As part of a strategy to develop permissionless mobility ecosystems, the IOTA Foundation has entered the Google Design Sprint in partnership with Audi Denkwerkstatt, a think tank that works for German luxury automotive firm, Audi. Both organizations will be combining their efforts to explore Tangle-based use cases, collect customer feedback, and construct a low-level prototype.
The Audi Denkwerkstatt team is made up of around 7 representatives from Audi who, in turn, support 15 members from all age groups, levels, and business areas towards developing and executing premium mobility solutions. The team currently has 6 months to do this and has the option of either doing it independently or through a partnership.
This new approach of doing things is very unique and has served as an example of just how car manufacturers innovate. It is also a great opportunity for IOTA to make itself a part of a new mobility solution with expert guidance from Audi.
IOTA has managed to garner the interest of the automotive sector once before. In fact, it was Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen, that took an interest. The company had actually announced in June, this year, that it would begin leveraging Tangle to help distribute its vehicle software over the internet.
Now, IOTA is working with Audi and hopes to make the most of the partnership. In its blog, the company stated that it was very excited to learn from Audi and hoped that the partnership would lead to something productive.
Perfect combo
Audi Denkwerkstatt, which translates to “An Ideas Workshop for Audi”, is mainly concerned with the development of various products and business models with the assistance of experts from the digital ecosystem.
Now, Audi’s research unit is primarily focused on mobility, but, IOTA’s capabilities might just be of great assistance to the think tank, which seeks out innovations in arenas such as data security, IT, HR, finance, sales etc.
As far as IOTA is concerned, their technology is an ideal fit since it meets most of the requirements. In a recent announcement published on its blog, the team mentioned that it’s open source protocol was meant to have a revolutionary impact on business ideas that are dependent on secure machine to machine interaction/communication, scalability, and trustworthiness of data.
Juggernaut
IOTA, which is ranked as the world’s 9th largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, is enjoying stellar 2018 run and it looks like things aren’t going to slow down anytime soon. The cryptocurrency has already managed to form partnerships with several large corporations and even governments, who’ve committed to leveraging the capabilities of Tangle. The Norwegian Bank and the UN were two of the most recent entities to form a partnership with IOTA.
Now, with the upcoming Qubic upgrade, which will provide the ability to develop smart contracts, IOTA may be able to offer a unique level of utility for DAG technology.
News of the latest IOTA-Audi partnership has gained plenty of positive attention on social media already.