The MQ! Innovation Summit imagines the world of tomorrow
Only those who let go of what they know will discover new things. Only those who are inquisitive about the future will change it. Only those who never stop asking questions will find new answers. In line with the motto #neverstopquestioning, Audi brings together pioneers, thought leaders, and experts from around the world each year at the MQ! Innovation Summit – an international conference for discussing impetus for the mobility of the future.
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Audi brings the cleverest minds to the innovation summit
At this innovation platform, keynote speakers highlight future themes; in the interactive plenum with 360-degree arena and in specialized workspaces, around 500 unconventional thought leaders from around the world discuss sustainability, electric mobility, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and automated driving. This setting fosters mutual inspiration and the development of new joint ideas that transcend national borders and cross disciplines.
In 2017 and 2018, leading minds from the economic and scientific sectors met in Ingolstadt for the MQ! Innovation Summit to discuss the core question of whether there exists a “mobility quotient (MQ)” in line with the intelligence quotient (IQ). An MQ as a measure of the mobility of a person or an organization, which incorporates not only spatial mobility (in the sense of movement from A to B) into the calculation, but also factors such as time, society, and sustainability. Who can forget how, as keynote speaker at the MQ! Innovation Summit 2017, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak asserted: “How would I define the mobility quotient? As a degree of freedom.”
“Technology is here to serve people. You can sleep in the car, enjoy breakfast in the car, and arrive at work on time.”
- Daizong Liu
Giving global mobility a new direction
Most recently, visionaries from around the world came together in Beijing, China, in 2019. How do we create trust in autonomous driving? How do we handle the associated ethical challenges? Which services would users like to see in autonomous cars? What does the correct charging infrastructure look like for electric cars in the world’s big cities? How is the mobile ecosystem developing in China? And how do we use swarm intelligence and augmented reality? These were just a few of the central questions at the innovation summit. And there was a great deal of inspiration here.
From Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, for instance, author of the book “AI Superpowers,” who has been researching artificial intelligence for 40 years. “With autonomous driving, we will save up to 9% of total human time on earth. That’s a huge saving.”
The vision of Daizong Liu of the World Resources Institute is that autonomous vehicles will be used in a considerably more varied way than mere transportation. “Technology is here to serve people. You can sleep in the car, enjoy breakfast in the car, and arrive at work on time.”
Biohacker and future researcher Dr. Patrick Kramer even thinks that the technology of the future will be able to augment people with additional functions, similar to an upgrade: “Cause a connected human is a concept that allows us to live more intensively. Connecting to robots is something that we are going to learn to be natural.”
With solar panels “to go,” entrepreneur Caritta Seppä is pursuing the concept of fully independent and sustainable energy provision: “Our vision is to ensure that every human would be the masters of their own energy field. I am passionate about bringing energy mobile – bringing energy to everyone.”
Driving to a more sustainable future
Innovation has always been at the heart of everything we do, but now it’s about taking progress in a new direction. Learn more about our path to a more sustainable mobility.
“Our vision is to ensure that every human would be the masters of their own energy field. I am passionate about bringing energy mobile – bringing energy to everyone.”
“With autonomous driving, we will save up to 9% of total human time on earth. That’s a huge saving.”
“Cause a connected human is a concept that allows us to live more intensively. Connecting to robots is something that we are going to learn to be natural.”
Audi is making a sustainable commitment to ideas that will change the world
It will remain fascinating to see the direction that technology and mobility will take in the future – from intelligent vehicles to cyborgs. Pioneering impetus for an intensive discussion on various aspects of a sustainable society will always be required.
After all, in a world that is constantly transforming, the question of what will sustainably motivate people in a digital future will continue to throw up more questions than answers. For this reason, the preparations for the MQ! Innovation Summit 2020 are already underway.
Let’s drive to a more sustainable future
Our path to a more sustainable future is fully-electric. Join us on our path - and learn more about electric mobility at Audi.
