Emerging Blockchain Applications in Mobility: Use Case-Specific Blockchain Types, Consensus Mechanisms, and Implementation Challenges

Introduction

Mobility sector has been recently undergoing major transformations, mainly driven by decarbonization of transport, decentralization of operation, data storage and management, and digitalization of user experience and services. Major sector players across the world have recently started to collaborate to develop integrated novel solutions by adopting promising technologies.

An expanding global nonprofit consortium, Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) is one of the main drivers of digital transformation in the mobility sector. It consists of over 120 member organizations, ranging from vehicle manufacturers (BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Renault, Toyota) to tech companies and consultancies (Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Bosch, IBM, IOTA, Quorum Control and many other), logistics to suppliers, blockchain protocol developers to e-mobility groups, fintech and lenders to insurers, utilities to governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (European Commission and other) and academic/research institutions (IEEE, Ontario Tech University, Texas A&M Transportation Institute and other) collaboratively identifying use cases, forming working groups, developing standards and taking part in field pilots aiming blockchain integration into wide range of mobility use cases.

Throughout the lifetime of a car, around 13 use cases have been identified for blockchain compatible vehicle digital identity. The use cases range from digital vehicle registration to DLT-based vehicle wallet, immutable maintenance and recall records to odometer fraud prevention, electric vehicle (EV) charging to vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services, road usage charge to smart parking management, traffic congestion management to vehicle and trip carbon footprint management, usage-based insurance and transportation services to connected data marketplace, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications to vehicle finance. Blockchain can allow effective, secure and autonomous verification, monitoring, traceability, operational optimization and transactions handling.

Blockchain is not a one-size-fits-all or a silver bullet solution with a single type of implementation that will be beneficial in different conditions, environments, and circumstances. It has several types and design varieties that could be suitable or may not fit based on the considered context of adoption. A careful consideration of the tradeoffs between the implementation dynamics of private, consortium and public blockchains in terms of network access, pseudonymity, authentication, consensus mechanism, security, transaction speed, energy consumption, system costs and individual costs is essential in planning and deployment of novel applications. It is a major challenge for decision makers, technology experts and managers to evaluate and decide on the most suitable blockchain type and design. Moreover, there are inevitable risks that need to be carefully assessed in potential applications.

There is a lack of studies on determining the suitable blockchain types and characteristics based on mobility applications and processes in detail. Furthermore, the possible risks and drawbacks of integration options have not been discussed satisfactorily.

This book chapter is one of the first studies that,

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  investigates blockchain implementation opportunities in detail in mobility,

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  identifies the most suitable blockchain types, consensus algorithms and possible risks specific to each potential mobility use case.

The second section comprehensively explains the potential areas of use of blockchain in current and emerging mobility sector applications; while the third section summarizes the main blockchain types, commonly used consensus mechanisms and associated risks considered in the scope of this work. The fourth section determines use case specific suitable blockchain types and consensus algorithms, together with their risks. The last section summarizes the findings and provides directions for future works.