Thirty industrialists, including Renault, BMW, General Motors and Ford, met in a new organization called “Mobi”. An international working group whose purpose is to concretize the applications of the blockchain in the automobile.
After isolated initiatives comes the time of the collective work. On May 2, 2018, some thirty international manufacturers announced, on the occasion of the Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai, the creation of a research group dedicated to the integration of the blockchain into the world of the automobile. Under the banner of Mobi (Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative), Renault, General Motors Ford and BMW, but also Bosch, ZF, IBM and Accenture, among others, will work together to make “transport more safe, more affordable and more widely available using Blockchain technology “.
In the management of Mobi, we find a name that is not foreign because it is Chris Ballinger, the former chief financial officer and director of mobility services of the Toyota Research Institute. “The blockchain and related technologies improve confidence, and will revolutionize the automotive industry as well as the way consumers buy and insure their vehicles,” he shares his belief in the research project. The areas of application will vary, from authentication to data security through payment of services, logistics traceability or securing autonomous vehicles.
Toyota is missing. The Japanese group is currently conducting its own boat alone. But it is not excluded to see the list of Mobi partners swell with time. Mercedes, which presented an eco-friendly cryptocurrency solution at the MWC in Barcelona last February, could be one of them, as could Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which at that time was launching an experiment of crypto-valuation of the data from the sensors of the automobile.