From one edition to the next, this is undoubtedly one of the great showcases of the VivaTech trade show, this flurry of futuristic inventions heralding the imminent arrival of flying taxis in the skies over major cities, as well as autonomous cars and soon even... houses in the clouds. The start-up Hover City has invented 'mobile' real estate. And she does so according to her desires - setting up her home sweet home in Nice, for example, whereas Paris is confined - or her needs, such as a natural disaster or a devastating event.
Its Hover Haus concept is based on sustainable housing units...
From one edition to the next, this is undoubtedly one of the great showcases of the VivaTech trade show, this flurry of futuristic inventions heralding the imminent arrival of flying taxis in the skies over major cities, as well as autonomous cars and soon even... houses in the clouds. The start-up Hover City has invented 'mobile' real estate. And she does so according to her desires - setting up her home sweet home in Nice, for example, whereas Paris is confined - or her needs, such as a natural disaster or a devastating event.
Its Hover Haus concept is based on durable housing units that can be taken into the air by a system of eight helixes. Modular, they can be stacked one on top of the other to build a real building or laid end to end to build the different rooms of a house. With no heavy foundations, the building can be dismantled and transported elsewhere without difficulty. As the founder of Hover City, Rawad Zaki, puts it, "that you can order a city online in the morning and have it appear that very evening!"The first tests are scheduled for 2023 in Arizona.
Alongside this project, the CAPS immediately seems more down-to-earth. Although... Because this concept, supported by La French Tech, BpiFrance and Banque Populaire, is riding the wave of electric flying taxis with a bias: transport only one person at a time. With an advertised price of €1 to €2 per kmThis start-up aims to offer an affordable solution for shuttles to and from airports, with journeys two to three times faster than by taxi or VTC. The smallest model on the market, to be tested for the first time at the end of 2020, this sort of unmanned capsule flies at 70 km/h. Another advantage is that its compact size means it does not require heavy infrastructure for take-off and landing stations, which should make deployment easier.
At a much more advanced stage, the Chinese autonomous flying vehicle EHang 216 has carried out over 20,000 hours of test flights in some forty cities and eight countries around the world, most recently in Japan, but also in Linz, Seville and Amsterdam in Europe. In China, the company received its passenger transport certification in April and is starting to sell its first tickets. While waiting for Europe to give the green light, the EH 216 will be tested in other cities such as Rotterdam and Helsinki, as well as at the Pontoise aerodrome, as part of the a project to develop flying taxis supported by RATP, ADP and the Ile-de-France region. Alongside its urban transport model, EHang intends to tackle regional transport with the presentation of its VT-30 concept at the end of May. Shaped like an aeroplane, with two wings, this model can carry two people over distances of 300km and a flight time of 100 minutes.
Plane or car, why choose? With hybrids one of the hottest trends of the moment, the Pal-V concept plays on both niches. This car - because it's a real car for two passengers - can be transformed into a "gyroplane" in just three minutes. In no time at all, the propeller unfurls, as do the little wings, and it only takes the distance of two football pitches for the Pal-V to take off. This allows users to reach an aerodrome by road, from where they can fly to the nearest landing strip to their destination.. The project's founder estimates that a journey from Lyon to Toulouse can be made in 2 hours 10 minutes, compared with four to five hours by road or rail. With a range of 500 to 1,000 km, the Pal-V can reach speeds of up to 160 km/h on the motorway, and flies at between 140 km/h and 180 km/h. Already certified, this first flying car is due for commercial launch within 18 months, and has already received quite a few orders. To facilitate its development, the Pal-V concept does not require any new infrastructure, as it can rely on the existing network of airfields. After this model designed for regional transport, Pal-V intends to focus more on a solution for urban mobility.
Sustainable mobility, one of the key innovation sectors at VivaTech
The 2021 edition of VivaTech has given pride of place to sustainable transport solutions. An emblematic vector of soft mobility, the bicycle saw the demonstration of several innovations present in the "Sustainability" showroom at VivaTech, including the Teebike which lets you transform a conventional bike into an electric bike in no time at all, simply by changing its front wheel for a connected wheel controlled by a mobile app.
Another model presented was the GeebeeThis hybrid model is half electric bike, half scooter, with the passenger standing upright, like on a scooter. With a range of 50 km, this electric model designed by a Canadian start-up is also equipped for off-road use, with a telescopic fork and adapted wheels. It can therefore be used in town, but is also intended for professional use, for example in factories or on building sites.
With cycling becoming an increasingly important part of company travel plans, Belgian start-up B2Bikea partner of Arval, the BNP Paribas subsidiary dedicated to car fleetsaims to provide them with solutions through the management of fleets of shared bicycles or the allocation of bicycles to their employees for business and private travel.
Another fashionable means of transport, the electric car is seeing a whole ecosystem being built up around it, including services such as the Antelope Batteries for People, which offers drivers a stress-free experience by giving them the exact battery percentage for their journey, depending on the traffic, weather or gradient forecasts and the weight on board.
But it's the recharging of these cars that is driving innovation. The Aix en Provence start-up Chargepoly for example, has developed stations that can recharge a dozen or so vehicles at the same time. For its part, Wattpark sees itself as the "Airbnb of recharging", thanks to its system of connected charging points that can easily be installed in a company or hotel car park, or even at a private home. When these charging points are not being used for their own purposes, their owners can monetise them by opening up access to the Wattpark community of users. Using an app, users can reserve a nearby charging point at a price set by the owner of the charging point.
The Belgian start-up Communithingssupported by Orange, also aims to make life easier for electric vehicle users. Its app detects free charging stations so that users can geolocate them, reserve them and, if necessary, queue them up until a space becomes available. Once the charge is complete, they will be alerted by notifications and reminders, as appropriate.
"If you don't come to recharge, the recharge will come to you": this is the philosophy behind the Charles robot, developed by Mob Energywhich moves autonomously around car parks. The main advantage of this is that it avoids the need to build an ad hoc recharging station. In practice, the user orders a recharge and places a small box connected to his car on the ground. While they go about their business, the robot will connect to it, then disconnect automatically once the charge is complete.
A heavyweight in the automotive sector, Renault also had a strong presence at the show through its brand MobilizeMobilize, one of the show's partners. Mobilize presented its vision of responsible and sustainable mobility, including car-sharing and the EZ-1 urban vehicle prototype. Bringing together the manufacturer's own initiatives and partner start-ups - Zity, Renault Mobility, Karhoo, iCabbi, Glide.io - Mobilize is also focusing on the subject of recharging. In this context, Elexent, a Renault subsidiary set up nearly a year ago, has been renamed "Mobilize Power Solutions". Its ambition is to remove this major obstacle to the electrification of vehicle fleets by offering small businesses, large groups and local authorities recharging solutions compatible with all makes and types of electric vehicle. All with a green energy offering.
While the LOM law supports environmentally-friendly business travel, a number of players are working to organise this development. Here are just a few examples, Search Mobilitya mobile application supported by La Poste, aims to boost responsible mobility plans. Employees will be able to find all the soft mobility solutions available in their vicinity. For their part, companies will benefit from greater visibility to feed into their CSR reporting and, at the same time, will be able to reimburse their employees.
In the same vein, the Strasbourg start-up OxycarOxycar, which has the backing of Microsoft, provides companies and their employees with a car-sharing and bicycle-sharing platform dedicated to home-work journeys. While carpoolers are put in touch with each other according to their constraints, using artificial intelligence, Oxycar offers companies the opportunity to manage their legal and tax obligations around the Forfait Mobilités, backed up by dashboards to monitor key performance indicators.
Hybrid work in the spotlight at a hybrid trade fair
But, of course, Microsoft is first and foremost a key player in the "future of work", one of the themes widely developed by the show's exhibitors. Its Teams collaborative platformwhich has been a favourite during repeated lockdowns, goes beyond its role as a videoconferencing and chat tool by grafting on solutions developed by start-ups to enhance collaborative working. These include AsterWitivio, which has developed a suite of applications called TeamsPro by Witivio.
The best known of the solutions offered by Witivio is undoubtedly Calendar ProTeams, a shared calendar that is already one of the most widely used in the world, used by large multinationals, SMEs and universities to organise their courses during the pandemic. Other applications integrated into Teams include a chatbot dedicated to using the platform and training users, a solution for managing passwords shared by a team, and the organisation of virtual cafés to bring together employees from different departments who work far apart.
Focused on the telephone, Onoff Business integrates with the Microsoft platform to enable employees to make calls from their Teams application on their phone or laptop. But the solution doesn't stop there, and is dedicated to managing mobile fleets in companies. The great advantage of the Onoff application is that you can create one business phone number, so you don't need to have two SIM cards or two phones. The all-in-one application includes SMS and voicemail, and can be put on standby at weekends. Another advantage of the app is that the number can be reassigned to another employee, either temporarily during holidays or permanently when the user leaves the company. Finally, Onoff also stands out for its ability to allocate foreign telephone numbers for calls at local rates.
At a time when teleworking several days a week seems to be the preferred model for the future, the specialist in collaborative working solutions Klaxoon presented a new offering at the show, with a connected room dedicated to the new challenges of hybrid working. This "white board room", named Hybridity is a sort of 5m2 mini meeting room equipped with three 360° screens, three on-board cameras and an integrated videoconferencing solution. Three people can be seated in this high-tech business bubble for hybrid meetings with up to 250 remote participants. Offering a high degree of confidentiality, the Hybridty space can be set up in an openspace, a coworking space or next to factory production lines.
Its appeal also lies in the integration of developments made to the Board, the visual collaboration tool developed by Klaxoon. As its name suggests, Board Hybrid is designed for work that is half face-to-face and half virtual, with an integrated videoconferencing function for audiences ranging from 50 participants to 250 people. Broadcast in a small window so that the employee can concentrate on the content, these videoconferences require very little bandwidth and are designed for efficient exchanges, as they are limited to a maximum of 30 minutes. In addition, Board Hybrid offers an enhanced range of graphic tools, including a pen tool, and above all the ability to exchange virtually any type of file. This has led to a drastic reduction in the number of files exchanged by email. At the same time, Klaxoon has optimised the integration of its solutions with Teams.
It's a commonplace in business life: more is often said around the coffee machine than in the meeting room. However, with current changes in working habits - more video-conferencing, fewer short-term business trips - the opportunities for these informal discussions between colleagues could be increasingly limited. La Vitre is able to overcome the constraints of distance by 'teleporting' an employee from one site to another using touch screens. Equipped with microphones and cameras, this technology enables face-to-face conversations to take place on the same level, as if the parties were physically next door. The solution also offers the option of sharing a smartphone or computer screen, images or videos. It's a practical, high-tech way to take virtual coffee breaks or have a quick debriefing after a meeting, while breaking down distance and language barriers, with instant translation in 60 languages.
