MOBI and the Connected Vehicle – MOBI | The New Economy of Movement

Connected vehicles and V2X

Modern vehicles are equipped with an array of sensors capable of producing vast amounts of data about the vehicle’s condition, location, and more. These connected vehicles are increasingly able to share this data through what is known as Vehicle-to-Everything, or V2X, communication.

V2X unlocks a pay-per-use mobility ecosystem wherein vehicles communicate with each other and with infrastructure, enabling marginal cost pricing for a host of public and private mobility applications that open new ways to finance public infrastructure, reduce congestion and emissions, arrange efficient multimodal trips, manage fleets, enable usage based mobility and insurance, and much more.

With the connected vehicle market valued at $63.03 billion in 2019 — and poised to reach $225.16 billion by 2027 (source) — mobility stakeholders around the world face a monumental paradigm shift. Learning how to harness V2X applications in a safe, sustainable, secure, and efficient way remains a preeminent challenge for many in the industry. Once achieved, this will open the door to a golden age of connected, autonomous, environmentally-friendly, equitable mobility for all.

MOBI VID enables trusted V2X communications

In order for any connected entity — a person, vehicle, device, or piece of infrastructure — to safely communicate and transact with another, there must be industry-accepted standards to define how that entity’s identity is created, shared, and validated.

In 2019, MOBI released its first standard, MOBI VID, which leverages the internationally-accepted VIN standard and W3C’s Decentralized Identifier (DID) standard to define a vehicle’s Digital Twin (DT) .

The vehicle’s DT combines the vehicle’s unique identifiers with key life events such as maintenance records, ownership transfers, and other standardized processes to give the vehicle a trusted, machine readable, tamper-evident, decentralized identity. This DT can then be used to permit interoperability and enable digital automation of business processes between unrelated parties in an extended value chain.

In a decentralized ecosystem, the DT must be linked to a DID anchored in a trusted network (watch the video below to learn more about Decentralized Identifiers). MOBI is building a blockchain-based trust network, the Integrated Trust Network (ITN), with our members and other consortia. The ITN is a member-owned and operated identity services network.

The MOBI Trusted Trip Standard released in 2021 builds on MOBI VID to link the decentralized identity of any connected entity — be it a vehicle, a smartphone, a sensor, or something else — with its timestamped location and pertinent metadata to create a verifiable trip (watch the video below to learn more about MOBI Trusted Trip). These trips, along with any transactions made along the way, are tracked and measured using Citopia, a decentralized platform designed to work with the ITN to facilitate the onboarding of entities’ Digital Twins and the issuance of verifiable credentials (VCs). Citopia uses Zero Knowledge Proof (ZK), and other advanced cryptography to verify trips and transactions without exposing the personally identifiable information (PII) of the users and organizations involved.

To demonstrate the potential of MOBI standards, the ITN, and Citopia (MOBI Web3 Technology Stack), MOBI and its members launched the Citopia vinTRAK Pilot to test decentralized V2X use cases such as a digital twin maintenance wallet, dealer floorplan auditing, emissions tracking, road usage charging, and usage-based insurance and mobility. These are discussed in more detail below.

MOBI VID (Digital Twin) Maintenance Wallet

The ability to quickly access a vehicle’s entire maintenance history would offer vehicle owners and buyers peace of mind, allow insurers to accurately estimate risk, and equip maintenance and repair experts with the tools to efficiently diagnose and address vehicle issues when they are presented. A digital twin maintenance wallet created using Citopia vinTRAK would leverage MOBI VID II Standards to track and trace vehicle maintenance events from production to use and end of life.

Dealer Floorplan Audit

Traditional dealer floorplan audits are labor and time-intensive, often requiring lenders to rely on third-party services to physically go to the dealership and manually check each vehicle’s identification number, ensuring that all the vehicles are accounted for. Citopia vinTRAK enables vehicles to communicate their unique identities and locations directly to lenders and uses ZK to protect sensitive data, presenting a blockchain-based automated alternative to traditional audits and creating a seamless and efficient experience for all involved.

Emissions Tracking

Sustainability is a growing priority for manufacturers and consumers alike. By enabling vehicles to securely and accurately share carbon emissions data, Citopia vinTRAK will give policymakers, vehicle manufacturers, and service providers the necessary tools to work toward incentivizing decarbonization at the tailpipe.

Road Usage Charging

Gas tax revenues have been steadily declining for decades due to the increased number of fuel-efficient and electric vehicles on the road. Many public agencies have begun exploring Road Usage Charging, or RUC, as a viable alternative to replace the gas tax as the primary funding source for operating and maintaining transportation infrastructure. However, collecting data for accurate RUC is a costly and time-consuming challenge. Citopia vinTRAK creates a more streamlined and trustworthy system by allowing agencies to collect RUC fees using trusted mobility data generated and delivered by the vehicles themselves.

Usage-Based Mobility and Insurance

Similar to RUC, usage-based insurance and mobility models enabled by Citopia vinTRAK allow mobility service providers to charge users on a flexible pay-per-use basis by using trusted trip data to verify which service was used and how long it was used for, while factoring in things like driver risk, congestion, and emission fees.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many applications unlocked using Citopia vinTRAK. Leveraging blockchain, Digital Twins, DIDs, VCs, and ZK, Citopia vinTRAK allows the use of connected vehicle data in a seamless, privacy-preserving manner, enabling multiparty business automation, and improving user experience at every level.

For mobility service providers, Citopia vinTRAK automates business processes throughout the value chain, vastly lowering operating costs, and enabling countless new business models in a multi-trillion-dollar pay-per-use ecosystem we call The New Economy of Movement.

Interested in exploring further? Click here to learn more about Citopia vinTRAK or visit our MOBI Technology Stack page for more information about the technology behind Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network!