Audi, Re-generate Planet, change perspective towards the mobility of the future

According to the sociologist Francesco Morace, it is not so much the speed with which one arrives at the change that matters, but the timeliness of one’s intervention, understood as a response in the right place and at the right time. “We need to grasp the best the time of opportunity: giving a timely response means giving it at the right time and in the right place. In some cases, this also means slow down, as we did during the lockdown. It is this difference between speed and timeliness: things must be done immediately, but giving relevance to what you are doing“.

To be able to keep up with the changes, the secret is to focus on the ones that are there needs of the new generations: “THE young they have a approach totally different and innovative in their way of experiencing mobility. For this we must try to orient ourselves in a different way and think, for example, of machines that communicate with the new infrastructures. The automotive sector must become a glue, a incubator for new realities”, Continues Longo.

Among the challenges that the automotive industry has to face there is also that of an ethical use of new technologies: “Everything that revolves aroundartificial intelligence, such as autonomous driving, for example, technologically already exists. We are getting closer to reality transmission on the roads of autonomous driving – Longo continues –. From an institutional point of view, the rules that govern it are still missing: if the machine knows, on a predictive level, that it is about to crash, and has to decide whether to go against an elderly man or a child, is this a technological decision? No it’s ethics ”.

Exit the comfort zone

Thinking outside the box leaving the comfort zone is the style that best represents the business of Audi Denkwerkstatt, the Berlin-based hub, led for the past four years by Tim Miksche, who took part in the debate on the H-Farm campus. “We have to reconsider, rethink, revive, redesign, only in this way can we regenerate – urges Miksche -. With our work, we empower people to change and create new sustainable business models“.

Audi Denkwerkstatt has started a collaboration with Techstars, a startup accelerator. The partnership resulted in the establishment of the Founder Innovation Labwhich will undertake the development of two programs, a pre-accelerator and an accelerator, respectively for new talents and for startups already underway.