Meet the finalists of “Mobility for a Better World”
By: Porsche Ag
Tags: Berlin, Sustainability, Mobility, Startup, Competition

Eight finalists have been selected for the “Mobility for a Better World” ideas competition, which was called on start-ups, students and developers to offer sustainable future strategies and innovative solutions to problems of mobility.

Launched by Porsche in 2019, “Mobility for a better world” is an ideas competition at the interface of technology, mobility and sustainability: What are the next big questions that need answering? The selected proposals and concepts represent a range of ideas — such as a platform for charging stations, end-of-life battery management, and a clean air scheme — all of which are outstanding in their endeavour to advance the future of sustainable mobility.

Mobility for a better world

The winners will be announced next Thursday, on January 23, during an award ceremony in Berlin, where the international teams have the opportunity to present their ideas before a jury of experts, including Daniela Rathe, Head of Sustainability, Policy and External Relations at Porsche or Robert Martin, startup expert and venturing manager at Porsche Digital. The finalists compete for a share of €20,000 in prize money and the opportunity to partner with Porsche Digital and Berlin-based accelerator APX.

The standard of entries we received was truly remarkable, and we would like to thank everyone who entered the competition.

At ‘re:publica’, the digital conference in Berlin, Porsche has launched the ideas competition ‘Mobility for a Better World’. Together with its partners, the sports car manufacturer from Stuttgart, Germany, is looking for fresh ideas and technology for the sustainable future of mobility.

Here are the eight finalists:

Artificial Intelligence Against Air Pollution: Breeze Technologies

Breeze Technologies is a start-up that develops low-cost air quality sensors that can detect pollutants like carbon and nitrogen oxides. Their environmental cloud platform, which gathers real-time data from Breeze sensors as well as external sources, measures and visualizes air quality data, generating hyperlocal air quality maps. Using artificial intelligence, Breeze recommends the most efficient interventions for local challenges, potentially raising the effectiveness of clean air action plans by factor 10.

Drone Deliveries Made Easy: Third Space Auto

Third Space Auto is a robotics and AI company that is committed to making drone deliveries a reality. Current drone platforms are not yet reliable and safe enough for general use. And that’s where Third Space Auto comes in: With their project ByDrone, they want to help make moving things from A to B fast, easy and efficient. Their software platform is designed to address the shortfalls in drone technologies of today and reduces the complexity involved in autonomous drone operations. Their sweet spots are aerial food delivery and medical drone delivery.

Simplifying Electric Mobility: Charger Next Door

The goal of Charger Next Door, a two-man student team, is to make charging easier and more reliable. They plan to improve the charging infrastructure of electric vehicles by making private charging stations accessible to all e-car drivers via a mobile app. Charger Next Door has developed a two-sided platform and is working on building a strong electric vehicle community, where users can charge their vehicles uncomplicated and CO2 neutral way.

Intelligent Energy Redistribution: Néng

Néng works on the effective repurposing of end-of-life batteries for sustainable motoring. Using machine learning models to determine the health of end-of-life batteries, the New Zealand team optimises the quality of second-life batteries and ensures they can be applied in the most suitable application possible. Optimising the application according to capacity is an efficient way to make use of all the batteries regardless of their absolute capacity.

The Time Bank: IUPETIR

IUPETIR is a social currency that facilitates the exchange of goods and services in a moneyless way. In other words: it operates outside of the regular money economy and is full people-driven. The team has developed a time bank and wants to help advance the sharing economy. For every hour a user spends doing something for someone else within the IUPETIR network, he or she earns POS credits, which can be exchanged for other services.

A Sustainable Reward Program: Liights

RoadEO is a team from Spain that aims to motivate people to be more sustainable in their daily routines with an ecofriendly-gamify app called Liights. In addition to gamification mechanics, their project relies on, smart city systems and artificial intelligence, and encourages environmentally-friendly actions, such as the use of public transport, cycling or recycling. The reward for these actions is so-called Liights, a virtual currency that users can redeem for different products and services.

Automated Delivery Vehicles: Ducktrain

The team behind Ducktrain has developed an electrical, automated logistics device that promises to eliminate the need for conventional delivery vehicles in cities. A Ducktrain is a combination of a leading object (other vehicles or persons) and one or several automated electric vehicles, which are called Ducks. Each duck is equipped with sensors (lidar, radar and cameras) and can automatically follow the leading object. The Ducktrain team is currently working on second-generation prototypes, which are tested on public and industrial terrain.

Helping Self-driving Cars Better Understand Humans: Phantasma Labs

Phantasma Labs wants to change the way automotive companies acquire high-quality datasets by crowdsourcing real human behaviour in virtual worlds. Leveraging the power of game engines and high-performance computing, they build virtual worlds in which users interact as pedestrians and/or drivers in life-like simulations. These datasets and models encapsulate a myriad of real random human behaviours and help developers better train machine learning models.

Be part of the finals in Berlin!

The finals will take place at the APX office in Berlin (Markgrafenstraße 12–14, Berlin), starting at 5:00 p.m. on january, 23rd, 2020.

The entrance is of course for free. The evening is hosted by Ole Tillmann, founder of PEAK Berlin. Swing by the APX office in Berlin for a drink and some snacks, see the pitches and vote for your favourite. Please register here for the “Mobility for a better world” finals just here via Meetup.

See you in Berlin!