by Nick Kolyohin
JERUSALEM, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Prime Minister's Smart Mobility Summit 2021 has predicted future cars to be much more like a computer on wheels rather than a traditional vehicle.
Thousands of automotive leaders, government officials, leading international carmakers and startups have gathered virtually and physically at an annual event held in Tel Aviv on Monday and Tuesday for the 8th time and broadcasted around the world, following a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
They have discussed the future of smart mobility and the main shared idea this year was that future transportation would change dramatically in the coming decade.
Nikolai Ardey, head of group innovation at Volkswagen, said that the current transition of car companies into a sort of tech companies is "definitely the biggest ever transformation in the automotive industry."
The transformation of cars into "iPhones on wheels" and "an intrinsic part of the Internet of Things" is even more rapid than the move of cars towards electromobility, Ardey said.
In the next five years, autonomous cars are expected to drive commercially in some cities around the world, and from around 2025, "there will be a rapid rise of autonomous cars, they will have a significant share until 2030," Ardey added.
One of the challenges for car manufactures is hackers, especially those who use quantum computers that "can hack every code, and so we have also to have quantum algorithms in the future to be safe against quantum computing," Ardey said.
As technology becomes the central part of car manufacturing in the future, Israel is attracting global leaders who research key technologies and experiment there.
Tel Aviv has already been serving as a testing area for several leading global developers of autonomous cars whose test cars are driving autonomously between regular vehicles.
Daniella Gera Margaliot, deputy managing director of Smart Mobility Initiative at the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, said that "we are celebrating ten years of the Israeli ecosystem of smart mobility."
In the past ten years, Israeli companies have received more than 10 percent of worldwide investments in the smart mobility sector, about 24 billion U.S. dollars, Margaliot said.
"It is amazing and a big testament to our success" that there are approximately 650 startups and 35 international research and development centers in the field of smart mobility in Israel, Margaliot added.
Some startup companies in the exhibition part of the conference showcased tech developments that help drivers drive more safely by relying more and more on computers rather than human instincts.
Uri Lavi, CEO and co-founder at RideVision, said his company has developed a safety system for motorcycles that analyzes the environment and delivers alerts to the biker about critical dangers on the road.
Another company at the exhibition called Cu-BX presented its innovative system that analyzes car users' physical condition while they are sitting in the driver's seat.
Eran Hochstadter, VP of business development at Cu-BX, said that the company has developed a system that can detect fatigue or drowsiness and alert if the driver is falling asleep. It can also measure stress levels, "the probability that you will suffer from an accident is raised by 30 percent if you're in a stressful condition," said Hochstadter.
The transition of transportation into the smart mobility era also included road infrastructure like traffic light systems, cameras, and sensors that will be connected to the Internet and create a whole new set of opportunities.
The company No Traffic offered a digitization of city infrastructure by bringing autonomous, cloud computing, and computer vision into traffic management.
Dvir Reznik, VP of marketing at No Traffic, said that at typical intersections, "the traffic lights are running on outdated systems. Up until now, cities are running on a fixed timing plan, and most of the intersections in our cities are not connected to anything." Enditem
