Anders Dewoon: Empowering Car Drivers With an Intuitive Interface in an Intelligent, Connected Head-up Display That Can Be Retrofitted Into Any Car

Consenz is on a mission to empower car drivers with an intuitive interface in an intelligent, connected Head-up Display that can be retrofitted into any car.

The driver stays connected and updated without compromising with road safety. The car becomes a connected node, with two cameras and sensors generating, processing and uploading data. New services are pushed out OTA.

A safe and convenient solution for the individual, that is making the existing car fleet intelligent, will give smarter mobility in a fast and affordable way.

With an open platform and a collaborative mindset, we aim at building and participating in a collaborative ecosystem that can dramatically reduce the number of fatal road accidents globally. For everyone, everywhere – democratizing road safety.

Tell us about yourself?

I have more that 20 years in the heavy commercial vehicle business, all over the globe. The last couple of years in the industry, I was responsible for developing new business models for connected, electrified, and autonomous vehicles and transport systems. Throughout the years I was also passionately engaged in Smart Cities and Sustainable transport systems.

Having understood the enormous potential in connectivity, I wanted to come closer to the action in a smaller structure where customer oriented, iterative development cycles could be more agile. I was also driven by addressing the existing car fleet and not only top modern more luxurious vehicles, in order to bring technology to where it is most needed and can have most real impact.

I met my co-founder Reza Tavakolizadeh in early-stage incubator Antler, and understood his passion to bring Swedish road safety thinking and Vision Zero back to his native country that suffers from high accident rates. He also had a tech embryo to work from. We founded Consenz and are since then on our mission.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

1,35 million people die in traffic every year and many millions are severely injured. More than 95 % of these accidents are happening in developing countries and in cars that are not supported by the latest driver support technology.

But you have to start on the individual level. Drivers have a need to stay connected and updated while driving. Since cars just a couple of years old do not support this, and their digital infrastructure is closed and outdated, the mobile phone becomes the only solution for drivers today.

But using the mobile phone while driving mulitfolds your risk of having an accident. Driver distraction from mobile phone use is the fastest growing accident cause globally.

Consenz addresses this with a connected, intelligent Head-up Display that can be retrofitted into any car. Capable technology, yet affordable and accessible for the many.

What is your magic sauce?

Our focus on a capable solution for retrofit, our focus on the empowering the driver by building a driver interface based on behavioural design, and our open platform that allows us to collaborate with 3P service providers to rapidly grow the number of available services on our platform.

We are not bringing any new edgy technology to the table, instead we are using modern, but proven, solutions in a new, ground-breaking way.

Where do you see your company going in 5 years time?

We are one of the single brands connecting most cars and drivers.

Drivers are enjoying the solution both on and off board, challenging their friends and peers in best driving behaviour, engaging with smart cities for eco-friendly routing, and their insurance companies for better premiums.

They are earning money from providing valuable camera and sensor data to different stakeholders. And most importantly, accident rates are finally coming down.

What has been your biggest setback so far?

We had one investor handling us quite unprofessionally, where we, a bit naïvely, were loosing important time and traction trying to satisfy special requirements just to finally see no progress.

What is the next big challenge for your business?

Find the right, intelligent funding that can help us grow in the pace we would like. Naturally, finding key talent will always be a challenge for any company. With the right impact mission, an open and collaborative mindset and culture, we should hopefully attract and keep great and diverse talent.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

At present we are using our SoMe platforms to start building a community that we hope to see involved in and engaged by our solution development and G2M initiatives going forward.