AFRY assessed a complete Mobility Ecosystem Solution
Product & Software Engineering + Management Consulting Division at AFRY joined forces in a Vendor Technical Due Diligence
National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) retained AFRY Management Consulting to perform a Vendor Technical Due Diligence assessment evaluating NEVS's PONS Mobility Solution (https://www.nevs.com/en/pons/).
NEVS is a Swedish-Chinese developer and producer of electric vehicles that was established through the acquisition of Swedish automobile manufacturer Saab’s main assets in 2012. NEVS vision is to develop sustainable, electric shared mobility solutions equipped with autonomous drive systems. Therefore, NEVS is currently working on the PONS Mobility Solution, which is primarily a connected transport ecosystem enabling Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
In 2020, NEVS launched a vehicle optimized for autonomous and shared mobility. The vehicle is designed for maximization of interior space, highest comfort, excellent maneuverability, highest utilization rates and seating modularity to accommodate for private, social or family offerings.
Besides the vehicle called “Sango”, the PONS Mobility Solution comprises the fleet management system “Koro”, and the user interfaces “Okulo” and “Spinion” (infrastructure platform).
The Sango vehicle is a “robo-taxi” developed for shared mobility service, with reliability, safety, and privacy as core attributes. It is based on a design optimised for shared mobility in city environments. Its design allows for flexible utilisation, adapting to the passengers’ transport needs.
Koro is the digital platform responsible for orchestrating maintenance, operations, data and back-office services of the PONS Mobility Solution. The platform coordinates customer demand and rides offered, follows up on the vehicle status and optimises the route selection considering real time traffic flow. It ultimately impacts both customer experience and fleet operations.
Okulo includes all omnichannel digital interfaces for users and customers. The mobile app covers the whole customer journey, from booking to payment where personalised user settings and support are offered. There also is a fleet management and customer interface in the system.
Spinon is the interface to the surrounding infrastructure, such as charging stations, cleaning stations and real-time traffic information.
In addition to this, AFRY also assessed materials, sustainability, manufacturing capabilities, NEVS’s operating model (ways of working), as well as the overarching topline business plan (capex and opex).
As a next step, AFRY explored alternatives from today’s technological/legal standpoints and future technology development as well as capex/opex perspectives. This led to several recommendations and alternative future roadmaps.
The AFRY team, comprising of senior professionals with extensive experience in Technical Due Diligences and Automotive R&D (including autonomous driving vehicles), is listed below. Supervision of the project was done by Kai Karring, Managing Director and Head of AFRY’s transaction service line, together with Johan Andinsson, who is heading Business Development at Business Area Products & Software Engineering. The daily operational project management was performed by Dr. Patrick Gasser, Senior Consultant, MCD Switzerland. NEVS’s CEO and management group were impressed by the results.
In total, 20 persons from BA PSE and MCD over 6 countries during 6 weeks were involved in assessing and creating the 203-page report. AFRY performed 20+ deep dives on different technology areas in this mobility ecosystem.
