Article
Smart City
Future of Mobility in China
With the rise of innovation and digitalization as the new drivers of growth, countries around the world are actively looking for solutions to balance economic, technological and social development. As data becomes more readily available in this day and age, governments are faced with a catch-22: how do they utilize the abundance of data to improve citizens' lives without intruding into their personal privacy, and how can they address social and environmental problems without compromising fiscal growth?
With this consideration in mind, governments have started to implement 'smart city' policies by leveraging IT infrastructure and incorporating innovative solutions in urban planning. Ultimately, the goal is for smart cities to elevate people's standard of living, integrate technology into the fabric of society, and achieve sustainable development in the long run.
In order to develop the best and most comprehensive smart city solutions, governments and enterprises must look beyond sector lines to synergize considerations from multiple areas, such as automotive, public and private transportation providers, legal, regulation, banking, insurance, energy, technology, telecom etc. The recent announcement of Ford's new self-driving platform at CES in Las Vegas is a prime example of the need for cross-sector collaboration in smart city solutions. Ford aims to be seen as an operating system for the future of mobility beyond being "just" a car company combining recent trends in the transportation sector, like autonomous vehicles, car-sharing and car-hailing, on-demand deliveries, and smart cities. The announced partnership with Qualcomm on "vehicle-to-everything" (V2X) technology to be launched by 2019 in all of its cars and deployment of the "transportation mobility cloud" will only be successful through activation of a broad ecosystem building on a cross-sector collaboration to allow for a suite of city and consumer facing applications.
