The New Economy of Movement

Abstract

The convergence of a number of emerging technologies—including AI, IoT, and Blockchain—permits any entity, whether a vehicle, smartphone, sensor, road, or another piece of transportation infrastructure, to have a trusted identity, be intelligent, communicate, and autonomously participate as an independent economic agent in transactions. These transactions will become a large part of the new, pay-as-you-go, mobility services economy at the “edge”. The potentially large number of independent agents, combined with the frequency and near real-time latency requirements of these transactions, will require edge connectivity, processing, execution, settlement, and new types of digital identifiers. For a roaming, connected entity—such as a person, vehicle, smartphone, electric vehicle (EV) battery, or package—one of the most important and valuable attributes is its location in time and space. Combining secure identity with trusted time-stamped locations creates a “Trusted Trip” and, for the first time, enables marginal cost pricing for many new classes of mobility transactions such as urban road tolling, meter-free parking, congestion management, carbon and pollution taxing, usage-based insurance, and many other usage-based Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applications. Together, these new transactions will comprise a multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem that we call the New Economy of Movement.