After winning in the Pioneer category two years ago, SEAT has once again been honoured by the editors of AUTO BILD and COMPUTER BILD with the renowned Connected Car Award. The Spanish brand was recently named Company of the Year 2019 in the framework of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 in Las Vegas.
The award, which recognises SEAT’s sustainability and urban mobility concepts, was presented to Sebastian Grams, SEAT CIO, and Paqui Lizana, SEAT Head of Digital Products and Services, by Stephan Fritz, AUTO BILD Group General Manager.
Dr. Christian Vollmer, SEAT Vice-president for Production and Logistics, stated that “Our commitment to sustainable mobility starts at home, and that is why we are working hard to turn our headquarters in Martorell into a 100% smart factory. We have tested with drones to deliver parts and we have bus-on-demand and bike sharing services to reduce carbon footprint and contribute to the sustainability and efficiency of our facilities.”
Innovation and sustainability go hand in hand
AUTO BILD and COMPUTER BILD singled out the brand’s sustainable projects.
SEAT pursues a holistic approach that focuses on individual mobility in a future urban context and makes it available free of charge to its employees in Martorell. More specifically, SEAT employees working in the Martorell factory can, for instance, rent bicycles to cover short distances at work. SEAT is working hand in hand with the well-known bike sharing service Mobike, which provides 100 rental bikes. The service has already been used by more than 2,000 people for over 4,700 short transfers.
For longer distances within the facility, employees have a bus-on-demand service available via the ByBus app. Several SEAT Alhambra units are available for transporting people around the plant. Users only need to notify their request 10 minutes in advance, indicating their location, destination and number of passengers. A driver will then pick people up at the nearest stop and take them to their destination. In the first weeks after the service was introduced, more than 3,000 employees were transported.
Parts delivery by drone: fast and with low emissions
The Martorell plant was the first Spanish production facility to test vehicle parts deliveries by drone. During the pilot project, the drones covered around two kilometres from the supplier to the plant in only 15 minutes, which would normally take about 90 minutes by truck. The faster and demand-oriented connection increases the efficiency, flexibility and sustainability of SEAT’s Martorell plant, as drones do not produce any CO2 and renewable energies are used to charge the batteries.
SEAT and IBM are reshaping future urban mobility
SEAT has also been working on mobility solutions for metropolitan areas, and to boost this work, the brand has partnered with IBM. Based on IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI), called Watson, SEAT is developing a traffic information mobile app, the “Mobility Advisor”. This app will enable people to choose the best transportation option: whether it is a car, scooter, bicycle or public transport.
SEAT’s sustainability concept sets standards in the industry.
Thanks to IBM’s Watson machine learning, the mobility advisor will be able to learn users’ preferences and give tailor made recommendations. The system will be connected to the IBM Cloud and adapt dynamically to changing conditions by considering weather, traffic and extraordinary events. Moreover, it could integrate users’ appointments and historical choices data to suggest the best transportation option for each scenario, even when that means parking their car, walking or riding an electric kick scooter.
The Connected Car Award is given yearly to the best innovations in connected cars. This year was its seventh edition, and AUTO BILD and COMPUTER BILD readers cast their vote for the winners in eight different categories and two editorial team decided the winners of the Pioneer and Editorial awards.
