Highlights from Drive Sweden Forum and Annual General Meeting

Mattias Landgren, State Secretary to the minister for infrastructure, highlighted how Drive Sweden has become a great arena for collaboration – a crucial player for helping Sweden staying at the forefront of innovation.

“Drive Sweden attracts different nationalities and stakeholders and they all take part of the Swedish model. Our method of collaboration is how we build innovation, new technology and the success of this country,” said Mattias Landgren, State Secretary to the minister for infrastructure.

Landgren also saw Drive Sweden as a great host to tackle the mobility challenges of the future and new sustainability goals:
“We need to transform in order to survive. And Drive Sweden is a perfect example of how we can come together and discuss, exchange ideas and collaborate,” said Landgren and claimed that the government is determined to push forward on legislation in order to keep up with the new business models and technology within our industry.

New steps within Society planning

All of Drive Sweden’s thematic areas were represented on stage. Within one of them, Society Planning, a panel discussion was held with Lars Backström, CEO Västtrafik, Peter Kisch, Head of Future by Lund and Malin Andersson, Head of Department at the Urban Transport Administration in Gothenburg. They discussed how technology development can help contribute to reaching societal goals.

The importance of placing the end-users at the center of this development became obvious since the need for their understanding of new technology is pivotal. But explaining new technology can be tricky. 

Presentations and results

During the day, the audience was presented with news and results on the digital future of mobility, new business models, upcoming steps within policy development, the new mobility service LIMA, status of a national ticketing system for all transit in Sweden, the future of control towers & connected automated trucks and more. You can find the presentations at the bottom of this page.

Networking opportunities

In our growing collaboration the opportunities to network and cooperate is ever-growing. Now, at more than 140 partners, the possibilities are greater than ever. Two of our newer partners, Atlatec and Univrses, were visible on stage and at the exhibition. Here are their input on what the forum and Drive Sweden means to them:

“Drive Sweden offers fantastic networking opportunities. Bringing the great and the good of Swedish mobility together in one place is a great way to find out the latest developments and to promote our technology to the community,” says Jonathan Selbie, CEO of Univrses and adds:

“Participating in the Drive Sweden partnership has given a new perspective to our work. We feel that much more connected to the Swedish mobility community which presents opportunities for development and for collaboration.”

Tom Dahlström, Business Development Manager at Atlatec, visited the forum as a partner company for the first time and appreciated the arena:

“As a mapping company we focus on projects that can be on the more innovative side of things, like modern ADAS features or self-driving vehicles. Drive Sweden seems to gather exactly the kind of stakeholders who are interested in exploring new ideas – we trust this will make for productive conversations that benefit all parties."

”As a new member we hope to connect with some of the projects for 2020 which can make use of HD road maps and are curious to find out more about other members' ideas on how to best leverage such data,” Tom Dahlström concludes.

International outlooks

As Drive Sweden is increasing its work internationally, an international outlook was also on the agenda. Olle Eriksson, head of Transport & Automotive at Ericsson introduced our collaboration with Singapore and showed how it can help Sweden to contribute to common sustainability goals. 

The audience also got a comprehensive take on what is on the global agenda when Martin Jönsson, Global Business Developer at Business Sweden, summarized a number of studies on the automotive industry. Jönsson showed the global mega trends and pointed out that sustainability, collaboration and regionalization are trends specifically found in Europe. This both strengthens the work being carried out within Drive Sweden and can give indications for future projects.

Thematic areas’ workshops

The day before and after the forum we arranged workshops focusing on our thematic areas . The workshops resulted in ideas for new projects and let different stakeholders work together around joint challenges and needs. The workshops also provided opportunities to discuss and influence the aims of Drive Sweden. Our ambition is now to continue the thematic workshops during the coming years and we will refine both working methods and the project ideas.

We would like to thank everyone who participated during these days, the participants, the almost 30 speakers and panelists, the exhibitors and the host Chalmers.

/Drive Sweden

Trends and observations
Business Models
Connected Automated Truck & Control Towers
Digital Infrastructure
Guidance to AVs
Implications of Global Mega Trends on the Automotive Industry
LIMA
A National Ticketing System
Policy Development
Public Engagement