Feasibility study and prototyping

of a blockchain-based transport
service pricing and allocation
platform
Final Report

Tsoniotis, N., Kourtesis, D.,

Tsiakmakis, S., Christaras, V.,
Makridis, M., Kounelis, I., Fontaras, G.

2019

EUR 29738 EN
This publication is a Technical report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science
and knowledge service. It aims to provide evidence-based scientific support to the European policymaking
process. The scientific output expressed does not imply a policy position of the European Commission. Neither
the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that
might be made of this publication.

Contact information
Name: Georgios Fontaras
Address: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I - 21027 Ispra (VA) Italy
Email: georgios.fontaras@ec.europa.eu
Tel.: +39 0332 786425

JRC Science Hub

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc

JRC 116496

EUR 29738 EN

PDF ISBN 978-92-76-03007-2 ISSN 1831-9424 doi:10.2760/60436

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2019

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How to cite this report: Tsoniotis, N., Kourtesis, D., Tsiakmakis, S., Christaras, V., Makridis, M., Kounelis, I. and
Fontaras, G., Feasibility study and prototyping of a blockchain-based transport-service pricing and allocation
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978-92-76-03007-2, doi:10.2760/60436, JRC116496.
Contents

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 1
Abstract ............................................................................................................... 2
Executive summary ............................................................................................... 3
1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 8
2. Background .................................................................................................... 10
2.1 Blockchain technologies .............................................................................. 10
2.1.1 Blockchain in a nutshell ...................................................................... 10
2.1.2. Blockchain and transport ..................................................................... 11
2.2. Transport sector - market status and innovative models ................................ 13
2.2.1. Transport of goods ............................................................................. 13
2.2.2. Transport of people ............................................................................ 14
3. Product discovery methodology ......................................................................... 18
3.1 Purpose of product discovery ...................................................................... 18
3.2 Agile process for product discovery (Lean Startup Methodology) ...................... 18
3.3. Product discovery approach ........................................................................ 19
4. Application of the methodology and outcomes ..................................................... 21
4.1. Market framing ......................................................................................... 21
4.1.1. Service Models in the Market ............................................................... 21
4.1.2. Consumer Demand Indicators .............................................................. 23
4.1.3. Barriers to Fulfilling Consumer Demand ................................................. 24
4.1.4. Comparative Evaluation ...................................................................... 25
4.2 Opportunity assessment and competition analysis ......................................... 26
4.2.1 Opportunity assessment ..................................................................... 26
4.2.2 Competition analysis .......................................................................... 28
4.3. Business value ideation .............................................................................. 30
4.4. Assumption definition ................................................................................ 32
4.4.1. Assumption mapping .......................................................................... 32
4.4.2. B2B service - Assumption validation ..................................................... 34
4.4.3. B2C service - Assumption validation ..................................................... 37
4.5. Conceptual architecture ............................................................................. 40
5. Demonstrator .................................................................................................. 43
6. Concluding remarks-Follow up ........................................................................... 48

i
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Lorenzo Maineri, and Biagio Ciuffo
from the JRC for the collaboration, support, and valuable feedback. We would also like to
acknowledge the help of all anonymous contributors to this research who participated in
online surveys, telephone conversations and face to face interviews. This technology
commercialisation research would not have been possible without them.

Authors
Nikolaos Tsoniotis (NT Consultancy)
Dimitrios Kourtesis (Ideas Forward UK Ltd)
Stefanos Tsiakmakis (Bio2CHP SA)
Vasileios Christaras (Nireus IT solutions UK Ltd)
Michail Makridis, Ioannis Kounelis, Georgios Fontaras (European Commission, Joint
Research Centre)

1
Abstract
This report summarises the activity and findings of the JRC Proof of Concept Project
Ridechain. The project investigated the applicability and market potential of blockchain
technology for asset sharing in the road transport sector.
The project comprised two principal activities. The first activity was market research and
analysis to support the development of a new service concept and business model for
blockchain-powered shared mobility. Specifically, the research resulted in the definition
of a novel technology platform that leverages blockchain, cloud services, and in-car
technology to enhance trust, streamline coordination and improve information exchange
in P2P car sharing ecosystems. The second activity was technology prototyping to
demonstrate the technical feasibility of the novel service concept using state of the art
blockchain and IoT frameworks.
These two activities provided answers to two respective research questions. First, what
would be a high-value transport sector market to which a blockchain-powered technology
product could offer a high-value solution? Second, how could this technology product be
realised?
The report starts with an introduction to distributed ledger technologies and applications
of blockchain in transport and presents a brief overview of innovative business models in
goods and passenger transport. The report continues with an outline of the agile product
discovery methodology followed throughout the project, which emphasises experiment-
driven validation in order to minimise risks relating to customer value, technical
feasibility and financial viability.
Next, the report presents the market analysis and research results derived through the
application of this methodology. It discusses different transport service markets and their
respective growth characteristics and examines a selection of the most promising service
models from the perspective of the value that blockchain technology has to offer.
Decentralised car sharing is singled out as a high-value market of high growth potential
in the wider sector of shared mobility. The report continues with competition analysis
relevant to the identified market and proceeds with analysis of alternative business
models for consumer to consumer and business to business car sharing captured with a
Business Model Canvas. The assumptions underlying the business value ideation are
identified and characterised with respect to impact and uncertainty, leading to the design
of a series of market validation experiments. These experiments are presented along
with the data obtained from 11 semi-structured qualitative interviews and answers
collected from 254 online survey participants.
The report comes to a close with an overview of the conceptual architecture of the
developed service concept and a description of the steps taken to demonstrate its
technical feasibility.

2
Executive summary
This report summarises the activity and findings of the JRC Proof of Concept Project
Ridechain. The project investigated the applicability and market potential of Blockchain
(BC) technology for asset sharing in the road transport sector.
Concepts investigated include the utilisation of existing capacity of vehicles for the
transportation of passengers and goods, possible improvements in the sustainability of
the sector, and the dynamics of same day delivery and shared mobility markets. As
required by the JRC’s Proof of Concept project guidelines the activity had a strong
business orientation. Various alternative business models have been formulated and
assessed, and the most interesting ones, in terms of market potential, were thoroughly
studied with regards to the likelihood of actually reaching the European market. In
parallel, the team has worked on a first demonstrator where the interactions of different
users are stored on a blockchain, using predefined smart contracts, keeping track of the
exchange activities between the users and eventually enabling a form of either direct
(monetisation) or indirect (tokens or miles aggregation) valuation of the service. For
doing so the project team relied on existing tools available to the JRC in order to create a
blockchain-based framework where the users can request or offer transport services.
These two parallel research activities provided answers to two respective research
questions. First, what would be a high-value transport sector market to which a
blockchain-powered technology product could offer a high-value solution? Second, how
could this innovative product be realised with state-of-the-art technology?
Research background
Passenger transport and goods transport are two sectors which undergo rapid changes.
The sharing economy is transforming markets around the world and passenger transport
markets are no exception. We are witnessing a shift in consumer mindset, transitioning
from prioritizing vehicle ownership to prioritizing vehicle usage. In a 2016 survey of
16,469 consumers across 16 countries, which was carried out by IBM, 40% of
respondents were very interested in subscription pricing, while another 25% of
respondents were very interested in fractional ownership of vehicles. We can distinguish
between three alternative models of shared mobility, Ride-hailing, Ride-sharing (car-
pooling), Car sharing.
Transport of goods is also an ecosystem in transition. In a 2017 study, Deloitte predicts a
decline in the sales of heavy and medium commercial vehicles through to 2026, but
analysts also expect this shrinking fleet will move 27% more goods in 2027 than it did in
2016. Demand for goods shipping is growing – fuelled primarily by a growing volume of
online sales. New technologies and market dynamics are reshaping every stage of a
product’s journey – especially the last mile. The convenience features that customers
prioritise in relation to last mile delivery are: alternative pickup and delivery options
(e.g., parcel locker-boxes), flexible delivery timing (i.e. scheduled/deferred delivery),
delivery speed (i.e. instant, same-day, next-day delivery), with the latter being probably
the most interesting in terms of expected market growth.
Blockchain technology is still striving to find its place in the transport sector and the
uptake of Blockchain based implementation in the market segments listed previously
remains marginal. Many of the current market activities will, most probably, fail to
materialise, though earning their contributors valuable insights into the application of
blockchain, preparing them for future adoption. Research efforts are still important if
inherent technology shortcomings, such as scaling and interoperability among different
frameworks, are to be solved and subsequently support real world transport scenarios on
a large scale. Nevertheless, the future opportunities that can spawn from broader
implementation of Blockchain technology in the transport sector are widely recognised.

3
Refining the scope of the research
Transport of goods and transport of people are the two sectors of potential interest
foreseen by the original Ridechain project proposal. Both sectors present significant
opportunities for growth and for new innovative business models. The two areas within
those sectors which are most vibrant in terms of innovation and investment activity are
same-day delivery and shared mobility, respectively.
Following an iterative process of market research and analysis the research team
gradually narrowed down the focus of the project to a specific transport sector, a specific
service model within that sector and a specific beachhead market to validate customer
demand and perception of value.

Which transport sector?

Options Goods transport vs passenger transport

Decision criteria Sector growth, ease of access, team advantage

Verdict The shared mobility sector affects all commuters on a daily basis. It
showcases a higher annual growth rate and new innovative models are
currently being tested and offered in the market with significant initial
traction. Traditional industrial stakeholders like Daimler and BMW are
already successfully operating shared mobility services and plans of
consolidation indicate strong drivers for growth. Furthermore, shared
mobility falls directly within the available expertise and market access
potential of the research team.

Which mobility model?

Options Ride hailing vs ride sharing vs car sharing

Decision criteria Value of blockchain, i.e. importance of information sharing, process

coordination and trust to each model.

Verdict Considering the fact that the transfer of assets among disparate
partners is prominent in the car sharing model, enhanced trust and
coordination along with reliable information exchange is paramount to
drive growth in this market segment and facilitate diversified business
models.

Which type of car sharing model?

Options Centralised vs decentralised car sharing

Decision criteria Which market would be more impacted by the use of BC technology?

Verdict BC technology was purposefully designed to offer unique benefits to

decentralised networks comprising disparate entities. As such the
technology is directly suited to peer-to-peer car sharing models, where
trust, coordination and reliable information stand to greatly affect
solution uptake.

4
Which beachhead market?

Options Consumer to Consumer (C2C) or Business to Business (B2B)

decentralised car sharing networks

Decision criteria Which market is most compelling and would potentially uptake a
proposed solution?

Verdict Small to medium sized managed fleet owners, such as car rental
companies, practise subletting as part of their daily processes in order
to handle fleet flexibility over high and low seasons and increase
profitability. Their market is mature but not supported by any purpose-
built ICT solutions to facilitate exchange among professional peers.
Subletting is based predominantly on trusted private networks, which
restricts their reach and eventually their choices and on-demand
responsiveness. The proposed market showcases compelling
characteristics as it is valuated at €58.26b in 2016 with an estimated
CAGR of 13.5%. Closer to home the European car rental SMEs
represent 35% of the entire EU car rental market at an estimated
€4.2b.

Methodology
To be able to frame an innovative business model on the foundation that a blockchain-
powered technology product offers a high-value solution to a high-value transport sector
market, and be able to proceed with implementing a minimum viable product to validate
that business model, ideas have to be placed in front of real users and customers early
and often.
There is a clear need for a structured product discovery methodology that can provide all
the supporting information and indicators of potential success, to drive product
development and initial market entry. One of the most prominent among the modern
product discovery methodologies used by startups around the world is the Lean Startup
methodology first proposed by Eric Ries, which outlines hypothesis-driven
experimentation, iterative progress and validated learning.
The research team followed an agile product discovery process based on this
methodology in order to minimise the different types of risk inherent in every product
innovation effort:
 Customer Value Risk – Will the targeted market recognise high value potential and
choose to buy the proposed product?
 Technical Feasibility Risk – Does the team have the skills and resources to build
it?
 Financial Viability Risk – Will the proposed product and revenue model prove to be
financially viable for a business?
Results obtained
The value proposition for the selected beachhead market, i.e. for business-to-business
car sharing networks / owners of small managed fleets, should revolve around the
following key axes:
 Fleet flexibility: via the proposed solution, car rental professionals could be able to
expand their fleet, on-demand;
 Low CAPEX: car rental companies could bring the size of their owned fleet to an
absolute minimum, decreasing capital expenditure requirements;

5
  Network expansion: each individual professional could have access to an
expanded network of other affiliate trusted professionals and businesses;
 Efficiency: the process of looking for cars’ availability, making arrangements, and
settling contracts and payments, should become streamlined and automated.
Building on these value characteristics, the assumptions tested over the course of the
project were based on three main business model variations:
● B2B offering: targeting only P2P car sharing activities among professionals
● B2B+ offering: P2P car sharing activities among professionals, plus the options
for individuals to offer their cars to this network under management by car rental
professionals
● P2P car sharing marketplace: a P2P car sharing marketplace which
professionals and private car owners would use as a platform for P2P car sharing
Alternative approaches have been adopted to select the various assumptions. Each
individual assumption has been tested with various “experiments”, while results of each
experiment have been compared with each other to identify inconsistencies and/or cross-
validate the respective assumption.
The B2B assumptions validation experiment was elaborated in a questionnaire to support
one-on-one semi-structured qualitative interviews with car rental owners in Greece,
supplemented by a cold-call campaign and an email campaign. The overall learnings from
the interviews conducted showed that an estimated 20% of revenues is lost due lack of
vehicle availability, approximately 30% of revenue is attributed to subrentals (demand or
supply), short term rental are more financially attractive than long term rentals, fleet
elasticity is highly seasonal and for small car rental companies the fleet size can rise
between 40% to 300% percent (depending on size of managed fleet).
● More than 80% of car companies practice car sharing, in one way or
another (>50% goal)
● The financial impact is highly depended on the size of the managed fleet but it
seems that 10-15% on average is an educated estimate (>10% goal)
● Streamlining vehicle supply and demand could lead to an increase of up to 20-
40% in revenues as estimated by interviewees (>30% goal)
● More than 80% of car rental owners would be willing to extend their
network (>30% goal)
● More than 80% of car rental owners would be willing to adopt a software
solution to extend their network (>20% goal)
A total of 260 calls were conducted using publicly available business contact details from
Greek and Italian car rental companies. Following the cold calling process an email
campaign was sent out to the emails gathered. To facilitate the process two marketing
landing pages were developed (Annex II).
Overall a 2.46% of the recipients submitted the partnership form at this idea stage
signifying an early adopters audience in the sector willing to investigate new and
innovative solutions. Considering that this is 10% of the recipients who ended up clicking
the call to action, the proposed solution seemed to attract considerable and genuine
interest by the relevant stakeholders.
To validate the B2C business assumptions a different experiment an on-line survey was
designed. This resulted in collecting answers from 254 participants mainly originating
from Greece and Italy with a wide age distribution. Out of them, 29.1% would be willing
to rent out their car at €36, a price competitive to alternative options such as car rentals.
The data indicate that participants belonging to the 18-25 age group constitute the most
engaged potion of the public with 38.3%, although they own less cars on average and

6
their perception of cost of ownership is lower than other groups. The prevalent themes of
concern were:
● The extent to which insurance coverage would be sufficient for the process of
participating in peer-to-peer car sharing
● The prior knowledge (evaluation) of a renter’s driving behavior
● The extent to which the process of participating in such a service is automated
In parallel to the feedback received and the conclusions extracted from the market
research, an architecture for a platform to support peer to peer car sharing at B2C and
B2B levels was designed. Also, substantial effort was placed in the development of a
functional prototype. The small-scale demonstrator which was developed consists of 3
components.
1. The smart contract that acts as the escrow between the 2 parties
2. The car probe that currently is used to upload the car coordinates to the
blockchain at set intervals.
3. The GUI that is used for all interactions with the contract
The system was presented at the JRC between the 26 th and the 28th of November 2018.
After configuring the system and setting up a private Ethereum blockchain network, we
successfully simulated a ride being hailed (3 of us, 1 acting as the passenger and driver
and 2 acting as the car). The main problems encountered during this demonstration were
connectivity issues, due to the very restrictive wireless network of JRC. The
demonstration proved that a blockchain ride sharing/hailing system is viable and the
inherent delay in the network due to transaction verification does not make it
unworkable.
Following the extended market analysis and assumption validation process the research
team initiated some basic market validation activities. To this end a start-up company
was envisaged as a potential spin-off of the Joint Research Centre, Directorate C -
Energy, Transport and Climate - Sustainable Transport Unit (JRC.C.4), called Innomovo.
The effort included the following four parts:
● A website descriptive of a technology provider in the field of peer-to-peer car
sharing space (www.innomovo.com)
● An explainer video included in the website
● A pitch deck to support the Innomovo positioning
● A financial analysis of a SaaS business model, fitting a technology solution
provider, such as Innomovo
To further enhance the project’s outcomes and in direct correlation with the envisaged
architecture a search is on-going in the field of in-car technologies that support
blockchain application scenarios. The preliminary research results revealed several
technology patents that identify the need for in-car technology able to convey key
information about a vehicle’s state but also to allow a vehicle to take part as a unique
entity in the future mobility landscape, where connected and autonomous cars will be
able to interact with drivers, services and infrastructures.

7
1. Introduction
This report summarises the activity that took place in the framework of the Proof of
Concept Project “Ridechain” (henceforward PoC) funded by the European Commission’s
(EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC). The project investigated the applicability, and market
potential of Blockchain (BC) technology for assets sharing in the road transport sector.
Concepts investigated included the utilisation of existing capacity of vehicles for the
transportation of passengers and goods, possible improvements in the sustainability of
the sector, and the dynamics of same day deliver and shared mobility markets. As
mentioned in the original scoping paper, the project aimed to investigate the plausibility
and the market worthiness of a decentralised, transparent and secure transport-service
allocation platform. As required by the JRC’s Proof of Concept project guidelines the
activity had a strong business orientation. Various alternative business models have been
formulated and assessed, and the most interesting ones, in terms of market potential,
were thoroughly investigated with regards to their likelihood of actually reaching the
European market. In parallel, the team has worked on a first demonstrator where the
interactions of different users are stored on a blockchain, using predefined smart
contracts, keeping track of the exchange activities between the users and eventually
enabling a form of either direct (monetisation) or indirect (tokens or miles aggregation)
valuation of the service. For doing so the project team relied on existing tools available to
the JRC in order to create a blockchain-based framework where the users can request or
offer transport services.
In order to review the business potential behind the originally proposed ideas the project
activity was divided in three parts:
1. A market analysis covering the most promising market segments for applying the
proposed BC based solution, along with their key characteristics, i.e. size, growth,
key players involved and others to be defined in the course of the project. The
research focused on competition analysis and provided a detailed overview of the
key indicators for analysing available competitive solutions.
2. A review the respective application adequacy corresponding to the chosen
business model that lead to the design of a first top level architecture based on
the Ethereum BC framework.
3. After the main business case was identified and selected the project team further
studied the most appropriate business model using a first round of semi
structured qualitative survey results. Following, a first iteration of a Minimum
Viable Product (MVP) proposal based on business model aspects and first round of
semi structured qualitative survey were formulated.
In parallel and due to the limited time available for designing a fully functional
demonstrator that would capture the characteristics of the chosen business model and
fully reflect the final business proposition, it was decided that in the interest of the
project a first pilot implementation would be created according to the original scoping of
the project proposal. Hence the demonstrator focused on ride-sharing and ride-hailing
services between individual drivers/users. This activity resulted in the development of a
raspberry-pi (RPI) based vehicle communications and tracking system that was linked to
JRC’s GreenDriving tool in order to make use of existing cost and fuel consumption
estimation tools. The concept platform proposed allows for data communication between
vehicle and the Ethereum BC network and could be further developed to a full scale car-
pooling or car sharing application.
The project started in mid-February 2018 and was concluded in March 2019. The project
team comprised of JRC staff and external blockchain and business experts. The following
chapters detail the work done.
The report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 summarises the current state of blockchain
technologies, their different flavours and characteristics, whilst attempting to offer and

8
overview of the interest and focus of the transport sector in its use, addressing transport
of people as well as transport of goods.
Chapter 3 outlines the product discovery methodology followed through the project, in an
attempt to minimise risks of customer value, technical feasibility and financial viability.
The process is largely based on the Lean Startup Methodology proposed by Eric Ries in
2008.
Chapter 4 introduces the product discovery methodology aiming at framing the transport
sector and identifying the market that would benefit the most out of the project’s
outcomes. It outlines a comparative evaluation between the transport of people and
transport of goods markets, leading to an opportunity assessment that considers the
project’s directive of using blockchain technology as a key element of the value
proposition. Subsequently, it addresses the competition in the chosen niche, elaborates a
business model, identifies key assumptions and presents the validation experiments
conducted. The chapter culminates with a presentation of the experiments’ results and a
proposed conceptual architecture and market offering.
Chapter 5 showcases the demonstrator conducted as part of validating potential and
eliminating the underlying feasibility risk, indicative of the research team’s capacity for
realising the proposed solution. The demonstrator included software and hardware
elements under a limited lab and field level pilot deployment.
Chapter 6 closes the document with an overall summary of project outcomes, whist
attempts to identify future steps and suggest follow-up activities.

Figure 1 Original project concept

9
2. Background

2.1 Blockchain technologies

2.1.1 Blockchain in a nutshell

Blockchain was first coined in 2008, by a person (or persons) under the alias Satoshi
Nakamoto1 as a basis of a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” now known as Bitcoin 2.
At its core a blockchain is a distributed ledger, a chain of custody based on sequential
blocks linked with cryptography. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record
transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way”3. The
cryptography used has high Byzantine fault tolerance 4 and thus renders the ledger
secure-by-design. It exhibits immutability to change or modification making it a prime
candidate for log-oriented architectures. A blockchain is realised by a distributed peer-to-
peer architecture of mining nodes, contributing via a common consensus algorithm to the
validity of transactions taking place, hence solving the aforementioned byzantine fault
tolerance problem, substantiating the highest security to date.
Since the inception of Satoshi Nakamoto several other frameworks were proposed with
considerable success. The Ethereum project5, a spin out project of the Ethereum
Foundation led by Vitalik Buterin is one of the most prominent open architectural
frameworks partly because it is open and it supports smart contracts.
“A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or
enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Smart contracts allow the
performance of credible transactions without third parties. These transactions are
trackable and irreversible”6
Smart contracts are rule-based software programs that lie in the blockchain network and
can execute transactions between disparate parties without the need of intermediaries.
This inherent characteristic has led to a multitude of applications where decentralised
architectures including transactional processes are considered an asset.
Similar characteristics are exhibited by other blockchain frameworks, like those hosted by
the Hyperledger organisation7, a project of the Linux Foundation, namely Hyperledger
Fabric, proposed by Digital Asset and IBM and Hyperledger Sawtooth proposed by Intel.
These distributed ledger technologies were built with enterprise level performance in
mind thus differentiating from open blockchains with functionalities such as roles and
stratification of access to the ledger itself.
A thorough comparison of open blockchains and distributed ledger technologies was
conducted by Dinh, T. T. A. et al.8 in 2017 indicating the large number of frameworks

1
Nakamoto, S. (2009). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Cryptography Mailing list at
https://metzdowd.com
2
https://bitcoin.org/en/
3
Iansiti, M., & Lakhani, K. R. (2017). The truth about blockchain. Harvard Business Review, 95(1),
118-127
4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance
5
https://www.ethereum.org/
6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract
7
https://www.hyperledger.org/
8
Dinh, T. T. A., Wang, J., Chen, G., Liu, R., Ooi, B. C., & Tan, K. L. (2017). Blockbench: A
framework for analyzing private blockchains. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International
Conference on Management of Data, 1085-1100

10
available, whilst comparing their characteristics under several benchmarks. One of the
main observed issues at the time, still persisting today, is scalability, pertaining to the
framework architecture or the consensus algorithms utilised, with proof of work being the
most resource intensive. Current research is focused on solving scalability limitations by
examining mainly mining and block size, as well as consensus algorithms whilst
maintaining a secure-by-design architecture.

2.1.2. Blockchain and transport

Blockchain technology was introduced with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and was
initially considered as a tool for financial transactions. In subsequent years however,
especially with the addition of smart contract functionality, there was a shift in perception
culminating in 2015 with an announcement of the World Economic Forum that
blockchains will be facilitating at least 10% of the global GDP by 20279. The European
Union is following suit, investing €340m in blockchain technology research between
2018-202010, whilst establishing important initiatives like the European Blockchain
Partnership (EBP), the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) and the EU
Blockchain Observatory and Forum. Blockchain technologies are now found in many
research and market applications, though still at its infancy, ranging from the Energy,
Healthcare, Financial and other sectors.
The transport sector is also examining vigorously the application of blockchain
frameworks within its multifaceted landscape. In fact, a concept paper released by the
University of Sheffield in June 201811 examined several use cases to identify how
blockchains, as part of the distributed ledger technologies, can disrupt the sector. Such
use cases included Mobility as a Service (MaaS), freight and logistics, Unmanned Aircraft
Systems (UAS), data sharing and Collaborative Digital Transport Engineering (CDTE)
identifying several value propositions, key beneficiaries and key challenges that have to
be addressed.
The International Transport Forum 12 in its Corporate Partnership Board Report,
“Blockchain and Beyond: Encoding 21st Century Transport” 13, issued on the 16th of May
2018, addressed issues in the field of Mobility as a Service in a networked and meshed
world and blockchain, identifying fertile ground for identity management, security
enhancement, process automation and others. On the other hand inherent issues of
blockchains were also addressed such as scalability, data syntax and sharing and
interoperability aspects.
Apart from institutional interest and approaches industry initiatives have also been
formed. One such is the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative14. MOBI is a “nonprofit smart
mobility consortium working with forward thinking companies, governments, and NGOs
to make mobility services more efficient, affordable, greener, safer, and less congested
by promoting standards and accelerating the adoption of blockchain, distributed ledger,
and related technologies in the mobility industry”. According to MOBI “Blockchains will
increasingly impact the provision of mobility services since it enables business networks

9
Espinel, V., O’Halloran, D., Brynjolfsson, E., & O’Sullivan, D. (2015). Deep shift, technology
tipping points and societal impact. New York World Economic Forum – Global Agenda Council on
the Future of Software & Society (REF 310815)
10
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/blockchain-technologies
11
Carter, C., & Koh, L. (2018). Blockchain disruption in transport: are you decentralised yet?.
Concept Paper, Transport Systems Catapult – Blockchain Disruption in Transport
12
https://www.itf-oecd.org/
13
https://www.itf-oecd.org/blockchain-and-beyond
14
https://dlt.mobi/

11
to reduce the cost of coordinating their activities”. The initiative showcases an impressive
roster of partners including but not limited to the BMW Group, General Motors, IBM,
Accenture, Ford, the World Economic Forum, Hyperledger Org., IOTA and others
indicative of the sectoral interest in the technology and its future applications. Another
initiative is the Blockchain in Transport Alliance, BiTA15, boasting 500 members in over
25 countries coming mainly from freight, transportation, logistics and affiliated
industries. BiTA is mainly focused on driving adoption via fostering collaborations and
education on blockchain technologies among its members.
The utilisation of the technology takes several forms across the board of transport sector
stakeholders. IBM has joined forces with Maersk to facilitate use cases across global
supply chains16. Walmart, the US retail giant has taken steps to securing intellectual
rights on a blockchain based delivery management systems, according to a filing
published17 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on July 5, 2018 . EY has
launched Tesseract18 a blockchain based mobility platform “built around fractional
ownership of vehicles, multimodal transportation integration and new investment
models” showcasing its strategic vision in the field.
Smaller players and startups come into play too with Quasa 19 proposing a more open
architecture for the supply chain, whilst others like Darenta 20, HireGo21,Helbiz22 and
Sharering.Network23 attempt to solve the car sharing puzzle with token economics across
decentralised car sharing networks. Overall blockchain technology is still striving to find
its place in the transport sector, with the potential benefits summarised in three key
areas:
 Trust – blockchain technology, due to its characteristics, can facilitate trust among
disparate entities, with transactional activity being logged in an irreversible and
immutable manner
 Coordination – smart contracts stand to automate the execution of cumbersome
logistical processes securely, reducing costs for transport sector service providers
 Information exchange – coupling blockchain with other technologies like on-board
sensors, 4G/5G, machine learning, big data etc. can greatly optimise secure
information exchange among people, vehicles and infrastructure.
Even though many of the current market activities will most probably fail to materialise,
vested actors will gain valuable insights into the application of blockchains, preparing
them for future adoption. Furthermore, research efforts are still important to address
technology shortcomings and be able to support real world transport service scenarios on
a large scale. Two of the main currently identified bottlenecks include:
 Scalability - commonly indicating difficulties in scaling the number of transactions
per second, thus enabling transaction heavy applications to materialise efficiently.

15
https://www.bita.studio/
16
https://www.ibm.com/think/fintech/maersk-and-ibm-form-joint-venture-applying-blockchain-to-
improve-global-trade-and-digitize-supply-chains/
17
https://goo.gl/qcdV6j
18
https://www.ey.com/en_gl/automotive-transportation/tesseract-blockchain-integrated-mobility-
platform
19
https://www.quasa.io/platform/overview
20
https://darenta.io/
21
https://www.hirego.io/
22
https://www.helbiz.com/
23
https://sharering.network/en

12
Mining costs – referring to the electricity cost of mining a single block. This is mainly due
to the consensus algorithms used and trade-offs between low mining cost and security.
Proof-of-work algorithms currently in use by popular public blockchain networks, like
Ethereum and Bitcoin, drive costs up as the chain of blocks increases, whilst least
resource intensive ones facing vulnerabilities.

2.2. Transport sector - market status and innovative models

The transport sector is undergoing a process of massive transformation. One that is
amplified by developments in enabling technologies such as vehicle connectivity, machine
intelligence and autonomous control, and shaped by recent developments in consumer
habits evident in the rise of the sharing economy and in the public’s growing appetite for
on-demand services.
In this section we look at some of the major trends setting the scene for what is to come
next in the sectors of transporting goods and transporting people and introduce key
concepts that are central in understanding the rationale and outcomes of this technology
commercialisation study.

2.2.1. Transport of goods

Transport of goods is an ecosystem in transition. Digitisation and new asset models are
driving major changes within the sector. In a 2017 study, Deloitte predicts a decline in
the sales of heavy and medium commercial vehicles through to 2026, but analysts also
expect this shrinking fleet will move 27% more goods in 2027 than it did in 2016 24.
Demand for goods shipping is growing - fueled primarily by a growing volume of online
sales. In tandem, the ability of transport networks to meet shipping demand more
efficiently is also growing.
New technologies and market dynamics are reshaping every stage of a product’s journey
- especially the last mile. Last mile delivery providers are under pressure to move an
increasing volume of goods through their network and need to optimise their processes
for both delivery and pick-up of goods - the latter driven not only by the increase in
online sales volumes (and the associated increase in product returns) but also by
retailers’ growing adoption of the free product returns service model. But the single most
pressing requirement for last-mile delivery providers is speed.
Express shipping has historically been the driver of innovation in logistics. In line with
this tradition, fast shipping in the form of same day delivery has been recognised as “the
next evolutionary step in parcel logistics”25. A 2016 Deloitte study26 found that most
customers considered “fast shipping” to be within two days, while just a year earlier, in
2015, most participants in a survey said it was within three or four days. Consumer
demand for speedier delivery is accelerating.
Looking at the broader picture, the convenience features which customers prioritise in
relation to last mile delivery are:
● alternative pickup and delivery options (e.g., parcel locker-boxes)
● flexible delivery timing (i.e. scheduled/deferred delivery)
● delivery speed (i.e. instant, same-day, next-day delivery)

In recognition of the opportunity that last mile delivery represents, venture capitalists
have gone “all in” with urban delivery startups. Companies introducing innovations in the

24
Deloitte (2017). The future of freight: How new technology and new thinking can transform how
goods are moved
25
McKinsey & Company (2016). How customer demands are reshaping last-mile delivery
26
Deloitte (2016). Deloitte Holiday Survey: Ringing in the retail

13
go-to-market approach and logistics model of last mile delivery have attracted almost
USD 5 billion in venture capital since 2014 in western markets alone and are
transforming the urban delivery landscape27.
Established companies who are stakeholders in this space haven’t been simply watching
these developments. In recent years an increasing number of companies have started
piloting and operating new models of same-day delivery, including incumbent logistics
providers such as DHL, DPD, FedEx, and UPS. Demand is expected to increase
significantly given the compelling value proposition of same-day delivery for consumers.
Despite the fact that incumbents and startups are racing to claim a position in this
exploding market, there are many skeptics who believe same-day delivery will not be a
viable model in the near future28. In reality, it is only technologically advanced retailers
and logistics providers who will be able to offer same-day delivery soon29. This is
because, in the current market environment, four prerequisites need to be fulfilled to
enable same-day delivery and flexible last-mile capability:
● First, products need to be locally available.
● Second, retailers need to have a real-time overview of their inventories.
● Third, the picking and packing processes need to be fast.
● Fourth and finally, last-mile delivery needs to be flexible enough to pick up and
deliver orders ad-hoc or multiple times throughout the day.
Despite the very real operational challenges outlined above, another limiting factor for
near-term market adoption of same-day delivery services is consumer value perception.
Despite the fact that customers’ expectations with regards to delivery speed have
increased, their willingness to pay for fast shipping seems to have fallen, with 64%
reported to be unwilling to pay anything extra for two-day shipping30. At present time,
delivery customers seem to perceive speedy shipping as something they would like to
have provided it doesn’t cost them extra.
In line with this analysis is also the observation that the main category that urban
delivery start-ups play in is prepared food – a market with high gross margins and
urgency which presents a natural fit for on demand delivery. Indeed, the new set of on-
demand urban delivery providers that has entered the B2C delivery market seem to have
found success in the niche of prepared food delivery. Start-ups including Deliveroo or
Foodora in Europe and Postmates or DoorDash in the US, are integrating demand
aggregation via their own mobile platforms and dedicated in-house operations to enable
(almost) instant delivery.

2.2.2. Transport of people

The sharing economy is transforming markets around the world and markets for mobility
of people are no exception. We are witnessing a shift in consumer mindset, transitioning
from prioritizing vehicle ownership to prioritizing vehicle usage. In a 2016 survey of
16,469 consumers across 16 countries, which was carried out by IBM 31, 40% of
respondents were very interested in subscription pricing, while another 25% of
respondents were very interested in fractional ownership of vehicles.

27
McKinsey & Company (2017). The urban delivery bet. USD 5 billion in venture capital at risk
28
Business Insider (2016). Don't expect same-day delivery anytime soon
29
McKinsey & Company (2014). Same-day delivery: The next evolutionary step in parcel logistics
30
Deloitte (2016). Deloitte Holiday Survey: Ringing in the retail
31
IBM (2016). A New Relationship, People and Cars

14
According to Accenture32, shared mobility through car-sharing and ride-hailing models
will be a key driver of growth and profitability in tomorrow’s auto markets, far
outstripping the profitability potential of traditional car manufacturing. Accenture
research supports the view that by 2030, revenues from manufacturing and selling
vehicles (around €2 trillion) will be only marginally higher than they are today, and that
profits from car sales will even shrink slightly (from approximately €126 billion to €122
billion). By contrast, revenues from mobility services are projected to soar to almost €1.2
trillion - with profits reaching as much as €220 billion.
We can distinguish between three alternative models of shared mobility:
● Ride-hailing
● Ride-sharing (car-pooling)
● Car sharing
Ride-hailing services such as those pioneered by Uber, which is now present in almost
700 cities worldwide, enjoy widespread adoption. Uber is the market leader in the US and
Didi Chuxing is #1 in China. These two companies are the dominant players in the ride-
hailing market with close to 90% of the global market by revenues, while Lyft is the
global #3, with operations currently confined to the US. On a market sizing analysis,
Goldman Sachs predicts that ride-hailing is set to overtake and ultimately eclipse taxi
markets, while the ride-hailing market will grow eightfold to $285 billion in 2030 33.
Autonomous cars may significantly disrupt the current ride-hailing ecosystem. The
business opportunity of providing autonomous fleets to ride hailers would open up a new
and even bigger revenue pool than that of ride hailing itself.
The alternative shared mobility model of car sharing is also growing fast, fuelled by
growing consumption demand and competition between OEMs and start-ups. A study by
ING Economics Department34 reports that 30% of Europeans with a driving licence show
interest in car sharing. Boston Consulting Group predicts that, by 2021, 35 million car
sharing users will book 1.5 billion minutes of driving time each month and generate
annual revenues of €4.7 billion. Europe will be the biggest revenue-generating region,
followed by Asia-Pacific and North America. Car sharing will reduce worldwide vehicle
sales by approximately 550,000 units by 2021 and cause a net revenue loss to OEMs of
€7.4 billion35.
The Carsharing Outlook study by the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC
Berkeley reports that the number of countries in which car sharing service are present
has increased from 35 in 2014 to 46 as of October 201636. The same study reports that
by October 2016 car sharing organisations were active in 2,095 cities worldwide, with a
fleet over 157,000 vehicles and 15 million members. Asia was by far the largest car
sharing region with over 40% of all car sharing vehicles operating there. Europe was the
second largest car sharing market with 37% of the global fleet.
We can distinguish between two alternative car sharing models, each of which can be
further analysed in variant submodels:
● Centralised car sharing services by single organisations operating an owned fleet
● Decentralised car sharing services by networks of entities who share vehicles

32
Accenture (2018) Mobility as a Service
33
Goldman Sachs (2017). Rethinking Mobility
34
ING (2018). Car sharing unlocked
35
Boston Consulting Group (2016). What's Ahead for Car Sharing
36
Shaheen, S., Cohen, A., & Jaffee, M. (2018). Innovative Mobility: Carsharing Outlook. UC
Berkeley: Transportation Sustainability Research Center

15
Examples of centralised car sharing services are those provided by large OEMs like BMW
ReachNow, Daimler Car2Go but also traditional car rental models such as those operated
by Avis and Hertz or smaller car rental companies. These can be further broken down to
station-based/round-trip car sharing services like Zipcar which is a wholly owned
subsidiary of Avis, Communauto or Maven, and free-floating services such as the
aforementioned car2go, DriveNow or Gig. Unlike with traditional car rentals, customers of
such services rent cars for short periods of time (by the hour or minute) from collection
points generally within cities. In the majority of car sharing fleets, cars must be returned
to designated collection points (stationary car sharing). Alternatively, in the growing
segment of ‘free-floating’ car sharing services, users can drop off cars anywhere within
specified urban areas.
Daimler was the first company to offer free-floating car sharing worldwide and on a
global scale. Car2Go was founded in 2008 and currently offers service in 26 cities, the
majority in North America and Europe, with one city in China. Car2Go used to run an
additional 11 cities that were all shut down for different reasons between 2014 and 2016.
Car2Go’s total fleet size is just under 14,000 vehicles and almost twice as big as the next
biggest competitor: BMW’s DriveNow/ReachNow program. Three of the European cities
are all-electric and free-floating: Stockholm, Madrid and Stuttgart37.
BMW was the second car manufacturer that invested in car-sharing, in particular in a B2C
free-floating program. In Europe BMW’s program is called DriveNow, in North America
ReachNow. The main difference is the technology stack supporting each of the regions,
the North American operations is powered by Ridecell whereas Europe runs on Sixt’s
platform. Combined DriveNow/ReachNow offer over 7,600 vehicles in 14 cities: the
majority in Europe. ReachNow used to operate in Brooklyn but closed that city in May
2018 because of high operational costs (vehicle damage) 38.
Decentralised car sharing services are peer-to-peer (P2P) models which allow car-owners
to make money by letting out their own cars for short periods of time. Peer-to-peer car
sharing is much more common in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and other parts of
Europe, but it is the fastest growing car sharing business model in the United States.
Examples of this service model include Turo, Getaround, Drivy, Snappcar, Sharoo and
Daimler-owned Croove.
Turo is the biggest of the six P2P providers in North America. Turo announced that they
have 170,000 privately owned vehicles on their platform and four million members. As of
2016 they have expanded outside the United States to Canada and later the same year
to the UK. In January 2018, they announced expansion to Germany. Turo has been
viewed as one of the hottest transportation start-ups with a valuation of $311 million in
2015. According to a report by Movmi 39, part of Turo’s success is an extremely simple
user experience for the owner of the vehicles: there is no hardware installation required
(unlike many other P2P providers such as Getaround, Sharoo etc), a smaller commission
compared to the competition (10-35%) that corresponds with the driver’s choice of the
amount of Turo insurance coverage they’d like and the ability of the owner to set their
own rental prices.
Getaround is a competitor to Turo that launched to the public in May 2011. The company
operates in 66 cities and has partnerships with Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Uber. In
August 2018 Getaround announced an investment of $300 million into the company, led
by Softbank. What is most compelling about the company according to Softbank’s Vision

37
Goldman Sachs (2017). Rethinking Mobility
38
Movmi (2018). Carsharing Market Analysis - Growth and Industry Analysis
39
Movmi (2018). Carsharing Market Analysis - Growth and Industry Analysis

16
Fund is the hardware system it built to allow people to rent out their cars without having
to personally hand over their keys40.
The leading car sharing service in Europe is Drivy. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in
Paris, Drivy is currently present in six countries. As of 2017 it had 1.5 million users in
France, Germany, Spain, Austria and Belgium and was entering the UK market. The
company has raised more than $45 million in total, to support its effort to become the
largest car rental marketplace in Europe.

40
Fast Company (2018). SoftBank revs up peer-to-peer car sharing with an investment in
Getaround

17
3. Product discovery methodology

3.1 Purpose of product discovery

Several factors come into play when attempting to discover the properties of what would
represent a compelling product for a compelling market. Fundamental issues need to be
addressed in order to guide a structured approach to product discovery. These pertain to
knowledge gaps with regards to the market and consumer intent to uptake a proposed
solution.
A core premise is that there is no crystallised knowledge in advance as to which markets
are ripe for adopting new solutions. Even if the market is identified, the details of the
problems cannot be known without a deep dive into the intricacies that dictate the need
for a solution. As such, the range of solutions that can be proposed is wide enough to
indicate that not all of them are fitting or destined to lead to an adequate
problem/solution fit. Thus, prior to investing in product development, there is need for
concrete evidence that building a specific product will not be a wasted effort.
To fully frame a solution and proceed with implementing a minimum viable product, ideas
must be placed in front of real users and customers early and often. When this idea
validation process reaches a saturation point then enough data are there to suggest a
promising problem/solution fit and justify the required effort for product development.
The overarching goal of product discovery is minimising risk and is based on the following
three pillars:
● Value Risk – Will the targeted audience choose to buy the proposed solution?
● Feasibility Risk – Does the team have the skills and resources to build it?
● Business Viability Risk – Will the proposed solution and revenue model prove to
be financially viable for our business?
This leads to a clear need of a structured product discovery methodology that can
provide all the necessary information and indicators of potential success, to drive product
development and initial market entry.

3.2 Agile process for product discovery

(Lean Startup Methodology)
One of the most prominent product discovery methodologies, which is commonly used by
startups around the world is based on an agile process as put forth by the Lean Startup
methodology first proposed in 2008 by Eric Ries, which outlines hypothesis-driven
experimentation, iterative approaches and validated learning.
In short, the Lean Startup methodology can be divided into two distinct phases
depending on the stage of development. These are the “Search” phase, where enough
evidence must be gathered to justify future actions, and the “Execution” phase, which
builds upon evidence to build and potentially scale an appropriate solution, as shown in
the following figure.
The “Search” phase is focused on discovering an appropriate problem/solution fit and
was the focus of the project. There are two key activities foreseen which include
“Customer Discovery” and “Customer Validation”. The process followed in both cases and
under the prism of the Lean Startup methodology are ideation on the path to be followed,
concepting on the experiments to take place and subsequently by screening and learning
from the results to adjust the approach.

18
 Figure 2. Lean start-up methodology

Customer Discovery aims to provide answers to fundamental assumptions that need to

be addressed in order to characterise in a comprehensive manner the most promising
path towards identifying compelling value to a compelling market. Such questions
include:
● Need identification - What is the customer’s level of pain?
● Need alleviation - What are the possible solutions?
● Beachhead Market & Persona identification - Who is the first customer?
● Adoption criteria - How does the customer react to the proposed solution?
● Competition (solutions or habits) - How do customers solve the problem
today? Do they do anything? What is it?
Once basic assumptions have been tested and there is sufficient data to justify a solution
proposal, then customer validation follows.
Customer Validation builds upon the learnings of the customer discovery process to
propose a minimum viable product (MVP) which commonly entails things like a landing
page for potential customers to express their intent to buy the solution, a mockup that
shows how the solutions solves their main problem or even a limited featured product for
them to pilot. This initial draft offering aims to solicit their reactions or responses in such
questions like the following:
● What are their reactions to the MVP?
● Would customers use the product? Would they be interested in a demo / pilot?
● Are they willing to buy the product? If yes, at what price?
● Which of the product characteristics are they most and least interested in?
● Are there other factors that would influence their decision to buy?

3.3. Product discovery approach

According to the agile product discovery process outlined by the Lean Startup
methodology, the research team followed a step by step approach to collect the required
evidence that can justify a problem/solution fit, addressing the transport and mobility
sector that includes blockchain technology, as outlined by the project objectives. An
outline is graphically represented in the following figure.

19
 Figure 3. Product discovery approach

The steps included: framing the market, assessing the opportunity, understanding
business value and testing it to the targeted market niche. Each step had to identify
“why” and “how” in order to justify satisfactory value and subsequently lead to the next
step of the process.
Market framing aimed at building a deeper understanding of the market. This was
achieved via thorough market evaluation based on desk research including analysis of
market reports, publications and patents, and field research based on a first round of
semi structured qualitative interviews with identified market stakeholders.
Opportunity assessment followed pace in the scope of narrowing down and focusing
on promising market segments. This was achieved after thorough analysis of the data
collected from previous online and offline research activities.
Business value ideation was the succeeding step in the process, which aimed at
producing distinct value propositions for the identified market niche. The Business Model
Canvas lean startup template was used in this step to characterise and record a top level
business model corresponding to a proposed solution offering and how it would fit within
the frame of business processes.
Value testing activities was the final step in the process aiming at minimizing the
associated risks with future product implementation. In order to assure most prominent
risk factors are thoroughly examined, a set of assumptions was drafted and mapped
according to impact on business viability and level of uncertainty as to the factors that
come into play or knowledge required. These assumptions fed a set of experiments
including online questionnaires and a second round of semi structured qualitative
interviews, appropriate marketing landing pages to identify customer interest and a final
project landing page, video presentation and pitch deck.

20
4. Application of the methodology and outcomes
The following sections summarise the activities undertaken and the outcomes derived
from applying the methodology outlined in section 3. Our presentation of the results aims
to justify the selection of the niche market being proposed by the research team, its
characteristics and the interest of market stakeholders involved in the product discovery
process.

4.1. Market framing

Framing the market to be addressed involved market research with the aim of the
current market status, models, trends and underlying problems and drivers. It also
included a first round of a limited number of open qualitative interviews with expert
professionals in the transport sector to confirm or enrich the preliminary findings. The
outcomes where then weighted based on the available expertise and potential unfair
advantages.
The transport sector was initially split between “transport of goods” and “transport of
people” as indicated in section 2.2 and as foreseen by the original project scoping
document/proposal. Based on publicly available market research reports, both of these
sectors present several opportunities for growth and new innovative business models,
including leveraging new technologies to tackle current issues. Market framing however
aimed at highlighting the characteristics of each market and not addressing the
opportunities that lie within.

4.1.1. Service Models in the Market

Table 1 presents the market service model analysis in the frame of “transport of people”
focused on car sharing models, whilst the “transport of goods” focused on last mile
delivery.
Shared mobility service models address all forms of transport options for people
including:
 Ride-hailing - with prominent companies employing innovative approaches, like
Uber with a €62b capitalisation value, Lyft valued at €13.2b, and even car
manufacturers like Daimler AG which has acquired several ride-hailing companies
in Europe and abroad over the past few years.
 Ride sharing - including companies like the French owned BlaBlaCar, generating
over €80m in revenues annually.
 Car sharing - which can be divided into centralised and decentralised models.
Centralised car sharing models are represented by offerings from companies
likeAvis, Hertz and local SMEs and side offerings like ZipCar, a subsidiary of Avis
Budget Group. Within this space several efforts are working towards more
innovative models such as free-floating car sharing. ReachNow and Car2Go by the
Daimler AG and BMW Group collaboration are paving the way in this respect. The
decentralised peer-to-peer landscape is currently represented only by start-ups,
established or upcoming, like Getaround, Turo, Drivy, Snappcar and others, whilst
professionals who commonly practice subletting between peers do not have
access to dedicated ICT tools.
Last mile delivery service models address delivery options including:
 Deferred Delivery & Next Day Delivery – mature services typically represented by
known market actors like UPS (currently under a merger with TNT), FedEx as well
as a plurality of national or regional carriers.
 Same Day Delivery (SDD) –includes more innovative delivery models and seems
to be a level-playing field for established carriers and upcoming start-ups alike.
Examples include Amazon’s Prime service, offering SDD within range of its

21
 fulfilment centres41, Dada serves Walmart’s SDD in China42 in collaboration with
WeChat, while Instacart is partnering with local groceries in a number of US
cities43.
However, a closer look to the data shows that the European market holds a significant
share of mobility of people services outperforming mobility of goods making it an
attractive target market. Furthermore, the growth rates of markets related to transport
of people are outpacing the corresponding growth rates of transport of goods. In line with
the above, Table 2 and Table 3 further outline the characteristics within these markets.

Table 1. Analysis of service models in the market – passenger vs goods transport

Last Mile Delivery

Shared mobility (transport of people)44
(transport of goods)45

Market size 2016: $54b (EU: $6b) Market size: $70b (EU: $3b in 2020)

Annual Growth Rate: est. 28% Annual Growth Rate: est. 15%

Service models:

Ride-hailing Deferred delivery

Ride sharing/Car pooling Next day delivery

Car sharing
● Centralised (Managed Fleets)
○ Station-based
Same day delivery
○ Free-floating
● Decentralised (peer-to-peer)
○ Individuals
○ Professionals

41
https://www.amazon.com/Prime-FREE-Same-Day-Delivery/b?ie=UTF8&node=8729023011
42 https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/20/walmart-in-china-is-now-testing-same-day-grocery-
delivery-from-dada-via-wechat
43 https://www.instacart.com/
44
“ McKinsey & Company (2016). How shared mobility will change the automotive industry”,
McKinsey & Company, 2016
45
“ McKinsey & Company (2014). Same-day delivery: The next evolutionary step in parcel
logistics”, McKinsey & Company, 2014

22
Table 2. Shared mobility European market characteristics

Degree of
Shared Mobility46 Distance Stakeholders Cost
flexibility

Station-based car sharing

Mid Low Established High
(mature model)

Established,
Free floating car sharing
Mid Mid internal Mid-High
(market ready model)
innovation

P2P car sharing

Short High Startups Mid-Low
(initial market insertion)

Table 3. Last Mile Delivery European market characteristics

Type of
Last Mile Delivery47 Time Stakeholders Cost
delivery

Deferred delivery
3 - 5 days mail-order Established Tiered
(mature model)

Next day delivery

1 day e-commerce Established Tiered
(mature model)

Established,
Same day delivery
1-12 hours SDD start-ups, Optimisable
(initial market insertion)
retailers

4.1.2. Consumer Demand Indicators

Exploring both sectors and their respective market reports, underlined trends and
consumer preferences and characteristics have been identified. In the case of last mile
delivery where very mature models exist, market research studies have been entirely
focused on same day delivery (SDD) models. The reports tried to capture current and
future indicators with the most prominent included in Table 4.
As the reported data suggest, shared mobility holds higher interest and intent by
consumers probably due to the fact that it affects basic transportation needs and on-
demand mobility habits. Same day delivery on the other hand would be a desirable
offering but is not considered as covering a crucial need or offering a highly valued
service.

46
Monitor Deloitte (2017). Car sharing in Europe: Business Models, National Variations and
Upcoming Disruptions
47
McKinsey & Company (2014). Same-day delivery The next evolutionary step in parcel logistics

23
Table 4. Market trends comparison Shared Mobility vs Same Day Delivery

Last Mile Delivery

Shared Mobility48
(focus: Same Day Delivery offerings49)

Increase of usage intent in e-hailing Consumers are willing to pay more for
services in the future: 63% same-day delivery: 61%

Increase of usage intent in car-sharing

Shoppers want same-day shipping: 80%
services in the future: 67%

Consumers (UK,FR,DE,SE) that think Same

Users would try autonomous driving when Day Delivery serves a real need: 27%
using car sharing: 68% Consumers (UK,FR,DE,SE) that think they
would definitely use an SDD service: 14%

4.1.3. Barriers to Fulfilling Consumer Demand

Having already looked at the status of the two most vibrant markets in the transport
sector (shared mobility and last mile delivery) and having identified the most prominent
consumer preferences driving developments within each market, the next step is to look
closer at the challenges faced by businesses active in each market.
To identify potential fields of opportunities that the project could address, further analysis
was conducted with regards to the problems that arise in each market. These mainly
revolved around procedural and pricing issues that stand to affect business processes as
presented in Table 5.
In terms of shared mobility there are evident problems with capital expenditure affecting
fleet flexibility, pricing models currently in place and lack of ICT tools for professionals.
Conversely in same day delivery, where operational costs dictate viability, there seems to
be lack of processes on behalf of retailers coupled with lack of capacity handling by
courier services, hence forcing them to focus on niches and local markets. In addition
within the frame of typical hub-and-spoke infrastructures which are optimised for next
day delivery, same day delivery is not foreseen, evidently affecting pricing models and
rendering such options of higher cost and difficult to uptake.

48
McKinsey & Company (2017). How shared mobility will change the automotive industry
49
McKinsey & Company (2014). Same-day delivery The next evolutionary step in parcel logistics

24
Table 5. Potential problems in shared mobility and last mile delivery market

Shared Mobility Last Mile Delivery

Fragmentation of the landscape (ownership Fragmentation of the landscape, too many

of assets) stakeholders

Lack of availability of these solutions in Processing, fulfilling, and delivering an

rural settings order within a few hours requires new
types of networks

Sharing tends not to favour frequent Current processes used by parcel logistics
commuting due to its cost providers are not suited to same-day
delivery at scale

Car sharing is rarely economically viable in More flexible city couriers are too small to
cities with fewer than half a million deal with large retailer volumes
inhabitants

Some models are asset intensive (managed Some models are asset intensive (managed
fleets) fleets)

Lack of tailored pricing models Lack of tailored pricing models

Driver insurance models can become Hub-and-spoke are optimised for next day
cumbersome

No ICT tools for sharing of assets among Narrow focus from current offerings,
professionals typically oriented in local market

4.1.4. Comparative Evaluation

Both markets exhibit significant drivers for adoption. The case for shared mobility is
strongly driven by consumer preferences worldwide and subject to face significant
changes in the future with the advent of autonomous driving technologies. Sustainability
issues are represented by a changing regulatory field addressing vehicle ownership and
emissions’ taxation, lowered limits of fleet ownership for car-sharing operators, whilst
lower sales drive traditional car industry players into considering diversified “as-a-
Service” models complementing their offerings and revenue streams. To this end, open
access to cutting edge technology frameworks like artificial intelligence and distributed
ledgers (e.g. blockchains) level the playing field supporting more and more actors to
create innovative offerings. On the other hand same day delivery seems to be gaining its
place in the last mile delivery landscape driven by customer preferences and gaining
importance due to the rising share of online retail. Lower costs and fast paced lifestyle in
urban settings drive consumers to further uptake of SDD options, providing fertile ground
for future growth.

25
The process of defining a compelling product for a compelling market demands focus. In
a preliminary effort to select between the two transport markets, three basic criteria
were considered, namely market growth indicators, entry barriers and the available
expertise.
Market growth is an important criterion because it significantly influences the size of the
opportunity that a new product could potentially capture. The presence of barriers to
entry in a market is also critical because they greatly affect how much capital and other
resources will need to be deployed to the product development effort. Lastly, the
expertise of the team that supports the development of a new product is also critical
because if can provide an “unfair advantage” in a future product or solution proposition.
In summary, the criteria and indicators are as presented in Table 6.

Table 6. Market growth, entry barriers and internal expertise

Criteria Shared mobility Last mile delivery

● CAGR ~28% ● CAGR ~15%

Market growth

● Shared mobility is a mature ● Several last mile delivery

Entry Barriers
model services are already
● Several shared mobility established
services are already ● Multi-stakeholder
established environment with increased
● New solutions are launching, complexity
gaining traction and congesting ● Hub-and-spoke
the competitive landscape infrastructure is optimised
for next day delivery

● JRC team has a stronger

Internal Expertise
background in passenger
transport
● JRC has access to mobility
sector stakeholders

In conclusion, there seem to be more clear indicators in favour of further examining the
shared mobility sector. Considering the team’s available expertise, the higher rates of
annual growth and market adoption of shared mobility solutions and the research
findings on consumer intents and preferences, we are encouraged to take a deeper dive
into assessing the opportunities that lie ahead in shared mobility.

4.2 Opportunity assessment and competition analysis

4.2.1 Opportunity assessment

Market framing has provided clear indicators on the potential of the shared mobility
market. It showcases a high Annual Growth Rate and new innovative models are
currently being field tested and offered with significant initial traction. Traditional
industrial stakeholders like Daimler and BMW are already successfully operating shared
mobility services and plans of consolidation indicate strong drivers for growth.
Furthermore, shared mobility falls directly within the research team’s available expertise
and market access potential.
Following that, a viable niche, a well-defined market often called a beachhead, had to be
identified, which would benefit from the enablers blockchain technology has to offer in

26
the shared mobility landscape. The goal was to discover the properties of what would
represent a compelling product for a compelling market. To do so, three questions had to
be answered, pertaining to (i) which mobility service model, (ii) which type of model
characteristics and (iii) which beachhead market would benefit the most out of enhanced
trust, process coordination and information sharing.
Each question had to indicate all available options, take under consideration specific
decision criteria and result in a verdict based on market insights so far and blockchain
technology strengths.
Which mobility service model?
Options: Ride hailing vs ride sharing vs car sharing
Decision criteria: Importance of information sharing, process coordination and trust to
each model.
Verdict: Considering the fact that the transfer of assets among disparate partners is
prominent in the car sharing model, enhanced trust and coordination along with reliable
information exchange is paramount to drive growth in this market segment and facilitate
diversified business models.
Which type of car sharing model?
Options: Centralised vs decentralised car sharing
Decision criteria: Which market would be more impacted by the use of BC technology?
Verdict: BC technology was purposefully designed to offer unique benefits to
decentralised networks comprising disparate entities. As such the technology is directly
suited to peer-to-peer car sharing models, where trust, coordination and reliable
information stand to greatly affect solution uptake.
Which beachhead market?
Options: Consumer to Consumer (C2C) or Business to Business (B2B) decentralised car
sharing networks
Decision criteria: Which market is most compelling and would potentially uptake a
proposed solution?
Verdict: Small to medium sized managed fleet owners, such as car rental companies,
practice subletting as part of their daily processes in order to handle fleet flexibility over
high and low seasons and increase profitability. Their market is mature but not supported
by any purpose-built ICT solutions to facilitate exchange among professional peers.
Subletting is based predominantly on trusted private networks, which restricts their reach
and eventually their choices and on-demand responsiveness. The processes involved
include tedious record keeping and insurance contracts on demand which leads to an
increase of operational expenditure. Widening their network on the basis of trust,
streamlining coordination and having access to information when they need it could
translate to a positive welcome of a BC based solution offering. The proposed market
showcases compelling characteristics, valuated at €58.26b in 2016 with an estimated
CAGR of 13.5%. Closer to home the European car rental SMEs represent 35% of the
entire EU car rental market at an estimated €4.2b. All of the above substantiate a
compelling market that is large enough, underserved and an overall good fit with regards
to BC technology. Conversely, peer-to-peer car sharing among individuals could prove an
interesting niche, although several solutions are currently competing in the market either
based on BC or not, hinder ease of initial market insertion. The following table outlines
the logic behind the focus on professional peer-to-peer car sharing while 4.2.2 depicts
the opportunity assessment tree.

27
Table 7. Professional peer-to-peer car sharing as principal focus area

Decentralised car sharing Readiness (European Current market size

model market) (European market)

Consumer to Consumer (C2C) P2P car sharing is at an Small (370,000 vehicles

p2p car sharing Transactions early stage of adoption in 2018, just over 0.1%
between private individuals among consumers of all passenger cars)

Business to Business (B2B)

P2P car sharing is an Large (annual spend
p2p car sharing
established practice among estimated at €630m, or
Transactions between owners
owners of small managed 15% of SME car rental
of small managed fleets (car
fleets market size)
rentals & dealers)

Figure 4. Opportunity assessment tree

4.2.2 Competition analysis

Analysing the competition in the decentralised car sharing space one needs to account
for solutions in the general peer-to-peer space addressing individuals, solutions
addressing the car rental space and particularly subletting, as well as habitual practices
that could stand to hinder adoption of new solutions. Figure 5 presents a snapshot of the
competition analysis matrix created in the course of this research.

28
 Figure 5. Snapshot of the competition analysis matrix

Companies like Drivy from the United Kingdom, Ouicar from France and SnappCar from
Germany, along with Turo and Getaround from the United States and others are
currently competing in the field of peer-to-peer car sharing space focusing on individual
car owners. These companies are currently based on common technology stacks to
facilitate their business models. Conversely newcomers in this field like HireGo, Darenta
and Helbiz, are leveraging BC technology to augment their offering based on tokenomics
and enhanced coordination. All of the above could diversify to foster the needs of
professionals, albeit diverting considerably from their business models, leading to
increased capital expenditure.
On the other hand one can identify several software vendors focusing on car rental
companies like HQ Rental Software50 by Caag Software or Carhire Manager Web 51 by
Datalogic Consultants and others which are however focused on car rental company and
fleet management rather than facilitating car exchanges amongst professionals. They
could however provide car sharing features with minor adjustments, but this is highly
unlikely as it would entail functionality only among the professionals currently licensing
the system which would defeat the purpose of building closely tied ecosystems of peers
in terms of location and market size.
A distinct offering is the one by carchain.io which is a BC based solution likely to facilitate
car leasing contracts. Carchain.io however is still in its infancy as it is the result of a
project that sprung from the 2018 hackathon.io competition in Munich, Germany. There
is currently no clear positioning neither enough data to constitute concrete competition in
the field.
Last but not least the most prominent competitor as with all new efforts are the daily
practices of professionals and the inherent difficulty to adapt to new solutions and break
established habits and manual processes. Break such barriers depends on the “level of
pain” and cost and whether implementing a proposed solution would make financial
sense, or save productive time better utilised otherwise in the short term.
Table 8 summarises the most relevant competitive landscape.

50
https://hqrentalsoftware.com/
51
https://www.carhiremanagerweb.com/

29
Table 8. Competitive landscape

Decentralised car sharing model Competition (European market)

Well-funded companies like Drivy,

Consumer to Consumer (C2C) p2p car
Snappcar, Ouicar (similar to Turo and
sharing
Getaround in the US)
Transactions between private individuals
ICO start-ups HireGo, Darenta, Helbiz

Business to Business (B2B) p2p car sharing

Transactions between owners of small Manual (not using special purpose tools).
managed fleets (car rentals and car Early-stage start-ups like Carchain.io
dealers)

4.3. Business value ideation

Based on the outcomes and learnings of the opportunity assessment the value
proposition for the selected beachhead market, i.e. business-to-business car sharing /
owners of small managed fleets, should revolve around the following key axis:
(a.) Fleet flexibility: via the proposed solution, car rental professionals could be able to
expand their fleet, on-demand;
(b.) Low CAPEX: car rental companies could bring the size of their owned fleet to an
absolute minimum, decreasing capital expenditure requirements;
(c.) Network expansion: each individual professional could have access to an expanded
network of other affiliate trusted professionals and businesses;
(d.) Efficiency: the process of looking for cars’ availability, making arrangements, and
settling contracts and payments, should become streamlined and automated.
Figure 6 presents the drafted business model. The model was built in a way that could
not only address the needs of the selected beachhead market, but could also be used to
expand the value proposition to the consumer-to-consumer car sharing model as well,
via three distinct layers:
(a.) B2B sub-model: this layer of the business model regards only professionals active in
the car sales and/or car rentals businesses;
(b.) Expanded B2B sub-model: this layer regards an extended B2B model, where private
individuals can offer their own cars to professionals for “exploitation”, i.e. sub-renting;
(c.) C2C sub-model: this layer regards private individuals who can exchange private
vehicles between each other.

30
 Figure 6 Business Model Canvas

The combination of the three different layers describes the complete proposed business
model where peers can rent vehicles from other peers, either as private individuals or
professionals in the car rentals sector.
A different colour code is applied to the business model canvas to separate information
relevant to each individual layer / sub-model: yellow is for the C2C layer, red is for the
B2B only layer, and grey is for both the B2B and C2C, i.e. the extended B2B layer.

31
4.4. Assumption definition
As outlined in section 3 the assumptions validation process demonstrates a swift from the
conventional waterfall approach of product discovery used by traditional models, towards
a lean, resource optimised approach, where experiments and real evidence from the
potential users and the targeted market are used to de-risk the proposed business model
and decision-making process regarding the business and/or product development
strategy.
“Assumptions validation is the process of gathering evidence and learnings around
business ideas through experimentation and user testing, in order to make faster,
informed, de-risked decisions.” (source: boardofinnovation.org)
Mapping assumptions and subsequently conducting small scale experiments to source
valuable data aims at reducing risk. It comprises elements that, when analysed, stand to
minimise uncertainty and provide strong indicators of potential success factors in all of
the following three categories of risk:
● Desirability/value risk: the extend in which the target audience desires the
proposed solution.
● Viability risk: the extend in which the proposed business model can be sustained
by the sise of the targeted market
● Feasibility risk: the extend in which the project team can develop the proposed
solution

4.4.1. Assumption mapping

The assumptions tested over the course of the project were drawn from its business
model and were based on three main variations of the model:
● B2B offering: targeting only P2P car sharing activities among professionals
● B2B+ offering: P2P car sharing activities among professionals, plus the options
for individuals to offer their cars to this network under management by car rental
professionals
● P2P car sharing marketplace: a P2P car sharing marketplace which
professionals and private car owners would use as a platform for P2P car sharing
As such the main assumptions recorded were those of considerable impact to the success
of the proposed business model and of high uncertainty, based on prior knowledge of the
team. The following Table includes a set of prioritised assumptions examined.
Alternative approaches have been adopted to select the various assumptions. Each
individual assumption has been tested with various “experiments”, while results of each
experiment have been compared with each other to identify inconsistencies and/or cross-
validate the respective assumption.
● Questionnaire to private car owners
● Qualitative interviews with car rental companies
● Cold calling to car rental companies to test further interest in a subletting solution
● Invitation to car rental companies to express interest for collaboration, via email
and landing page MVP

32
Table 9 Prioritised assumptions examined

Business
BMC box Assumption Impact Uncertainty Score
model

A sufficient percentage of car rental

companies would be willing to use a
software solution to manage the process of
Customers B2B 10 5 50
sourcing cars from a wider network of other
car rental companies, under specific
conditions and pricing

A sufficient percentage of car rental

companies would be willing to source a car
Customers B2B+ 8 10 80
from a private individual, under specific
conditions and pricing

A sufficient percentage of car rental

companies would be willing to use an
Customers Marketplace online marketplace as a channel to rent out 8 5 40
their owned cars, under specific conditions
and pricing

A sufficient percentage of car rental

companies would be willing to use an
online marketplace as a channel to rent out
Customers Marketplace 4 7 28
cars they have sourced from private car
owners, under specific conditions and
pricing

A sufficient percentage of private car

owners would rent out their car to a private
Customers Marketplace 8 9.5 76
car seeker, under specific conditions and
pricing

A sufficient percentage of private car

B2B+ / owners would rent out their car under
Customers 9 10 90
Marketplace management by a car rental company,
under specific conditions and pricing

A sufficient percentage of private car

seekers would be willing to rent a car from
Customers Marketplace 10 6 60
a private individual, under specific
conditions and pricing

Car insurance companies offer a suitable

Key B2B+ /
insurance model already, or are willing to 10 8.5 85
partners Marketplace
create one

There is a sufficient profit margin between

Cost B2B+ / costs (stakeholders' price points) to sustain
10 8 80
structure Marketplace a scalable business. For instance, insurance
product costs do not limit financial viability

Key B2B+ / There is freedom to operate from a

10 10 100
resources Marketplace regulatory point of view

33
4.4.2. B2B service - Assumption validation

Semi-structured Qualitative Interviews

Peer-to-peer car sharing is common practices among SMEs in the car rental space, but
desk research indicated no software solution or service addresses it. Thus, the
assumption articulated aimed at identifying what this gap entails and whether a
solution/offering would make business sense.
“A sufficient percentage of car rental companies would be willing to use a
software solution to manage the process of sourcing cars from a wider network of
other car rental companies, under specific conditions and pricing”
To validate this assumption the following experiment was designed:

Table 10. Experiment outline

Experiment Steps

Step 1: Hypothesis We believe that a sufficient percentage of car rental companies

would be willing to use a software solution to manage the
process of sourcing cars from a wider network of other car rental
companies, under specific conditions and pricing.

Step 2: Test To verify this hypothesis we will conduct a semi-structured

qualitative survey through 10 interviews with small and medium-
sized car rental company owners...

Step 3: Metric ..and measure how many of the interviewees confirm the
following:
● Car sharing is a common practice among car rental
companies
● which has a real financial impact in their business
● but also significant room for improvement
● and car rental companies believe that widening their
network would increase the revenue opportunity
● and would be willing to try a special-purpose software
solution

Step 4: Criteria We will consider the hypothesis right if:

● at least 50% of companies practice car sharing
● car sharing represents at least 10% of their revenue
(demand and supply combined)
● at least 30% of car demand or car supply requests is
currently not satisfied
● at least 30% would be willing to practice car sharing
through a wider network of car rental companies
● at least 20% or more would be willing to try a software
solution to help them in this process

34
The experiment was elaborated in a questionnaire (Annex II) to support one-on-one
semi-structured qualitative interviews with car rental owners in Greece. A total of 11
interviews were conducted of which 6 face-to-face interviews took place in the areas of
Thessaloniki, Katerini and Chalkidiki and 5 phone interviews in the areas of Thessaloniki,
Rethymno, Chios, Skiathos and Corfu. The car rental owners interviewed managed fleets
ranging from 10 to 300 vehicles.
The questions touched business processes issues as well as practices. Some of the key
areas examined were the company profile and how it correlates with the project’s market
framing, what does car sharing as a company practice entail, the financial impact of car
sharing practices, problems and room for improvement identified by stakeholders,
whether widening the peer network as a solution makes business sense and willingness
to try a software solution to streamline current practices. Some of the recurring themes
are summarised in Table 11.

Table 11. Semi-structured inteview recurring themes

Recurring Themes

Fleet elasticity is common practice (rises in high season, drops in off season)

Network trust is essential, commonly limited in small groups of professionals who know
each other

Pricing & cash flows, timing of payment is an issue

Demand vs. Response depends on fleet sise owned & affects vehicle availability

ICT tools are not available to support car sharing among professionals

The overall learnings from the interviews conducted showed that an estimated 20% of
revenues is lost due lack of vehicle availability, approximately 30% of revenue is
attributed to subrentals (demand or supply), short term rental are more financially
attractive than long term rentals, fleet elasticity is highly seasonal and for small car
rental companies the fleet sise can rise between 40% to 300% percent (depending on
sise of managed fleet). This situation presents similar characteristics to the hotel
business in terms of revenues lost once capacity is reached, a sub-rental could cost from
as low as €5-€10 per day per car. In terms of market sise and revenue potential it was
noted that travel agencies charge 10-15% commission, with the wider area of
Thessaloniki hosting roughly 400 car rental companies. In a positive outlook it was
suggested that peer effect could quickly raise the number of professionals up taking the
proposed peer-to-peer car sharing solution. Overall the examined assumption seemed to
be validated, considering that the following results were achieved):
● More than 80% of car companies apply car sharing, one way or the other
(>50% goal)
● The financial impact is highly depended on the sise of the managed fleet but it
seems that 10-15% on average is an educated estimate (>10% goal)
● Streamlining vehicle supply and demand could lead to an increase of up to 20-
40% in revenues as estimated by interviewees (>30% goal)

35
 ● More than 80% of car rental owners would be willing to extend their
network (>30% goal)
● More than 80% of car rental owners would be willing to adopt a software
solution to extend their network (>20% goal)
In order to further examine and solidify car rental owners’ interest in the proposed
solution more steps were taken that included cold-calling campaigns, email campaigns
and the creation of two marketing landing pages.
Cold-calling campaign
Cold calling is a common business practice which attempts to solicit interest in a product
or service from the targeted audience, without the potential customer having prior
knowledge of or contact with the person conducting the call. The process relied on
publicly available business contact details from Greek and Italian car rental companies
and the call included the following pitch.
“We are a team of engineers, working on a solution that will facilitate the process
of cars’ sub-rentals between professionals. Would you give us your email to send
you more information?”
A total of 260 calls were conducted with the details presented in Table 12.

Table 12. Cold calling campaign summary

Total Cold Calls Greece Italy

Calls: 260 Calls: 84 Calls: 176

Replied: 122 Replied: 61 Replied: 61

Emails collected: 112 Emails collected: 54 Emails collected: 58

Conversion rate: (91.8%) Conversion rate: (88.5%) Conversion rate: (95.1%)

Although cold calling conversion statistics are typically in the 1-3% range52 the response
and voluntary email sharing of the respondents was considerable. Except for a small
number of cases (<10%), the conversion rates are indicative of their interest in the
proposed solution, further supporting the validity of the assumption.
Email campaign
Following the cold calling process an email campaign was sent out to the emails
gathered, extending the initial pitching with information on what the team is working on
and the value proposition. The email context prompted recipients to visit a webpage
where they had the chance to express their interest for a collaboration / participation in
our beta testing, via a purpose specific call to action.

52
Khalsa M., & Illig R. (1999). Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play: Transforming the buyer/seller
relationship. ISBN-10: 1591842263

36
To facilitate the process two marketing landing pages were developed using the
Mailchimp53 online email marketing service. The two pages presented the same set of
information in Greek and Italian and are available in Annex II.
The results of the campaign are summarised in Table 13

Table 13. Cold-calling and email campaign results

Total (GR+IT) No. of Conversion rate Conversion rate/Total

(unique)

Calls conducted 260

Calls answered 122 46.92%

Emails collected 112 91.80% 91.80%

Emails delivered 102 91.07% 83.61%

Emails accessed 65 63.73% 53.28%

Email call to action 30 46.15% 24.59%

clicks

Partnership forms 3 10% 2.46%

submitted

Additionally, the 102 emails delivered were opened 205 times, whilst the total clicks on
the call to action message were 34. The interest was similarly distributed among Greek
and Italian recipients. Overall a 2.46% of the recipients submitted the partnership form
at this idea stage signifying an early adopters’ audience in the sector willing to
investigate new and innovative solutions. Considering that this is 10% of the recipients
who ended up clicking the call to action, the proposed solution seemed to attract
considerable and genuine interest by the relevant stakeholders. This first set of results
was encouraging, however more data and a more extended campaign would be required
to reach a saturation point and thus extract solid conclusions (i.e. increasing the number
of recipients visiting the landing page).

4.4.3. B2C service - Assumption validation

When addressing the service directly to consumers the most important assumption
tested was the following:
“A sufficient percentage of private car owners would rent out their car to a private
car seeker, under specific conditions and pricing”
To validate this assumption, the experiment described in Table 14 was designed.

53
https://mailchimp.com/

37
Table 14. Β2C Assumptions-validation experiment

Experiment steps

Step 1: We believe that a sufficient percentage of private car owners would

Hypothesis rent out their car to a private car seeker, under specific conditions
and pricing

Step 2: Test To verify this hypothesis we will conduct an online survey with a
minimum of 100 private car owners...

Step 3: Metric ...and measure how many of the participants confirm the
following:
They would be willing to rent out their car at a price point
"comparable" with common car rental companies, under conditions
which would be "compatible" with common car rental companies'
practices

Step 4: Criteria We will consider the hypothesis right if at least 20% of car owners
would be willing to rent out their car through a peer-to-peer car
sharing platform for a price comparable with rental companies
under similar insurance schemes

To this end a questionnaire was elaborated (Annex II) which aimed at identifying if there
is a considerable percentage of the general population willing to share their car, at which
price point and under which conditions and circumstances they would do so.
The questionnaire was disseminated via online channels (facebook groups, linkedin,
direct email to startup ecosystem stakeholders and startup founders), via two targeted
workshops within the frame of the OK!Thess 54 pre-incubation program and via JRC’s
mailing list. This resulted in collecting answers from 254 participants mainly originating
from Greece and Italy with a wide age distribution. Out of them 29.1% would be willing
to rent out their car at €36, a price competitive to alternative options such as car rentals.

Figure 7. Main findings of the B2C assumptions-validation experiment

54
http://www.okthess.gr

38
A more detailed distribution is presented in Table 15. The table includes the average
number of cars owned and the perception of cost of ownership. The data indicate that
participants belonging to the 18-25 age group constitute the most engaged potion of the
public with 38.3%, although they own less cars on average and their perception of cost
of ownership is lower than other groups. Age groups 26-35 and 36-45 also show high
rates of value proposition acceptance exhibiting comparable metrics.

Table 15. Results of the B2C assumptions validation experiment

Age Perceptio Average

Age Participa Would Owned
groupper n of cost price/day
groups nts rent cars
centage (€) (€)

18-25 60 23 38.3% 1.26 755.00 35

26-35 56 15 26.8% 1.33 1,530.00 30

36-45 91 25 27.5% 1.48 877.00 31

46-55 35 7 20.0% 1.28 1,736.00 58

56+ 12 4 33.3% 2 1,813.00 26.6

254 74 29.1% 1,342.20 36

Table 16. Recurring themes B2C experiment

Recurring Themes (concerns in support of opt in)

Full insurance coverage

Driver is trustworthy, driving record known

Returned as rented (cleanliness, tank capacity)

Make profit

Security deposit upfront

Restrictions respected (distance, time)

Simplicity of process (e.g. when damage occurs)

39
Participation however comes with concerns which were collected as part of responses to
an open-ended question and collectively, out of those who would be willing to rent out
their car, fall under as set of themes as presented in Table 16. The prevalent themes of
concern were:
● The extent to which insurance coverage would be sufficient for the process of
participating in peer-to-peer car sharing
● The prior knowledge (evaluation) of a renter’s driving behaviour
● The extend in which the process of participating in such a service is automated.
Secondary themes included the state of a car when returned, security deposits and
dispute resolution processes. Interestingly enough the same themes were also brought
up by participants not willing to rent out their car, perceived as the main blocking factors
for participation.
The results overall validated the assumption that at least 20% of car owners would be
willing to participate in a peer-to-peer car sharing service, with comparable pricing and
insurance coverage to car rental services. Additionally, the online survey collected 66
emails of participants interested in knowing more about the service at a future date,
which accounted for 26% of the total of 254 respondents.

4.5. Conceptual architecture

Following the conducted market analysis, the in-depth interviews and all activities aiming
to identify a market niche with the lowest possible friction, identifiable and significant
growth rate and in-line with the research team expertise and knowledge, a top-level
architecture was envisaged that leverages blockchain technology in the peer-to-peer car
sharing space.

Figure 8 High level concept

The approach was for the architecture to be able to support any peer-to-peer car sharing
service, leveraging blockchain technology and the required in-car technology and cloud
services. The following figure includes a more detailed layer-based concept of how
blockchain technology fits into the overall picture.

40
 Figure 9 Platform layers

The figure indicates that the physical layer can be implemented under several possible
configurations:
● Private network. This implementation indicates that the network would be
managed by the company that will bring the product to market.
● Consortium network. The implementation would entail that blockchain nodes
would be deployed among participating entities in a permissioned or permission
less fashion leading to a higher degree of decentralisation of the architecture.
● Public network. A public network would indicate that anyone would be able to
deploy blockchain nodes and thus participate in a permissionless fashion.
The blockchain layer suggests that there are multiple options in terms of which
blockchain frameworks can be applied. Ethereum, Hyperledger (Fabric, Sawtooth...),
IoTA (Tangle) and others could provide the required functionality provided that the
framework chosen can support smart contract creation, increased number of transactions
and scale. Smart contracts would be essential in supporting enhanced process
coordination in a trust-less and automated manner among disparate participants.
Common smart contract programming languages, depending on blockchain framework,
are Solidity, GoLang, Python and others.
The presentation layer brings together cloud services in support of the necessary
functionality and also integrates the decentralised applications or dApps programmed in
W3.js, Web3.py or other relevant programming frameworks. dApps will have their
frontend code making API calls to the smart contracts deployed in the blockchain
network, thus consolidating process flow across layers.
Considering that the nature of peer-to-peer networks requires an ever increasing number
of participants with stratified access rights to the various services it was suggested that a
consortium based network would be required. To this end Ethereum was considered as
an appropriate framework, including smart contract functionality.
To further support this architecture however an element was missing, one that would
support the decentralisation of the network in a manner that would be (a) economically
viable for participants and the service, (b) applied by non experts in a plug and play

41
manner and (c) provide value to the network beyond just deploying an extra blockchain
node. It was thus suggested that this requirement would be sufficiently addressed by in-
car technology. An in-car hardware implementation that could not only support a
blockchain node but also provide the “state of the vehicle” information that could further
enhance a commercial peer-to-peer service offering. Such information could support real
time monitoring of a vehicle, report on geolocation, characterise driver behaviour, offer
basic remote management (e.g. lock/unlock) and other information that could augment
the service’s value proposition to its customers.
In light of the aforementioned considerations the final conceptual architectural framework
included:
● A Blockchain Technology Layer to include the appropriate distributed ledger
technology, supporting smart contracts and decentralised applications
● A Cloud Services Layer, whereby the necessary services can be elaborated in
support of identity management, transactional automation, efficient information
sharing, blockchain network connectivity, process coordination and others
● An in-Car Technology Layer, that can provide real-time monitoring of a
vehicle’s state and basic remote management, whilst at the same time equipped
with sufficient processing power and storage capacity to host a blockchain node in
support of decentralisation and trust.
The following figure represents the different layers of the conceptual architecture and
their indicative functionality.

Figure 10 Indicative technology components

42
5. Demonstrator
The present chapter summarises the activity that took place for the development of a
first functional prototype within the project. The prototype was based on the key
assumptions introduced in the original project scoping making use of existing JRC tools
(the GreenDriving Tool) for linking real time vehicle data monitoring to cost and
emissions estimation functions, allowing the deployment of a ride-service sharing
platform. There are already several available applications on-line that deal partly with
the problem of transport service allocation and optimisation. Most of these applications
(a.) rely on centralised web systems that eventually create closed eco-systems, (b.)
provide no transparency over the pricing of the activity offered. It is suggested that the
application of BC technology can act as an enabler for transport-as-a-service operations
and help improve the efficiency of transport services improving both, costs and the
environmental footprint.
As described onwards, the main focus of this work was on creating the design the
corresponding implementation workflows for connecting different systems involved in
the project namely, vehicle to blockchain, blockchain to IT system/database, IT system
to blockchain. Consequently, this work lays the foundations for further design and
implementation of the necessary basis to support a platform along the lines described in
the previous chapters. The main outcomes from include:

 A way for processing and transmitting vehicle OBD data to the JRC web services.
 The development of an RPI based system for data communication between
vehicle and the blockchain platform. The implemented RPI system
communicates and exchanges information with the JRC’s web services
(GreenDriving Tool) and the Ethereum BC network.
 Ad-hoc Contributions to the definition of the workflow followed for the
demonstrator of the project.
 The smart contracts deployed in the demonstrator and their specifications
definition. This included functional activity mapping between disparate
systems/clients and provision of implementation solutions when needed.

Table 17. Test code metrics

Blank Comment
Language Files (#) Code (lines)
(lines) (lines)

JavaScript 2 110 39 692

Markdown 6 36 0 241

Solidity 1 65 121 166

Bourne Shell 3 21 7 105

Python 3 23 23 101

YAML 1 0 0 49

Dockerfile 4 0 0 22

43
 All relevant software code and respective documentation can be found in
https://github.com/MichalisMak/ridechaindemo . The following table summarises the
metrics of the test code developed within the project,

Small scale Demonstrator

The small-scale demonstrator developed in the present contract consists of 3
components.

1. The smart contract that acts as the escrow between the 2 parties
2. the car probe that currently is used to upload the car coordinates to the
blockchain at set intervals.
3. the GUI that is used for all interactions with the contract

The Contract
This is the bit that runs on the ethereum network containing most of the business logic
and acts as the escrow, receiving down-payments and dispensing payments once the
ride is resolved. It is a long running contract, owned by the administrator of the system.

The Probe
The probe is an ad-hoc developed hardware system based on raspberry pi equipped
with a GPS receiver, an ODB2 interface and an internet connection, that runs its own
ethereum node. Every few seconds, the probe will send an event to the blockchain with
the new coordinates of the car.

Figure 11. Demonstrator probe. rpi, obd 2 & gps receiver

The GUI
Web3js based GUI, to be used in conjunction with an online wallet (metamask, mist),
provides access to the system for both drivers and their prospective clients.

44
 Figure 12. GUI snippets

System Architecture
The system architecture was decided after consultation with the project team and the
JRC coordinator. It comprised of the following main elements that are visualised in Figure
13.
1. Passenger selects route on GUI map
2. Passenger application queries Usave for the expected fuel consumption &
duration
3. Passenger makes a RequestForService call to the contract, passing the
expected cost, fuel consumption and duration as well as coordinates of route.
This is a payable call that accepts the full deposit for the ride.
4. When transaction is confirmed a request for service event is emmited.
5. Any driver that is listening for events will get a notification and the ui map will
get updated.
6. A driver can accept the service by making an AcceptRequest call to the
contract. This is payable function that accepts the full deposit for the ride.
7. The contract once the AcceptRequest transaction is mined will emit an event of
the same type.
8. The passenger will then start listening for the UpdateCoordinates events that
are constantly emitted by the car probe.
9. The Driver is responsible for starting the journey and informing the contract
when the journey ends.
10. When the driver calls FinishJourney the contract pays back his deposit plus the
passenger's fee.

45
 Figure 13. Prototype implementation sequence diagram

Design decisions: Running the beacon on top of a local a node

The beacon program is running on top of a local geth light node. The light node is
specially designed for devices with restricted resources both in terms of storage and
network. It only downloads the block headers and does do no verifications. In terms of
storage only ~2MB of headers are stored and it downloads about 1KB per 2 minutes.
Running a node on the onboard device rather than using a standard client-server
protocol was decided for reasons of simplicity. The ethereum network has built in
redundancy capabilities and we're leveraging that in our situation where reduced or no
network connectivity is expected to be quite common. The beacon checks the
coordinates every N seconds and raises an event in the ethereum network if they have
changed. We chose to emit the coordinates as events as the are the cheapest form of
storage on the blockchain at ~8 gas per byte. The other reason for choosing events is
that the updates can be pushed to the clients rather than having them constantly
querying a node.

Limitations
Currently the contract does not support cancellation or modification of the contract before the ride
is finished. Disputing the ride can only be done by a third party that will have to inspect the blocks
with the transactions for the specific ride and give a verdict. Currently the system queries the
GreenDriving API (GD), to get a cost for the trip. GD returns the expected fuel consumption and trip
duration for an average car. The system does not currently allow the driver to modify the
parameters for his specific vehicle.

46
Results
The system was presented at the JRC between the 26 th and the 28th of November 2018.
After configuring the system and setting up a private ethereum blockchain network we
successfully simulated a ride being hailed. 3 of us, 1 acting as the passenger and driver
and 2 acting as the car. The main problems encountered during this demonstration was
connectivity issues due to the very restrictive wireless network of JRC. The
demonstration proved that a blockchain ride sharing/hailing system is viable and the
inherent delay in the network due to transaction verification does not make it
unworkable. Further information regarding the software documentation and the
respective deployment guidelines can be found in the Annex.

Design issues and future development

The system uses events to transmit state changes in the system. One of the issues we
noticed with this approach is that often there are delays in the events getting
propagated through the nodes or even missed altogether, even on a private ethereum
network. We currently don't wait for multiple confirmations to happen before the ride is
confirmed to the driver. Once a transaction is mined and an event is raised, the party
interested is automatically informed. 6 confirmations per block are the recommended
minimum to be secure and ensure the chain has reached consensus and no more
reorganisations will happen. There is the possibility of collision where two drivers
attempt to get the same ride, simultaneously. It is possible that both transactions are
mined but only one of them will get accepted when the chain reaches consensus. The
current implementation does not account for that as it would make the system very
sluggish and unresponsive. Another factor is that a driver that is willing to get less profit
might give higher gas fees in order to get priority in his transaction getting confirmed.
A future development could be to:

 Enable the driver to set the parameters for his car/specific trip (number of
people, baggage etc).
 Allow the drivers to send quotes, so the client can decide which one is most
affordable. By allowing the client to decide which offer to accept, the
aforementioned issues with transaction collisions or gas sacrifice in order to get
the ride first are solved, since the competition will be on the actual price of the
journey.

47
6. Concluding remarks-Follow up
Following the extended market analysis and assumption validation process, the research
team conducted some basic market validation activities. The first opportunity arose with
the MOVE 2019 - Mobility Re-Imagined event that took place in London, UK on the 12th
and 13th of February 2019. The overarching concept was to present a hypothetical
technology provider for the market, which leverages blockchain technology to facilitate
peer-to-peer car sharing services, and to solicit feedback from established stakeholders
in the field with regards to their market insights and how they perceive the use of
blockchain in the field of shared mobility. To this end, a startup company - to be
established with the aim to further explore and develop the outcomes of the present
project - was envisaged as a potential spin-off of the Joint Research Centre, Directorate
C - Energy, Transport and Climate - Sustainable Transport Unit C.4, called Innomovo.
The effort included the following four parts:
● A website descriptive of a technology provider in the field of peer-to-peer car
sharing space;
● An explainer video included in the website;
● A pitch deck to support the Innomovo positioning;
● A financial analysis of a SaaS business model, fitting a technology solution
provider, such as Innomovo.

All four can be found in Annex III-V.

The visit to MOVE 2019, the insights from the event presentations and the subsequent
talks with market stakeholders substantiated that blockchain is a good fit only to
decentralised applications serving disparate parties, with companies like Turo (P2P car
sharing, US) considering its use in the future. One of the most promising interactions was
the one with MOBI55, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative. The concept behind
innomovo was considered very attractive and in-line with the initiative and thus was
invited to take part in the upcoming MOBI Mass Challenge56.
To further enhance the project’s outcomes and in direct correlation with the envisaged
architecture, a research is on-going in the field of in-car technologies that support
blockchain application scenarios. The preliminary research results revealed several
technology patents that identify the need for in-car technology able to convey key
information about a vehicle’s state, but also to allow a vehicle to take part as a unique
entity in the future mobility landscape, where connected and autonomous cars will be
able to interact with drivers, services and infrastructures.
Over the last decade several patents and research outcomes have been put forward by
individuals, vehicle manufacturers and ICT companies which combine blockchain
technology and vehicles. Most are focused on the logging side of the benefits blockchain
can offer, others in the cybersecurity issues that will become more prominent with the
advent of autonomous and connected vehicles. However, very few refer to the
operational side of the equation where vehicles are an entity within the broader future of
interconnected services in the mobility sector. Facilitating on-board intelligence with
features addressing cybersecurity and access, logging immutability, real time
communication, safety and other characteristics are not currently addressed in a
satisfactory and holistic manner.
The previous has led the research team to submit a Patent Declaration Form (Annex VI)
of a proposed in-car technology that takes into account the following three main aspects:

55
https://dlt.mobi/
56
https://dlt.mobi/stage-one-mgc/

48
 ● The technical solution should be based on standards and extend them, thus being
compatible with all vehicle types and facilitate easier uptake by OEMs in the field;
● The technical solution should foster all the necessary communication ports to
interface with a vehicle, on-board sensors, as well as mobile networks for
information transfer;
● The technical solution should provide enhanced processing power and storage
capacity to be able to host the required software implementations.
The latter was however rejected due to the presence of similar patents granted (dating
2018, while the project was on-going). However, the research team truly believes that
the field of application is broad and is confident that potential for patents based on the
outcomes of the present activities still exists and should be further explored.

49
List of figures
Figure 1 Original project concept ............................................................................. 9
Figure 2. Lean start-up methodology ......................................................................19
Figure 3. Product discovery approach ......................................................................20
Figure 4. Opportunity assessment tree ....................................................................28
Figure 5. Snapshot of the competition analysis matrix ...............................................29
Figure 6 Business Model Canvas .............................................................................31
Figure 7. Main findings of the B2C assumptions-validation experiment ........................38
Figure 8 High level concept ....................................................................................40
Figure 9 Platform layers ........................................................................................41
Figure 10 Indicative technology components ............................................................42
Figure 11. Demonstrator probe. rpi, obd 2 & gps receiver ..........................................44
Figure 12. GUI snippets .........................................................................................45
Figure 13. Prototype implementation sequence diagram ............................................46

50
List of tables
Table 1. Analysis of service models in the market – passenger vs goods transport ........22
Table 2. Shared mobility European market characteristics .........................................23
Table 3. Last Mile Delivery European market characteristics .......................................23
Table 4. Market trends comparison Shared Mobility vs Same Day Delivery ...................24
Table 5. Potential problems in shared mobility and last mile delivery market ................25
Table 6. Market growth, entry barriers and internal expertise .....................................26
Table 7. Professional peer-to-peer car sharing as principal focus area .........................28
Table 8. Competitive landscape ..............................................................................30
Table 9 Prioritised assumptions examined ................................................................33
Table 10. Experiment outline .................................................................................34
Table 11. Semi-structured inteview recurring themes ................................................35
Table 12. Cold calling campaign summary ...............................................................36
Table 13. Cold-calling and email campaign results ....................................................37
Table 14. Β2C Assumptions-validation experiment ....................................................38
Table 15. Results of the B2C assumptions validation experiment ................................39
Table 16. Recurring themes B2C experiment ............................................................39
Table 17. Test code metrics ...................................................................................43

51
Annexes

52
Annex I - Questionnaires

B2B service - Assumption Validation Questionnaire

---
Question groups per metric
Company profile
● How many vehicles do you own?
● How many vehicles have you rented out last year?
● What percentage of your fleet remains idle depending on the period? What is the
expected fluctuation?
● What is the age of the vehicles in your fleet?
● What vehicle categories do you own?
● What is the average rental time?

Car sharing as a company practice

● How often do you practice sub-renting/car sharing?
● How important is car sharing in your line of work?
● Is it an important practise and why?
● Last time you practiced it what was the process you followed? (process, logistics)
● Last time you responded to a sub-rental request what was the process you
followed?
● What is the process once a vehicle has been identified as available?
● When you are searching for a vehicle what are the criteria affecting your decision?
● When you are asked for a vehicle what are the criteria affecting your decision?
● How many times were you asked for vehicle over the last year? (availability)
● How many times where you able to comply with the requests? (demand)
● When you could not comply, why was that?
● How many times did you search and request a vehicle over the last year?
(demand)
● Of the times you requested for a vehicle how many did you manage to get one?
(availability)
● When you couldn’t find one, what was the reason?
● Where there times when you could search for a vehicle and you didn’t and why?
● Where there times you could accomodate a request but you didn’t and why?
● In what way does seasonality affect your need to find a vehicle?

Financial impact of car sharing

● What percentage of your total revenues comes from vehicles sub-rented to other
professionals?
● What percentage of your total revenues comes from vehicles sub-rented from
other professionals?
● How is your revenue model affected? (percentage of revenue and logistics)
● Could your revenue be increased if demand and supply becomes a more
streamlined process?
Problems and room for improvement
● Are there any issues with how this process is facilitated currently?
● Where there any relevant issues in the past?
● Where there any mistakes in the past, which ones are the most common ones?

53
 ● What could make this process easier?
● What is the time required, what are the problems associated?

Widening the network as a solution

● How many professionals can you reach as part of your network?
● Would you want you network to become wider than it currently is?
● Under which conditions would you grow your network?
● Do you receive requests from professionals outside your network?

Willingness to try a software solution

● Do you believe a software solution could streamline the process?
● What could a software solution provide to streamline the process?
● Have you searched for a similar software solution in the past?
● Which other software do you use in your line of work?

---

B2C service - Assumption Validation Questionnaire

---
New startup loading...and we need your help!

In this brief survey (3 minutes) we would like to investigate how people perceive their
relationship with their car. Answering this short survey would really mean the world to
us.
*Required fields
Personal Details
Some demographics to help us out
1. How old are you? * (Mark only one.)
18-25
26-35
36-45
46-55
Other:
1. How many members in your family/household? * (Mark only one.)
1
2
3
4
4+
3. What area do you live in? * (Mark only one.)
Urban
Suburban
Rural
4. Which country do you live in? *
Open ended question
Let's talk about cars. We are interested in knowing about your relationship with
your car
5. How many cars do you own? * (Mark only one.)

54
0
1
2
>2
6. How old is (are) your car(s)? (Tick all that apply.)
Car 1 : [less than 5 years] [between 5 and 10 years] [over 10 years]
Car 2 : [less than 5 years] [between 5 and 10 years] [over 10 years]
Car 3 : [less than 5 years] [between 5 and 10 years] [over 10 years]
7. How much do you estimate the annual cost of owning a car (not usage, just
ownership)?*
Open ended question
8. How often does your car stay unused for a full day or more? (Mark only one.)
every weekend
more than two days a week
a couple of days a month
a couple of days per year
I always use my car(s)
Other:
9. Have you ever lent your car to someone apart from immediate family
members? (Mark only one.)
YES
NO
10. If YES, how often do you do that? (Mark only one.)
a couple of days per year
a couple of days per month
11. Would you be willing to rent out your car to another individual? * (Mark only
one.)
YES
NO
12. If YES, under which conditions would you be willing to do so?
Open ended question
13. At which price/day would you be willing to rent out your car?
Open ended question
14. If NO, what makes you hesitate to do so?
Open ended question
15. Would you like to be informed of our future steps? Type in your email and
we will keep in touch
Open ended question
---

55
Annex II - Landing pages (IT, GR)
The landing pages created for the purposes of marketing and soliciting feedback from car
rental owners are:

The landing pages above are accessible at the following temporary URLs:
 Greek Website URL: https://mailchi.mp/0372c08e4ee1/carspace-gr
 Italian Website URL: https://mailchi.mp/b0dd86d025a7/carspace-it

56
Annex III - Innomovo website & explainer video
Ιnnomovo website: https://innomovo.com/

Ιnnomovo explainer video: https://youtu.be/u8vmzGR82Aw

57
Annex IV - Innomovo pitch deck
Pitch deck download: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1F9Crdync5QROMPdF1aw-
cMN8FO2wxFOW4r550Y0NTA4/edit?usp=sharing

58
59
Annex V - Innomovo financial analysis
The figures below are excerpted from the financial model that was developed as part of
this research.

60
Annex VI – Patentability analysis results
The European Commission (JRC) has asked Brantsandpatents for a patentability opinion
on their concept of System and method thereof of on-board diagnostics (OBD) dongle
with embedded Blockchain node. The following summarises the scope of our efforts and
our conclusions to date.
[undisclosed text]
Concluding, we deem that the outlined concept is novel over the retrieved prior art, and
in particular in regard of the closest prior art US ‘126. The outlined concept differentiates
itself from US ‘126 by the addition of a battery and one or more sensors. However, we
are of the opinion that the added features lack an inventive step. Therefore, we deem the
concept not to be patentable.

61
Annex VII Design and user manual of the RPI-based system for
transmission of the vehicle OBD data to services.

Quick instructions on how to set up a car gps beacon for ridechain.

The start up sequence is the following:

 A raspbery pi model ZeroW (or any other raspberry pi but zero has the lowest
power consumption)
 An 8GB sd card.
 A gps neo 6m module
 Some way to connect the pi to the internet from your car. The assumption is that
either a mobile phone or a dedicated device will act as mobile wireless hotspots to
provide internet connectivity to the rpi. Alternatively a 3g/4g modem shield could
be added but this is beyond the scope of this document.

Setting up the software

OS setup
Steps 3-5 assume that this is a headless installation via network. Alternatively an hdmi
monitor & usb keyboard/mouse can be connected to the pi.

1. Download raspbian lite57 and install it on the card by using etcher58 and following
the instructions on etcher site. (the easiest option and works in all major OSes)
2. Enable ssh by opening the boot folder on the sd card and create an empty file
named ssh. (can also be ssh.txt)
3. Setup the wireless network by creating a file in /boot folder named
wpa_supplicant.conf and follow this template :

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
country=US
update_config=1

network={
ssid="My Wifi"
psk="mypassword"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
where ssid, psk are replaced with the setting of your wifi router device.

4. Boot the rpi. If all went well it should connect to the network. Contact your
network admin in order to get the new ip of the pi.
5. Log in to the pi via ssh, using account pi with default password raspberry.
6. Expand the storage using $ sudo raspi-config and choose 7.Advanced options -
> Expand storage

57
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest
58
https://etcher.io/

62
 7. Stop the serial console from using the uart. $ sudo raspi-
config choose 5.Interfacing options -> P6 serial-> No to console yes to serial.
Rebboot and see if device files: /dev/serial or /dev/ttyAMA0 exist.

GPS daemons & libraries

1. Install gpsd & relevant clients: $ sudo apt install gpsd gpsd-clients
2. run the following command: sudo sed -i -e
's/DEVICES=\"\"/DEVICES=\"\/dev\/ttyAMA0\"/' /etc/default/gpsd && sudo
systemctl enable gpsd and reboot.
3. Install python 3.6 as it's needed by pyweb3:
o Install dependencies first, $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y
make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev
libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev openssl
bzip2 git
o Get pyenv installer $ curl -L
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yyuu/pyenv-
installer/master/bin/pyenv-installer | bash
o Add & activate environment: $ echo 'export PATH="~/.pyenv/bin:$PATH"'
>> ~/.bashrc; echo '$eval "$(pyenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc; echo 'eval
"$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc; source ~/.bashrc
4. install web3 python extensions: pip install web3
5. install python gps library pip install gps3
6. expand virtual memory:
o sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile
o set CONF_SWAPSISE=1024
o sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile restart

Ethereum for raspi

1. Download geth for arm59

2. Untar: tar xvf geth-linux-arm6-1.8.16-477eb093.tar.gz
3. Create a new account: geth password new
4. Copy over the genesys file (can be found on the webnode server) & init geth:
*geth init genesis.json
5. Start the geth client: *geth --datadir /opt/geth/data --networkid 53453 --rpc --
rpcapi "eth,personal,web3" --bootnodes {bootnode enode}

Setting up the gps receiver.

Connect the power&ground, RX/TX of receiver go to 14/15 gpio (on pi zero these are pins 8&10)

The beacon program.

How to start the beacon:
python beacon.py --car_address '0xdbe191a206ec3ab84f773bea04f933bf8c2cb381' --
contract_address '0xabd50a02fc9c0ca6fdbefd9baa71724e30109fe1' --
log_file=/home/pi/gps.log For help: python beacon.py --help

59
https://gethstore.blob.core.windows.net/builds/geth-linux-arm6-1.8.16-477eb093.tar.gz

63
UI Node image
This node serves the GUI content for the driver & customer. The docker image produced
here spins up an apache web server, with self-signed ssl setup. (Obviously since the
keys are published here this is very insecure and new ones will need to be generated
before) The html files found in this folder will happily play with any other https server in
the market.

Prerequisites
You'll need to have Docker installed. For Ubuntu installation:

sudo apt install docker-ce

(optional) Generate the self signed keys

$ openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout server.key -out
server.crt
Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key
..+++
...........+++
writing new private key to 'server.key'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:IT
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Lombardia
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Ispra
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:JRC
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:ridechain.jrc.eu
Email Address []:your_email@jrc.eu

copy server.key & server.crt to the same directory as your docker file is.

cp server.key server.crt UI_node/

64
Create the image
$ cd UI_node
$ sudo docker build -t uinode .

Run the container

sudo docker run -p 443:443 -v $PWD/content:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ uinode

The container should now be accessible on https://yourhost/

65
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH THE EU

In person
All over the European Union there are hundreds of Europe Direct information centres. You can find the address of the centre
nearest you at: https://europa.eu/european-union/contact_en
On the phone or by email
Europe Direct is a service that answers your questions about the European Union. You can contact this service:
- by freephone: 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11 (certain operators may charge for these calls),
- at the following standard number: +32 22999696, or

- by electronic mail via: https://europa.eu/european-union/contact_en

FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT THE EU
Online

Information about the European Union in all the official languages of the EU is available on the Europa website at:
https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en
EU publications
You can download or order free and priced EU publications from EU Bookshop at:
https://publications.europa.eu/en/publications. Multiple copies of free publications may be obtained by contacting
Europe Direct or your local information centre (see https://europa.eu/european-union/contact_en).
 KJ-NA-29738-EN-N

doi 10.2760/60436

ISBN 978-92-76-03007-2