by Nick Kolyohin
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Israel is leading the world in smart transport industry which is expecting the first fully autonomous car, said Israeli government officials at the sixth International Smart Mobility Summit which concluded on Tuesday in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv.
"We have become one of the greatest centers of this new technology in the world," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
"Our goal is to position Israel as a global center of smart transport," said Orlie Dahan, executive director of EcoMotion, a smart transport community with 600 startup members.
Israel is leading the mobility and smart transport technologies, in fields including automation and connectivity, urban mobility, shared mobility and electrification, according to Dahan.
"I don't know when the first fully autonomous vehicle will be on the road, but I know that every autonomous vehicle around the world will have some Israeli technology within it," he said.
Honda, BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Audi, Volkswagen, Ford and GM are among the companies that have already come to Israel to interact with its innovative startups.
During the summit, EcoMotion presented the most innovative Israeli startups in the field of smart mobility, including Inpris, a company specializing in eyes-free touch and voice-controlled interfaces NoTraffic, which produces the optimal solution to traffic management.
Anat Bonshtein, director of the Department of Fuel Alternatives and Intelligent Transportation at the Prime Minister's Office, told Xinhua that his vision about the future smart mobility will combine sea, air and land together.
To Israeli government, the high-tech industry is also a way to increase its global influence.
"Because of Israel's growth as a global technological power, we are reaching out to a lot of countries," said Netanyahu.
Israel also sees a lot of potential in extensive collaboration with China in various fields of innovation.
"Collaboration with China is still in the early stages. I see China as a very very huge market and a good opportunity for the Israeli startups," said Bonshtien.
"We can learn from China how to deploy the electric charging infrastructure, as China is already ahead of us in that," he added.
The Israeli autonomous car industry in 2017 attracted about 750 million U.S. dollars of capital raising and investments, in a steady upward trend over the past decade, said the Israeli Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen in a statement issued on Sunday.
The global market value of smart mobility is expected to reach about 130 billion dollars by 2024 with leading trends in the sub-sectors of smart transport, electric transport, autonomous transport, interconnected transport, and mass transit, according to Israeli Foreign Trade Administration.
The International Smart Mobility Summit, which attracted more than 2,500 participants from around the world and sponsored by the Prime Minister's Office, aimed at promoting cutting-edge technologies for smart mobility in the global race for designing the first fully autonomous car.
