Mobility Innovators

Guido di Pasquale [00:00:00]:

Yeah, as you say European Commission invests billions on research and innovation and selecting the best projects proposal that we mentioned at the beginning. And I think this is an excellent way to boost research and to boost innovation and also the deployment of innovation. The model of the European Commission is to incentivize the collaboration, so that’s incentivize the collaboration between different actors and stakeholders. So that’s when you develop a solution or service, whatever is the scope of your project, you have to consider all the players and then you start bringing together the industry that develop this technology that you need. But also the research center or the university with the huge knowledge on the specific topic, but also you need to collaborate with another industry because this other industry is doing complimentary component or solution for you. And then you need to collaborate, in our case, in the transport, you need to collaborate with an operator.

Maybe that is operating a service that you want, that is using the technology. And then you want to have also the involvement of the city because this technology and the service is deployed in the city. And then you need the involvement of the authority to as to that will receive this service in the city. And you may need startups and you may need the representative of these stakeholders like associations and representative of the users. And this mix, this cocktail of different stakeholders and actors brings the innovation.

Jaspal Singh [00:02:18]:

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators podcast.

Jaspal Singh [00:02:24]:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovators Podcasts. I’m your host Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovators podcast invites key innovator in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future forecast. In this episode, we’ll be discussing about autonomous mobility and how it’s reshaping our cities.

At today’s guest, He is the Managing Director of Pave Europe. PAVE is a Partner for Automated Vehicle Education, a coalition for industry non-profit academic institution with a mission to inform the public about the automated vehicle and their potential.

Prior to joining Pave Europe, he was working as a co-director of Knowledge and Innovation at UITP, he’s an expert in digitalization ability as a service, automated road transport and internet of things. With 20 years of experience, he was involved in many projects including:

• SPACE Project Shared Personalised Autonmated Connected vhEicles.
• Shift2Rail GoF4R Governance of the Interoperability Framework for Rail and Intermodal Mobility
• AUTOPILOT Automated Driving progressed by Internet of Things
• IMOVE Accelerate deployment and unlock the scalability of MaaS schemes in Europe
• My-TRAC My Travel Companion
• GALILEO FOR MOBILITY Fostering the adoption of Galileo for MaaS

 

I’m so happy to welcome my good friend Guido Di Pasquale, Managing Director of PAVE Europe. It’s now time to listen and learn.

Hello Guido. It’s great to have you on the show and learn from your experience.

Guido di Pasquale [00:03:43]:

Hello Jaspal. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a real pleasure for me to be here with you.

Jaspal Singh [00:03:49]:

It’s great to have you back as a good friend and as a mentor I would say. So today I’ll be spending time getting to know more about you, about your new role at PAVE Europe and also your thoughts on upcoming trends in the mobility sector because you have worked a lot in Europe as well as now you’re doing amazing work with the autonomous mobility.

Now I saw your LinkedIn profile and I was quite surprised to find some unknown things about you because I never knew that you were a software developer in past and now you work as a transport expert so it’s quite rich. But I would still ask you to share some interesting fact about your career that you still hiding from the world and you haven’t put on the LinkedIn

Guido di Pasquale [00:04:34]:

Thank you for the question. Just as you say, I had previous life in my career. Yeah, the linking profile is quite rich. I put everything there but there are some aspects that I enjoyed very much and it was amazing for me now that I think of it like when I was software developer, I spent months for example in commissioning of a plant for the storage of radioactive material. So I spent months in this area with radioactive material. So I was also scared somehow going every day there and anytime there was a mistake or something had to work all this space in protective clothes and you have to do redo everything from scratch. So it was quite what was a very nice experience and I’m happy to started with this type of experience.

Then when I moved to the transport sector and something that probably is destiny and that I like very much was this job on bids and proposal management because this was giving the opportunity to be creative and to develop ideas for projects and to start building.

Guido di Pasquale [00:06:14]:

Well my sector was ITS so Intelligent Transport System. So I was thinking about possible architecture for the different solutions and the components but also the partnership. So who should we involve in this? Do we need a university? Do we need this supplier, these other suppliers? And then bringing all together and create a proposal, a project proposal that can have an impact on business impact and also the society And that can be accepted by the client or by European commissioner or whatever. So that was very nice. And also I would like to mention when I joined when yeah at UITP time, let’s say my UITP period I like very much the period when I had to work with my team and with the team at UITP and moving from the development of projects and the management of projects to mentoring the team and to support them and to be with them and try to solve issues and help them to grow this part I liked very much and maybe it’s not what you can perceive from a CV.

Jaspal Singh [00:07:48]:

That’s great but in fact I can vouch for that. Like you mentioned your time at UITP. So one thing I just want to share that we still miss you, we are already missing you so you’re doing great in your career so that’s why we are happy but otherwise we were sad that you left. But at the same time, like you mentioned, you love to mentor and that’s why I said in the beginning that you are one of the mentor to me as well. I learned a lot of good things – Project Management, Proposal Management and also the technical side of handling the project. So you did a lot of work in there. Now following on to my previous question, so like I mentioned, you started your career as a software developer, you worked there. In fact one of the project you mentioned on your LinkedIn profile, which is very interesting, it’s automatic machine for the assembly of washing machine drum and radioactive materials.

Guido di Pasquale [00:08:38]:

So you do so many crazy stuff in your previous role and then you started your career as an Innovation and Project Management and consulting firm and start focusing on ITS and AFCS and then you joined UITP, you grew internally and recently joined PAVE Europe as a Managing Director. One thing I want to learn is what led you to shift your career from a software developer to an innovation manager because you were doing great. What was the moment when you decided okay, this is enough and I want to do something into innovation. And also one of the reason like you were doing great in public transportation in UITP, why did you move and join PAVE Europe? So what was the reason of these career transition? Because I think these are the big career transition in your life moving from software developer to UITP, the innovation role and then now UITP to PAVE. So what led you to do that?

Guido di Pasquale [00:09:35]:

It was not easy. I mean as engineer I wanted to do some technical stuff. So after graduation I wanted to work in the field that I study. It was automation. So I started to look for some jobs around automation. I liked the robotics and this type of stuff. So I found this job and I like very much to be in the field and to you to put my finger let’s say in this tools and this software. So experience also the excitement of seeing a system working. So that was very exciting and when you do it with a team, it’s team work. So you are even more excited because at the end everyone plays a different role and at the end you see the final result or together and it was great but at some point there is things happened in life and things and other things you try to steer.

Guido di Pasquale [00:10:50]:

And I also believe in change that the change gives you the opportunity to grow and also to do something different that gives you new perspectives. So yeah, I’m not really planning to change or to that I have a timeline for changing but I perceive the moment when it’s time to change and at that time I said okay, I did enough on the field, now I need to do something at higher level and something where I can design and also work on some sort of strategy and look at the future. So look at innovation or research and what is possible to do if we look at and the transport and mobility gave me this opportunity.

So from one side it was said to leave the automation sector but from the other side moving to the transport and mobility gave me the opportunity to work in innovation and in research. And then I started there. Then after few years in this field I liked so much and I was also in contact with UITP because UITP is a leader in research and innovation and it was quite natural for me to move from this previous company to UITP to have even a more higher level view and also to have UITP offers the possibility to work and engage and be in contact with a huge network and to be in contact with the authorities and operators and industries.

Guido di Pasquale [00:12:48]:

So it’s the next level of layer of obstruction or of where you can really work on innovation and strategy. So that was I think a milestone for me moving to UITP. And then yeah, you said about the last move joining PAVE Europe, maybe we talk about that later. It was also for me a natural move. I was looking for something that I could build by myself but of course with the help of those who are working with me and the members that founded this new association but a new challenge that could give me the possibility to use all the experience that I gained over the years and to build something new and of course in the field that I like, which is transport and automation. So now I’m combining.

Jaspal Singh [00:14:03]:

A full circle of life. You started from automation and robotics went to transport and now you’re back into automation.

Guido di Pasquale [00:14:13]:

Loop

Jaspal Singh [00:14:14]:

It’s a loop of life and I really love your line about that change give you opportunity to grow. So change is very important in life. So if you are not changing because we are changing every day, but you need to adopt to that change and it’s an opportunity. I love that line. I’ll use it everywhere now. It’s a mindset.

Guido di Pasquale [00:14:34]:

Yeah, it’s a mindset. You need to.

Jaspal Singh [00:14:39]:

It’s a mindset, it’s a growth mindset to change. Now you mentioned about you’re back into automation and you’re working with pay as a Managing Director for PAVE Europe. Those who don’t know pay is a partner for automated vehicle education which is quite interesting. So why don’t you share a little more about the organization, what PAVE is doing? what is it mission? In fact I saw they have a PAVE Canada also so they’re expanding and how this action is looking to make a big impact in autonomous mobility. Would love to know more.

Guido di Pasquale [00:15:17]:

PAVE is partner stands for Partners for Automated Vehicle Education. So education is the key word here. Well this is starting from studies and over studies that have shown that the biggest hurdle for the adoption of autonomous vehicles or automated mobility is okay, regulation can be technology but the biggest hurdle is the people. The acceptance of the people of this technology. And maybe it was the same for other technologies in the past, but in this case trust of people to this technology is very important. And to build this trust it’s very important that people understand the technology. So if they understand, they trust it and if they trust it, they start to use it. And if they start to use it at the end what happens is that innovation come because you start trusting and using a new technology and the new technology can bring you to the unknown or to new services or to new application.

Guido di Pasquale [00:16:44]:

Like it happens with the internet or because you start trusting this. So PAVE and PAVE Europe, so I’m representing Europe here is a nonprofit association, a coalition of organizations, industry, startups and nonprofit public sector. So every organization as an interest on automated mobility with the scope of educating the public opinion. So I wouldn’t say the users but the public or everyone because everyone will be concerned about this technology and the public sector of course the authorities and the cities and the national ministries and departments.

So has let’s say two beliefs mainly. One is that we believe that automated mobility can really improve road safety and sustainability and mobility efficiency. I think we can agree on this. The second belief is that we need users to understand and accept this to progress and to move forward because, and the reason why this group of amazing organizations as stakeholder wanted to create PAVE is because they believe that this should be done together. So everyone should contribute to this because you can compete on the services on the technology, but you cannot compete against misinformation or against misunderstanding. And then the non-unaccepted technology. So that’s the main mission and I’m happy to have joined this because I personally like this technology and they believe that this technology can really improve our mobility system. I’m not talking about the vehicle, I’m talking about the mobility system.

Jaspal Singh [00:19:12]:

I fully agree with you. In fact, if you look at any technology adoption, there is always some resistance. In fact when the mobile will launch, there were a lot of resistance. Nobody thought how these small device can change our life. Nobody protected 10 years back that our camera, our video, our phone, our notebook, our reminder, our television, our entertainment, our connection, everything will be in just one device which will be carry. And with so much of memory you can carry unlimited numbers of memory with you now with the cloud computing and all, so nobody thought. And same way I think without autonomous mobility we still not sure how it’ll change our life in future because we just have scratched the surface. So moment we have those kind of opportunity available, then we’ll realize that how our life will be completely changed in future. So I agree with you, it’s a lot of work require on the education side and make people ready for that.

Guido di Pasquale [00:20:07]:

Just I mentioned surveys and studies, but just two or three days ago was released a new study showing that only the 27% of the global population would accept or believe that this technology is safe.

Jaspal Singh [00:20:31]:

27%

Guido di Pasquale [00:20:32]:

27%. So yeah. There’s work lot of work for education for patient.

Jaspal Singh [00:20:40]:

There’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of work. No in fact the study which we are mentioning, in fact I get a chance to see that. And you rightly mentioned one of the biggest challenge for autonomous mobility is not the regulation, technology or infrastructure, it’s about the user perception and confidence. And the study you are I think mentioning is about this J.D. Power prepared U.S. Mobility Confidence Index in partnership with PAVE and there is a low confidence of people basically consumers show very low level of readiness to accept or riding in a fully automated or self-driving vehicle and using fully automated or self-driving public transit. I mean we can travel in an automated train but it’s still not clear for us how we’ll be traveling in an automated bus or a self-driving bus. So how do you see that autonomous mobility industry can overcome this challenge and will city or authority have any role to play in this area?

 

Guido di Pasquale [00:21:39]:

Well for sure. It’s very important that the cities and the authorities are involved in this introduction and introduction of this technology. I mean they are also the ones directly connected to the citizens and they are also the organizers of the mobility in the cities. So it is very important that they participate and they participate in partnership with the private sector to make these campaigns and in fact UITP that we will get in Europe disengagement and this involvement of the public sector and the authorities and transport authorities that can help us in engaging with the public, with users and other type of users so that we can not only create the framework for their understanding but also to co-create with the citizens and co co-create with them the services that are needed. Very much one of the major transport providers said that we don’t need to adapt the services to the technology but we need up to the technology to the services and the services are for the end users and for that we need the authorities to help.

Jaspal Singh [00:23:22]:

I love your point about co-creation. That city and go and authority you need to co-create with the industry. You can’t do it alone, not neither the industry nor the city of authority. And you need to adopt the services to the technology not other way around because I mean it’s part of a change management. If you never change with the new technology, if like even if I give you a smartphone and you still use it just to make call and you don’t change yourself to access the internet or to access any web browser or any app, it means you are not fully potentially using the full potential of the technology. So it means it doesn’t matter whether you have a 2G or 5G because you are still using in the so same old fashioned way.

Guido di Pasquale [00:24:04]:

Yes and if you don’t learn to use it when at the beginning you will never use it. There is a curve and you use it at the beginning or you will drop out and you will not use the full potential

Jaspal Singh [00:24:17]:

Now one of the important point which you mentioned and you actually work in Europe for past two decades and one of the key role for you was to work a lot with EU commission and European commission on a lot of projects generally Europe, everybody see Europe as a role model for public transport system. It has world’s best public transport system on infrastructure and big credit goes to the city and state because they invest in these services. But there is one more secret ingredients which I feel because I also closely work in this area is, which people not fully aware of, is the role play by the Mobility and Transport Division of European commission because the department invests a lot of money in research and pilot project in different region and you were part of a lot of these project UITP is one of the largest player who’s conducting a lot of these pilot and project on behalf of EU commission.

Jaspal Singh [00:25:21]:

Can you share a little more about the EU commission model, how commission model work and other point is what other countries and region can learn from it? Because I see lot of countries are investing in transportation and mobility but they are not still able to reach the full benefit of it. I know in North America the government of Canada, Transport Canada is investing, FTA’s investing in USa then in Asia a lot of cities are investing but they’re still not able to bring out the new technique and technology forward. So what we can learn from Europe?

 

Guido di Pasquale [00:25:58]:

As you say European commission invests billions on research and innovation and selecting the best projects proposal that we mentioned at the beginning. And I think this is an excellent way to boost research and to boost innovation and also the deployment of innovation the model of the European Commission is to incentivize the collaboration. So that’s very important and so incentivize the collaboration between different actors and stakeholders. So that’s when you develop a solution or a service or whatever is the scope of your project, you have to consider all the players and then you start bringing together the industry that develop this technology that you need. But also the research center or the university with the huge knowledge on the specific topic but also you need to collaborate with another industry because this other industry is doing complimentary component or solution for you. And then you need to collaborate in our case, in the transport, you need to collaborate with an operator maybe that is operating a service that you want, that is using the technology. And then you want to have also the involvement of the city because this technology and the service is deployed in the city and then you need the involvement of the authority to that will receive this service in their city. And you may need startups and you may need the representative of these stakeholders like associations and representative of the users.

Guido di Pasquale [00:28:03]:

And this mix, this cocktail of different stakeholders and actors brings the innovation and not only brings the possibility to exchange ideas because especially in Europe we are very diverse in terms of cultural and culture and also the way we work and the different states. But in this way you give the possibility to exchange and also to have exchange between universities. So you broadly your research and also to compare what is happening in one city and in another city why this service is working in this city but isn’t, can this service also work in this other city or in the north, you have specificities because of the weather or because of the geographical context. And then this gives really the opportunity to advance and European commission is funding this because of course they want to support the European industry because at the end it’s a way to advance the industry putting money to lower the risk on the financial risk of these companies.

Guido di Pasquale [00:29:36]:

Cause they receive financial support for research which is you know, don’t know what the results will be. So they are covering partially this financial risks for research and innovation and I think that this model works, works very well and gives also the opportunity to many young people to learn and to be in contact with their peers in other cities, in other universities, in other industries. So it it’s the way to grow and this could be, I don’t know if this could be replicated in other regions like South America or North America or in Asia, but it’s a model I think that’s is really, really working in Europe especially because our history, we are coming from different histories in our continent and we speak also different languages. And so it’s a model that is contributing a lot to build the Europe, European Union.

Jaspal Singh [00:30:55]:

I think you share some of the very interesting point because I never thought from that point of view. One is that you’re not giving money to these company for selling the product but supporting their R&D. So in a case you are advancing them like a lot of cities what they do is they’re just giving them money or subsidize their product but instead of subsidizing their product, you subsidize their cost and reduce their financial risk, which is very interesting. And the second point, which you also mentioned because I see a lot of demonstration projects happen in US and in Canada, but they are very city specific or the project specific. But the challenge is you never have a chance to learn from each other. I mean there are more than 50 states in US and they get funding and they work in silo. But this is a model where people can exchange learning with each other, the universities can calibrate, the industry can collaborate and then operator can collaborate with each other and learn and exchange and share why it can work in one geography and why it’ll not work in other geography, which is quite interesting.

Guido di Pasquale [00:31:57]:

I never thought from that point of view. So thanks for sharing that. I think what you said is right bang on.

Guido di Pasquale [00:32:03]:

In what the European commission ask in return is sharing.

Jaspal Singh [00:32:09]:

Yeah

Guido di Pasquale [00:32:10]:

It’s okay, it’s of course deployment of what you promise in your proposal but it’s also sharing the results. And this is the way to advance in research at European level because you are sharing your results and then you can see if this can be transferred to other context. And because this is funded by public money by taxpayer, it’s important that results are shared of course what can be shared, what is not confidential,

Jaspal Singh [00:32:48]:

Which is great, which is great because then you don’t need to repeat the cycle. The other city can learn from what being done in other city and deployment. Now you work on a lot of EU commission project, I can name 10 or 15 projects you worked so you were so busy. I know every week you were busy in mimicking a new proposal and I also know now you declare your first love is automation but your second love, which a lot of people don’t know is MaaS Mobility as a Service. That’s something very close to your heart. And one of the project you did for MaaS was iMove which was basically aim to accelerate the deployment and look the scalability of MaaS scheme in Europe. And like you said every project is pan Europe, so different cites. And that project was also implemented in Four Cities.

The pilot were done in Berlin, Koberg, Manchester and Turin. There was a lot of hype about MaaS. Everybody was predicting that MaaS will change everything and we will and I remember when we used to have discussion about EU project, we were predicting that MaaS will be a big thing in next 4-5 years. But everything fizzle out. Now my question is because you work in this space very closely, you saw these for cities, you saw a lot of other project happening in Mass, what did we miss? Why MaaS was not able to pull it off? And secondly, is it still possible to get it right? Do you think it’s still possible to make mass work in Europe and outside Europe?

Guido di Pasquale [00:34:23]:

Yes, MaaS. MaaS is it’s close to my heart. No it’s because when I started to learn about MaaS, we started in one of my previous activities with integration of services and also ticketing integration and clearing and how to integrate different services and then redistribute the different incomes to the different service providers. So it was, it’s coming from a long time, long time ago. But then in 2015 I think it was launched this idea called Mobility as a Service. And then we had this project, iMove that you mentioned I think MaaS is still the right one of the important tool for the future sustainable mobility. So is it’s something that we have learned in these years. It was very important in projects like EU and other projects to have pilots and to demonstrate that it’s not so easy to demonstrate that it’s not enough to have a great platform that is capable to connect the different services that that’s not enough.

Guido di Pasquale [00:35:57]:

You need collaboration or integration at other levels. Maybe this was missed or underestimated at that time. Also the user engagement was not really considered because it’s not easy to gain customers from the privately owned cars if you don’t offer a similar service or level and the engagement of the user. Again, user acceptance was not really considered at that time. And also the fact that you need to adapt or the different models of mobility data service to the different context. So you cannot build something that is adaptable or that is good for every city, every context, every region. So you need to understand the local context, you need to understand the local stakeholders, what are their needs but also how they would make a viable business or they would make money out of this participating in this MaaS ecosystem. So it was not really considered and then the different actors that should have been integrated started to say well I can be the MaaS integrator, why this other one should be the MaaS integrator.

Guido di Pasquale [00:37:44]:

And then the conflict started. But I think it’s possible now we more aware of what is needed to have a successful MaaS. Maybe we don’t need to start from the big picture or from the big platform or system, but just look at the local context and look at the needs of specific customers. So maybe you can build a MaaS service for target group or specific customers like employees or I don’t know whatever you can name them and maybe not for all type of services. And I think now we are moving towards this and it is understood that the collaboration between public and private again is very important. And I see now initiatives in Europe also in Italy or in France where at the national level they are building support to expand and to promote mobility service. So at least these projects were successful in raising the awareness and educating also in this case all the stakeholders.

Jaspal Singh [00:39:20]:

Now all these are great point and I think you rightly mentioned a lot of time we do project and without considering the end customer and forget the need of the end customer and that option of end customer. And I love because now what you’re doing for autonomous mobility, you are putting customer in the center and then building things around it rather than building a technology first and tell people, now here’s the technology, use it. But you’re saying no we need to bring customer forward and build use case around that. Great, thanks for sharing that want and you have such a vast experience in this area. We can just talk hours and hours on this topic.

I want to come back to your first love, which is autonomous mobility and automation and you started your carrying automation then you work automation in public transportation, you work on couple of project at UITP space other which were on autonomous mobility.

But now you are working in PAVE and here you’re not looking after the passengers, you’re also looking after the logistic, you’re looking after the last-mile delivery. Everything about autonomous mobility, it doesn’t only mean, so basically I want to ask you there are a lot of pilots happening right now on public road for autonomous mobility. The robot taxi Cruise, Waymo, even Baidu in China. They are doing those projects.

Tesla we already see they have a self-driving vehicle, they claim that this can work. We see a lot of vehicle with autonomous delivery robots, but still there are a lot of doubt about it when it will happen. So my first question is when can we expect a fully autonomous fleet on the public road and will it move Passenger or goods? So whether we will see more autonomous mobility for vehicle or for goods?

Guido di Pasquale [00:41:12]:

Yeah, excellent question. That’s also you need it’s not easy to say but what I can say is that few years ago probably we were too optimistic. So yeah, industry was saying that for 2021 or yeah around it the autonomous vehicles were providing services and were available in our streets. But I think it’s also good, I mean the good news is that if you this curve of Gartner now we are with the autonomous vehicles, we are in this phase of this illusion but rising towards the actual deployment of it. So in a way we all know that we have to go through this apparently. And so now we are starting to the second phase I would say. And also looking at the tests and what the experience that was gained by the different providers in the past year.

Guido di Pasquale [00:42:39]:

They also say that we had numbers of trials that were very useful, that were very important to test the technology. But now it’s time to move to the second phase at least for the fully the autonomous vehicles so-called L-4 and to start providing the services. So your question when it’ll happen, I don’t know exactly the date, but it is starting to happen and as you mentioned in us already there are robotic taxi providing real services even if in specific hours of the day and specific ODD Operational Design Domains. But they are there providing the service. And the same in Europe, which is a more PT oriented market but prior robotic taxi will come soon as well. In Europe we start to seeing them, we start to see them operating in Europe, we have this focus on L-4 which means fully or highly automated vehicles without the intervention of a driver but in specific conditions. So specific geographical conditions called Operational Design Domain ODD. So where the environment or the vehicle knows the environment and also under specific weather conditions and so on. So in these cases I think they are coming, they are. And this could provide a real service to the users.

Guido di Pasquale [00:44:42]:

And yeah, you said rightly that we look at passenger transport but also at good. And I think that goods can be or can be even better usecase. I mean in the short term because first of all is highly needed to remove the driver from tracks for business model of course and for driver shortage. And if you think they are let’s say moving in almost well-defined path in highways or for long distances from the technological point of view and from this point of view is easier. So this could come earlier and in fact there are tests and on this direction and also last my delivery and urban logistics are quite advanced. So yeah, I would say that we should see soon services in logistics and trucks and autonomous passenger autonomous vehicles very linked to public transport.

Jaspal Singh [00:46:07]:

Very linked to public and I think that’s the best way to go forward Also rather than having autonomous car, personalized car. I love your point about this Gartner hype model because for five years back we were too optimistic that everything will change. And recently Bloomberg published this article and you must have read that they mentioned that hundred billions of dollars is wasted on self-driving vehicle and we are nowhere. But I think when you have more skeptic things happen because now you’re not working in hype, you are working more in reality closer to reality. So we are right in that phase and things will be reality soon

Guido di Pasquale [00:46:48]:

We can only go up

Jaspal Singh [00:46:49]:

Yes we can go only up. Now it’s already too much of downfall. So you don’t need to now do math. Now you love this technology and you are going, you’re not somebody who just look at from outside but you go deeper into this technology. And one of the key thing we see in autonomous vehicle or mobility is the use of technology for sensing. And there are two approach which companies are following. One is LiDAR-based using radars, and second is this vision-based sensing approach which started actually by Tesla and Toyota is now following it and now they’re also going for this vision based sensing using cameras to capture image and process that and make decision of that. You have so much of experience and knowledge in this area. If I ask you which technology will work or I would say which technology are more bullish on and why? Because if I need to invest in a startup, should I invest in LiDAR or camera this?

Guido di Pasquale [00:47:51]:

Well I’m not saying what is best because also to be neutral in towards our members. Well based on what I know and in my experience, you say we have the vision based or the sensing through cameras and LiDAR. When I see two aspects, one is safety and the other one is performance. So the camera and the vision based system is it is connected and it’s based on machine learning.

Guido di Pasquale [00:48:38]:

So machine learning is becoming more and more accurate and more and more sophisticated of course. But as far as I know it can make mistakes still. It can mix some of the images and interpretation of images perceived. So it is improving, it is advancing the technology but it still can make mistakes on the other end. It is I performance. Yeah, because you can, it is content based content sensitive. So with the camera, what you see and you can react accordingly with the leader is the sort the opposite. So you don’t know what it is, but you 100% detect an obstacle. So in terms of safety is better because you that there is an obstacle with I accuracy. But in terms of terms of performance, it’s lower because you don’t know what it is. And then it means that the vehicle may stop simply because there’s no way to detect what is this object and then react accordingly. So you see you have two different technologies that and then you have to balance them and it depends it the risk you want to take and depends what you want to invest more. And what is more important for your technology and service?

Jaspal Singh [00:50:30]:

Again, I would say I never thought these two technologies in that sense of safety and performance. And you rightly mentioned with in fact there was a funny video showing Tesla following a horse carriage vehicle because it cannot able to recognize horse vehicle on the road. So it was predicting that vehicle into either a man or as a walking person or a slow car or truck. So for image base that’s another challenge because you need lot more information to process well so you have a better performance but the safety may be compromised. And in LiDAR-based you have other, or probably in future we’ll have a vehicle which have both. So which can have a high performance and high saving,

Guido di Pasquale [00:51:13]:

Which is very expensive than

Jaspal Singh [00:51:16]:

Always there is a compromise how good you want to make thing. But let’s see how technology is changing. We are seeing lot more advancement and like you said, we are in that phase where things are more closer to reality than hype. So people will come out with something now, although undermine this point, but I feel one of the key big hurdle for autonomous mobility is the policy framework and regulation. You said it’s important but user is more important. But at the same time I feel like first question people will ask from the regulation point of view is if an autonomous vehicle met with an accident, who will be responsible for that? Is it the car? Is it the person who is sitting in the car? Is it the software developer who will be responsible for that? And second is how will you make sure that in case of any cyber security hack and any cyber hack again who will be held responsible.

Jaspal Singh [00:52:26]:

We also see the regulation problem for delivery side. There are a lot of these autonomous delivery robots. A lot of companies want to make all your delivery with these sidewalk robots. But a lot of cities are banning them because it’s encroaching the public area and all. But in the beginning you rightly mentioned that city and authority need to work with the industry to co-create, otherwise it’s not possible. Can you share a little bit more about the regulatory framework required to make autonomous mobility success? Because I’m pretty sure you must be going into detail and seeing what are those regulatory aspects which need to be created for industry to succeed in this area. Because if you don’t have a good supportive regulatory framework, autonomous mobility will never happen.

Guido di Pasquale [00:53:18]:

Yeah, no you are fully right. But the regulatory framework is first of all important for safety mean to ensure safety. This is “safety first” is the priority. And again when you have a framework, regulatory framework that ensure safety, then you can also build the trust of people. Cause there are people who will trust the technology because they feel safe because they can use a service that is safe and is regulated. Let’s say in Europe we have this now we have this recent regulation that was released last July. So actually in Europe there is this framework now regulatory framework. Of course, each member state should adopt and also adapt to their own national context. But at least this regulation now gives the possibility to test and to have on the roads, public roads L-4 vehicles, which is quite a pioneer in this sense because it allows maybe the regulation is more advanced than the technology, so at least that as a European framework.

Guido di Pasquale [00:54:59]:

So it is possible to test and those framework establish also the different use cases that you can test to get the type approval of the vehicle. And there are some specifications that the provider, the manufacturers need to follow and to test against use cases like highway shuttles or shuttles or robotic taxi up to autonomous vehicles. So it’s important the regulation because this framework can give reinsured the users that there is are safety specifications that they can trust and also gives the possibility to the industry to test the technology to try their technology in the real context. There are also some more and more living labs in Europe, at least where the industry can test the technology and try all the different functionalities and also use this living labs to get the approval, the type approval. So the certification. So it’s very important because so far it was left to the decision of the city to give the permission to test the vehicle for a limited period in a limited area. So it was very limited and for the industries they need to try and test the technology, but that’s a very good advancement from European side,

Jaspal Singh [00:56:48]:

No, I mean Europe is always much advanced compared to other cities or other countries in the world Regarding the regulation, some of the forward-looking regulation come from Europe. No, I’ll happy to put this in the show note so that people can access and see that how Europe is regulating. Because I know there was some regulation came out in China, some state or there was a federal regulation in US too on autonomous vehicle, in Canada to they’re trying to now create some kind of a regulation. And I think that’s an important point when each country should look at what others are doing and try to bring some good aspect from each other. And it should be flexible. The innovation can never happen under a stringent regulatory framework because then you can’t do much. So you have to make it more flexible so the innovation can happen and grow.

Guido di Pasquale [00:57:42]:

Exactly, exactly.

Jaspal Singh [00:57:44]:

Now one of the important points which from UITP side also and otherwise one of the key point for autonomous mobility is that it can be a big boon or it can be a big bane for the city depending on its users. And you rightly mentioned that the autonomous mobility for public transport is good. We have a good use case of robo taxi when it’s shared it’s good for society, but at the same time the self-driving cars will be kind of a nightmare for city because everybody will try to own a self-driving car and they will be running 24X7 because you don’t need to worry about anything else. What should we do to make sure that the autonomous ability can help city rather than destroy our cities. And how do you see the evolution of autonomous buses? Do you see there’ll be a big push for autonomous buses, the big buses or you see they will be the last one to come on the road.

Guido di Pasquale [00:58:45]:

Yeah, thanks. Thank you for the question. I mean it’s the question because we need to I think that the autonomous mobility, so it’s mobility, we need to make it autonomous in the sense that the mobility in the city should be optimized and optimizing the mobility in the city means to make it more efficient in terms of congestion, in terms of use of the space of the city and the liability of the city itself. And I think the city authorities this very well that they need to reach and to achieve this goal. So it’s important that the autonomous vehicles are introduced in the right way. In way means they don’t have to fulfill the city with additional cars or additional vehicles. They need to provide complimentary service to the existing mass transit to improve the mass transit where it needs to be improved. And only in this way then you can really have efficiency in mobility.

Guido di Pasquale [01:00:14]:

And again, if you put the customer at the center then you will start thinking about what is needed for the different categories of users. Can you provide a personalized service that is not private car but can also be the use of an automated car, automated robo taxi that needs then brings you to the station and the new tech train and go. Or maybe in some cases it is better to a door to door autonomous mobility. So this is tailored service combined with the general interest. That is the big challenge for me and where autonomous vehicles can really help because it is removing some costs and this bringing some improvement in terms of efficiency. So you can use these vehicles all the time, they don’t need to be parked because as we all know, 90-95% of the time a car is just parked. So it’s an asset that you don’t use. So why don’t you use it with an autonomous vehicle? You could use it at the best. And then we come to the efficiency of the existing public transport maybe with autonomous buses. And the autonomous buses are a very good business case for automation because again, you remove in this case the driver which is the highest cost for the operators and you can use this services in confined environment. So again, it is easier from the technological point of view. Just think for example of an autonomous BT bus, rapid transit.

Jaspal Singh [01:02:19]:

I was thinking about the same segregated.

Guido di Pasquale [01:02:19]:

Yeah, you have a segregated lane. It’s the first step for automation. Actually this could be a very, very good use case. And again, if this is optimized in terms of mobility, so improving the efficiency of the current public transport, make it more autonomous, plus complimenting it with other more flexible and on demand transport.

Jaspal Singh [01:02:55]:

I agree with you. In fact, I was thinking the same use case is auto because there’s a lot of city in, especially in North America now looking BRT as a solution, you don’t have that much of passenger demand to go for trains. So other option could be just to build a BRT lane and put these buses and when you have this dedicated right of way, so probably removing driver can be one of the options because at the same time they have a huge shortage of drivers. I was reading yesterday in one of the city I can’t name, but then in one of the city they mentioned that the driver can earn up to 130 to 150K annually, the bus driver, which is a very good salary. At the same time they still couldn’t able to find drivers. So it’s a huge shortage. So it can solve both the purpose. Thank you so much Guido.

I think we really had a good conversation about MaaS, Autonomous mobility, about you now to end this podcast, we have this rapid-fire questions round and the idea for this question round to learn little more about you and what do you think? And I have these five questions you need to just answer them quickly if you’re ready. I’ll just start.

Guido di Pasquale [01:04:10]:

Okay ready.

Jaspal Singh [01:04:11]:

It’s not very difficult, so you will enjoy it. Now my first question is if you were not in technology or public transit space, what the profession you would’ve selected?

Guido di Pasquale [01:04:26]:

Okay, this is quite easy. I would love to be a pianist.

Jaspal Singh [01:04:33]:

Pianist

Guido di Pasquale [01:04:34]:

To play piano in this clubs making concerts. So that was next life,

Jaspal Singh [01:04:44]:

Past life, hidden talent you never shared. So next time when we’ll meet, you need to pay.

Guido di Pasquale [01:04:50]:

So that’s for my next life.

Jaspal Singh [01:04:53]:

Now you have traveled around the world because of different projects and all. You’ve been in so many different cities. If I ask you which is your favorite city in the world?

Guido di Pasquale [01:05:05]:

That’s a very difficult question. There are so many.

Jaspal Singh [01:05:08]:

The easy and the difficult now.

Guido di Pasquale [01:05:11]:

Yes, too many beautiful cities and are beautiful for different aspects. Yeah. Well can I say two?

Jaspal Singh [01:05:19]:

You can go for

Guido di Pasquale [01:05:21]:

Two, yeah. Okay, thanks. Because one is from my country, Italy. So I would say Naples.

Guido di Pasquale [01:05:29]:

For many reasons this is a very special city and yeah, we can spend hours to talk about it. And the second one is Singapore.

Jaspal Singh [01:05:40]:

Singapore. Any particular reason

Guido di Pasquale [01:05:44]:

I like very much the dynamism and the innovation that they bring in all sectors and how advanced they are. Of course they are a small country, a very confined country possible. But it’s, every time I go there I say wow,

Jaspal Singh [01:06:08]:

It is one of my favorites two. I never been to Naples so I can’t share much, but I heard they got the best in the world. So that’s my plan to be here. But Singapore is one of the good city to see in term of land use planning and urban planning and as well as the use of public transfer. Now if you feel, my last question was difficult, now you have the most difficult question to answer. Which city has the best transit network in the world?

Guido di Pasquale [01:06:40]:

Okay. No, yes. Well, without looking at the say the actual figures, I would say London or Singapore.

Jaspal Singh [01:06:54]:

London, Singapore.

Guido di Pasquale [01:06:58]:

So for what I experienced

Jaspal Singh [01:07:01]:

London is everybody’s favorite and it is one of the good public transit network, the buses and the train and all. Okay, so my next question is, which is your favorite startup in the mobility sector or in autonomous mobility space?

Guido di Pasquale [01:07:16]:

Okay, interesting one. So without making any name, but I normally like those startups who are capable to develop or to create applications on top of technology or services or systems that are doing something else. Example, you take autonomous vehicles okay, they are supposed to move people from A to B, but with this technology, with this vehicles, you have a lot of data. You can do many things. You can bring, put sensors in this vehicles and collect data from the city for example. And you can use this for monitoring the streets of the cities or for whatever application that is not mobility. So this type of startups that think about this is how smart phones were created.

Jaspal Singh [01:08:20]:

I agree with you. It’s quite interesting what you said. It’s basically thinking out of walks. So don’t go for the same use case. If you are collecting data through autonomous mobility, can it be used for checking the road conditions or collecting data about the city network and the crowding level and providing other feedback about the commercial opportunities. So there can be a lot of other things which can be done. No, I really like your point. It’s quite interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Now my last question is if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Guido di Pasquale [01:08:57]:

In my life?

Jaspal Singh [01:08:58]:

Yeah, in your life. If God gave you power and say, okay, change one thing in life, what do you want to change?

Guido di Pasquale [01:09:05]:

Well frankly Jaspal. Nothing.

Jaspal Singh [01:09:07]:

Nothing

Guido di Pasquale [01:09:09]:

I wouldn’t change. I would I like everything I did so far and everything, I mean I could change and tell you I would like to be the richest man in the world.

But for what I have, I feel the richest man in the world. So that’s fine, to be honest.

Jaspal Singh [01:09:29]:

If you feel there is nothing need to be changed, you are content with life and that’s about to being the richest in the world, not about money and not about fame and all, it’s about how you feel happy with yourself. Thanks for sharing that. And I agree with you, we can do a lot of complaints about life, but finding everything what we got is what we have. So we should be happy with what we have.

So thanks for sharing. I mean, I really enjoyed our conversation and like I said, some of the perspective you share, I never thought from that point of view. So really appreciate giving those new angles and new perspective. And I never knew that you always want to become automation person and you were in the wrong place. Now you’re back in the right place.

Guido di Pasquale [01:10:17]:

Thank you very much Jaspal. I really enjoyed it. It was a real pleasure to be with you today. Thanks a lot.

Jaspal Singh [01:10:23]:

Thank you for listening to this podcast. We’ll be inviting some other inspiring guests in the coming week. You can subscribe to this podcast online to get the notification for the next episode. If you like this podcast, please don’t forget to give us a five star reading as it’ll help us to spread that message. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please do right to us at Info@mobility-innovators.com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.