A mobility hub operating system launched at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by FlashParking could help smart cities turn parking lots into mobility hubs.
 
The single platform lets real estate owners and operators manage mobility hubs that deliver parking plus mobility services.
 
The Texas-based company’s platform can power the evolution of isolated parking assets into connected mobility hubs that are more efficient, intelligent and adaptable than garages and surface lots of the past. At the show, it demonstrated how the operating system offers asset owners and operators a single management platform for increasing parking asset value, diversifying revenue and integrating into smarter cities.
 
The explosion of electric vehicles, ride-sharing services and scooters coupled with the trends of urbanisation, ecommerce, electrification and autonomy requires a significant infrastructure evolution to meet the growing demands of the mobility ecosystem of today and tomorrow. To face this problem head-on, FlashParking is elevating the role of parking assets in smart city environments by empowering them to become modern hubs, where parking, mobility, logistics and transportation intersect.
 
With the operating system, built on Microsoft Azure, asset owners and operators can manage the threshold of these connected mobility hubs through a cloud-based platform that delivers enhanced parking, business intelligence and mobility ecosystem extensibility.
 
“Trends in mobility are moving so fast that if each stakeholder tries to optimise the system for only their best interest, we risk grid-locking our city streets into one giant parking lot,” said Neil Golson, FlashParking executive vice president. “FlashParking’s vision to transform parking assets into mobility hubs that act as congestion capacitors, as multi-modal logistics hubs, and as a marketplace for busy consumers and their autonomous, electric vehicles is a simple and somewhat obvious solution to cleaning up the littered landscape and unlocking the smart city.”
 
The EV charging demo with mobility partner EVgo at CES aimed to show what’s possible with the power of that operating system that is helping build more efficient cities with parking infrastructure at the centre.
 
“As we work with local leaders to bring smart cities to life, integrating new and evolving forms of mobility in a sustainable way is a challenge, and we’re excited to collaborate with FlashParking to deliver enhanced parking and mobility services,” said Cameron Carr, director at Microsoft. “FlashParking’s Azure-based cloud platform delivers an extensible foundation of parking technology, robust business intelligence to inform strategy and the open-API architecture to connect with other smart city infrastructure.”
 
A mobility hub starts with the physical asset: parking garages and lots that have been a part of the city landscape for the last century. For the large part of that century, those parking assets remained isolated and stagnant while innovation in mobility surged – until now. FlashParking’s operating system can be a foundation for these assets to become more than just parking; mobility hubs are configured to offer a strategic set of services based upon platform insight and intelligence.
 
FlashParking’s technology platform is comprised of:

• Mobile-first, cloud-based platform: Dynamic, future-ready system that delivers anytime, anywhere access and visibility across a portfolio for easier management, while a mobile-first approach creates a more modern, enhanced customer experience.
• Real-time visibility and intelligence: Instantaneous insight and intelligence across every asset, from a single-site to an enterprise-level portfolio.
• Frictionless access: Effortless entry and exit.
• Evergreen system: Over-the-air software updates deliver extensibility without any downtime and ensure the operator is running the latest version of the platform.
• Extensible ecosystem of partners: Open-API architecture enables assets to integrate with an ecosystem of partners that offer staging for rideshare companies, charging for electric vehicles, cleaning and servicing, drone launching and landing, and points for delivering.

Founded in 2011, FlashParking has grown to serve thousands of operations, enterprise portfolios and smart cities across the USA. Today, the company is enabling traditional parking assets to evolve into next-generation mobility hubs by implementing future-ready hardware and software infrastructure, a business intelligence engine, and a robust partner ecosystem.