Groupe Renault, NUMA and their partners present the results of the first edition of CityMakers

CityMakers : an open innovation program to accelerate the transition toward a flexible and sustainable urban mobility

The fast urbanization rate raises multiple issues for cities and citizens, including the efficiency of transportation networks. In April 2017, Groupe Renault, NUMA and their partners launched CityMakers, which brings together startups, experts, and public and private stakeholders to develop solutions. Its objective: to simplify citizens’ urban mobility and accelerate the transition toward more flexible and sustainable urban transit .

In June 2017, CityMakers’ partners introduced 6 challenges , which could lead to one or more experiment, and called startups to join them in this adventure. Challenges addressed subjects related to the optimization of the infrastructure for electric vehicles in the city, the improvement of road maintenance or the development of multimodal mobility solution in the workplace, for example.

On September 28, 9 start-ups were selected among many candidates to meet these challenges with program partners and many experts . After 3 months of experiments, during which partners and startups, supported by NUMA, developed and tested innovative mobility solutions together in Paris, the CityMakers teams presented the results of their collaboration yesterday.

6 challenges and 9 innovative urban mobility solutions

Challenge #1 – Improve the car-sharing experiences with additional services

OuiCar , AXA, RCI Bank and Services and Groupe Renault have focused on understanding practices related to peer-to-peer car rental . Two phases of studies, quantitative and qualitative, made it possible to identify the expectations and needs of owners (especially of new vehicles’ owners) and to determine the best way to promote the availability of their vehicle on car-sharing platforms.

Challenge #2 – Offer an interactive and immersive information to passengers in a vehicle

With Groupe Renault and the City of Paris, Persistant Studios imagined the car as interactive media by rethinking the interaction between the interior of the car and its external environment with the objective to make the journey a time of discovery. They developed and tested different types of experiences and content to be consumed within the car. A very useful test to imagine autonomous vehicles’ services of tomorrow.

Challenge #3 – Simplify the use of different means of transport while travelling in Ile-de-France

Using its travel-tracking technologies and multi-source data analysis, Geo4Cast has provided a better understanding of the behavior of the employees of Nissan’s headquarters and AXA based in the Ile-de-France region in order to offer 7 solutions to optimize their mobility in accordance with energy transition objectives. These optimization solutions included remote working, carpooling and the replacement of company cars with "mobility passes". For each of these scenarios, travel time and budget savings for employees and companies were measured.

Karos tested its carpooling application with RCI Bank and Services’ employees on a specific site. This experiment was an opportunity to raise awareness on new mobility solutions among employees, and made it possible to create new transportation practices reducing travel time and simplifying itineraries. During the trial, employees of the site gained an average of 24 minutes and an increase in purchasing power of €6 per trip. In total, the equivalent of 345 kg of CO2 has been saved during the experiment.

Challenge #4 – Promote the deployment of electric vehicles and their infrastructure in urban areas

When it comes to the electric vehicle, incentives, benefits related to traffic or parking are multiple and vary in time and by region. It is not always easy to access this information in a clear, fast and reliable way. Toucan Toco and Groupe Renault have developed a platform helping future buyers to project themselves in their electrical vehicle experience: daily or holiday charging and parking, set up of a terminal, impact on budget, models available on the French market, environmental impact, received ideas, etc.

Dalberg Data Insights , Groupe Renault and the City of Paris have developed another platform bringing together data from Groupe Renault and the City of Paris on electric vehicles’ uses and load infrastructures. This platform provides a dynamic visualization of behaviours and the impact of electric vehicles in Paris, and makes it possible to relevantly deploy the required infrastructure or incentives to increase the acquisition of electric vehicles.

Challenge #5 – Improve mobility services or create new ones thanks to data generated by unused cars

In France, looking for parking spaces is responsible for 5% to 10% of congestion in urban areas. AppyParking , Nissan, and RCI Bank and Services have tested solutions to solve this problem. Already operating in London, the prototype of AppyParking provides a quick and easy solution to identify free parking spaces and a payment procedure more adapted to the real time parked thanks to the geolocation of vehicles and available parking spaces. This was studied in the Marais district in Paris.

Nissan and RCI Bank and Services have also worked with Ellis Car to better understand behaviours of professional vehicle drivers to improve infrastructure and behaviour in a highly personalized way (based on recurring driving risks) through data collected via telematics and/or smartphones. Continued work on this solution can help reduce the risk of accidents in all professional fleets .

Challenge #6 – Use car data to provide a predictive road maintenance tool

Logiroad , a decision-support software publisher in the field of maintenance and operation of road networks, has tested the reliability of Renault’s car sensor on Paris roadways to assess the quality of road safety and to accurately geolocate defects such as potholes. By linking this sensor to the Logiroad database, they developed a solution that offers local authorities the possibility to access objective information about the state of the road in real time and at a lower cost, thus making road maintenance and traffic more fluid while reducing the maintenance budget .

Partners and contributors :

Contats:

Euros Agency for NUMA
Eglantine Saubot : +33 6 82 26 49 66
Mathieu Lomazzi : +33 6 13 16 10 04
numa@eurosagency.eu

Groupe Renault
Lucía CHAVEZ PAZ External Communication – Innovation Lead Manager
Email: lucia.chavez-paz@renault.com
Tel. : +33 (0) 1 76 82 93 37/ +33 (6) 60 64 04 58

AXA Partners
Aline Dumont : +33 1 55 92 45 37
aline.dumont@axa-assistance.com
Nadia Quentin : +33 1 55 92 11 30
nadia.quentin@axa-assistance.com

Nissan
François Crisias Corporate Communications Nissan Europe
Email. FCrisias@nissan-europe.com

RCI Bank and Services
Sophie Guiot + 33(0) 1 76 88 86 44
sophie.guiot@rcibanque.com
Agence CLE + 33 (0)1 84 16 06 22
rcibspress@agencecle.fr

Mairie de Paris
Chloé Humpich : +33 1 42.76.69.23
chloe.humpich@paris.fr

About NUMA :
Founded in Paris in 2013, NUMA supports startups, businesses and civil society actors in their innovation strategies. The home of France’s first startup acceleration programme, NUMA also puts its expertise at the service of major international groups to support them in their digital transformation and help them to develop agile working methods inspired by the entrepreneurial world. In Paris, New York, Berlin, Casablanca, Moscow, Barcelona, Mexico City and Bangalore, NUMA leads a community of innovation actors on a daily basis to help them to develop the technologies and services that will shape the society of tomorrow. The 100 employees of NUMA have participated in the development of over 250 startups and organise 1200 events every year. www.numa.co https://citymakers.io/

About Groupe Renault :
Groupe Renault has been making cars since 1898. Today it is an international multi-brand group, selling close to 3.76 million vehicles in 127 countries in 2017, with 36 manufacturing sites, 12,700 points of sales and employing more than 120,000 people. To meet the major technological challenges of the future and continue its strategy of profitable growth, the Group is harnessing its international growth and the complementary fit of its five brands, Renault, Dacia and Renault Samsung Motors, Alpine and LADA, together with electric vehicles and the unique Alliance with Nissan. With a new team in Formula 1 and a strong commitment to Formula E, Renault sees motorsport as a vector of innovation and brand awareness.

About Nissan :
Nissan has one of the most comprehensive European presences of any overseas manufacturer, employing more than 17,000 staff across locally-based design, research & development, manufacturing, logistics and sales & marketing operations. Last year Nissan plants in the UK, Spain and Russia produced more than 660,000 vehicles including award-winning crossovers, commercial vehicles and the Nissan LEAF, the world’s most popular electric vehicle. Nissan’s Intelligent Mobility vision is designed to guide Nissan’s product and technology pipeline and this 360 degree approach to the future of mobility will anchor critical company decisions around how cars are powered, how cars are driven, and how cars integrate into society. Nissan is positioned to become the most desirable Asian brand in Europe.

About RCI Bank and Services :
Created and wholly owned by Groupe Renault, RCI Banque S.A. is a French bank specializing in automotive financing and services for Groupe Renault customers and dealer networks (Renault, Renault Samsung Motors and Dacia) throughout the world, and for the Nissan Group (Nissan, Infiniti and Datsun), mainly in Europe, Brazil, South Korea and in the form of joint-ventures in Russia and India. RCI Bank and Services is the new commercial identity of RCI Banque as of February 2016. With over 3,300 employees in 36 countries, RCI Bank and Services financed over 1.56 million contracts (new and used vehicles) in 2016 and sold more than 3.4 million services. APAs totaled €33.3 billion in financing at end-December 2016, and pre-tax income was €912 million at end-December 2016. Since 2012, RCI Bank and Services has been collecting retail deposits in four countries. At end-December 2016, the net amount of deposits collected came to €12.6 billion, or 33% of the company’s assets. Find out more about RCI Bank and Services at www.rcibs.com

About AXA Partners :
Within the AXA Group Innovation Unit, AXA Partners is AXA’s global team, dedicated to co-build with Partners tailored innovative solutions combining insurance, assistance and high value services across sectors: Automotive, Mobility & Travel, Protection & Health, Home & Utilities, Telecommunications, Retail, Bancassurance and Global Assistance. Its 10,000 employees are located in 40 countries.

About the City of Paris :
The City of Paris is committed to support innovation in all its form. Since 2008, Paris has invested almost a billion euros and created 100.000 squares meters of incubators, among them The Cargo in the 19th arrondissement which is today the largest in Europe. The dynamism of the Parisian ecosystem has proven that innovation is the product of various actors working together to find solutions. Partnering with the open innovation program City Makers is the opportunity to tackle collectively the main mobility challenges that Paris will and is already facing.