Connected Mobility and Bosch
Bosch is one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers. Probably everyone has had Bosch windshield wipers on his or her car at some time. The company of long-standing tradition from Stuttgart is also an innovation leader in questions of mobility. Connected Mobility — the interconnection of vehicles with one another or with the Internet — is one of the key topics of the future at Bosch. The objective: to secure substantially more safety on roads, lower energy consumption, and to have more fun at the same time.
“These new, interconnected technologies have so much potential — we also need new ways to approach them if we want to tell the stories behind them all,” said Stefan Westphal — the man is in charge of the new Bosch corporate blog “connected-mobility.net” in Hildesheim. “We want to build up a pool of bloggers, authors, and freelance journalists who will report on topics related to Connected Mobility from all around the world — in return for a fee and worldwide in several languages on our blog.” That is also why Bosch is a partner of re:publica. “This is where we find the most innovative minds from the European blogger scene. And those are the people we are looking for,” noted Westphal.
There are plenty of examples for the usefulness of Connected Mobility. For instance, Bosch is currently working on a collision warning for motorcycle riders. There were more than 45,000 accidents with personal injuries involving motorcycles and mopeds in Germany alone in 2014. Among the most common causes of accidents: car drivers fail to notice motorcyclists. In the future, the Bosch system will warn car drivers about an approaching motorcycle. Interconnected Bosch technology will extend the reach of electric vehicles through intelligent and predictive route planning. And finally, how convenient is it to pick up your smartphone while you are lying on the sofa in the evening and ask it if you will have to stop at a filling station on your way to work the next morning.
Westphal: “The authors writing on connected-mobility.net will be a part of this dazzling development. Yet we are just as interested in the human stories related to the application as in the background of the technology.” The stories will be told in classic blog format, but cross-medial as well. Westphal, who himself worked for many years as a journalist, puts his faith in networks: “My vision of the work: an English blogger introduces a subject related to driving on the left, and we bring in an Indian journalist to talk about his experience while driving on the left, the German video journalist shoots a video on the subject of how Connected Mobility can be used to help find solutions, an Austrian works on the informational charts, and all of these elements are merged by a French author into an interactive, cross-medial story.”
Information and registrations: http://authorpool.connected-mobility.net