Fleet Forward - 1 surprise and updates on Mobility, AI, Blockchain*, Autonomous and other trends

Last week, I was in the bay area talking mobility and the convergence of major trends and technology in the fleet space. The annual Fleet Forward conference brings OEMs, FMC’s, tech companies and suppliers together to discuss the future of mobility. I take notes as a bit obsessive habit, so I thought I would share.

The key themes covered:

• CASE/ACES --> Connectivity, Autonomy, Sharing, and Electrification
• AI, machine learning, blockchain, and other nerdy buzzwords
• Data ownership ( who's going to own, who's going use, who's going to profit)

My take-aways and highlights:

1. Digital meets physical - Who is going to service the future of mobility

• Who is going to move, clean, wash, inspect, maintain, and charge/fuel the vehicles
• Potential players: Incumbent Rentals, Fleet Management Companies, Dealerships, Other Mobile Service providers (Note: I added the last one)

2. Concept of Multi use vehicles - Interchangeable bodies on a powered platform

3. Connected Vehicle (telematics) companies are taking a MAJOR step forward

4. A lot of corporate innovation labs/garages in SF focused on fleet/Mobility

 While I will write more in depth on the future concepts of mobility, impacts to fleets, and how AI is and could be applied, I want to focus on my biggest surprise from the conference. The talk that I have been thinking about most was about a new approach to global addressing. What3Words (what3words.com) presented their approach to solving global addressing inefficiencies. Basically, they divide the world up into 3 trillion 3m by3m squares and assign each a random 3 word combo (removing offensive words and homonyms)

The potential for this concept is vast (while there are a number of hurdles I see, for instance what if you work in logistics and your what3words is Overgrown,Logistics,Overlaps... which is my driveway...). For Travel, Transport, and Logistics companies this could be a great efficiency gain. They are promoting this as a hours per week savings

 For example

• Which loading dock should the truck arrive at?
• Which door do you prefer packages be delivered to?
• On a corporate campus, which door do you enter and exit, (or pick up your pizza)?
• Which entrance to a golf course is used for delivering beverages?

I keep thinking of use cases for this

• On beach, meeting my wife “Hey I am in the 3rd row of chairs, on the 2nd beach, about 10 chairs in or....
• I am at “ word 1, word 2, word 3”

More on the other topics as I can edit and synthesize my notes!

Parker

* Lifting this next bit from a slide at a AI conference I was at earlier this month, there is no update on Blockchain, blockchain slide inclusion is just obligatory.