Industry Insight: The State of Smart Transportation

Smart transportation is closely tied with smart city initiatives. What happens when vehicle travels from a smart city to one that might not be so smart? Will autonomous vehicles bridge the intelligent transportation divide, or will autonomous vehicles rely on a smart infrastructure to support functions critical to improving public safety, traffic efficiency, and sustainability?  

neXt Curve is joined by Bill Pugh, co-founder and managing partner of Smart Connections Consulting LLC to explore the following topics:

  • Why does transportation need to be smarter? – Bill and Leonard discuss the motivations and the objectives that the auto industries and municipalities have for smart transportation. What is the carrot that is getting parties excited, or is the carrot not big enough to bring about the digital transformation we have all been expecting in some form?
  • What are the challenges facing smart transportation? – Smart transportation has taken a patently vehicle-centric focus as of late with excitement about self-driving cars that will function as robotaxi’s that will chauffeur us around. But progress for smart transportation solutions that could benefit the broader driving community have been nothing short of stagnant with only a few pilot project of any notice. What are the persistent challenges that get in the way of the smart future of transportation?
  • What kind of mindset change is need to make progress? – Do we have the right attitude about smart transportation? Could it be that we don’t think broadly enough about the benefits of modernizing our transportation system and how we will make that modernization happen?
  • What can the tech and “IoT” industry do to deliver the promise? – Bill and Leonard brainstorm what the tech community and industry can do to make IoT a thing for transportation. We discuss the approaches that can be considered to get investments and commitments to stick given short-term political and administrative agendas of our cities, counties, states, an dour nation.

reThink Podcast featuring Bill Pugh, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Smart Connections Consulting

Our reThink Media Center features the YouTube video podcast of this episode.

Qualcomm Smart Cities Accelerate 2021: Key Takeaways

Qualcomm Smart Cities Accelerate 2021

On September 28th, Qualcomm hosted its Smart Cities Accelerate event at their corporate headquarters in San Diego, California. On an unusually cloudy day, hundreds of attendees congregated outside for registration and a pre-event breakfast. The conference promised to be packed with exciting updates on Qualcomm’s progress with its IoT (Internet of Things) business and smart city ambitions. The IoT has become growing part of Qualcomm’s business which grew 83% year over year to a sizable $1.4 billion in Q3 of 2021.  

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