The potential of interconnected service marketplaces for future mobility,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2015.06.008Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Current electric mobility service marketplaces are proprietary and closed systems.

  • Data exchange among marketplaces is not possible because no common protocol exists.

  • Roaming provides easy service access and extends the end-customers’ operation area.

  • The access at foreign services can be achieved via interconnectivity and roaming.

  • The selected architecture is critical for the success of interconnectivity.

Abstract

Mobility currently evolves far beyond owning a car or using public transit services. Passenger transport can be managed by mobility providers by combining and extending various mobility services either directly or by using available mobility service platforms. This paper evaluates the capabilities and technical features of existing mobility service platforms with a special focus on electric mobility. Based upon this evaluation, criteria are presented which future platforms should address. As part of this work, a marketplace approach is developed which addresses the identified criteria. Potential marketplace architectures are presented which are deemed to establish marketplace interconnectivity. The developed marketplace approach and the proposed architectures contribute to the vision of an interconnected service ecosystem for mobility services.

Introduction

The number of world-wide mega cities with around ten million inhabitants or more is currently more than thirty [1] and continues to grow. The citizens and the commuters demand a satisfying level of mobility, provided by the public transport system, transport companies or by themselves in any way. Electric mobility (eMobility) is still a niche, even though it has been a major topic for many years and is considered to be a tremendous market in the future [2]. A closer look unveils its sustainable potential: eMobility affects various domains which would have been undetected at first glance. The production domain for electric engines and batteries are directly involved as well as the energy domain which is in charge for providing electric power in an intelligent manner. eMobility also affects domains like the public and private transport, logistics, parking, vehicle sharing, and urban design.

A lot of research has been conducted on electric vehicles and eMobility in general. The research’s achievements help to promote eMobility in our society. A good example is the North Sea region with about 70 eMobility projects [3]. To support the progress of eMobility, Value Added Services (VAS) are designed, developed and publicly provided via service platforms. This is done in various publicly founded projects1 but also by companies.2 To the current date, these service platforms are specialized in a particular eMobility domain like charging, car-sharing, parking or others.

The next section provides an insight into existing eMobility platforms and presents criteria for future service marketplaces. The criteria have been elaborated based upon the identified strengths and weaknesses of current platforms during the State of the Art (SotA) analysis. Section 3 introduces an eMobility marketplace approach and demonstrates how current limitations can be solved. Section 4 discusses current limitations of eMobility platforms and addresses the lack of interconnectivity. In this section architectural approaches are proposed which are considered to overcome the gap of interconnectivity between eMobility platforms. A conclusion is provided in Section 5 and an outlook can be found in Section 6.

Section snippets

Existing eMobility platforms

The platforms introduced in this section operate in the mobility domain. Parking, vehicle sharing and charging are part of this domain. Some presented platforms offer services for eMobility whereby some of these services are also useful for combustion vehicles. Services designed for combustion and electric vehicles might require a different treatment. A combustion vehicle for instance can use every suitable parking lot. In contrast, an electric vehicle with low battery capacity probably needs a

eMarketplace for mobility services

An eMMP is a Business-to-Business (B2B) environment which enables service operators and service providers to conduct business. A service operator can be for example a Charge Point Operator (CPO) and a service provider an Electric Mobility Provider (EMP). A transaction between a service operator and a service provider is a minimal transaction. A transaction which consists of a service operator, a service provider and an end-customer is a maximal transaction.

A CPO can offer capabilities as a

Lack of interconnectivity

Service marketplaces are emerging [24] and already offer various services. Nevertheless, current solutions lack the capability to communicate with each other. Missing communication channels are assumed to neglect future business cases and also limit end-customers in their operation area. Platforms use their own protocol to interact with their participants. Until today, none of the used protocols is finally standardized by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) or DIN (Deutsches

Conclusion

The evaluation of currently available service platforms in respect to the identified criteria unveiled that no service platform currently exists which has implemented all identified criteria and functionality. The fundamental criterion of interconnectivity is not yet implemented by any platform. However, it is considered to be a key asset of future marketplaces and probably has a major impact on a marketplace’s success. The disadvantages of missing marketplace interconnectivity have been

Outlook on further research

Communication interfaces for marketplace interconnectivity need to be designed, implemented and evaluated to prove their feasibility for eMMP interconnectivity. A sophisticated role model should be developed. Suitable architectural approaches need to be exemplary implemented to determine their feasibility and contribution to eMMP interconnectivity. These reference implementations should consider protocol-adaption as well as request-routing and performance and security. To achieve

Michael Strasser received his Diploma from Hochschule Ravensburg-Weingarten, Germany in 2009 and his M.Sc from Cardiff University, Wales in 2011. Michael is a member of the Robert Bosch PhD program in collaboration with the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

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    Michael Strasser received his Diploma from Hochschule Ravensburg-Weingarten, Germany in 2009 and his M.Sc from Cardiff University, Wales in 2011. Michael is a member of the Robert Bosch PhD program in collaboration with the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

    Nico Weiner is product- and project-manager at Bosch Software Innovations GmbH. He has been studying business informatics and information technology at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg in 2008. Afterward he has been working as a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute of Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. He is passionate about business concepts and technologies for the Internet-of-Things-and-Services.

    Sahin Albayrak is professor and head of Agent Technologies in Business Applications and Telecommunication (AOT) at Technical University Berlin. He is the founder and head of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) Laboratory. He is also the founder of Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories and the founding director of the Connected Living Association and the German-Turkish Advanced Research Centre for ICT.

    Reviews processed and recommended for publication to the Editor-in-Chief by Guest Editor Dr. Anna Foesrster.

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    This work has been conducted within a project (support code 16SBB007C) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

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