Blockchain provides new capabilities for improving driving safety and affordability, supporting autonomous and electric vehicle development and infrastructure, fostering ride and car-sharing applications, and connecting mobility participants in a new peer-to-peer ecosystem.
Fetch.AI announced that it has joined MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, to explore blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for use in the development of a digital mobility ecosystem that could make transportation safer, more affordable, and more widely available.
Fetch.AI is collaborating with MOBI and other industry, government, and non-profit partners to foster a digital environment where users – both businesses and consumers – may securely record driving data, manage ride-share and car-share transactions, and store vehicle identity and usage information.
Blockchain technology sends information over a network of independent computers, known as a distributed ledger, intended to ensure that transactions are secure and data privacy, ownership rights, and integrity are protected. Fetch.AI and partners believe that distributed ledger technology may create transparency and trust among users, reduce risk of fraud, and reduce frictions and transaction costs in mobility, such as fees or surcharges applied by third parties.
Humayun Sheikh, CEO, Fetch.AI commented: “Mobility today, whether public transport or private automotive, is a complex system that requires coordination beyond the scope of the IT systems we currently rely on.” He continued: “At Fetch.AI we are combining distributed ledger technology and machine learning to provide an autonomous infrastructure that’s able to support a more efficient transport ecosystem by anticipating, and acting on, the needs of various actors. We wholeheartedly support MOBI’s mission to develop common distributed ledger standards that will be essential to moving the entire mobility industry forward.”
Through an open-source approach to software tools and standards, the MOBI consortium hopes to stimulate more rapid and scalable adoption of blockchain technology applications by other companies developing autonomous vehicle and mobility services. Fetch.AI is pleased to join MOBI to collaborate with global partners on the development of blockchain-enabled vehicle data and mobility services applications.
Initially, Fetch.AI will be working with MOBI on projects related to:
- Vehicle identity, history and data tracking
- Supply chain tracking, transparency, and efficiency
- Autonomous machine and vehicle payments
- Secure mobility ecosystem commerce
- Data markets for autonomous and human driving
- Car sharing and ride hailing
- Usage based mobility pricing for vehicles, insurance, energy, congestion, pollution, infrastructure, etc.
Chris Ballinger, former Chief Financial Officer and Director of Mobility Services at Toyota Research Institute, is joining MOBI as Chairman and CEO to coordinate this initiative and create a more open platform where users, owners, mobility service companies, and infrastructure providers can better control and monetize their assets, including their data. “Blockchain and related trust enhancing technologies are poised to redefine the automotive industry and how consumers purchase, insure and use vehicles,” said Ballinger. “By bringing together automakers, suppliers, startups, and government agencies, we can accelerate adoption for the benefit of businesses, consumers and communities.”
“We are incredibly excited to be part of this initiative which already connects several of our portfolio with the world’s automotive companies. We see mobility as ground zero for the convergence of AI with DLT and IoT. Fetch.AI’s approach of using ‘bottom-up’ intelligence within a decentralised network to automate the management of systems as complex as transport is unique and compelling.” – Jamie Burke, CEO and Founder, Outlier Ventures
MOBI’s partners include: Accenture, Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Services USA, Beyond Protocol Inc, BigchainDB, Blockchain at Berkeley, BMW, Bosch, Chronicled, ConsenSys Systems, Context Labs, Crypto Valley Association, Dashride, Deon Digital AG, Digital Twin Labs, DOVU, Fetch.ai, FOAM, Ford, General Motors, Hyperledger, IBM, the IOTA Foundation, Luxoft, MotionWerk, NuCypher, Oaken Innovations, Ocean Protocol, Outlier Ventures, Renault, Ride Austin, Shareing, Shift, Spherical Analytics, the Trusted IoT Alliance, VeChain, Xain, and ZF Friedrichshafen AG.
MOBI and its partners announced their collaboration at the Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai.
About MOBI
MOBI is a newly created non-profit foundation formed to accelerate adoption and to promote standards in blockchain, distributed ledgers, and related technologies for the benefit of the mobility industry, consumers, and communities. MOBI and our partners are creating simple, standard and digital ways of identifying cars, people, and trips, of paying for mobility services, and securely exchanging and monetizing data in ways that preserve property rights and privacy. MOBI is working with most of the world’s large automakers and many mobility ecosystem players, along with many start-ups, non-profits, governments, transit agencies, and technology companies. We are convinced that by working together we can make mobility services more efficient, affordable, greener, safer and less congested.
MOBI is an open, inclusive body that acts as a ‘trusted convener’ and partner to entities in the emerging ecosystem of pay for use, on demand, connected, and increasingly autonomous mobility services. MOBI itself is technology and ledger agnostic.
About Fetch.ai
The world’s first adaptive, self-organising ‘smart ledger’. Fetch is a next-generation protocol, invented by leading AI experts, that enables a digital world where Autonomous Economic Agents can perform proactive economic activity. With unrivalled performance and scalability, Fetch is the missing critical infrastructure for tomorrow’s digital economy. www.fetch.ai