SEAT and IBM Revolutionize Urban Mobility with AI

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SEAT, a member of the Volkswagen Group and one of Europe's biggest car manufacturers, along with IBM, announced the development of a new solution designed to transform driving in cities.

Announced the day after SEAT presented its concept car Minimó promising to revolutionize urban mobility, 'Mobility Advisor' uses IBM Watson AI to help urban citizens make informed decisions about their daily transportation options including cars, scooters, bikes and public transport.

"Traffic congestion and environmental challenges are putting huge pressure on cities to transform," said Jordi Caus, SEAT's Head of New Urban Mobility Concepts. "At SEAT we are leading the way by working with innovative cities and technology companies to come up with solutions to make mobility easier and more efficient. With its advanced cloud and AI technologies, IBM is helping us to innovate new approaches to mobility that will transform our business strategy while improving the lives of people living in urban areas."

Currently under development and designed to run as a mobile app on 4G/5G networks, 'Mobility Advisor' uses IBM Watson Assistant to provide users with a conversational interface to plan and optimise routes and suggest the most suitable transportation options.

With IBM Watson Machine Learning, 'Mobility Advisor' can learn a user's preferences and make personalized recommendations for how best to complete a journey. Connected to the IBM Cloud, it dynamically adapts to changing conditions by taking into account weather forecasts, traffic reports and things happening in the city that day. It incorporates the user's appointments and historical data about previous choices in order to suggest the best modes of transportation each time – even if that means leaving the car behind, walking, or using one of SEAT's e-Kick scooters for the part of the journey.

"With the roll-out of 5G networks in cities in the coming years, the possibilities for transforming the driver experience are limitless," said Juan Ramon Gutierrez Villar, Industry Solutions Leader, IBM Global Markets. "At IBM, we are working with telecommunications companies and innovative manufactures like SEAT to provide the open technologies which they need to deliver on this vision and create highly contextualized and personalized user experiences that work at lightning speed across multiple clouds and IT platforms."

SEAT's R&D Mobility team will continue working with IBM technicians on the evolution of Mobility Advisor proof of concept and its different potential applications. Together with XMOBA, SEAT's independent company which tests new solutions that contribute to better mobility, SEAT will analyse the future integration of Mobility Advisor with Justmoove, the collaborative mobility solutions platform which the company already offers to its customers. On IBM's side, the project is being implemented by Viewnext, an IBM subsidiary in Spain. 

About SEAT

SEAT is the only company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets cars in Spain. A member of the Volkswagen Group, the multinational has its headquarters in Martorell (Barcelona), exporting 80% of its vehicles, and is present in over 80 countries on all five continents. In 2018, SEAT sold 517,600 cars, the highest amount in the brand's 68 years of history.

The SEAT Group employs more than 15,000 professionals and has three production centres – Barcelona, El Prat de Llobregat and Martorell, where it manufactures the highly successful Ibiza, Arona and Leon. Additionally, the company produces the Ateca and the Toledo in the Czech Republic, the Tarraco in Germany, the Alhambra in Portugal and the Mii in Slovakia.

The multinational has a Technical Centre, which operates as a knowledge hub that brings together 1,000 engineers who are focussed on developing innovation for Spain's largest industrial investor in R&D. SEAT already features the latest connectivity technology in its vehicle range and is currently engaged in the company's global digitalisation process to promote the mobility of the future.