4-Perspectives analysis of the e-mobility ecosystem

ContentsIntroduction.................................................................................................................................................2

Background and Overview.......................................................................................................................2

Objectives & Scope..................................................................................................................................2

Research Approach & Questions: 4-Perspectives Tool / Framework.......................................................2

4-Perspectives Analysis of the e-mobility ecosystem..................................................................................5

Products / Services Perspective...............................................................................................................5

Core Infrastructure..............................................................................................................................6

Smart Grid Integration.........................................................................................................................7

Emerging Mobility Solutions and Trends.............................................................................................7

EVs as part of digital lifestyles – “Cars as more than cars”..................................................................9

Technology / Platform Perspective........................................................................................................10

Battery Technology............................................................................................................................10

Charging Technology.........................................................................................................................10

IT Mobility Platforms.........................................................................................................................10

Ecosystem Actors, Business Models and Operating Environment Perspective......................................11

IT Platform Provider / System Integrator...........................................................................................11

Third Party Application / Solution / Service Developers....................................................................12

Operating Environment.....................................................................................................................12

Users Perspective..................................................................................................................................13

Delving deeper into the “User Perspective”..........................................................................................14

Ascribing new meanings via Design-driven Innovation: What is a car that’s not a car?....................14

A case in point in providing new interpretations - The MIT ‘City Car’ project...................................15

Co-Creating with Users......................................................................................................................16

Gamification......................................................................................................................................18

Works Cited...............................................................................................................................................20

Introduction

Background and OverviewElectric Mobility has been touted as the ‘next revolution’ in transportation technology and a torch bearer for sustainable living for quite some time now. While the technology is undoubtedly promising and is steadily gaining ground, at least in niches, the growth has not been as fast or smooth as was predicted at one time.

While EVs and related technologies have been gaining maturity over the years and the technological roadmap looks relatively settled, there are still a plethora of open questions on the viability aspects from a business and economic point of view.

As stated in (1), e-mobility is being viewed as a disruption and hence is a cause of confusion among the established actors in the mobility ecosystems, even as it creates opportunities for new players in the evolving ecosystem.

Objectives & ScopeThe goal of this document is to provide a holistic overview of the emerging e-mobility ecosystem – in Finland in particular and across the globe in general, its key features, challenges and opportunities by studying and analyzing the various perspectives that shape the overall landscape.

The document attempts to identify the key questions, both, those already answered or being considered as well as open or unexplored ones within each perspective that can help in furthering the understanding of the dynamics involved and thus in formulating strategies for the future.

Research Approach & Questions: 4-Perspectives Tool / Framework

Figure 1: The 4-Perspective Framework

An industrial / technology / business ‘ecosystem’ can be described as the network of value producers (companies, partners etc.) and value consumers (users, customers etc.), the activities and transactions that take place between them (e.g. Value creation in the form of goods and/or services produced and value consumption – the consumption of those goods and services) and the physical / virtual assets that facilitate those activities and transactions (e.g. technology platforms, policies etc.). Thus, such an ecosystem can be characterized by the following four ‘components’ or ‘aspects’ and the interfacing that happens among them:

1. The Value being created – Products or Service

2. The Value Producers – Partners in the ecosystem

3. The Value Consumers – Users and Customers

4. Supporting or Enabling Assets – Platform, Policies, Business Models etc.

The essence of the 4-Perspectives tool lies in identifying and answering the key questions and issues concerning the specific ecosystem under consideration by approaching it from these four different perspectives and the interfaces between them. While the tool suggests some basic and generic questions that can be applied universally, it can and should be augmented to include more precise questions, as needed, thus creating specialized ‘flavors’ of the basic tool suited to particular industries or domains being studied. This flexibility ensures that the tool can be configured and adapted based on the specifics of the case at hand.

Approaching the subject from these different viewpoints helps in getting a holistic view of the ecosystem(s) under consideration. The questions and ‘deliberation points’ within each perspective are

designed to facilitate an insightful study by providing both, breadth as well as depth understanding of the most pertinent issues. The 4-Perspectives framework is especially useful in the initial, ambiguous stages of the analysis as it helps in focusing on the key questions and issues.

Figure-1 shows a version of the tool targeted towards technology driven digital-service ecosystems. Table-1 offers another view, depicting the key generic questions pertaining to each of the four perspectives in this context.

It is also important to note that the framework can be used both in an analytical sense for studying the existing or already established ecosystems as well as in a generative fashion for ‘designing’ or envisioning new ecosystems.

The framework can provide a skeletal structure which can be fleshed out further by using other appropriate analytical tools and methods to delve deeper within the specific perspectives or interfaces. For instance, the ‘User’ perspective may be elaborated further by creating User Personas, User Journey Maps and identifying User Expectations (e.g. using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). Similarly, Business Model Canvas, Scenario planning, Network diagrams, Service or Product Prototypes and other such tools and techniques may be used in other perspectives.

Users

• Who are the users being targeted for different services / products?

• What are the typical personas of the users

• User experiences of services / products – have there been any pilots / trials – how was the response?

• What are the key adoption blockers for each of the user segments?

• Can the users be involved in co-creating or customizing services / products and their experiences? What are the models for this kind of participation?

Services / Applications

• What are the services/ products being offered / planned – some concrete examples? What value do they provide or add to the users / customers?

• What is user experience for those services / products? How do they compare with the existing or competing products and services?

• From customers’ perspective, what are the usage models for the services / products?

Technology / Platform Ecosystem Actors / Business Models /

• What are the characteristics of the platform – is it open, interoperable etc.?

• How easy or difficult is it to onboard new partners – service providers etc.

• What is the level of maturity of technologies involved – key benefits, how do the compare to other equivalent technologies, risks, potential issues etc.?

Operating Environment

• Who are the key partners and what role do they play?

• What are their incentives?

• What are the involved business / revenue models for different partners?

• What are the key challenges or participation blockers for each of the actors?

Table 1: Key generic questions in various perspectives

The 4-Perspectives framework, briefly described above, has been used to provide an overall scaffolding to structure the analysis and observation in this document. Other tools and techniques have been used to flesh out the details where appropriate.

4-Perspectives Analysis of the e-mobility ecosystem

Products / Services PerspectiveThis section explores the emerging product-service continuum in the e-mobility space. While there is a potential for a large number of diverse services in the ecosystem eventually, here we focus on some representative examples which are either core to the ecosystem or represent major emerging trends and categories.

As noted earlier, this section attempts to answer the following generic questions in context of the e-mobility ecosystem and the products and services therein:

• What are the services & products being offered or planned – some concrete examples? What value do they provide or add to the intended users / customers? What are the main features / characteristics and classifications of the products and services?

• What is user experience for these services / products? How do they compare with the existing or competing products and services? From users’ perspective, what are the usage models for these?

The other sections will then use the products/services introduced here as concrete examples to extend the discussion and cover the other related aspects associated with these (e.g. user segments, technology etc.) in depth.

Figure-2 depicts major, broad categories which may be used to classify the existing and potential future services and applications in the e-mobility ecosystem. The categories are stacked more or less in a hierarchical order such that each category builds on / depends on those below it in the stack.

Figure 2: E-Mobility Product/Service Categories

Core InfrastructureAt the most fundamental level – the very core of the ecosystem - is the basic e-mobility infrastructure consisting of the electric vehicles and the corresponding network of charging stations (both private as well as public).

Electric VehiclesDocument D1.1 provides the basic definitions with regard to the electric vehicles as applicable, mainly to passenger cars and buses. Other sources, including Frost and Sullivan (2) also offer similar classifications. The main axes for classification are the energy source (whether based solely on battery power or ‘hybrid’ – with both a battery / motor drive as well as a conventional Internal combustion engine (ICE)) and the range of the vehicle on a single charge. The electric vehicles in the scope of this discussion also have the ability to charge the batteries through the regular electric supply network (grid).

It is noteworthy that while most of the discussion is targeted to electric 4-wheelers (cars, buses etc.), electric 2-Wheelers are also a popular and growing trend especially in developing countries (China). The 2-wheelers (bikes, scooters and other new forms) should be studied in depth in their own right with respect to target users, their expectations and associated business models.

While globally the low range of electric vehicles vis-à-vis the costs involved is a major adoption blocker (and also a key focus / development area), in Europe (and Finland) this seems to be a relatively lesser problem due to relatively smaller intra-city commute distances. Hence a class of electric vehicles, typically called the “City Electric Vehicles (CEVs)” seems to hit the sweet point in terms of cost and range especially in European markets.

Core Infrastructure(Electric Vehicles, Charging Stations)

Smart Grid Integration

Emerging Mobility Solutions(Car Pooling, Multi-mode Transportation, End mile connectivity etc.)

E-Mobility as part of sustainable, digital lifestyles

Nevertheless, continuous technological improvements and growing scale of adoption is expected to both increase the range as well as bring down the costs, hence bringing the electric vehicles within reach of a much broader base of users in near future. (2)

On the other hand, the increasing battery capacities are also likely to create spare capacities available in a significant percentage of electric vehicles since the typical and average commute distances for intra-city travel are relatively small. This has the potential to create opportunities for innovation in managing the spare capacity. Applications in the areas of integration with the electric grids and new, innovative mobility solutions, covered later in this document, therefore become interesting.

Charging StationsThe charging infrastructure for electric vehicles forms the other pillar of core e-mobility infrastructure. The major points of consideration with regard to the charging stations are the following:

Charging Times‘Slow Charging’ (typically 6-8 hours for a full charge) is currently the most common prevalent mode of charging. This limits the mobility of the vehicles as well as the scope of locations for installation of charging points / stations. (Typically restricted to homes and offices). Frost and Sullivan’s electric vehicle technology roadmap (2) predicts developments in ‘Fast Charging’ technologies will make possible charging times of 1-2 hours by 2015 and less than an hour (~15 minutes) by 2020.

Location of Charging Stations & “Charging as a Service”The advent of ‘Fast Charging’ (including ‘battery swapping’) enables charging stations to be setup in a much wider variety of locations and hence creates opportunities for a large number of players to offer ‘charging as a service’ either as a value-add on top of existing services to their users and customers or commercially as a service in itself. Parking lots, Retail outlets (malls etc.), Restaurants etc. are good examples of potential locations for charging stations.

It is interesting to note that integration with the electric grid (discussed in the next section) also adds to the role and value of the charging station network as these stations serve not only as ‘dumb’ charging points but potentially also as smart grid integration / access points. Charging stations also bring into the picture a host of associated services and players / providers for the same including metering, billing and payment etc.

Smart Grid IntegrationAs already noted, electric vehicles typically interact with the electric grids through the charging station during a charging event. At present, this interaction is mostly ‘dumb’, involving a one-way transfer of electrical energy from the grid to the vehicle (battery). As the adoption of electric vehicles flourishes and charging stations grow in number and type, this interaction / transaction with the grid will need to become increasingly more ‘intelligent’ to accommodate users preferences and usage patterns. This will also be needed to tailor or encourage certain user behaviors (e.g. offloading charging to non-peak grid usage times by dynamically pricing / electricity markets). Incorporating this intelligence entails and

enables participation of various other players (e.g. technology solution providers, electricity market operators, payment providers etc.)

However, one of the most interesting emerging aspects of electric vehicles is their potential application as participants and suppliers in the distributed electric / power grids. Due to the nature of the technology involved, electric vehicles (batteries) can naturally act as storehouses of electrical energy. As the EV adoptions increases to a significant number and battery capacities and the network of charging stations improve, the vehicle (battery) to grid transfer may indeed become a viable component of the electricity supply. This would again require innovative solutions and applications for interaction between the vehicle, the charging station and the grid.

Emerging Mobility Solutions and TrendsA number of emerging trends in the mobility and urban living space offer scope for innovation in products and services that are built around electric vehicles. Some of the important ones are noted here.

Car sharing / poolingCar-Pooling and sharing (private / personal as well as commercial sharing services) is emerging as a strong trend globally, especially in specific user segments including urban office commuters, students etc. Further, a lot of governments are supporting and encouraging the trend by way of favorable policies and concessions especially to the service providers who make use of electric vehicles in their fleets.

Frost and Sullivan (2) estimates car-sharing EU subscriber base to increase to 14 million by 2020 (32 million worldwide) with over 200,000 shared vehicles on the road by that time. The market size is estimated to be around 7 billion euros. The study also estimates that at least 20% of the car-sharing vehicles will be EVs by 2016.

Car-sharing being a relatively nascent concept, offers a huge open space for service innovations in areas such as vehicle discovery and ‘booking’, identification and access, payments etc.

Integrated Multi-modal transportationAnother trend that is still relatively small but is slated to pick up in near to mid-term is integration of various modes of urban transport, including different forms of public transport, shared vehicles and personal vehicles to provide seamless, door to door mobility.

Frost and Sullivan (2) predicts emergence of the role of ‘Mobility Integrators’ that act as single point of contact for the end-users, coordinating between the various modes of transport as also, payment and information service providers.

There is ample opportunity for service innovation across various media (e.g. smartphones and other digital devices for information access, discovery and bookings, on the ground logistics and transportation services, payments etc.) in this space targeting both the urban residents as well as tourists, the latter being a segment that governments are especially interested in tapping into.

The following example provides a case in point for multimodal public transport chains as step towards ‘door-to-door’ mobility for urban commuters.

Flinkster: Deutsche Bahn’s ‘Last Mile’ connectivity service (3)Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German transportation behemoth offers ‘Last Mile’ connectivity services targeted at different user segments under the ‘Flinkster’ brand across Germany. The services are aimed, chiefly, at different categories of passengers using the DB’s rail network and services. The two main services offered are (1) A Car Sharing/Rental service and (2) A Bike Rental service (called call-a-bike).

Through the car sharing service, the users can book rental cars for stipulated times and pick-up the same at conveniently located access points (typically near railway stations and airports). Cars are available for booking round the clock for low rental fares starting at around 2 EUR per hour. Regular DB network users are entitled for further discounts. It is interesting to note that DB’s car sharing service also acts as a platform for other private rental car providers who can make their cars available for rentals through DB’s fleet, hence avoiding technology and operational overheads that would otherwise be required to offer a standalone service. The advantage for DB and their customers is the bigger, enhanced fleet of vehicles on offer.

DB intends to progressively include increasing number of electric vehicles in its fleet of car sharing vehicles. (See a note in this context in the ‘User Perspective’ section).

An alternate to the car sharing service, which is targeted mainly at the long-distance / inter-city travelers or upwardly mobile city dwellers is the ‘call-a-bike’ bike rental service aimed at students and other cost, health and environment conscious daily commuters. The service works on similar concept – bikes available for rent at relatively inexpensive rates at convenient locations in the cities.

In both cases, the user experience of the services is an important aspect for success. The services rely on a straightforward, hassle free and quick booking (via mobile, web etc.), discovery, access (via lock codes, mobile or customer card) and return mechanism for the vehicles.

An important takeaway from the above case is the fact that the seamless integration of diverse transportation modes – including public and/or private, ‘motorized and/or non-motorized’, electric and/or conventional is the key to success of the services in this space.

EVs as part of digital lifestyles – “Cars as more than cars”Preference for sustainable living, conscious ecological choices and increasingly digital lifestyles, interconnected with social media are emerging as major trends globally, but especially in the western countries including Europe.

Electric mobility and electric vehicles can get a shot in the arm by tapping into these trends and helping them pick up further. However, for this to materialize there’s a need to redefine “What is e-mobility and an electric vehicle”. These vehicles and the associated set of services need to go beyond the conventional wisdom. This might mean re-interpreting electric vehicles as working spaces, infotainment hubs, media consumption platforms and in many other ways.

This is also a space which is highly conducive to user participation in design and delivery of experiences and hence to user-driven innovation. The open question / challenge, however, is to find ways of engaging with the users and coming up with pilots / prototypes to test the concepts quickly.

The section ‘Delving Deeper into User Perspective’ presented later in the document provides further examples and inspiration in this regard.

Technology / Platform PerspectiveThe technology perspective, as the name suggests, considers the important underlying technologies and platforms that are vital for the functioning of the ecosystem. In the case of e-mobility ecosystem, we focus on technology areas that are easily recognizable as being critical to the success of the ecosystem and the services / products discussed above.

Battery TechnologyBatteries account for the majority of the cost of electric vehicles and constrain its range. Thus, the battery technology is the single biggest adoption blocker for EVs and electric mobility today. No wonder it is also the area receiving a lot of attention in research and development.

Frost and Sullivan (2) indicates an emerging preference for Lithium-ion batteries over lead-acid based ones. Battery capacities are slated to go up from the current 7-15 kWh to 16-25 kWh by 2020. This will, in effect, increase the range of EVs from around 60-80 KMS at present to up to 150-170 KMS.

Charging TechnologyAlong with the battery, the charging technology (and the time taken for a full charge) is the other determinant of the ‘degree of freedom’ of the mobility of electric vehicles. From the currently prevalent ‘Slow Charging’ which requires 2-8 hours for a full charge, the technology is slated to see rapid improvements in charging times (termed as ‘Fast Charging’) with the time taken for a full charge coming down to around 15 Mins – 2 hours by 2020. (2)

IT Mobility PlatformsApart from the core battery and charging technologies, which will need to improve to meet the consumer expectations for a broad based adoption of EVs, the supporting IT platform(s) is the other major critical area which requires considerable thought and deliberation.

The IT mobility platform needs to be cohesive, integrated, open and interoperable to allow a diverse set of services to be delivered (and service providers to deliver those services) on top of it. This includes both consumer facing services as well as ‘backend’ or infrastructure level services.

Consumer Facing Platform Services

In-Vehicle Applications & ServicesThese include services like real- time navigation, traffic updates, social and digital media, vehicle diagnostics including information about battery & charge state, smart charging and access to charging stations etc.

Auxiliary User ServicesThese include services for transport / connection discovery, booking, reporting on usage etc. They may be accessed from within the vehicle or from outside using various digital media.

Charging Station and Grid IntegrationThese services, typically accessible at the charging stations, revolve around interaction between the vehicle, charging point and the grid including payment, information and intelligence with regard to usage patterns etc.

Especially in the consumer space, there’s immense scope for innovative services and applications that can be offered by third parties (and perhaps even the users themselves) on top of the open mobility platform. Discoverability and ease of use of these third party services must also be taken into account while designing the platform. Apple’s app-store model, though in a different context, can be looked at and studied as a successful model that harnesses third party innovation on top of the Apple platform spanning multiple devices.

Backend / Infrastructure ServicesThese mainly include services that facilitate interaction, information sharing and transactions within the smart grid as well as between the grid and the charging station network. Examples include Grid monitoring, dynamic price control, demand forecasting, Vehicle to Grid related backend services etc.

Interoperability and an open and flexible platform is an imminent requirement not only for consumer facing services but also for the backend services to allow for different service providers (e.g. different grid operators, energy producers, analytics, payment service providers etc.) to come on board and continue evolving the platform.

Ecosystem Actors, Business Models and Operating Environment PerspectiveThis perspective, at a high level, attempts to answer the following questions:

Who are the different actors in the ecosystem? What are their roles and incentives? What are the key challenges for each actor that stops them from coming on-board? What are the key characteristics of the operating environment that can impact the ecosystem –

both positively and/or negatively? For instance, government policies, economic factors, socio-political factors etc.?

The document D1.1 Value Creation Schemes of Electric Mobility (1) provides comprehensive answer to the first question and to a large extent to the second question. This section only discusses complementary Actors / Roles not covered in that document and additions to original roles, where needed.

IT Platform Provider / System IntegratorWhile (1) provides for a role of ‘Operative System Integrator’ responsible for bringing together the physical assets and services from diverse actors (from installation, lifetime services etc.), as demonstrated in the Technology perspective, there’s also a need for an IT platform provider (or multiple providers working in tandem) cum system integrator that ensure a cohesive, open and interoperable IT platform for offering diverse services - both backend and consumer facing, as described earlier. The platform should also provide a marketplace like mechanism for discovering and harnessing third party applications and services described next below.

Third Party Application / Solution / Service DevelopersIn order to foster innovation and vibrancy in the ecosystem, it is vital that third party service providers and application and solution developers be encouraged to come on-board the IT mobility platform and introduce both consumer facing and backend services and applications to continuously evolve the platform. The Apple platform analogy already mentioned earlier should serve as a model for inspirations as well as execution in this regard. As in case of the Apple ecosystem, the ‘third party’ in a lot of cases could be the users / consumers of the ecosystem, thus allowing them to participate and shape the offerings in the ecosystem.

Operating EnvironmentOwing to the skewed performance to cost ratios which are tilted in favor of ICE vehicles at present and due to the current limitations of EVs, policy and infrastructural support to e-mobility will be critical in getting the industry up on its feet.

Globally, governments and city administrations are putting in place policies and economic structures to facilitate the growth of sustainable technologies including electric mobility. There have been several successes at least in specific niches (e.g. electric Kei cars in Japan, electric 2-Wheelers in China. Toyota Prius Hybrid in the US) thanks to some of these measures.

In Europe and Finland as well, several incentives have been introduced by governments and civic administrations.

Users PerspectiveThe ‘Users’ perspective aims to consider the most important participants in any ecosystem – the consumers or users of the service and product offerings. Here we deliberate on and attempt to answer the following broad questions:

Who are the typical users or user segments for e-mobility? Some concrete Personas? What are the incentives / value-adds that e-mobility will provide vis-à-vis costs to the different

user segments? What are the expectations of these different user groups? What are the key adoption blockers for each of these segments / personas and how can they be

removed? What are the user centric trends that can influence the choices of these personas / segments?

How can those be tapped? What are the models needed to involve the users more actively in designing services and

solutions in the ecosystem?

The report ‘End User Expectations on e-Mobility in Finland (3)’ delves into and offers interesting insights on some of the above questions. The last question is of great significance and will be dealt with in a dedicated section.

Given the current state of art and the nascent nature of the e-mobility space, most of the users can be classified as ‘Early Adopters’. By definition, they tend to have a relatively higher risk aptitude compared to the average users with respect to trying out new products, services and technologies. However, within this broad group, different users typically have different motivations which must be understood in order to tap into this limited pool. (3), based on previous studies, identified the following broad early-adopter user segments (or Personas):

Green Consumer Technology Enthusiast Hybrid Household (with multiple cars) City Bohemian (Wants to be ‘different’) Design Lover (Motivated by innovations in design)

The study (3) sought to establish the expectations / requirements of these user personas with respect to e-mobility on a set of variables including – range, charging (time and location) and price. The study established, among other findings that price of the EVs was the major adoption blocker and not the technical limitations by themselves. However, there is possibly a subtle dependence on the technical capabilities as well – the users perhaps found the available EVs overpriced for their capabilities vis-à-vis conventional ICE vehicles.

Delving deeper into the “User Perspective”

Ascribing new meanings via Design-driven Innovation: What is a car that’s not a car?Conventionally established wisdom in the fields of product (and service) development, places a great emphasis on researching, analyzing and designing (or improving) product (service) features to meet user requirements and expectations. While it is obviously important to cater to explicit user requirements, especially in case of incremental enhancements, it is easy to notice that the most disruptive or ‘breakthrough’ innovations have stemmed not from ‘expressed’ but from ‘latent’ needs. Roberto Verganti argues and illustrates that very often, innovative breakthroughs lead to creation or expression of new ‘needs’ or ‘desires’ (4), (5).

In his works (4), (5), the author argues that envisioning and providing new meanings and hence new experiences to the users (a phenomena he terms as ‘Technology Epiphanies’ as depicted in figure 3) is the key to tapping the true market potential of new and emerging technologies and is more important than being a ‘first mover’. The author supports this argument by providing examples of firms like Nintendo, Apple and Swatch, which, though not the first to introduce a new technology (motion sensing, mp3 players and quartz watches respectively), were indeed the first to redefine their respective product categories and enable a new set of experiences for their customers and thereby proved to be extremely successful.

Figure 3: Technology Epiphanies (6)

In this context, Verganti also emphasizes the role of ‘interpreters’ (interdisciplinary experts) and the process of ‘interpretation’ of users’ needs and expectations (in order to decipher new meanings) as being an important part of the design-driven innovation process vis-à-vis a ‘User-Centered’ design process which tends to take the expressed needs on their face-value.

In the famous quote attributed to Henry Ford (whether fact or just an urban legend), he remarked, “If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’”. Many of the products and services that we, as users, take for granted today – from automobiles to Google search, from light-bulb to iPhone – would never have seen the light of day if their ‘perpetrator s’ had only focused on satisfying the obvious or expressed user needs. Innovation, as much as it depends in technology or business-model inventions, relies equally on being able to appeal to the latent needs and, perhaps more importantly, desires of the consumers / users being targeted.

The advent of electric-mobility in context of today’s increasingly digital urban lifestyles provides an important socio-technological opportunity to reimagine and redefine the concept and meanings of urban mobility. In line with ‘design-driven’ approach outlined above, it’d be prudent to view the emerging trends and technological advances in e-mobility not merely as the ‘next iteration’ in automobiles but to broaden the perspective to include the accompanying social and lifestyle changes and pose fundamental questions such as the one in the title of this section – What is a car, that is not a car?

A case in point in providing new interpretations - The MIT ‘City Car’ projectFolding Cars, Novel Manufacturing and Distribution, Autonomous (driverless) vehicles, Mobility on Demand and more

Kent Larson, director of MIT Media Lab’s ‘Changing Places’ group, in his Ted Talk presents interesting new interpretations (many of them research projects at MIT Media Lab’s ‘Changing Places’ research group) of the future of urban living and mobility.

The CityCar (7) is a foldable, two-person electric vehicle for crowded cities. Technology wise, the personal mobility concept employs wheel robots – fully integrated wheel units consisting of drive motors, suspension, braking and steering. This, along with the elimination of IC engine and drive train enables the vehicle to be folded away to further reduce footprint for parking. The vehicle also features a near zero turning radius.

Figure 4: MIT Media Lab's CityCar (7). Picture courtesy of the ‘Hiriko’ project (8)

While the CityCar itself provides an interesting interpretation of the new age urban vehicle, the project exudes a systems thinking approach by also trying to support the concept car with an accompanying re-interpretation The ‘Hiriko’ (Urban Car) project (8), based in the Basque region of Spain, is a collaboration between Denokinn, MIT’s Changing Places research group and a number of other automotive systems

suppliers aimed at productizing the CityCar concept using a novel distributed manufacturing system which will allow the part vendors to supply integrated modules like the wheel robots (hubs), battery systems, interiors, control systems, chassis etc.

Deutsche Bahn has recently entered into an agreement with the Hiriko project to progressively pilot and incorporate the Hiriko City-Car into DB’s ‘last mile’ car sharing network (Flinkster - already discussed earlier) in Germany, starting with Berlin in 2013. (9)

Several other complementary urban mobility projects are also underway at the same research group at MIT. One of them includes designing alternative driving interfaces for the CityCar different from the traditional steering based interface, including autonomous drive-by-wire technologies. Another noteworthy effort in this space is the Google’s autonomous car project. In June 2011, the government of Nevada, California authorized the use of autonomous vehicles after lobbying by Google and other organizations.

Another related project (in the same research group at MIT), called the ‘Market Economy of Trips’ aims at experimenting with and studying the feasibility of “self-organizing vehicle sharing systems that employ incentive mechanisms (dynamic pricing) to control demand imbalances, and an interactive graphical user interface to effectively communicate location-based price information. Prices adjust dynamically to parking needs, incentivizing users to drive vehicles to stations with too few vehicles, while discouraging arrivals to stations with excess vehicles.” (10)

One of the key insights from the broad based projects and efforts outlined above is that a system-thinking approach is needed in order to understand and reimagine the urban mobility space in a holistic manner.

Co-Creating with UsersThe best way to create new ‘meanings’ and interpretations in context of e-mobility would of course be to include the end-users directly in the creation process as much as possible. As already mentioned earlier, the two topmost abstraction layers of e-mobility related services (figure 2) are especially conducive to broad based user participation throughout the service lifecycles. Various strategies, models and methods could be adopted to facilitate such co-creation at various levels of participation. Some of these are outlined below.

Listening to and working with the usersPerhaps the most direct, somewhat primitive and yet quite effective way to involve the users is to actually talk to them and get them to express their explicit and implicit needs and desires. This can be achieved through various well-established and documented means including workshops, focus-groups, forums etc. However, to makes these fora more effective and creative, they should be curated, mediated and/or facilitated by specialized and interdisciplinary ‘interpreters’, as already noted in the design-driven approach discussed above.

The paper “Electric vehicles beyond transport: Ideas for features, meanings and services related to ‘Batteries on Wheels’” (11) presents the process and outcomes of one such meditation workshop organized during the Nordic Climate Festival at Aalto University.

The workshop participants were selected from among the attendee experts and students to form a diverse group (based on various criteria like age, professional background, gender etc.). The workshop involved providing contextual background to the participants followed by individual and group work in various forms (posters, essay, discussions etc.) around the theme of e-mobility in general and ideas for new meanings for and services in context of electric vehicles in particular. This was followed by post workshop ‘interpretation’ of the outcomes including taxonomizing, classification and clustering of the ideas generated by the author / facilitator.

The workshop yielded interesting insights and ideas which could be classified in various ways including, for instance, using the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A majority of the ‘new meanings’ or ideas generated were based on perceiving the electric vehicles as a power source or buffer rather than just a means of transport.

However, more important than the specific outcomes from the workshop, was perhaps the experience of the workshop process as an interpretative tool / model for fostering end user participation. Given the dynamic nature of the space, it is important to discover, develop and use such tools on a regular basis to engage with the target users and iterate over insights, opinions, findings and ideas.

Harnessing the Social Networks for Open Innovation: Fostering ‘Adopter / Influencer’ CommunitiesDemocratization of innovation and proliferation of ‘open source’ community based models in contrast to the closed, proprietary systems in almost all spheres of human activity has become one of the hallmarks of the digital age we live in. There are both mature / established (e.g. open source software like Linux) as well as recent / emerging success stories (e.g. open source venture funding like Kickstarter, open source movies like ‘Iron Sky’ etc.) that have adopted this alternative, broad community or ‘crowd’ based approach to innovation. With the emergence of digital social media platforms, ‘innovators’ now have at their disposal, the necessary collaboration and communication tools to gather and sustain creative communities.

Fostering a community for ongoing dialogue as well as for creating a fraternity or peer group of early adopters, influencers and perhaps even innovators in the space of electric mobility (i.e. the potential persona types already identified and mentioned earlier viz. the ‘Green Consumer’, the ‘Technology Enthusiast’, the ‘Design Lover’ etc.) would hence be a prudent strategy. While such a community should naturally utilize online social media and collaboration tools as appropriate, efforts should also be made to encourage real world interaction and face time between the members as much as possible. This can be achieved by various means like regular social meet-ups, conferences and festivals.

A community event: National Plug-In DayA good example of a community event in this context is that of the ‘National Plug-In Day’ instituted in the US in 2011. The second edition was held across 50 US cities on 23rd September 2012. (12)

The local celebration events in different cities were led by the community members – drivers and advocates of electric plug-in vehicles. The events included EV parades, ride-and-drives, electric tailgate parties, press conferences, award ceremonies, informational booths etc. A consortium of organizations served as the national level support team to help with the logistics and enthusiastic individuals and groups could register to host local events or join those in the vicinity.

Gamification‘Gamification’ or introducing elements of game-play and game design (such as difficulty or achievement levels, rewards and recognitions, virtual currency etc.) in non-game environments and contexts to stimulate desired behavioral responses is another major trend evident in the digital lifestyle services being offered today. So much so, that a lot of forward thinking workplaces are increasingly incorporating gamification into their work cultures in one form or the other.

Gamification is also a key tenet of most of the social media and especially online collaboration platforms and open source communities. The elements of gameplay promote richer engagement, often encouraging desired behavioral changes that would otherwise be harder to affect. Game design elements such as ‘achievement levels’, ‘rewards’ and ‘recognitions’ (e.g. ‘kudos badges’, ‘stars’) help to elicit and /or reinforce positive contributions from the community members, hence creating an overall healthy and active community.

Thus, coupled with the open community approach outlined in the previous section, gamification can possibly go a long way in motivating users to adopt electric vehicles and associated services. Elements such as ‘achievements’, ‘awards’ and peer recognition within the community can have an amplifying effect in fast pacing the adoption of EVs and related services both inside and outside (by virtue of network effect) the community.

For example, the community members (or registered users) could be awarded ‘Green Achievement Badges’ (or even physical, paper certificates) for using shared electric vehicles or public transportation instead of ICE vehicles. There could be weekly (or monthly) awards for most active contributors, service providers etc. The use of virtual currency could also be explored. For instance, users could be awarded virtual money in proportion to the money saved by using electric vehicles or associated services (e.g. carpooling) vis-à-vis ICE vehicles. Avenues to spend the virtual money could open up further opportunities for promoting associated partners and services in the community (say by selling merchandise in exchange for the virtual money).

Providing an open and accessible platform to lower the threshold of user-driven innovation: Lessons from AppleAside from, and arguably even more important than the brilliant user experience and industrial design (the ‘product’), the factor that made iPhone a huge success was the Apple AppStore – the platform that sparked an ecosystem of app developers – both big and small, professional and amateur. Indeed, availability of innovative apps has become one of the key competitive and differentiating factors across various mobile platforms in the industry today. The AppStore served to democratize innovation in the Apple ecosystem – there was no way Apple could have come up with all the applications available today

by themselves or by working with few select partners. Instead, by opening up the platform and by providing tools, guidelines and help to the developer community (a majority of who were also the early adopters akin to the ‘Technology Enthusiast’ category of users mentioned above), Apple cemented their ecosystem and earned loyal fans.

While not exactly replicable, the AppStore model can serve as an inspiration for creating an open and accessible e-mobility platform for technology developers and service providers – both established but also the startups and emerging players and perhaps even tech-savvy users who could use the platform to create or tailor their own experiences. As already noted the Products / Services perspective, the open platform can facilitate innovation across the entire product/service stack starting from applications targeted at smart grid integration, charging point features etc. to service aimed at integrating with and enhancing the urban mobility and digital lifestyle experiences for the users.

Works Cited1. Veikka Pirhonen, Raphael Giesecke, Pekka Malinen. Value Creation Schemes of Electric Mobility. 2010.

2. Frost and Sullivan. 360 Degrees Review.

3. Juhani Hutri, Veikka Pirhonen, Raphael Giesecke. End User Expectaions on e-Mobility in Finland. Helisnki : s.n., 2011.

4. Verganti, Roberto. Designing Breakthrough Products. Havard Business Review. October 2011.

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8. Hiriko. What is HIRIKO project? Hiriko.com. [Online] [Cited: September 27, 2012.] http://www.hiriko.com/what-is-the-hiriko-project.

9. Hiriko Pressroom. Hiriko.com. [Online] [Cited: October 13, 2012.] http://pressroom.hiriko.com/2012/10/12/the-german-railways-choose-the-hiriko-for-their-berlin-transport-network/.

10. MIT Media Lab. Market Economy of Trips. Changing Places Research Group. [Online] [Cited: September 27, 2012.] http://changingplaces.mit.edu/research/95-market-economy-of-trips.

11. The Electric Vehicle beyond Transport: Ideas for features, meanings and services related to "Batteries on Wheels". Giesecke, Raphael. Monaco : s.n., 2012. Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energy Conference, 2012.

12. National Plug In Day. PluginDay.org. [Online] [Cited: September 27, 2012.] http://events.pluginday.org/content_item/about.