The electrification, automation and digitalization firm Siemens has recently shown great interest in the adoption of blockchain-based solutions. To be particular, Siemens is exploring blockchain technology and is keen on implementing it in the transportation industry, as per a report by Forbes.

According to Siemens Corporate Technology’s head of cybersecurity and blockchain, Andreas Kind, Siemens is interested to incorporate blockchain tech into carsharing service via Siemens Mobility — one of Siemens’ subsidiaries.

According to a report by the Enterprise CarShare website, carsharing is nothing but to use or rent a car for a short duration of time. One of the famous examples cited in the report is the rental service Zipcar.

According to Kind one issue with this system is with the associated fueling cards, which provides the ability to allow the car renters to refill on gas. However, the use of this card is subjected to a number of rules and restrictions on the customer side e.g. customers can only use the card at specific partner fuel stations and the cards are thus sometimes stolen. Kind said he believes that carsharing technology could be improved via a blockchain solution.

According to him, this service not only inconvenient for the users, but it also happens to be inconvenient for the carsharing companies because fueling cards get stolen and then are sold on the internet.

To solve this problem, in an industrial context, we need something like the blockchain technology, that has the ability to bring together different participants that might or might not fully trust each other. That’s how blockchain technology can add value.

Siemens is also planning to tackle other problems within the transportation sector for the implementation of blockchain solutions. According to certain reports, at Bosch’s 2019 Connected World conference Siemens’ Corporate Technology presented a blockchain solution for “blockchain-based smart parking”.

Siemens reportedly is also considering blockchain use cases for supply chains and manufacturing. Siemens is also apparently taking steps towards using a permissioned blockchain, however, the firm is still in the testing and discovery phase of this plan, and is still reportedly exploring the viability of various use cases.

Grand View Research has made a suggestion that blockchain is a digital technology that is driving market growth in the global transportation management systems (TMS) sector.

The TMS market is projected to reach an estimated value of $198.82 billion by the year 2025 with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 16.2%.