Sunday - Arrival in San Francisco, Check-in to the hotel, Welcome keynote Rik Vera, Welcome Activity & Dinner.

Companies like Uber and Lyft are the ones who revolutionized the transportation industry with their peer-to-peer business model. The impact it had, spread like a virus. It challenged incumbents, governments and even the average family brunch conversation.

But there is more. Instead of only sharing your car with other people, why not actually share the car itself or your in? Turo is lesser known in Europe but thé largest peer-to-peer car rental platform in the US and Canada, representing a community of more than 2 million owners and travellers.  

Opinions vary whether the self-driving car will know its breakthrough within one, three or five years. Fact is, we’re close. Waymo is refining its technology on the road with two million miles on public roads already. 

Nio is redefining what the behaviour of the future car customer - or perhaps bettter say consumer - will look like from a global point of view and General Motors states that it will launch its mass produced self-driving car in 2019. 

Fact is, there is no denying that the money going into this technology will yield results in the next five years.

Customer Centricity

The autonomous revolution is as significant as the electrification one in the past. People might not own, drive or finance cars anymore. So the question emerges: who is the new car customer? What does this mean for car designers? How can they make cars appealing again for the new generations to come? Which functions does it serve? Why and when will people use which car? 

Enablers

Financing, policy and insurance might sound like the most boring topics on the planet but they sure aren't. Meet the enablers: Mark Platshon knows all about the financing of the startups that are now changing our mobility. Trov is only one of the companies that is changing the insurance business and how did a company like Lyft advance in a world where no policies existed?

There is no more stopping the change that is happening right now in the car market. Under the impulse of Tesla and the pressure from governments, almost every car manufacturer has announced to start producing electric cars before or around 2020. 

No wonder we are interested in how the future of mobility will look like when electric cars take over. The impact on the industry will be massive and many business will have to change in order to cope.

In case you'd still be in the 'no no, this will never happen - camp', perhaps the following companies might alter your perspective: 

Chargepoint is already the world’s largest and most open EV charging network, empowering not only the fleet industry, but also retail and the workplace in general. 

We had the opportunity to visit the autonomous car builder drive.ai which is building the engine of the future and guess what? It's not really big, massive and roaring but rather silent, effective and supersmart. Take a look at this video to watch it in action! 

Mobility is more than just cars or airplanes. What to think of Hyperloop, Uber elevate or Boosted Boards? Alternative ways of transportation might look silly or downward impossible but that's what people said about the Wright brothers as well. During our tour we'll visit a couple moon shot companies that are going to change mobility once again.

Beam me up Scotty!