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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - USharePark (USharePark: smart secUres system to SHARE PARKing places in private garages)

Teaser

Summary

Nowadays, 30% of the traffic in urban areas is caused by drivers who are looking for a space to park their vehicles. At the same time, everyday people leave their parking spaces to go to their jobs or any other duties and other parking resources are as well underused. The usage of these spaces could be optimised by means of a system which determines when a space is empty and informs drivers about its availability.
USharePark satisfies these needs, allowing drivers to enjoy the service without needing any kind of currency or keys to operate, providing on-demand operations, and guaranteeing a safe and easy way to park their vehicles, while the owners receive an extra income for renting their parking spaces when are unused.
Three innovative Spanish companies, Ayanet, Garage Scanner and AGMSOFT (the latter joined the consortium after the Phase I submission) have put their expertise together to develop and bring to market this solution. The idea was initiated by the CEO of Garage Scanner in 2015 with the aim of providing a tool for drivers and owners to optimize the way they use the available private parking spaces in their cities.
Our specific objectives are: Improve the current HW version of our solution by providing it with advanced features which will support more functionality, develop the correspondent firmware that will operate the HW inside the RGSs, develop new SW applications to interact with the users both via web and mobile devices, deploy the business project in the key geographical locations, manage the maximum number of parking spaces in the cities where Garage Scanner is deployed through commercial actions and keep a high level of quality, usability and availability of our system by improving and/or updating its parts (both HW and SW).
Our overall goal is to reach key cities in Europe and the US based on the potential benefit of each location. The total smart parking revenue in these areas is estimated at â‚¬6.14 billion in 2014 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.9% to reach â‚¬38.17 billion in 2025. Top global companies and administrations are showing interest in form of investments, strategic alliances and new products and services. These facts suppose potential opportunities for smart parking solutions like USharePark.

Work performed

Conduct in-depth market research for each potential location: This research included regulations, social context, competitors, prices and also optimistic, pessimistic and realistic economical estimations of our business project. Altogether, this research allowed us defining the most suitable locations to address as initial key goals.
Analysis of pilot experience: We deployed our pilot in a city with 666,058 inhabitants in December 2015. With an initial agreement for managing 600 of his parking spaces, in less than 3 months we almost triple this amount. In the same period we multiplied by 5 the number of users to more than 1,000, and also multiplied by 9 the number of daily rents. Feedback and acceptation from users is being positive.
Technological surveillance: This task helped us to strategically address the processes of research and technological development in our project; it is based on the fact that technology is a key factor in the competitiveness of our company, therefore, knowledge of technological advances, in all its components, is an essential asset for progressing with more certainty in the identification of gaps and challenges.
Design customised business plans for each aimed market: These plans included a marketing plan, the operational strategy and a review of risks.
Financial plan: This plan covers the comprehensive evaluation of our companyâ€™s current and future financial status by using current known variables to predict future income, asset values and withdrawal plans. This assessment helped us to evaluate the financial risks that we could face in the deployment of our solution in the targeted cities.
IP and regulation strategy: This task is intended to exactly define and design the strategy that protects our product and knowledge from being used or copied by other players, as well as reviewing the potential constraints that we could face in form of regulatory issues. The main part of our product, the Remote Gate System or RGS, is protected by a patent and further PCT applications are being developed. Besides, the trade secrets and know-how that our company possess will not be disclosed, aiming to maximise our competitive advantage.
Set the technical and commercial implementation work plan and budget: We must be ready to uptake the international market in less than 2 years, so we designed the work plan and budget according to this condition. This international deployment will be started at the end of the Phase II of the SME Instrument.

Final results

Our benefit is estimated at â‚¬4.4 million by the fifth year with a total income of about â‚¬22 million, according to our calculations and the gathered information about global smart parking market economics. This estimation is based on a conservative prediction about market, with a penetration of only 0.36% the first year, and growing at a CAGR of 88% on average the first 5 years, reaching a market share of 4.56%. During years 1 and 2 our activity will be focused in Europe, and from year 3 onwards, we will deploy our system across key cities in the US.
We also analysed the break-even point in the deployment of our business innovation project. This break-even point is reached in the fourth year of the market introduction of USharePark and then the investment is recovered. The ROI makes up 0.44. We estimated as well the overall turnover of our three companies and which impact of the sale of the USharePark solution would have. The personnel will be increased by 25% per year in the three companies in the consortium, according to the growing volume of work.
Regarding the environmental benefits, in 2012, the EU alone generated 4,683 million tons of CO2, from which 7.2% (337 million tons) came from particular cars in urban areas. About 30% of this pollution, or 100 million tons, was caused by drivers looking for a space to park. This is the same amount of CO2 that, for example, Austria together with Croatia emitted in that year.
By means of an optimisation tool like USharePark, we could avoid the disposal of hundred millions tons of polluting gases to the environment every year. In fact, our product moves forward the same goals that the European Commission addresses in many initiatives in its agenda, e.g.: reduction of polluting gases and noise pollution, directly related to environmental matters; optimization of public roads, which relates to mobility defies; minimization of time effort for drivers, which contributes to life quality; economical profit for users by saving money, and for owners which easily monetize their empty parking spaces; and generation of a commercial activity and the correspondent taxes, contributing to employment and economy.