Tangling with the Automotive Industry

It wasn’t long ago that few people had heard of Elon Musk, fewer knew what Paypal was during its startup years, and even fewer thought that e-mobility could be a thing someday. Yet innovation has continued on. The world’s biggest industrial fair provided insight into what the world’s largest industrial companies are focusing on: the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with the automotive industry leading the way, and IOTA is in the midst of it through its partnership with MOBI.

The automotive industry is a major industrial branch. Almost 100 million cars are produced every year with about 70% of each car’s components being produced by external suppliers. Germany, for instance, has about 1,500 supply firms alone. These suppliers are the ones who provide the “smart” materials which enable autonomous driving or smart parking.

IOTA wants to not only be part of the next industrial revolution, but to be its base layer. And if this revolution is to be successful, the supply firms are the key, because innovation will never hit the road without them. Let’s have a look at two of the biggest supply firms:

BOSCH:

Ranked 1st of the global supply firms.

Products include: Gasoline systems, diesel systems, chassis system controls, electrical drives, starter motors & generators, car multimedia, electronics, steering systems, battery technology, exhaust gas, turbochargers & treatment systems as well as service solutions.

ZF:

Ranked 2nd of the global supply firms.

Products include: Transmissions, chassis components & systems, steering systems, clutches, dampers & active & passive safety systems.

IOTA’s first major step in the automotive domain was a partnership with with BOSCH followed by the addition of Volkswagen’s CDO Johann Jungwirth to its supervisory board. Joining MOBI (Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative) is the next step for IOTA.

MOBI’s mission reads as follows:

Promoting standards and accelerating adoption of blockchain, distributed ledger, and related technologies for the benefit of industry, consumers, and communities

This boils down to projects related to (source):

Vehicle identity , history and data tracking

, history and data tracking Supply chain tracking, transparency, and efficiency

tracking, transparency, and efficiency Autonomous machine and vehicle payments

Secure mobility ecosystem commerce

Data markets for autonomous and human driving

for autonomous and human driving Car sharing and ride hailing

and Usage-based mobility pricing and payments for vehicles, insurance, energy, congestion, pollution, infrastructure, etc.

Each of these can be realized on IOTA’s Tangle simply because it was designed for exactly such use cases.

With its focus on being the base layer for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the Tangle fits in perfectly here. MOBI is actively working with companies accounting for over 70% of the global vehicle production in terms of market share. This consortium not only has the big car manufacturers on board (for instance BMW, Ford, GM and Renault), but also the two biggest suppliers of the world which will tailor their products to the IIoT’s needs, thus enabling IOTA’s advantages to shine.

So IOTA has seemingly found a comfortable home in the epicenter of a tsunami which will change not only the automotive industry, but the whole industrial sector.