Wattpark, Geoflex and Vianova win Software République's “Mobility 4.0 Challenge”

• Atos, Dassault Systèmes, Orange, Renault Group, STMicroelectronics and Thales, members of the Software République, finalized their first open innovation challenge on 16 December 
• Out of 150 applications and 10 finalists, the 3 winning start-ups of the competition are: Wattpark, Geoflex and Vianova
• The 3 winners are invited to join the Software République incubator to accelerate their innovative projects

Paris, December 16, 2021 – The three start-ups Wattpark, Geoflex and Vianova won the first edition of the “Mobility 4.0 Challenge” organised by the Software République, a new European ecosystem for innovation in intelligent mobility. The winners received their trophies by the members of the Jury of the six founding companies with the participation of Cédric O, French Minister of State for Digital.

On 6th September, the members of the Software République launched the “Mobility 4.0 Challenge”, motivated by a common goal: to mobilise the start-up ecosystem around innovation for sustainable mobility. 

After receiving more than 150 projects, 10 finalists were shortlisted by the Software République Jury. By giving them access to the necessary data for their projects and benefiting from the expertise of the six founding companies, the 10 finalists were able to develop their innovative concepts during a prototyping phase which finished early December. 

After deliberation by the Jury, three winning start-ups were rewarded. Wattpark, Geoflex and Vianova have been invited to join the Software République incubator from February 1st, 2022 to bring their project to fruition with the support, expertise and resources of Atos, Dassault Systèmes, Orange, Renault Group, STMicroelectronics and Thales.

The three winning start-ups of the 2021 edition of the “Mobility 4.0 Challenge” are:  

• 1st prize: WATTPARK
  Wattpark is the « Airbnb© of chargers ». It allows owners of charging stations to share and rent it out. It helps drivers locate a charging station, connect to it, and easily pay thereby making the experience of driving an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle stress-free.
• 2nd prize: GEOFLEX 
  Geoflex is a service operator enhancing GPS / GNSS applications to achieve secure and accurate positioning, down to 4 centimeters, on land, at sea and in the air. Geoflex provides universal hyper-geolocation to trains, cars, ships, drones and smartphones, and also for last mile delivery in smart cities.
• 3rd prize: VIANOVA
  Vianova proposes to build a road safety algorithm that could benefit both cities and motorists to identify and be informed in real time of dangerous incidents on the roads or high accident risks in certain areas.

The members of the Jury also nominated three special mentions: Parcoor, Pasqal and Search Mobility.

The jury is composed of representatives from the six members of the Software République: 

• Sophie Proust, EVP Group Chief Technology Officer, Atos Group
• Laurence Montanari, VP Transportation & Mobility Industry, Dassault Systèmes
• Frédéric Vacher, Head of Innovation 3DEXPERIENCE Lab, Dassault Systèmes 
• Jean-Marc Lafond, IoT portfolio Director, Orange Innovation
• Luc Julia, Chief Scientific Director, Renault Group
• Sophie Schmidtlin, VP Research & Advanced Engineering
• Frédérique Le Grevès, Executive Vice President, France Public Affairs, STMicroelectronics & President and CEO, STMicroelectronics France
• Stéphane Royer, Group Chief Data Officer, Thales

For further information about the Mobility 4.0 Challenge: https://www.challenge-software-republique.com/ and related videos on Software République’s YouTube channel.