Blockchain Technology in the Automotive Industry

Nowadays, the latest technologies can be found not only in healthcare and space application but also in hybrid supercars. Supercars and hypercars require high-performance materials with high strength, high stiffness, and light weight. For higher performance, car engines now become stronger but smaller and with lower fuel consumption (with cleaner exhaust). Currently, the automotive industry involves batch production, but in the near future, personalized and individualized automobiles with low and limited quantities can be fabricated in smart factories, which integrate all companies working in the supply chain, from manufacturing to marketing and services. In this regard, future automobiles in smart cities become more personalized (single user, limited version, personal spare parts), safer, and smarter.

Blockchain technology is the key to these future perspectives toward intelligent automobiles without any risk of safety, accident, security, theft, or traffic jam. In the current industry, blockchain technology can explore the interconnection of blockchain with other innovative technologies and trends, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), and analyzes the potential to transform business processes and whole industries if these innovations are applied jointly.

In the case of the manufacturing sector, manufacturing can provide a high return on investment. It was reported that $1 of investment in manufacturing can create ~$2.5 of economic activity. In addition, smart products should be fabricated from smart materials via the intelligent manufacturing system framework. In smart production, if the products and machines are integrated, embedded, or otherwise equipped with smart sensors and devices, the system can immediately collect the current operating parameters and predict the product quality and then communicate the optimal parameters to machines in the production line. For smart city applications, the global smart cities market size is expected to grow from USD 410.8 billion in 2020 to USD 820.7 billion by 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8%. For smart city applications, blockchain technology can build on decentralization, immutability, and consensus characteristics.

Additionally, intelligent wireless sensor networks can provide big information to monitor and manage the city’s regular operations and services, including traffic and transportation systems, street lighting systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, libraries, hospitals, schools, universities, etc. A blockchain-based distributed framework can be used for automobiles in the smart city. This framework can include a novel miner node selection algorithm for the blockchain-based distributed network architecture.

This book explores how blockchain technology can be used in the automotive industry from smart manufacturing to the smart city.

Ghulam Yasin is a researcher in the School of Environment and Civil Engineering at Dongguan University of Technology, Guangdong, China. His expertise covers the design and development of hybrid devices and technologies of carbon nanostructures and advanced nanomaterials for real-world impact in energy-related and other functional applications.

Amit Kumar Tyagi is an assistant professor at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, India. Previously, from 2019 to 2022, he was an assistant professor (senior grade 2) and senior researcher at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai Campus, Tamil Nadu, India. He earned a PhD in 2018 at Pondicherry Central University, Puducherry, India. From 2018 to 2019, he was an assistant professor and the head researcher at Lingaya's Vidyapeeth (formerly Lingaya's University), Faridabad, Haryana, India. His supervision experience includes more than ten master's dissertations and one PhD thesis. He has contributed to several projects, such as AARIN and P3-Block, to address some of the issues related to privacy breaches in vehicular applications (such as parking) and medical cyber physical systems (MCPS). He has published over 190 papers in refereed high-impact journals, conferences and books, and some of his articles have been awarded best paper awards. Dr. Tyagi has filed more than 25 patents (nationally and internationally) in the area of deep learning, Internet of Things, cyber physical systems, and computer vision. He has edited more than 25 books and has also authored 4 books on intelligent transportation systems, vehicular ad hoc networks, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. Dr. Tyagi has received faculty research awards for 2020, 2021, and 2022 from the Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai, India. Recently, he received a best paper award for a paper titled "A Novel Feature Extractor Based on the Modified Approach of Histogram of Oriented Gradient," at ICCSA 2020, Italy (Europe). His research focuses on next-generation machine-based communications, blockchain technology, smart and secure computing, and privacy. He is a regular member of ACM, IEEE, MIRLabs, Ramanujan Mathematical Society, Cryptology Research Society, and Universal Scientific Education and Research Network, CSI, and ISTE.

Tuan Anh Nguyen is the senior principal research scientist at the Institute for Tropical Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Vietnam. His research activities include smart sensors, smart networks, smart hospitals, smart cities, and advanced nanomaterials. He has edited over 55 Elsevier, 10 CRC Press, and 1 Springer books. He is the editor in chief of Kenkyu Journal of Nanotechnology and Nanoscience.