The cities of Markham and Vaughan are house to the brand new $7.3-million Demonstration Zone, the newest addition to the Ontario Automobile Innovation Community
The Ontario authorities introduced right now it’s investing $2.5 million by way of the Ontario Automobile Innovation Community (OVIN) to launch a Demonstration Zone for automotive and mobility options within the cities of Markham and Vaughan.
An extra $3.4 million in private-sector funding and $1.4 million from the host municipalities deliver the undertaking’s whole capitalization to $7.3 million.
The OVIN Demonstration Zone will function a platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the province to check, pilot and showcase improvements, equivalent to electrical automobile developments, built-in mobility options, robotics, and related and autonomous automobile (CAV) applied sciences in real-world environments.
“What the demonstration zone will do is allow Ontario companies as part of the commercialization process to use real infrastructure, to use real railways and to use real sidewalks or whatever the case may be, to showcase how their technology works,” says Raed Kadri, head of OVIN, in an interview with Electrical Autonomy.
“The purpose of the demonstration zone is to really act as a lighthouse that the world knows that all of these companies in Ontario have created the best technology.”
Why Vaughan and Markham?
OVIN is an initiative began by the Ontario authorities in 2021, as a successor to the Autonomous Automobile Innovation Community (AVIN). Its mandate is to assist the province turn into a worldwide chief within the automotive sector by constructing a strong ecosystem and attracting investments.
The Ontario authorities’s funding for the Demonstration Zone is a part of its four-year, $56.4-million dedication to OVIN.
Beforehand, the town of Stratford served as an indication zone below AVIN, permitting the testing of automobiles, autonomous expertise, and associated infrastructure in stay, on-street situations. When AVIN concluded, the zone undertaking got here to an finish as nicely.
Final fall, OVIN launched a aggressive course of to seek out hosts for its new demonstration zone. Markham and Vaughan had been chosen as a result of each cities have a rising inhabitants and are shortly urbanizing their metropolis centres.
“The city of Vaughan and the city of Markham are rapidly transitioning from suburban to urban. We are seeing densification we’re seeing condos built, we’re seeing professionals moving in, we’re seeing all sorts of new pressures on how people move around and this is causing us again to innovate,” says Raphael Costa, director of financial improvement, Metropolis of Vaughan, in an interview with Electrical Autonomy.
The Zone’s real-world expertise demonstrations will probably be carried out in designated areas and infrastructure inside Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and Markham Centre, the brand new downtown hubs of each cities.
Whereas experiencing development, these cities are additionally the best dimension for conducting demonstration testing.
“We’re not like the cities of Toronto or Montreal where it’s often hard for companies to test new technologies with municipalities because of how hard it is to navigate procurement and various departments,” says Chris Rickett, director of financial development, tradition and entrepreneurship on the Metropolis of Markham in an interview with Electrical Autonomy. “Working with a bit of a smaller municipality that’s a little more focused on making it easy for companies to test and demonstrate technologies, I think, is the other value proposition we bring to the table.”
“Markham and Vaughan also have a fairly large cluster of automotive and technology sectors,” provides Kadri. “They really put together the most compelling story and have brought the right partners and kind of put the right factors in place to meet our needs.”
The Demonstration Zone will function with an extended record of companions, together with SmartCentres, Rogers Communications, Syntronic, Honda Canada, AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Microart Companies, Remington Group, PSP Companies, York Area, York Area Transit, Toronto Transit Fee (TTC), York College, Alectra, and Seneca-HELIX.
Tasks to be examined
Requires functions from Ontario firms to submit their automotive and sensible mobility applied sciences and options for testing in Markham and Vaughan will start by October.
“We anticipate a large demand,” says Kadri. “I hope that we get so many more than we can do because that means that we really hit the nail on the head on what we’re accomplishing here.”
The decision for demonstration tasks will take two kinds, says Rickett.
The primary will probably be searching for tasks, applied sciences and {hardware} options that may spotlight present city transportation challenges within the cities of Markham and Vaughan, equivalent to last-mile items and other people motion options.
In accordance with Rickett, the town of Markham goals to handle a spot in its transit system, looking for to ascertain a connection between the east and west sides of the town.
Concurrently, as part of Vaughan’s Transportation Innovation Program, the town is devoted to enhancing Vaughan’s highway and avenue community, advocating for higher public transit choices, and selling the development of lively and rising modes of transportation.
“A great example is the City of Vaughan’s new Transportation Innovation Program (TIP), which truly harnesses the innovative spirit of our thriving auto-tech sector. When it launches this fall, the TIP will position the city as a testbed for smart mobility innovations,” says Steven Del Duca, mayor of Vaughan to Electrical Autonomy.
The second type of tasks that will probably be accepted within the Zone will probably be “an open call for companies that may have solutions that we weren’t thinking about or different technologies that weren’t even on our radar so we can look at potential applicability and opportunities within each of those zones,” says Rickett.
These may very well be varieties of challenges and expertise equivalent to micro-mobility options, city robots, charging infrastructure, sensible intersection expertise and extra.
