My day at IAA 2019

Today I was at the IAA in Frankfurt. Super impressive, almost as much as my beloved InnoTrans.

After a stimulating kicking-off with a breakfast roundtable organized by Bloomberg on “The Future of Mobility”, followed by the IAA opening ceremony, I toured the exhibition (special thanks to Schaeffler for their booth visit), had numerous meetings and chats, and finally attended a panel on digitalization entitled “Overcoming digital potholes.”

Digitalization was clearly on everybody’s mind. I was happy to contribute to the discussion from the point of view of a company that has centered its portfolio around digitalization and artificial intelligence for some years now.

Perhaps not fully courteously, I started out with challenging my panel’s title. “Overcoming digital potholes” – this image suggests that in order to respond to digitalization, all we need to do is to fill a few potholes. I just don’t think that’s enough. In my opinion, digitalization is a game changer. And our response cannot be to just do a little bit of repair work here and there on our existing roads. Instead, we need to build entirely new “roads”, an entirely new network, and even a mobility operating system that allows cities and their operators to reclaim the comprehensive management of urban mobility. At the other end of the spectrum, passengers want to get from A to B seamlessly, meaning as efficiently, safely, reliably, and eco-friendly as possible. And they look for one digital platform offering, on their mobile devices, which is an integrated solution for the entire journey, combining all modes, and offering not only trip planning but also ticketing etc.

For passengers, mobility is a service – and for us at Siemens Mobility it is, too. So in my presentation, I discussed a couple of examples from our portfolio for that new mobility operating system: for instance how artificial intelligence makes traffic lights more efficient because it can adjust their phasing to changing traffic patterns; how routing software gathers an entire country’s transportation network in one single app (it’s an app for Denmark called minRejseplan, an example that I love); and of course our technology for self-driving vehicles which relies on roadside infrastructure and is safe, efficient, and superbly suited for the first and last mile.

I’ve highlighted this new eco-system not just because the technologies are really cool and ultimately benefit passengers. I think they have a more general advantage: they help communities and municipalities all around the world to reclaim control of their mobility system. Digitalization lets them organize sustainable, attractive, secure and safe, demand-responsive, intermodal mobility – and that’s something we all want!