The car makers BMW, General Motors, Ford and Renault are the lead companies in forming a new group which has been established to explore the potential of the blockchain in the automotive and mobility space.
The new group is called MOBI, standing for the “Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative”. In all there are thirty founding members. Other companies in the organization include Bosch, Blockchain at Berkeley, Hyperledger, Fetch.ai, IBM and IOTA. The group has a fairly broad goal, according to TechCrunch, of making transportation “safer, more affordable, and more widely accessible using blockchain technology.”
MOBI is spearheaded by Chris Ballinger, the former CFO and head of mobility services at Toyota Research Institute, who is quoted by CoinDesk as saying: “You really have to have common standards and common ways for cars to communicate, to identify themselves and make payments.”
He goes on to mention: “But if each auto company is trying to develop its own car wallets or its own way of paying tolls, or providing a ride sharing service, it just doesn’t work; it’s the Tower of Babel.”
The project will begin through an open-source business design, as Bitcoin Magazine indicates, with introducing blockchain for vehicle identity and history. The aim is to then extend to other areas, such asride sharing, mobility ecosystem commerce and data markets for autonomous and human driving.
This move represents the growth of blockchain technology for businesses in general. As Andrew Ma, the Founder and CEO of LemoChain, told Digital Journal earlier this year: “Blockchain is becoming an infrastructure for future businesses. Just like the Internet, a lot of new services will be built upon blockchain. These services will significantly increase efficiency, lower cost, and enable businesses to acquire resources much easier than ever before.”
Ma dded: “Blockchain will also change the relationship between different, independent businesses – in a blockchain-driven business world, entities will be able to work directly with one another to maximize profit.
