Blockchain Standard Accelerates Decarbonization, Circular Economy, and Track and Trace

MOBI Trusted Trip Standard — co-developed by members such as EU Commission, Dana, DENSO, Hitachi America, Ltd., ITOCHU, and Reply — links decentralized sovereign identities and verified timestamped location throughout a trip to enable Trusted Carbon Emissions Tracking (TCET) and countless other track and trace applications

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Transportation GHG emissions account for nearly a third of global emissions. They are also expected to grow at a faster rate than any other sector, posing a major challenge in moving towards a low carbon economy. Blockchain has been highlighted as one of the emerging technologies to lessen carbon-intensive practices by organizations such as the United Nations, the European Commission, and the World Economic Forum. MOBI and its members released the Trusted Trip Standard today for track and trace applications that unlock almost every decentralized use case imaginable for on-demand, personalized, usage-based mobility, including carbon tracking and pollution taxing. The standard aims to make transportation more sustainable, equitable, and accessible.

"Organizations are making bold commitments for a net zero carbon future and will need to adopt blockchain solutions to deliver on their promises. Blockchain's consensus mechanism and immutability are required for track and trace — from material, supply chain, through production, first-life and second-life use, recycling, and end of life. When paired with other emerging technologies such as AI and IoT, blockchain can significantly enhance measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), driving trust for all stakeholders," said Tram Vo, MOBI Co-director and Founder.

A trip is the journey of a roaming entity — such as a person, smartphone, vehicle, package, or EV battery — from one place to another. It is also the basic unit of information for monetizing mobility in a services economy for consumers, providers, and infrastructure owners. For a trip to be useful and trusted by all parties in the transaction, a roaming entity's verified decentralized identity must be linked with its location in space and time throughout its journey, along with a minimum set of industry-accepted proofs for each use case. Blockchain acts as a trust anchor in a decentralized network, allowing third parties/entities in the network to verify ongoing and completed Trusted Trips.

Why is decentralized identity important? As our lives are increasingly linked to apps, devices, and services, we're often subject to data breaches and privacy loss. A standards-based decentralized identity system can provide greater security, privacy, and control over personal and organizational data.

"Data availability and willingness to share is hampered by the absence of a 'trusted environment for data sharing' across mobility sectors where transport operators, users, infrastructure managers, public authorities, agencies, and other relevant stakeholders can easily connect and exchange data in a secure and interoperable way." European Commission (SWD(2020) 331 final)

MOBI Trusted Trip is the key primitive enabling smart mobility including track and trace up and down the supply chain. It will enable scaling, incentivizing, and monetization of a multitude of new and existing use cases in smart and low-carbon mobility. Current use cases being demonstrated by the MOBI community are:

• supply chain parts traceability for EV batteries
• electric vehicle maintenance such as battery state of health (SOH)
• trusted carbon emissions tracking to verify emissions claims
• usage-based fees such as tolling, insurance, and electric charging/sharing
• curbside management
• incentives and rewards for sustainable behavior
• dealer floorplan audit to reduce the cost of vehicle ownership
• future use cases being considered include verification of green energy sources and verification chain of custody of vehicle parts

MOBI Trusted Trip standard was made possible by the contributions of these organizations: Accenture, AWS, BMW Group, Cara7, Car IQ, CEVT, CPChain, Deutscher Auto Dienst GmbH (DAD), Dana, DENSO, EU Commission, Ford, Global Battery Alliance (GBA), General Motors (GM), Hitachi America, Ltd., IOTA Foundation, IoTeX, ITOCHU, MEF Forum, Nara Institute, NuCypher, Politecnico di Torino, R3, Reply, Swedish Blockchain Association, Toyota Industries Corporation, University of Urbino, and USAA.

"We continue to look for better visibility and traceability across our supply chain, and we expect the blockchain-based MOBI Trusted Trip Standard to provide a stable and consistent mechanism to accurately track important parts of our extended operations," said Chris Dawson, Senior Manager, Purchasing Analytics, Dana Incorporated.

"MOBI Trusted Trip can provide the basis for many transactional applications in mobility, a capability that adds critical layers of traceability, security, and carbon reduction for all things on the move," said Roger Berg, Vice President of DENSO North America R&D. "DENSO's proud to contribute to this groundbreaking effort."

"With blockchain and the MOBI Trusted Trip standard, a roaming entity's digital proofs can be verified by other entities. This will enable new use cases for carbon emission reporting, and provide a building block for a carbon neutral future," said Dr. Harsha Badarinarayan, Vice President of Hitachi America, Ltd., R&D.

"At Reply we think that innovative technologies, like blockchain, underlie the evolution of the mobility sector, enabling the delivery of new services, smoother user experience, collaborative ecosystem, and guaranteeing native security and traceability. Decentralized identity and standards defined within MOBI are key pillars of real use case applications we are working on," said Daniela Novaro, Associate Partner, Blockchain Reply.

About MOBI

MOBI is a nonprofit alliance of many of the world's largest vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, startups, governments, transit agencies, NGOs, insurers/financial institutions, toll road providers, smart city leaders, and technology companies working to accelerate adoption and promote standards in blockchain, distributed ledgers, and related technologies.

MOBI and its members are creating simple blockchain-based standards to identify vehicles, people, businesses, and MOBI Trusted Trip in order to securely exchange and share data, and pay for mobility services, with the goal of making transportation more efficient, democratic, affordable, greener, safer, and less congested. MOBI itself is technology and vendor agnostic. For additional information about joining MOBI, please reach out to Griffin Haskins (griffin@dlt.mobi) or visit www.dlt.mobi.

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