Note: this post was written for Bridgestone EMIA in January 2022.
2022 promises to be an exciting year for the world of mobility
When the Covid-19 pandemic took hold around two years ago, many automotive and mobility companies had to scale down their ambitious future plans to focus on the challenge at hand. Today, many businesses are reactivating and often even accelerating these plans as the global outlook improves while major societal challenges remain. As a result, we expect 2022 to be an exciting year for the world of mobility in which we take another big step towards the safer, greener and more efficient transport of people and goods.
Smart and context aware
With 90% of all new vehicles being natively connected, 5G finding its way to the market and artificial intelligence reaching its tipping point, we expect many smart innovations to hit the market this year. In 2022, Level 3 autonomous driving will formally see the light of day, predictive maintenance will increasingly become a mainstream offering and traffic and navigation systems will become more context aware and anticipative. At Bridgestone, we are also committed to making mobility smarter by developing an exciting portfolio of advanced tyre solutions for safer and more sustainable operations including our tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), tyre-mounted sensors and state-of-the-art algorithms.
Open and integrated
The global pandemic and the blocking of the Suez Canal last year showed how fragile our global supply chains can be. As a result, in 2022 we will see more collaboration and system integration along value chains to gradually establish true end-to-end and near real-time supply chain visibility. This will enable companies globally to better plan their operations and react more swiftly to disruptions in the market. At Bridgestone, we also wish to contribute to improved supply chains by integrating, for example, our fleet management solution WEBFLEET with project44, a leading supply chain visibility platform, enabling our fleet customers to easily share their location and other data in real-time with their partners in a compliant way.
Green and lean
Last year’s renewed global ambition to combat climate change put sustainability at the top of virtually every company’s agenda. In the world of mobility, we believe this ambition will translate into numerous things, including record-breaking electric vehicle sales (EVs), hydrogen fuel cells gaining increased attention, shared and micro-mobility initiatives reviving in cities around the world and last-mile freight consolidation finally becoming a reality. In 2022, Bridgestone will continue to contribute to supporting greener mobility by helping our customers transition to and manage an EV fleet more easily with data-driven insights, on top of bringing green technologies to our tyre line-up.
So, buckle up and join us for an exciting year in which we all will take a major step forward towards the future of mobility, together!