The newest Road Revolution: Car as a Service

摘要

Since the invention of the first modern automobile, dated back in 1886 with the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, cars have experienced a continuous and endless evolution. This trend is still currently ongoing but, despite a tremendous technical improvement, during the last century cars have always been conceived as a means of transportation. Fast, reliable, efficient, ecological and even self-driving but the main purpose has always been transportation: now, with the arrival on the road of the Internet of Things (IoT), cars are next to a major conceptual revolution. This paper introduces in fact the concept of car as a service: it will offer a preliminary description of how sensors, actuators and radio-devices are going to transform these vehicles into a means to provide multiple services - not only transportation - both to the passengers and to the community, within the bigger framework of the Smart Cities.