Three Dutch startups in the smart mobility sector have conquered a place in Volkswagen incubator program “Gläserne Manufaktur” in Dresden. These are SPIKE from Eindhoven, GoodMoovs from Helmond and Greenflux from Amsterdam. According to the VW jury, all three have credibly managed to present their mobility solutions. The pitches were part of a trade mission on mobility and automotive to the state of Saxony led by the Brabant Commissioner Anne-Marie Spierings. The mission is a follow-up to earlier mutual visits on this theme and the Saxon Minister of Economic Affairs Martin Dulig has already announced that he will be coming to Helmond and Eindhoven for the major ITS conference in June 2019.
Read also: Saxony is a natural partner for Brabant.
“It is always important for the jury to have a clear focus on the customer,” says Marco Weiss, Director of New Mobility & Innovation at the Gläserne Manufaktur. “The new solutions developed in the Incubator should enable users to move more comfortably, safely and cost-effectively.” Part of the VW incubator, which is financially supported by the city of Dresden, is an amount of €15,000.
The Dresden programme aims to stimulate start-ups in the areas of fleet management, car sharing, concierge services, charging infrastructure and navigation and parking services. The “Volkswagen Future Mobility Incubator”, as it is officially called, is open to startups from all over the world. The aim is to enable startups to develop their ideas directly to market maturity in the Gläserne Manufaktur.
SPIKE is a company born from the student project Storm, in which in 80 days a trip around the world was made on an electric motorbike. SPIKE is currently working from Innovation Space on the campus of the Eindhoven University of Technology on safe and sustainable batteries for electric vehicles. For example for Kibo, an electric motor specially developed for the African market and produced in Kenya.
Goodmoovs is working from the Automotive Campus in Helmond on a concept for sharing electric cars and bicycles. The company currently works with 185 electric cars and 50 bicycles, which are available in dozens of cities in the Netherlands, England and Germany. Unlike Amber – which also offers electric cars in a sharing concept – Goodmoovs mainly works with cars from large employers, cooperatives and the fleet of the foundation Limburg elektrisch and Brabant elektrisch which are shared with its own employees and private individuals. Edwin Bestebreurtje of FIER adds: “GoodMoovs partly has its own electric shared cars and charging stations and partly cooperates with organisations such as municipalities, companies and cooperatives to ensure that their electric vehicles can be reserved and used by employees and private individuals.”
Finally, Greenflux focuses on the management of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. In this, the company works with energy companies, grid managers and parties in the automotive industry to remotely manage charging stations, process transactions and adjust the charging process to the capacity of the electricity grid and (local) energy generation. GreenFlux operates in fifteen countries, with an ecosystem of more than 18,000 charging stations.
Photo © VW
