Electric driving in the Netherlands is currently (still) limited to a several thousands of cars. And although many motorists are somewhat hesitant about the advantages of electric driving and mainly point out the limited action radius, there are also many indications that there is a positive future for electric cars in the Netherlands.
In the Brainport Region, NXP, TU/e, ‘Brabantse Ontwikkelingsmaatschappij’ (BOM) (Brabant Development Company), AutomotiveNL and ‘Driessen Autogroep’ (Driessen Car Group) have joined forces (the VIBe initiative: Vehicle for Innovation Brabant electric) to try and get electric driving off the ground on a large scale by setting up a platform to promote automotive innovation, and thus contribute to a breakthrough of electric driving and connected cars in the Netherlands. The objective is to use our knowledge and technology to make better use of the current infrastructure. Examples are integrated traffic management, systems to improve traffic safety, new mobility services, etc. The number of possibilities is almost infinite if the cars on the road are part of a coherent ICT-infrastructure, data centers, services and a motivated/active motorist community. When cars are connected, a wide range of new applications for motorists can be developed.
On Friday 30/01/2015 an important VIBe milestone is met with respect to hyper connected (electrical) cars in the very fast moving IoT world. The first version of VIBeX (Vehicle for Innovation Brabant electric eXchange protocol), a pragmatic open standard API (application programming interface) for distributed VIBeX nodes version 0.1 is released based on existing Brainport experiences in the domain of connected vehicles.
Unique in this VIBe project is the open innovation platform and VIBe living lab which will enable companies and universities to develop new applications on pragmatic open standards very fast and the essential option to connect to an existing connected VIBe cars base rapidly via the car data owners.
This interaction with the data owner, in most cases the driver, is the second unique factor of this VIBe initiative and its focus on data ownership, privacy and security.
Also a demonstrator is delivered to demonstrate this standardization of protocols between the in-car technology, the technology ‘in the Cloud’ and the Internet applications and the unique aspects.
A VIBe living lab will be configured to support application development and a VIBeX consortium will be installed in the first quarter to prepare for the next release of VIBeX.
Why are we doing this?
To provide digital access to (electric) cars on a large scale, in a safe & controlled manner, without paralyzing service provider lock-in’s, in a fast moving IoT world respecting privacy a standardized connection between driver, vehicle, cloud and internet applications is a key element in a very dynamic IoV marketplace to be able to develop high value added and very innovative cross domain applications for a large fleet of (electric) vehicles.
The VIBe initiative is now working on this standard, delivering the first tangible results with help of public authorities (Provincie Gelderland) and Brainport companies (Beijer Automotive, V-tron B.V., Sioux Embedded Systems). The first step was to get a first version of this distributed node standard in place, which makes use of existing commercial solutions. This pragmatic evolutionary approach is desirable. Various manufacturers of in-car connectivity technologies and
Cloud services / Smart Phone application providers together drop a pragmatic standard.
The next step is to get this open innovation platform in place via a VIBe living lab with hundreds of connected cars to start with. This platform will enable a number of companies and universities to innovate rapidly on energy management, mobility services, charging of EV’s, fleet management and many other domains also supporting goals of public authorities.
An example of a possible project; via VIBeX data is collected from a vehicle such as speed, location, occupants, pedal stroke, range or state of charge. These data are the basis for e.g. eco-driving. By combining these data with traffic data there can be a “real-time” optimisation of energy consumption to identify accessible (free) charging points. In this way, optimum use of the available range of the vehicle and the available charging infrastructure is realized.
