Blockchain technology is said to ensure greater transparency in the new era of mobility.

Blockchain is a kind of public distributed ledger technology and it stores a tamper-proof and permanent record of transactional details;therefore, it is used to maintain transaction records across a number of computers.

The technology assures transparency and helps innovate models of new business like those related to automobile, reward programs and alternative ownership. It even creates loyalty and attractiveness for the brand.

For example, Porsche is experimenting with the applications of blockchain directly in its vehicles, which includes locking and unlocking the vehicle with an app, granting short-term access authorisation, providing efficient payment systems, etc.

Blockchain in advertising

Many companies are using blockchain to build, deliver and manage advertising campaigns. The digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, Isobar India, recently released a blockchain-based ad campaign for CeatTyres to allow transparency throughout the campaign performance and delivery.

The Chief Growth Officer of Isobar India, Shekhar Mhaskar said, 

“Leveraging blockchain technology is imperative in this day and age primarily because of its many advantages.”

For Ceat Tyres, what this means is getting “a transparent and unambiguous view of payment transactions and deliveries for every valid advertisement impression”. This prevented media investment spillage and also avoided ad fraud.

Senior Director of Media of Isobar India, Prachi Karan said that this campaign enables Ceat to transparently track all transactions maintained in an irreversible ledger for each and every valid ad impression. Hence, the key performance indicators of the campaign were fulfilled. 

Mercedes’ initiative

Blockchain is at its budding stage, and the traditional business models are being challenged by the automotive sector by leveraging this technology. Mercedes-Benz has used it for greater efficiency in its supply chain. It has created a prototype program which helps automate payment transactions and also tracks the vehicles. Daimler, the patent company, recently collaborated with a blockchain firm for producing a hardware wallet exclusively for automobiles. This integration intends to give solutions for automatic vehicles in the future and transfer information of accidents to the insurance providers and authorities. Other automobile enterprises wish to implement blockchain in new areas like automatic driving. 

Toyota has reportedly collaborated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to allow easier data management andcreate safer vehicles. With this collaboration, the automotive manufacturers will be able to access and share vehicle data in real time. This allows the self-driving vehicles to become available rather sooner than a decade from now.

Volvo cars’ first electric cars allegedly contained recycled cobalt mapped on a blockchain, to verify and prove the origin of raw materials and goods. The technology is also helping diminish the synthetic identity fraud, which is the act of taking data from multiple identities and then integrating it to build a fake identity. Due to this, fraudsters could have access to credit cards and also take out car loans.

IBM is said to be creating an automated payment system for parking, car sharing, tolls and other payments. The Blockchain Offerings and Engagement Leader of IBM India and South Asia, Jitan Chandanani, said that vehicles are going through innovations from being a mode for transport to a new type of moving data centre with in-built computers and sensors.

Blockchain comes in handy in this industry. It is important to have traceability to understand a vehicle’s post-sale movement. 

India focus

Blockchain is slowly being adopted widely in India. Last year, one of the biggest open ledger innovations had announced acollaboration between vehicle companies and component makers, in order to implement a vendor management system opening the gates for more than two billion transactions a year to the new distributed ledger platform. 

Mahindra said that this technology will soon become the next revolutionary industry, back in 2016 when it wished to improvise supply chain financing with blockchain technology. The company along with IBM, is working to develop a cloud-based, blockchain-enabled common platform for transactions from supplier to the manufacturer. This allows trust and transparency through the supply chain and the business ecosystem.

Chandanani from IBM stated that the cloud-based application is one among the first blockchain-enabled projects of its kind in India along with traditional banking. The initiative intends to deliver value to the consumers, and also support Mahindra Finance with the design protocol and the delivery of new products. The potential of blockchain was tested and noted in a white paper by IBM in collaboration with Oxford Economics, which showed 1, 314 automotive executives across 10 business areas and countries apiece. 62%of them said that blockchain will prove to be a disruptive technology in the auto industry by the year 2021.