Mobility and health: the car, from a cause of pollution to a key to improving quality of life. Here is how the electric car will drive innovation in the smart city.
Using as one pleases the time needed for getting around, with the aim of reducing it more and more. Reading a book, watching a film, chatting with a partner, children, or a friend, while on the way to the office. Yes, even reading and replying to work emails (though we were talking about pleasure…). This scenario, just described, is only one of the visions of the smart city, but one of the most important ones, given that urban mobility has a profound impact on everyone's life. And it is (also) on this that the Volkswagen Group is focusing its efforts in the transition from car manufacturer to mobility services provider.
The best example of the Volkswagen Group's commitment to more sustainable metropolises can be found in Barcelona (without forgetting Hamburg and Lisbon): here, subsidiary SEAT has just launched SEAT MÓ, the new brand dedicated exclusively to developing urban mobility based on micromobility products and services. At the same time, the SEAT MÓ eScooter 125 and the SEAT MÓ eKickscooter 65 (kick scooter) were presented: products intended both for sale and for sharing services. "With SEAT MÓ we want to make individual mobility accessible to everyone, and Casa SEAT (the Spanish brand's new hub located right in the city centre) will be the hub of operations. Barcelona will be the testing laboratory for developing urban mobility solutions to be exported to the rest of the world," said Wayne Griffiths, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at SEAT and CEO of Cupra.
Initiatives such as the one undertaken by the Volkswagen Group through the SEAT brand will help to solve — or at least reduce — one of the major problems facing our cities: the many, far too many hours spent in city traffic, with the easily imaginable consequences for quality of life, health and pollution. Inrix, a company founded in 2005 and specialised in traffic monitoring based on sensors positioned on roads and in vehicles, publishes an annual ranking of cities around the world by number of hours spent in traffic. The worst off are the inhabitants of Bogotá (191 hours per capita), followed by those of Rio de Janeiro (190 hours) and Mexico City (158), while Rome ranks sixth and is the worst European city, with 166 hours per inhabitant.
Impressive figures, which the concept of the smart city aims to consign to the past once and for all. Here are some concrete examples. A smart city is one that allows you to find out whether there is a free parking space at your destination and, perhaps, to book it before you even set off. The benefits? Time savings for the individual and for the community; a reduction in polluting emissions. A city is smart when it connects citizens and public administration: to book a service online such as the collection of bulky waste, or, where possible, to carry out a remote diagnosis — on the understanding, of course, that the direct doctor-patient relationship cannot be entirely set aside.
According to the European Commission, a city is smart when it knows how to harness new technologies to optimise resource use and reduce emissions. A smart city relies on sustainable public transport networks, effective water supply and waste disposal systems, and efficient lighting and heating solutions. Furthermore, a city is truly smart if it offers interactive civic administration and security for its inhabitants, and if it is capable of meeting the needs of an ageing population.
By 2050, people aged over 60 will account for more than 22 per cent of the world's population. What is more, still according to the European Commission, by 2050 two thirds of the world's population will be living in cities, consuming 70 per cent of energy and emitting an equally large share of greenhouse gases. In short: a paradigm shift is something we cannot do without. Starting now. Starting with the habits of everyday life.
One of the most important roles in transforming cities into smart cities is played by the car: from a simple means of transport, it has already begun its metamorphosis into a "piece" in the service of mobility in a broader sense. A transformation that has already taken shape in car sharing services, in which the concept of ownership is superseded and the car itself takes on a secondary role, in favour of the capillarity and coverage area of the service across the city, the ease of use of the app, the cleanliness and upkeep of the vehicles, and the costs of using the service.
That the car is destined to become central to smart cities is also demonstrated by vehicle-to-grid technology, which allows the energy stored in electric vehicle batteries to be used to stabilise the grid (in practice, the car's batteries feed energy back into the electricity grid) along with other major benefits. The first: the consumption of renewable energy is maximised. The second: energy is stored when it costs less (at night) and fed back when demand peaks (reducing the risk of blackouts). Third: electric car owners will be able to receive remuneration for the energy supplied. The fourth benefit, albeit indirect, is that the first three could accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles in our country.
The smart city is an environment in which all (or almost all) of its constituent elements are smart. Smart home: non-invasive sensors monitor energy consumption, signal any break-ins, and monitor people's comfort and health. Smart building: buildings equipped with photovoltaic systems and advanced energy flow management systems. Smart street: monitoring of traffic flows, parking availability, noise pollution levels and air quality.
What is the situation around the world when it comes to smart cities? The Smart city strategy index, a study produced by consultancy firm Roland Berger, tells us. Vienna comes first, followed closely by London and Saint Albert (Canada). In Italy, the smartest city is Milan (thanks to indicators such as economic solidity, sustainable mobility, social quality and digital transformation), ahead of Florence and Bologna.
The modernisation of Italy, the transformation of its cities into smart cities, is not a dream, but forms part of a project signed in December 2019 by the Cnr (National Research Council) and the National Urban Planning Institute (Inu). Furthermore, the Cnr has already completed its Three-Year Activity Plan 2018-2020, whose stated aim is to expand the concept of the smart city through the construction of so-called digital twins: virtual copies of urban agglomerations, capable of predicting their evolution and testing the effectiveness of innovative solutions. The fact is that something is beginning to move. And that is good news.
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