• IOTA will handle micropayments for EDAG’s autonomous driving car launching in Frankfurt in 2023.
  • This project is likely to bring $86 billion in smart city revenue by 2026.

 

As we know the IOTA blockchain network caters to one of the faster-emerging technologies i.e. Internet of Things (IoT). As per the latest development, IOTA’s partnership with the EDAG Group shall be boosted next year in 2023. The EDAG Group entered into a partnership with IOTA three years back in 2019.

Since then, the two players have been working on transforming the face of autonomous mobility solutions. The EDAG Group also has its autonomous vehicle CityBot that leverage the power of the IOTA blockchain for data transfer and payment protocol.

EDAG presented the CityBot autonomous driving car for the first time at the International Motor Show 2019. As per the latest development, it will start testing the CityBot vehicle in a real environment on the streets of Frankfurt starting in 2023.

More about the EDAG CityBot

The EDAG CityBot is an autonomous vehicle using fuel-cell propulsion and moves across the city in a climate-friendly manner. The goal of this project is to show how fully autonomous vehicles could work in futuristic cities. However, the special feature of the CityBot is that it would never stand still and has been designed to use urban resources efficiently.

The EDAG CityBot could be used for a variety of different applications such as a group taxi, a clean-up vehicle, a supermarket hero, a delivery vehicle, or a party vehicle. In this case, the IOTA blockchain will play the role of maintaining secure communication and micropayments. As per the estimates, this project will contribute to $80 billion in smart city revenue by 2026.

How will IOTA contribute

The IOTA blockchain can play a diverse role in this entire process. It notes that there can be several service options offered on an IOTA-enabled marketplace such as the IOTA Industry Marketplace. Here, the communicating machines can trade digital and physical goods.

This perfectly caters to EDAG’s vision of creating a multifunctional vehicle that is active 365 days a year and 24 hours a day and does not stand still. This would help in eliminating a lot of parking space requirements.

Thus, in this entire project, IOTA would serve as a data transfer and payment protocol between machines. Furthermore, with the help of the IOTA Tangle technology, vehicles will be able to automatically communicate and exchange data with each other along with other services such as parking. Any payments that are due, would be processed via IOTA cryptocurrency.

This way, IOTA would majorly cater to the IoT requirements of the project while facilitating efficient data transfers and payments.