SEAT will present a future concept of the SEAT Ateca with Smart City Connectivity, called Ateca Smart City Car, which is able to collect information from its surroundings using tracking sensors and share it with other users via the Parkfinder app, which has been developed by the company and CARNET – the research and innovation hub set up in Barcelona.
Through an agreement reached with the Barcelona Council and Cellnex Telecom, this pioneering project enables the SEAT Ateca Smart City Car to transmit information on available parking spaces to the city of Barcelona’s iCity platform.
At the same time, this server distributes the information to the Parkfinder app and displays their location to urban drivers on a map.
There are three possible driver profile configurations – close to home, close to work, and a personalised third option. For each of these profiles, the user can organise preferences according to distance, price and the likelihood of finding parking more quickly.
In addition, it includes functions such as “Find my car”, which displays where the car is parked, and “Last Mile Routing”, which maps out the distance on foot to the final destination.
Visitors to the Smart City Expo World Congress, which is being held in Barcelona from tomorrow to Thursday 17 November, can view this concept of the Ateca, which points towards its future potential.
According to Fabian Simmer, SEAT’s Chief Digital Officer, “nearly 30% of traffic in major European cities involves drivers looking for a place to park. The Ateca Smart City Car and the Parkfinder app display the most convenient route to follow to reduce the time spent looking for a parking space, with the subsequent reduction of emissions, noise and traffic congestion in cities”.
At a stand located in pavilion 2C of the Barcelona Fair’s Gran Vía facilities, which will heavily feature SEAT’s concept of Easy mobility by way of solutions created to make life easier for users in an urban environment, the company will reveal its latest technological innovations on display in the Smart City territory.
In addition to unveiling the Ateca at the Smart City Congress, which SEAT is sponsoring as a Global Partner, SEAT will present the Digital Sharing app, which has been developed for sharing economy environments, or peer-to-peer sharing.
The app works as a digital key that enables carsharing in private and corporate environments.
Intelligent mobility – topic of the Dialogue Session between Luca de Meo and Carlo Ratti
Tomorrow, on the first day of the congress, SEAT will feature in one of the scheduled Dialogue Sessions in an encounter between company President Luca de Meo and Italian architect, engineer and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Senseable City Lab, Carlo Ratti.
Under the heading “The future of urban mobility”, both will discuss several challenges linked to urban mobility of the future, taking into account the influence of the sharing economy culture, which is gaining widespread popularity among consumers.
SEAT’s participation at this benchmark international smart city event consolidates its commitment to developing new mobility solutions where the connected car enhances user experience, making it easier and more flexible. In an environment of disruptive changes, such as the ones the sector is going to undergo in the next decade, SEAT is eager to become a leading brand in the field of connectivity and digitisation.
Therefore, it is committed to moving towards new business to be able to deal with the challenges posed by urban infrastructures, traffic systems and vehicles in cities.
SEAT is the only company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets cars in Spain. A member of the Volkswagen Group, the multinational has its headquarters in Martorell (Barcelona), exporting more than 80% of its vehicles, and is present in over 75 countries.
In 2015, SEAT’s turnover amounted to over 8.3 billion euros, the highest in its history, and the company achieved worldwide sales of more than 400,000 units for the first time since 2007.
SEAT Group employs more than 14,000 professionals at its three production centres – Barcelona, El Prat de Llobregat and Martorell, where it manufactures the highly successful Ibiza and Leon.
Additionally, the company produces the Ateca and the Toledo in the Czech Republic, the Alhambra in Portugal and the Mii in Slovakia.
The multinational has a Technical Centre, which operates as a knowledge hub that brings together 1,000 engineers who are focussed on developing innovation for Spain’s largest industrial investor in R&D.
SEAT already features the latest connectivity technology in its vehicle range and is currently engaged in the company’s global digitisation process to promote the mobility of the future.
