The German car manufacturer Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is involved in a blockchain-based process of tracking the distance traveled by the rented cars.
The first startup company to work with BMW Group UK was DOVU. This has been involved in the development of a “system with Alphabet“, aimed at encouraging drivers to fully record the mileage of the rented cars.
The purposes of such projects are to understand how important the vehicle is for the customer and to analyze the impact of improvements on several factors, according to Alex Morris’s explanation.
Asked by CoinDesk, DOVU head of product stated that:
“What we’re doing is we’re essentially trying to build out this circular economy on the DOVU platform. [Drivers] can earn tokens, but down the line they’ll also be able to spend tokens on services – for example, they might be able to get replacement tires or something like that using the Dovu ecosystem. The partner, in this case BMW, defined the categorization of the reward and that’s defined in a smart contract. As long as the parameters are met for the smart contract, they’ll receive tokens.”
Thus, the BMW giant is structuring modal rewards based on mileage. Alex Morris says that automatic tracking isn’t appropriate for this purpose, because the information gathered is not a generalization of the activities carried out by drivers.
Through the new pilot project, BMW asks drivers who rent cars to follow a few simple steps in order to record the distance traveled weekly, which further will be stored on the DOVU network.
“Right now mileage is the most important factor for the resale value of their vehicles. The problem is quite an important one for them to solve, so when we suggested tokens to incentivize them to do that they were very excited,” added Morris.
The company is ready to test the blockchain platform
According to Max Lomuscio, DOVU has successfully completed the proof-of-concept part, and now, the startup is ready to start the practical part, which is the real testing period. This stage is expected to last about 6-8 weeks.
According to Morris, “the plan is to become this kind of ubiquitous rewards system that can work across vehicles, make some kind of unified wallet for token rewards that you can use on your BMW, but maybe jump into your second car and earn more tokens and then spend those throughout the ecosystem.”
In addition to working with the BMW giant, DOVU is planning to become a partner with “smart city environments” in order to integrate the reward system into as many public transits as possible.
