The transport sector is experiencing a shift towards shared mobility models as consumers are increasingly prioritizing vehicle usage over ownership. Private car ownership will continue to decline, primarily in urban environments, with car-sharing growing in popularity.
The car-sharing market has been growing fast since 2010 but this has been primarily true for centralized car sharing business models with private vehicle fleets. Peer-to-peer car sharing has been growing much slower and this is because it is much harder to operate. P2P car-sharing operators face difficulties with ensuring trust (identity fraud, car maintenance issues, insurance problems), facilitating P2P coordination (contracting, providing access to the car, managing incidents) and reliable information sharing (vehicle history, usage monitoring, location tracking).
Innomovo is a technology platform that leverages blockchain, cloud services, and in-car technology to enhance trust, streamline coordination and improve information exchange in P2P car sharing ecosystems.
The development of the platform concept came out of a technology commercialization study carried out jointly by Ideas Forward and researchers of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Directorate C – Energy, Transport and Climate – Sustainable Transport Unit (JRC.C.4). The study addressed two research questions. First, what would be a high-value transport sector market to which a blockchain-powered technology product could offer a high-value solution? Second, how could this technology product be realised?
The project investigated the applicability and market potential of blockchain technology for asset sharing in the road transport sector. The project comprised two principal activities. The first activity was market research and analysis to support the development of a new service concept and business model for blockchain-powered shared mobility. The second activity was technology prototyping to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the novel service concept using state of the art blockchain and IoT frameworks.
Following a business model discovery process we went through a “customer discovery” phase involving 11 semi-structured qualitative interviews with owners and executives of small and medium sized car rental operators in Greece as well as an online survey of 254 car owners. This was followed by a Customer Validation phase involving phone surveys, email campaigns and expression of interest MVPs targeting 122 car rental operators in Italy and Greece.
The study results suggest that P2P car-sharing is a well-established practice among small & medium-sized operators in Greece and Italy. However carrying out sub-rentals between small operators is presently complex, labor-intensive and prone to errors. This impacts business flexibility, optimization and efficiency in a negative way. Car rental operators are eager to investigate new forward-looking solutions for B2B car sharing and are also open to C2B models.
Further to the product discovery activity the study involved a technology prototyping activity to demonstrate feasibility using state of the art blockchain and IoT frameworks. The prototype involved setting up a private Ethereum blockchain network, developing a smart contract that acts as an escrow between the two parties involved in a car sharing transaction, developing a GUI for interacting with the contract, and developing an on-board controller based on Raspberry Pi which is equipped with a GPS receiver, an ODB2 interface and a 4G connection. The on-board controller runs its own Ethereum node and can record data to the blockchain such as the vehicle coordinates at a preset interval.
Publications:
- Tsoniotis N., Kourtesis D., Tsiakmakis S., Christaras V., Makridis M., Kounelis I., Fontaras G. (2019).Feasibility study and prototyping of a blockchain-based transport-service pricing and allocation platform. Joint Research Centre Technical Reports. Publications Office of the European Union, DOI: 10.2760/60436 (online).
- Kourtesis, D., Makridis, M., Tsiakmakis, S. Tsoniotis, N. & Fontaras, G. (2020). A study on the value and market potential of blockchain-based solutions supporting asset sharing between car rental operators. Transportation Research Board (TRB) 99th Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 2020.
- Kourtesis, D., Tsoniotis, N., Tsiakmakis, S., Makridis, M & Fontaras, G. (2020). Insights on the acceptance of direct private car rental for supporting peer to peer mobility solutions – a case study on Italy and Greece. Transport Research Arena 2020, Helsinki, Finland. (Conference cancelled due to COVID-19).
