E-buses, e-tickets, on-demand, autonomous – and HR

Industry meeting mobility move sold out for the brand premiere

“We are delighted with the great response to our completely redesigned industry meeting mobility move – with around 1,400 participants and 90 exhibitors we are almost fully booked. These numbers once again exceed those of the last previous event, the Electric Bus Conference, and show that the further development of content around the future topics of human resources, autonomous driving and ticketing is the right thing to do,” said Vice President Werner Overkamp. The mobility move is all about networking in road-based public transport on the road. “Electromobility and autonomous driving only work as networked systems anyway. The same applies to demand-controlled transport as well as to digital passenger information and ticketing. Despite all the technology, it is obvious that skilled workers are needed for this - and we are taking this important aspect into account in our own forum," says Overkamp. The mobility move will take place from March 5th to 7th at Estrel Berlin.

The record number of 20 electric vehicles at the trade fair - including those with fuel cells or autonomous ones - shows that the core of the event, electromobility, is in greater demand than ever. But electrification goes hand in hand with the digitalization of the industry - especially in ticketing: For the first time, the experts from the “Kontiki” association are organizing their conference as part of mobility move. The neutral association of transport companies and associations, public authorities, IT, industrial and consulting companies has set itself the goal of driving forward digitalization in public transport: It relies on interoperable, standardized and, above all, customer-friendly solutions.

Federal funding vs. transformation
“mobility move has the potential to become the public transport specialist event of transformation. However, the success of the industry meeting cannot hide the political standstill in the urgently needed e-bus funding: around 50,000 public buses are in use in Germany - over 6,000 e-buses are currently in regular public transport operation or have been ordered. The rate of over twelve percent of emission-free buses is more than three times higher than for electric cars. Even if public transport is the market leader in fleet conversion, it is foreseeable that the market ramp-up will be slowed down. “Everyone can calculate what the massive cuts in the 2024 federal budget in e-bus funding and their prospective expiry mean for the changeover in municipalities and for the federal government’s climate protection goals,” says Overkamp. The mobility move was organized by the VDV Academy and the Forum for Transport and Logistics was co-initiated by the DEVK.