Business Finland – Future Mobility Finland

KONE’s Veturi Program: Building a Sustainable Urban Future

A Four-Year Journey of Innovation with 200 Partners

In 2020, KONE launched the “Flow of Urban Life” Veturi ecosystem program, addressing urbanization and sustainability challenges. Supported by EUR 20 million from Business Finland, the program brought together 200 companies, resulting in over a hundred patent applications.

“The Veturi program helped us find high-tech partners to co-create solutions for the physical and digital world. Business Finland and other leading companies, such as Nokia, Wärtsilä and Meyer Turku, have been important players. We have also collaborated with top universities and researchers who are experts in studying smart and sustainable cities,” says Tomio Pihkala, Chief Technology Officer at KONE.

Key Achievements and Innovations

Increased R&D Investments: KONE’s Veturi program has generated new knowledge and innovations in several key technology areas, promoting the development of Finnish expertise and companies in the field of smart and sustainable cities. KONE’s R&D investments in Finland grew by 7% annually, especially in AI, digital twins, and data analytics.
KONE SiteFlow: This construction management application was tested in industry projects, winning the Council of Tall Buildings Innovation Award in 2024.
Digital Twin Concept: Enhances urban commuting by simulating people flow in transport hubs.

Ongoing Innovation

“Research collaboration provided us with a vision of the future, an idea of where the world is going – a vision to create smart construction and sustainable urban environments for the future, for example. Now we have a better understanding of customer needs and emerging technologies. We received a lot of support from external partners that helped us develop the technologies used in our future products,” says Janne Öfversten, digital innovation lead at KONE.

As a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, KONE moves two billion people every day, making their journeys safe, convenient, and reliable with smart and sustainable People Flow®. KONE’s purpose is to shape the future of cities.

Year of foundation: 1910

Sales: ~€11 billion (in 2023)

Personnel: over 60,000, of which 2,582 are based in Finland

The mission of KONE’s Veturi program, The Flow of Urban Life (2021–2024), was to develop smooth and sustainable services and solutions for the next 1 billion people moving into cities by 2030, helping to ease some of the major challenges caused by urbanization and climate change.

KONE’s Veturi program also seeks to create new business for the ecosystem partners and KONE worth a total of EUR 1 billion in the coming years.

Electrifying the Grid: How VIRTA Transforms Electric Cars into Virtual Power Plants

Virta, a frontrunner in electric vehicle charging platforms, collaborates with Business Finland, benefitting from innovation funding and loans for its R&D efforts. Now entering a phase of swift international growth, Virta’s latest endeavor aims to integrate EV batteries into the power grid, addressing the surging need for energy flexibility.

Virta’s Grid Innovation: Revolutionizing Energy Balance with EV Charging Networks

Virta is redefining the electricity market’s approach to maintaining balance between production and demand, especially in the face of challenges introduced by the proliferation of variable renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. Traditionally, imbalances were addressed by ramping up or down the output of hydroelectric and thermal power plants, a solution that, while effective, is increasingly seen as cumbersome and less sustainable. Virta’s innovative solution harnesses the power of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, connecting them into a unified demand response reserve. This network is capable of reacting in real-time to disturbances in the grid, ensuring stability and continuity without the need for additional, heavy-duty power plants. By leveraging this technology, Virta supports a more responsive and resilient energy system, tailored to the complexities of modern electricity markets.

Pioneering Sustainable Mobility: Virta’s Bidirectional Charging and Global Vision

Beyond merely offering a sophisticated charging platform, Virta is pioneering the integration of bidirectional charging technology to further bridge the gap between sustainable mobility and energy systems. This approach allows the battery capacity of EVs to be aggregated and utilized as a flexible energy resource, capable of feeding power back into the grid during times of need. Such innovation not only circumvents the slow and capital-intensive process of bringing new power plants online but also aligns with Virta’s mission since its inception in 2013: to expedite the transition to sustainable mobility and energy systems. With ambitions to lead the service platform market in Europe and Southeast Asia, Virta is not just addressing today’s energy challenges but is laying the groundwork for a future where electric transport and energy sustainability are deeply interconnected, driving both profitability and ecological preservation.

Founded in Helsinki in 2013
One of the world’s leading digital EV charging platforms that enables charging point owners, such as large charging networks and retail chains, to manage their charger networks and turn the provision of EV charging services into a business
Employs more than 230 people (January 2024)
Holds the largest number of software patents related to the integration of EV charging and the energy system in the industry globally.
Estimated turnover in 2023 close to EUR 80 million
Average annual growth in turnover (CAGR) 119% between 2014 and 2022
More than 1,000 B2B customers with more than 100,000 charging points in 36 countries (January 2024)
The service allows you to charge your electric car at over 500,000 charging points in more than 60 countries (January/2024)
Key markets and personnel: Finland (headquarters), Nordic countries, DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), France, UK and Ireland, South-East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia), Romania (2nd technology unit)

Read the original article about Virta oy on the Business Finland website here

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Business Finland aims to make Finland a globally recognized provider of sustainable, carbon-neutral solutions for cities

The Decarbonized Cities Program launched by Business Finland on April 18, 2023 aims to make Finland a globally recognized provider of sustainable, carbon-neutral solutions for cities. The program helps Finnish companies and organizations to find international cooperation and business partners. New exports are estimated to amount to several billion euros.

Smart solutions and sustainability principles drive global urban development

Urban development has a significant impact on climate change: cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and account for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. In the near future, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. The largest challenges in urban environments are related to the built environment, energy, and traffic. From the point of view of the cities of the future, the utilization of digitalization and data as well as new business models have great potential.

Most major cities in Europe and in many other OECD countries have set a challenging goal to become carbon neutral by 2030 or 2035. The EU has selected 100 cities to implement the EU’s Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities mission. Six of these are located in Finland: Espoo, Helsinki, Lahti, Lappeenranta, Tampere, and Turku. The goal of the mission is to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 through developing smart and sustainable solutions.

Decarbonized Cities Program In a Nutshell

The aim is to help Finnish companies and other stakeholders to create new business and networks by solving urban carbon-neutrality issues.
The program will increase and strengthen the multisectoral supply and expertise that cities need to manage their CO2 emissions and energy transition today and tomorrow.
Long-term relationships with foreign cities are established in terms of both innovation and business.
New Finnish exports will amount to EUR 3 billion.
The program will involve close collaboration with selected domestic and foreign cities, large and small companies, researchers, and other stakeholders.
The program will focus on comprehensive solutions instead of partial solutions.
EUR 150 million will be allocated to the development and modification of solutions.
The program will run until 2028.

A Unique Living Lab Environment In Tampere For Urban Transport

Business Finland is funding Tampereen Raitiotie Oy’s Lyyli Living Lab development environment through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funding program, which is part of the Sustainable Growth Program for Finland. Lyyli Living Lab is an inclusive RDI environment for the development, validation, and the acquisition of market references of sustainable, rail-based, smart urban transport technologies and services.

Lyyli Living Lab is a real-life development and test environment for urban transport products and services. At its core, it is a tram car equipped with exceptional measurement devices, IT connections, and a data management and analytics system.

Operations started in Tampere in early 2022.
Lyyli Living Lab is an open piloting, development, and validation environment that invites Finnish and international operators to join its partner company network and to use its services by submitting an application to Tampereen Raitiotie Oy and agreeing on a partnership fee corresponding to their chosen participation period.
The operations of the Lyyli Living Lab development environment are steered by the TURMS innovation cluster, which is financed through partnership fees and Business Finland’s funding that will continue to the end of 2025.
The steering group of the innovation cluster includes Tampereen Raitiotie Oy, Skoda Transtech, Business Finland, Business Tampere, City of Tampere, VTT, and the University of Tampere.
Business Finland has granted EUR 366,000 to the rail transport laboratory. In addition, Business Finland has granted funding to the SmartRail ecosystem.

RRF FUNDING IN A KEY ROLE

Lyyli Living Lab is designed to meet the needs of companies as well as public, research, and other organizations that develop transport and mobility technologies and services. These companies and organizations are partners in the TURMS innovation cluster and use the RDI environment.

TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

Business Finland’s cooperation with Tampereen Raitiotie demonstrates that it is able to fund activities that differ from conventional research and development activities also through innovation clusters, for example. The potential for similar arrangements may also exist elsewhere.

The main goal of Business Finland is to make the group of organizations participating in the ecosystem more international.

RRF – 5G/6G, AI, Quantum – development environments and microelectronics

For 2023, Business Finland will open a new funding call for projects aimed at building or developing test, pilot, research, and innovation infrastructures that promote the development of 6G, AI, and quantum computing and advancing microelectronics.

For more information, please contact us or leave a message in the online customer service with the identifier RRF – 5G/6G, AI, Quantum – development environments and microelectronics.

The Sustainable Growth Program for Finland related to the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) aims to accelerate the development of competitiveness, investments, increased competence levels, and research, development, and innovation. It specifically focuses on promoting the green transition and the digital change.

Olavi Keränen
Business Finland
olavi.keranen (at) businessfinland.fi

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