Electric Vehicles (EVs): The Future of Transport Technology

The automobile industry has evolved in the past several years with the push to manufacture low-emission vehicles. And the most important evolution is Electric vehicles (EVs). EVs manufacturing is gaining momentum across the globe and India is one of the prominent markets.

Manufacturers have already begun manufacturing EVs and industry is sighting it as the future of transport technology. We discussed with MoveInSync, co-founder and CTO Akash Maheshwari to understand the current tech and future of EVs.

New opportunities

India is at a critical juncture in its growth story. Smart City Mission is helping address the need for an improved quality of life for the growing population in light of depleting resources. While the sluggish pace of our sustainable infrastructure development has been an impediment for our global powerhouse stature.

Ironically, India’s large population has enabled the service sector with its skilled workforce in the 21st century. This increasing base is helping us solve global problems faster.

We have accepted the challenge of bringing this workforce to their workstations, on time, stress-free and full of energy. We understand the sustainability challenges in transportation and hence are focusing our energies on making ride sharing solutions hassle free and green.

The challenges

The industry is faced with the challenge of sustainability in transportation systems. For transportation to be sustainable, more people must look to share their (office) commute - be it through ride sharing taxis, carpooling, mass transit solutions like a bus or a combination where employees travel part of the way through public transit, and then use shuttles for the last mile transit. This requires the dependence to shift from private vehicles to ridesharing.

We believe EVs is the near future of transport technology. The office commute space is gaining the most and leveraging the improving EV infrastructure. We are at the forefront of optimizing EV cab usage.

Also, cab suppliers are concerned with the challenge of cab asset utilization. Cross-utilization is the key to addressing this concern. We are working on solutions to enable cab suppliers to utilize their cab assets better with cross-utilization of cabs across multiple client locations. This provides increased business opportunities to drivers to earn well in humane working conditions.

Impact of IoT & 5G connectivity

Data is the new currency. Optimization stands on the foundations of large volume of data, quick information processing and accurate and reliable predictions that aid decision making. IoT and 5G connections will help gather location data, cab health data, and commuter experience data in real time, reliably. Thus, the quality of predictions and optimization engines would improve as fewer human guesses will fill the information gap.

Utilization of IoT, AI and ML

The MoveInSync powered mobile device and fixed GPS device send a constant stream of data to our servers, whereby, we know precisely where any cab is at any given moment. Our systems are powered by intelligent engines to decipher the patterns in this data stream and take quick and efficient decisions to aid operations. For instance, if a cab is suspected to have a breakdown, meets with an accident or if the driver is speeding, the system raises smart security alerts. This helps us ensure employees travel safely.

We are also working on AI/ML solutions to make optimal transportation plans by analyzing historical data patterns to predict demand, identify supply gaps, predict travel times, suggest employee clubbing and cab deployments.

Current connectivity challenges

MoveInSync driver application is capable of running trips even without internet connectivity. The application transmits the data as soon as the network becomes available. In case, cab is not in a network location when trips are being pushed, The application enables SMS-based trip creation on device. It smartly sequences out of order SMSs, minimizes the data sharing and handles redundancy. Post trip execution or during a trip, in event of data loss, It smartly backfills the missing data.