Thursday, June 1 and Friday, June 2
Hosted by the Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI) at the Wharton School in Philadelphia
Introduction
At an extraordinary time of change in the automotive, trucking, and mobility sectors, PVMI and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management will hold a major two-day conference on the theme “Connected Truck, Connected Car” on Thursday and Friday, June 1–2, 2017.
For these two related but distinct sectors, we will bring academics and practitioners together to take stock of the latest developments in “Connectivity”, evaluating them with frameworks from PVMI/Mack scholars and discussing implications for firms, consumers and societies. Participants can attend either day or both.
Why “Connectivity”?
Four major disruptive innovations (Connectivity, Autonomous Vehicles, Mobility Services, and Alternate Drive Trains) are now central to the PVMI research agenda. We are choosing Connectivity as the theme for this conference because the underlying technologies are already widely available and their diffusion is likely to occur faster/sooner than for autonomous vehicles or all-electric vehicles. Furthermore, Connectivity, whether supporting drivers’ needs for personal communication or facilitating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, is a vital foundational technology for other innovations such as Autonomy and Mobility Services to advance.
Connectivity also operates through networks and achieves its fullest impact as networks scale. It thus needs to be studied at a systems level. Understanding how the “connected vehicle” ecosystem will evolve, including which entities (firms, governments, voluntary associations) will orchestrate the coordination and development of standards for interoperability, is thus essential to PVMI’s research agenda.
Connected and autonomous vehicles will likely affect firms in the mobility ecosystem in many ways — from relationships among OEMs, suppliers, and shippers/carriers and customer expectations to human resources and data security — although at this point no one can say exactly how much or when. Rather than focusing extensively on the technologies themselves, the Connected Truck, Connected Car Conference will focus on the strategic decision making of firms in the face of this technological, and associated regulatory uncertainty. How are firms thinking about and planning for these new technologies? Do the old models of decision-making work in the face of these new technologies? Where older processes of decision aren’t working, how are firms developing new, more flexible, processes to understand and position themselves for the changes ahead? How does coping with uncertainty differ across incumbent firms located in various parts of the mobility ecosystems and between incumbents and new entrants?
The Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation (PVMI), part of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, has a long history of studying innovation in the global automotive industry. Originally founded as the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) and headquartered at MIT, the program has brought together leading researchers and industry leaders from around the world for over three decades. PVMI joined Wharton’s Mack Institute in 2013.
Starting with a day on “connected trucks” reflects PVMI’s ambition to expand beyond the automotive industry. Furthermore, many believe that the trucking sector will see fuller and faster implementation of advanced connectivity applications than the automotive sector. The incentives for investment in connectivity for a trucking fleet are relatively high because payback on that system-level investment comes more quickly. Trucking OEMs, suppliers, and logistics companies also have incentives to agree on integrated hardware-software systems that provide value-added services vis-à-vis reporting driver hours, improving routing efficiency and asset utilization, and improving fleet maintenance and safety. We believe trucking will be the “first mover” sector. To organize the “truck day”, PVMI is working with the North American Council on Freight Efficiency (NACFE), an industry association that helps trucking firms evaluate new technologies.
The automotive sector is where the greatest impact will be felt, given the sheer scale of personal mobility and the wide range of services enabled by advanced connectivity technologies. These include services related to vehicle upkeep and maintenance (e.g. software updates; service reminders; early warnings of potential problems); vehicle usage (e.g. help finding parking; information about congestion; advanced navigation); infotainment (e.g. voice, text, video communication; Internet access; radio, movies; information services; emergency services); and general portal functionality (e.g. ability to use any smartphone app through a vehicle interface). Connectivity can be the key to monetizing these services; it also poses privacy and security challenges.
Conference Design
The conference design will have three elements, repeated each day: 1) an initial session with contextual background plus frameworks and concepts; 2) presentations by practitioners reporting on current applications, tests/pilots, and future plans/implications, with researcher commentary; and 3) a workshop session, organized during lunch, for brainstorming and information-sharing among participants.
Invitees on the academic side will include the PVMI network of international scholars with expertise in the automotive industry; Wharton faculty working with Mack Institute; and faculty from the Design, Engineering, Law, and Medical Schools at UPenn working on related issues.
Invitees on the practitioner side will include executives, senior engineers, and corporate staff members from automotive, trucking, and mobility service companies; consultants and “thinktank” analysts; government policymakers and regulators at national, state, and city levels; and representatives from voluntary associations at the industry/sector level or linked to certain technological standards.