters into China. In the last 12 year they installed 800,000 charging stations. And you can try to think about how many of those are in just Germany or you. It’s nothing compared to the kind of speed they can put on the table is just very different. And why is that? Because as you all know, you go to the government first and China, if you want to do anything, you convinced the government first.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:50:15
I think maybe we can take that as an analogy to say, okay, how can we work with the US I’m already going to come back to or come to the u point for us. We would love to work with the EU. For us in the blockchain space or in that innovation space, I don’t think are, I guess many of the people like us, we have to primitive the thinking of the globalized people in my generation. So we don’t see it as competitors anymore. We tried to achieve something together. The challenge is we don’t know how to do it because we don’t see concrete initiatives or we don’t find them. We don’t know where to act in. So, what we would like to see or we would like to do we would like to work, I guess in the same kind of EU sandbox or some kind of thing that enables us to build use cases in a high speed to play around with that.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:51:16
Without too many regulatory hurdles. I don’t know how many of you have tried to fill out an application for EU funding on you project. It’s a lot of fun. That takes you a long time and usually if you don’t have the strongest player in the home market and the strongest universities, then you probably won’t achieve it. So the question is, is there a possibility for us to build these kind of things for you? And here’s a surprising point in that industry. We probably do it for free. Probably don’t ask for anything. We won’t even ask for funding. We just want to get a chance to do it. I think that’s a really crucial point that this blockchain world brings with it because most of those companies are well funded. A globalization brings them money from China, from us, from crowdfunding. So, I think that’s not the challenge.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:52:08
The challenge is more like getting the opportunity to actually just do it. I mean, because I think only then we can really be fast. I think we have to take a really pragmatic approach, otherwise we can keep sitting in such circles. And think about it and talk about it for ages, but we won’t get anywhere. And I think that’s from at least our small little perspective what’s going to happen again, most likely because I think that’s the same what happened previously and yeah, I mean this, having been to China, I was a, at least some colleagues of mine last week ads, you wouldn’t believe what you see there and how fast they move and how incredible it is, what you see in terms of scale and speed and how much further developed they are in AI and blockchain. So yeah, I think that’s a very large point for us.
Simon Schwerin (Founder/Director of Business Development, XAIN): 00:52:57
The second one is the data and bundling. I think that’s a really, really interesting point. And we also look a lot into how to build data marketplaces. And I was, I would be wondering myself, okay, what are the, what’s the groundwork on the, on the regulatory side, it has to be done in order to provide such data marketplaces. I mean myself, I wrote my thesis on GDPR and blockchain. I talked to Angela [inaudible], lots of other commissioners. That topic. It’s really interesting to see how the GPI world and we knew now we do everything we can to build our technology by designed and enabled to have be privacy, conform. And to take those considerations into mind. But what will it take for data marketplaces? What will it take to share these data points and then make them usable to startups, make them usable for training on them. And I think this is what we, we are probably going to be able to do next year technically. The question is can we do it regulatory? I mean in the regulation sense, otherwise we will do it and Israel and China and the US, you know, and that’s the, that’s the way I think. Yeah, so I think that’s probably the end of my argument.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):00:54:18
Thanks a lot Simon. Last but not least Kurt, please give us your vision for the European forum of Mobility and what it tries to achieve.
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET): 00:54:28
Yeah. Yes. I’m not the only the general of the European mobile form. I’m also a lawyer and a as a lawyer, 25 years ago I wrote a book about the liberalization of infrastructure market and telecommunication and we had the same discussions 25 years ago. So for you, maybe we have a solution on the regulation. I think it should be based on the regulation for, on the EU regulation of telecommunication because that will solve the problem with the access to, to the Tata points. It’s from us, it’s called the essential facilities or between, it’s from 1,912 and we have a lot of principles there in this regulation is a EU regulation and I think, yeah, we should take this regulation and 60% there. We can use for these problems we have second you ask them if they own of the data should be a private person or maybe the public. I think it should be the private person because it’s so complicated. Yeah. To handle this data in a, and the, and the, and the, and the blockchain. Yeah. It has to be private. Yeah. It’s not possible for, for public data holder to hold the standards for all these uses.
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET): 00:55:58
On the contrary, that we should not be nationalized, make public in any way. Of course data belongs to those who, I mean to, to private individuals and then to companies who have collected data, but just like my energy infrastructure is mine, but I’m forced to unbundle it. That is to make it like treated as a separate economic or business unit and allow access to others. This is not being, it’s still my pipeline or my whatever infrastructure. This was with the point I was making. I mean, God forbid nothing close to making private data public or nationalizing or forcing anyone to do, you know, anything excessive but to, to create access and the marketplace and data marketplace may be, may be one way out of this conundrum of this dilemma data, the new oil you have, the economy and so on. It’s just an idea that is worth debating. But again, I was not suggesting we should nationalize in anything, so I know that you, yeah. But as a discussion, yeah. We’ve, we’ve been even in Australia because the want to, to nationalize this state, this Tonto. Yeah. And so my position, so it’s not your position. My position is thought they should be private, but there should be the essential facility they took twins. So is essential for the public. Yeah. They have to, to get access to this data. Yup. That’s it.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 00:57:28
Thank you. Before I start asking question, is there any questions from the floor before I start torturing all panel? Oh, please, go ahead.
Speaker 1: 00:57:41
So just a quick question would use maybe for the representatives of the European Parliament and regulators. Would you foresee that we are, as in we have presently in the current situation, a competition between regulators cross geography in a way that if you don’t do anything, small startups will go elsewhere to do their business. So, is there this kind of competitive approach that, do you feel that in your day to day?
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament):00:58:22
Yes. I mean, I hear this very often that, but you know, I mean, it, it, it varies across fields by generally from innovative startups and from companies everywhere in the blockchain space, in the AI space. We do hear this in this quite often, that if we do not come up with intelligent, soft regulation, then they are likely to go to other jurisdictions. And I know cases when, and our companies have moved to either Singapore but, but the, I know cases where the opposite was true, they move back into Europe from Singapore or the u s many. It varies. I mean, on a company trying to do an ICO would not likely move to the u s because the environment is hostile, but it may be in Switzerland. France is developing an ICO friendly regime. Mop seems to work.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 00:59:14
We hope it will. So yes, there is regulatory competition, but on the other hand, we do need to look after the general interests of society as well. So we need to find a balance. But I think on, on blockchain at least now the commission has been quite open minded and has made quite some inroads. And parliament as well on the, for instance, the money laundering regime, extending it to the blockchain space I think was a major achievement. It may seem hostile, but actually on the contrary, it’s aiming to bring some legal predictability and sorts of light civilization to this space and make it more respectable. Getting rid of this cameras and the things that have gone wrong in this space, allowing you to grow legitimately. So, you know, it’s helping clean the space of its bad apples. And then this is, I mean the, the most important jurisdiction on earth.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 01:00:06
I think Europe has done this and I think it has done a good job, but on our rather issues, for instance, on a market manipulation or regulating icls in a sophisticated, friendly way that we haven’t done as much as we could have. But I know the commission DG connect is, is, is, is thinking of moving on that as well for the, at least for the end of this mandate early the next the next college of Commissioners. But yes, the, the straight answer to your question is there is regulatory competition and there are member states in the EU that compete with each other where there’s no year regime. You know, I have Estonia Malta a day and it varies with technologies. Now Finland is quite keen on a, on a, on mobility as well for instance. And they try to create a friendly regime but outside Europe too.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament):01:00:48
So, we are losing competitiveness and businesses to the world outside Europe on AI. There’s the famous argument that because of GDPR and I, I believe there’s only partial truth in this we will lagging behind because other people can collect data much more easily. But if you collect data against your citizens or not, respecting their rights is not the right thing. I mean, if you create a digital dictatorship as China does now, I would, God forbid, I would never try to do that. Even risking to, to, not to lose the AI race, but now blockchain may be the solution to that. Maybe people can, you know, have self-sovereign identity and they monetize their data and this way and amid they share freely they data rather than data being taken from them. So I think you can have peace between the GDPR and AI eventually. But there is this famous argument that we are lagging behind because we don’t have enough data to train our learners and somehow European culture is less propitious for AI.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ):01:01:44
Yes. So I will I’ll try to, to present it to facts linked to the European part first, the funding. So the gentleman for from saying I would tell him that we obtain 1 million euros and we were just two people from Europe. So we will obtain 1 million when we are applying for another 2.5 million. So we can still obtain funding. And they’re speaking about regulation. We had the foundation, we made the foundation in Switzerland, one year ago. We liquidated, we are making it in print. Well those are two facts.
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET):01:02:44
Okay. Yes. I think it’s for if it’s very important for you because at the moment, yeah, if you see an industrial product, yeah, it’s not only the product, it’s product and the service or that product, industrial European product as a service. So the value in quality is not any more. The product itself can be from China. It’s just the quality of the services. And blockchain is a part of the services. So if we’re losing the services into regulation there, yeah, we’re losing the quality. So what China or a u s structure should buy the European product and that’s really the problem. You cannot sell anymore. Just an industrial product without any service. It’s gone.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):01:03:34
Thanks a lot. Anybody else who wants to answer from the panel to the question?
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):01:03:42
No. Great. Any other questions? Please go.
Speaker 2: 00:103:54
Hi. I just want to follow up on what Thomas said. It’s, it was easy for you to get money out of the European Union. Cause my experience is most for like what Simon said takes like from age 20, 20 to get the paperwork done and get everything in. It’s a nightmare. And people actually just don’t just walk away from it, just eat, just to start worrying about it. And because I know a couple companies who like to get involved, but he just said the paperwork and everything needs to get done is just too overwhelming to even join. So, there’s companies who would like to do it through European Union or help out, but they’re ready to just go to the VC or not the ICO anymore, but maybe the route going forward, down to with all the paperwork this needs to be done. I don’t know if you guys can put any to it. Maybe you can shorten it or make it a smart contract or something go forward.
Thomas Cocirta (CEO/Founder, MOBOTIQ):01:04:42
Yes. I so we applied for 1 million from Romania with two guys. I was, me and my, my, one of my colleagues. And then applied also for age 20, 20, and they made the record on my own alone in 30 days. I was refused, but I’m reapplying this year with help from some consultants in Spain. I think. So what I meant, I don’t mean this is very easy, but this is not impossible. And of course, nobody likes the paperwork. I admit it’s very complicated. But try to obtain money from vcs and you’ll see it’s much more complicated because we did that also much more complicated.
Isabelle Vandoorne
(Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission):01:05:38
I feel obliged to reactivity activity even if I am not a funding and financing experts. I have a bit of a knowledge that I can share. So maybe other ways of receiving ferns others and each 2020 because you have our pseudo specific year activities targeted SMEs which are we choose another tool to, to, to, to support setups to, to work. And in the world of smart cities, we have also the EIT, we sold sewer offering some, some possibilities besides that and beside the ISI managed phones. We need also to, to be aware that the EIV has also some possibilities to offer. I know that for example, in the, in the CTE world the reason for CDT which is called Elena which can help to, to, to have some feasibility studies to, to launch a project. So I think that maybe, maybe the commission is not a good enough at explaining the different possibilities we have to, to give money. But the true that’s beside that if you know, a good expert in in application, it’s a research easier.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):01:07:11
Thank you. If I may ask a question, which personally is of interest to me because basically as data was mentioned a lot and comp manufacturers are calm producers. I look more and more into data becoming service providers. And as you know, the biggest data holders in the world probably Google and maybe Facebook. Just out of interest, if you look at them as you outlined that class that car manufacturers until 2025, when it became service providers who will be the googles and the Facebooks in the mobility space in 2025, will it be Google and Facebook or will it be somebody else?
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group):01:07:52
My personal hold for that is there will be no other Google or Amazon or Facebook. They are already there. So, what we can do in the mobility sectors and s the OEMs is to build up a wall against these services so there will not be a, a Fox and not be a Daimler or a Toyota who will be fighting Google with the data.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group):01:08:16
But we need something where we have some kind of a mobility layer above the Internet and between the or between the Internet and the platforms which are used by all the mobility providers. And with, with this where we can, where everybody can contribute and take the data out of it and use them for them mobility system or for their business model. We have a chance to overcome this this data. I don’t know how to say that, but they, they, they own the data. They, they think they own all the data. But if we, if we work together and we put this together in a layer which everybody can use then this the standalone by Google will somehow disappear.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group):01:09:29
Because then they will don’t have the data alone, but we can use them and they we are not dependent on them anymore. And that is, I think the major thing which we need to discuss over the over the time. And also, we need to have some new ways to self-solve problems. W which are in mobility for example, we have now the cities which are whether some courts say in the near future when the weather is bad and the, the climate is bad, then, eh, the cars are not allowed to go into the cities anymore. We need to find ways around this. Nobody wants this actually to happen. And but there are ways around this so that we can so that the access to the cities is somehow regulated but not by, by the authorities, but by the users themselves. And if we can work something like this out and I think we could have a chance for this then we would have a new way of that the people do not look bad at authorities, cities or a European administrations. But it is, it would be more like, oh, we are doing this, and I can I can get advantages out of this and I can sometimes I need to pay for it because I am disadvantaged.
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group):01:11:15
At disadvantage by it, but we have a chance that the, the borders which Google and Amazon especially set up can be taken down by us if we do it right and if we do it fast.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI): 01:11:38
I would like to, to introduce a different perspective. So, starting with the data that Google and apple amongst gutters hold, it’s a lot of data but even this amount of data is by no means enough to get to level five autonomy for self-driving cars. There have been many estimates that if you want to get that type of data that will require cross industry collaboration to even train those algorithms. Okay. Let’s assume that it arrives self-driving cars. I think it will end the end of today. What your then see is for mobility services. It’ll most likely be on recurrent model risk at the bottom.
Arwen Smit (Mobility Fellow, MOBI):01:12:24
If you have cars that can drive themselves, it will be increasingly the users of their cars will be increasingly commoditized unless your services around it that would add a new value layer. Now if you look at what’s happening across many OEMs and lastly feel free to react on this is that if you currently sell a car that’s called one x, that is a one off value creation opportunity, then that car enter a skilled mobility services ecosystem and they’re in it continuously generates value. Now what I’m seeing is that OEMs not necessarily all want to become mobility service providers because that is a space that is very attractive to them. They want to share in the benefit of that seven x pool because who in their right mind ins. Right? so I think that trend is currently going in parallel with where of market is going, which is that we don’t have a one to one relationship anymore. Like I own a car. You have one car used various service providers for various different utilities and it will become even more complex because there’s one car or there’s one vehicle will not just be on by me. It might be armed by the entirety of his panelists in the simplest sense. So I think the, the ecosystem will become more and more complex. I think mobility services, we’ve become more and more fluids and I think that one of the, or I guess the most attractive way of technically structuring this would be to bring back the distributed ledger technologies because that’s definitely a multi stakeholder collaboration play.
Isabelle Vandoorne
(Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission):01:14:23
I think that’s a, I like the way you explain it, but I would like to come to the basics. Can someone explain to me why we are focusing on access to data in a, in a room discussing blockchain for mobility? Because I am a very close and if I would have been prepared to discuss about access to data, I love that topic, but why are we talking that in into the specific framework of blockchain? If someone can just reply to me.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide):01:14:53
That basically is a simple thing. The last time a colleague of Arwen and I will discussing the use of blockchain and he gave me a simple example that there is a project where the bring together entrepreneurs or engineers to, to test self-driving cars and how to use the data and how to steer them. That was basically the starting points of the data that is connecting those cars. And the exchange of this data is being done by blockchain. And that’s basically why I was asking you on it. So that’s as an overarching topic, as simple as that.
Sorin Moisa (Romania International Trade Committee, European Parliament): 01:15:44
Yes. I mean, I, I concur with that. The two reasons why I mentioned this first one is that I have looked into the briefing that I have received from you, and this is mentioned as an important thing, but when you said that it’s not, it’s like apples and pears, that was a bit tough, but I realized you were right. I mean it’s for [inaudible] if you can have an influence on the type of blockchain that we use, for instance, it can be a permission blockchain if you have the more restrictive approach to it. Or it can be a, a, a, a, a public permission less blockchain otherwise, but it might not even be a blockchain. So what you will decide should be, hopefully it will be technologically neutral, so it may have an impact on the blockchain solution that is finally adopted if it is a Blake to blockchain solution. But you are right, the tune issues are not necessarily linked. I mean, they are, they put preoccupied this crowd here, but they are not necessarily one doesn’t condition the other. So yeah, you’re right.
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET):01:16:48
Sometimes they’re not linked, but I think down link because the blockchain. Yeah. in that abstract way. Yeah. It’s just the medium of circulation is a currency for any data. Yeah. So smart contact, whatever. But you have a technology and this technology is blockchain or something else, but we’re abstract. It’s just the medium of circulation. Yeah. And the, and this, this medium transport data. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a value of a currency. It’s a smart contract, whatever. So for me, yeah, that the blockchain, the, the technical side of the blockchain is permanently linked to any data. Okay. But the funny thing is in an abstract way, yeah. I think, yeah. A currency and a smart contract yeah. In, in the mobility. Yeah. It’s the same. So, in the future we will have not only a currency or a smart contract of whatever we can, we will combine it.
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET):01:17:56
Yeah. So, for example, you will have in the future a currency, a state currency, for child benefit. Yeah. Right. You can give them money in form of, based on the blockchain, a currency, but you, you can in the form of smart contracts say, okay, this is just for this money is just for a child, nine to 12. Yeah. It’s just for them, I don’t know, for a child to in, in the region of, of us. Yeah. So the future combining blockchain. Yeah. With the abstract ability, yeah. Of, of tater. And it will be unbelievable, but it’s the first step at the moment.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission):01:18:39
Maybe, maybe instead of tear, talking about access to data, we should talk about data sharing and the conditions to share the data. Is it not a, right?
Kurt Nemec (Director General, EFMDET):01:18:50
I think we should discuss, yeah. The future medium of tech collation that the word is from is, is it’s from yeah. Okay. It’s from copy on Nikos. Yeah, because he, he did, he was not only famous for, for, for his astronomy, he was only famous for economics. And this expression is problem from Funko. At the pricing and then, yeah, he was the first man. Yeah. When went into that, that the sentence, what they ordered, the idea of circulation, the medium of circulation. So circulation of data. That’s it. So what’s the data? It’s a currency. It’s a contract. But in the end it’s just circulation. And that’s the highest point of subsection.
Isabelle Vandoorne (Deputy Head of Unit & Sustainable & Intelligent Transport, European Commission):01:19:43
Because they quite often access to data, access to data, open data. And if we get a weekend cooler, cat ocat Ett is easier to focus, but it’s really complicated because of that. The blockchain is just a technically know. Thank you. Yeah. And then we have the law on it’s another layer. Yeah. And then you have to economic center, you have competition. Okay. It’s really complicated.
Robert Kopitsch (Director, APCO Worldwide): 01:20:08
To have to bring this to an end, especially now. Got Very interesting. Anybody with the last question before we close for today? Anything that you always wanted to ask anybody on the panel?
Speaker 3: 01:20:28
Anybody on the panel if these very mobile and automated that atomic don’t you, the roads and everything else needs to be redone with sensors. And you know, it just a question that, because if you have it all these communication between cars and trucks and everything?
Klaus Schaaf (Director DLT, Volkswagen Group):01:20:52
There will be some additional communication needed. Definitely. but I think this is something which will develop over, over time. And this, this is something we can really adjust really easily to, but to the, to come up with a solution for exchange of, of data, exchange of values. That is something we have to think about from a regulatory aspect. The other one is just technic.