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Automotive Companies in the Metaverse – NFTs and Saraswati

ByLaurel Papworth

List of examples of NFTs, Metaverse campaigns, virtual worlds, VR, AR, Web3 in the automotive car industry

“The global metaverse automotive market is estimated to be valued at over USD 116.5 Billion by 2030, at a CAGR of over 41.46%. ” from Research and Markets via PR Newswire

Laurel Papworth on car NFTs and Automotive Metaverse Web3

List of Reasons for Car Companies to use Web3 & be in The Metaverse

  1. R&D Digital Twin Factories (development and CAD in virtual space)
  2. LABS simulation and testing
  3. Virtual Showrooms for customers to view solely online sales
  4. Marketing NFTs as virtual good collectibles for branding, including Digital Twin NFTs
  5. VIRTUAL EVENTS for launches and in-world parties
  6. TRAINING OEMs and major suppliers can provide AR/VR training and staff onboarding
  7. AUGMENTED driver HUD for parking rates & spaces

AR/VR/XR Partners with Automotive Industry

Roblox (Hyundai), Unity Technologies (Hyundai Metamobility), Blender (BMW), Rocksolid Graphics (BMW), Basemark (BMW) Upland (think NFT monopoly), Sandbox (owned by Animoca Brands), and Epic Games (Ferrari)

List of Automotive NFTs for Metaverse Marketing

  1. BMW ~ Feb 2022 ~ BMW audio (“roar of engine) NFTs are in the “Museum of Sound” on the OpenSea marketplace. Polygon (MATIC) based. Read more on U.Today https://u.today/bmw-venturing-into-nfts-and-metaverse
  2. KIA ~ 2022 ~ NFTs are from a special collection called Legends of the Driveway on Sweet IO marketplace
  3. CHEVROLET ~ 2022 ~ “Chevrolet is offering drivers an opportunity to bid on a 1-of-1 piece of NFT artwork created by xsullo, along with a first—and only—of its kind 2023 Corvette Z06 in Minted Green.” Time gated, it was available on SuperRare the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) art market trading in $RARE.
  4. Lamborghini ~ 2022/2023 various ~ the drops are “Puzzles” so collect ’em all. https://nft.lamborghini.com/rules Note that they drop each month but are time-gated to 24 hours, so if you snooze, you lose. The promotion includes some “surprises”: Among these surprises is a digital artwork of Lamborghini Style Center produced for “The Epic Road Trip” campaign for all those who will purchase two complete monthly collections. For those who complete the first four months, there will be a chance to participate in a special tour of the Sant’Agata Bolognese headquarters.
  5. Porsche ~ 2023 ~ win a Porsche 911 Carrera through NFTs.
  6. Aston Martin ~ 2023 NFTs to drive around a Metaverse game world. Partnership with motorsports game developer “The Tiny Digital Factory” and its metaverse game “Infinite Drive,” where users can collect and race their favorite digital cars. Each NFT will cost 66 $MATIC (Polygon).
  7. Ferrari ~ 2022 ~ Talked it up for a year or so. Some kind of NFT scam by hackers put paid to Ferrari’s May campaign. Not sure where they are at now except Ferrari are showing up in virtual worlds like Roblox sans NFTs.
  8. McLaren ~ 2022 Purchase NFTs to join the community McLaren Special Operations (MSO Lab) also see the inworld McLaren Racing Experience centre.
  9. Rolls Royce ~ 2022 ~ Rolls Royce Motor Cars Dubai and Abu Dhabi worked with British artist Sacha Jafri to design ‘The Six Elements’ Collection- six real life Rolls Royce Phantom Series II. The collection’s goal was to raise $1 million for charitable causes. NFT Embedded in The Six Elements Phantom – Tradeable – The NFT can be accessed by scanning a QR code, which is uniquely embedded within the glove compartment of each Phantom series II car enabling each of the six owners to view their NFT while sitting in the car.
  10. Volkswagen ~ 2022/2023 ~ treasure hunt NFTs. It’s South American and I think Portugese/Brazilian but I did find the Digital Garage which is the NFT site for Volkswagen?

Resources for Automotive Metaverse and Saraswati lecture

As well as the links above, please review these:

Interesting videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG1R-m3SiBU
Interior of BMW advanced design
Nissan Virtual Showroom

Basemark and Rocksolid Graphics

click SHOW TRANSCRIPT and then skip to relevant section if not wanting the whole thing?

TRANSCRIPT OF LECTURE on Automotive and Car brand NFTs in the Metaverse

[00:00:01.210]
Hello, my name is Laurel Papworth and I’m a Metaverse mentor, consultant and trainer. In this lecture we will look at the different uses of the Metaverse and web3 in the automotive industry with car brands.

[00:00:17.810]
Let me just hop in the old Transit and let’s see what Silk Charm is up to in her Virtual World, I’ll list: the use cases for web3 and Metaverse from showrooms through to virtual 3D development labs and others. We’ll be looking at the tools and the platforms. Eg Animoca Brand’s Sandbox virtual world and games like Infinite Drive Racing for the Aston Martin In the third section I’ve got a list of NFTs for marketing car brands. We’ll also swing by Hyundai’s Metamobility World, where space, time and distance become irrelevant and where physical robots are physical ambassadors on Mars providing real time data for travellers’ haptics. That means they can feel things. As they roam in cars that have been turned into educational classrooms. This brought to mind for me Saraswati, the Hindu goddess and her swan, driving us through the layers from this world to the world of education and creativity. Don’t forget to head to Metaverse.com Au to see the resources and links mentioned in this video lecture.

[00:01:40.610]
Now I will say it’s a very new sector. Most of the automotive companies I looked at had only come into the Metaverse in 2022, coming into 2023, maybe about an 18 month period. Let me give you the list of reasons why automotive companies are using the Metaverse and interested in investing in web3. So some companies are doing R and D digital twin factories. This is for development and CAD. In virtual space there are labs for simulation and testing. Very popular is Virtual showrooms for clients who have now shifted to buying their cars solely online. In marketing we see NFTs, non fungible, tokens virtual goods and I’ve got a bunch of examples of those and different ways and means that they’re being used I’ll go through shortly. Virtual events within virtual worlds and augmented layers are popular for car launches, for in world parties, for promotions and competitions, things like that. Very popular across the board, not only in the automotive industry, is the Future of Work and that is AR & VR Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for onboarding or orientation of new staff, for training, virtual training across the world, across the metaverse and with the addition of Zoom, the company, Zoom, into spaces like Horizon Worlds and Metaverse virtual world offering. We can see a lot more of enterprise style solutions being offered through web3 and the Metaverse.

[00:03:24.010]
One area that’s been growing for quite some time and I don’t think we can call new but is being added to quite often, are augmented reality HUDs, which are ATT’s (ed: ADAS) and that is being able to see on a dashboard or on a windscreen, an augmented layer. For instance, that there’s a parking station coming up and then being able to tap that layer and see what the parking rates are, how many parking spaces are available in that parking station. The sort of things that help consumers in ways that they may not even realise are web3, Metaverse, AR or VR.

[00:04:05.390]
If you’d like a list of companies that have worked in the automotive industry to build virtual worlds or augmented layers and things like that, I can give them to you right now. So for Hyundai’s Metamobility, which we’ll see later, they’re using Unity and Roblox. BMW Blender (like another Unity) RockSolid Graphics which is plugin and they’re working with Basemark on that. Some brands are using Upland, the virtual world think… I guess… Monopoly with NFTs. And one of the largest companies in the Metaverse Animoca Brands has a virtual world called Sandbox, which also some automotive companies are using. There’s quite a few more, but I want to keep this video fairly short.

[00:04:50.530]
So let’s go on to the next part, which is marketing with NFTs. So if training and onboarding is internal to the enterprise and belongs to HR Recruitment and the training department, then the NFTs typically belong to the marketing department. Looking at a list of automotive NFTs for Metaverse marketing, BMW has trademarked the Sound of the Engines roar and that’s now available as an NFT. It’s in the Museum of Sound on the Open Sea marketplace and based on Polygon MATIC which is I think, a

Layer Two Ethereum blockchain, (blockchain is) basically a legal contract. Kia have a collection of NFTs or virtual goods for sale on the Sweet IO marketplace platform and that’s called the Legends of the Driveway. Chevrolet has gone for, in marketing terms, “scarcity” which means you can bid for one off virtual representations of the Chevrolet and that’s available on the SuperRare Marketplace. These marketplaces OpenSeas SuperRare, SweetIO and others I’ve mentioned in other videos but they’re basically eBay for virtual goods. SuperRare is a DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) kind of a cooperative structure and uses the $RARE currency. Lamborghinis. promotions: marketing and promotions in the Metaverse are based around, I think it’s quarterly drop. So every three months they drop a range of NFTs, they drop a range of products that you have to collect within 24 hours and then they’re not available anymore. So they’re time gated called the Epic Road Trip. I think there are prizes attached to the NFTs such as the possibility of getting a tour of their headquarters. This is connected to digital artwork. Porsche has offered a promotion and we often see this where the virtual good is tied into another offer. So if you purchase the NFT you could be the lucky winner of a real life Porsche 911 Carrera. Is it 911 Carrera or 911? I’m assuming it’s 911 Carrera. Because part of the Metaverse is ensuring that virtual goods are traversable and can be moved across different worlds in different games and different layers, which is one of the reasons we need Blockchain to verify that product, that you own it. Aston Martin has teamed up with Tiny Digital Factory for the Metaverse game Infinite Drive, where for 66 Matic, which is Polygon’s currency, you can race an Aston Martin in a virtual world. McLaren offer a virtual world experience and NFTs allow you to join the McLaren Special Operations lab. I think it’s called MSO. So we saw quite a lot in 2022 with McLaren offering different ways of keeping fans engaged in their part of the industry, part of the sector through NFTs. Rolls Royce took a different approach. Sacha Jafri, who’s a British artist, worked with Rolls Royce, Dubai and Abu Dhabi to create six Phantom Rolls Royce, real life ones, and design them. And then in the glove compartment, in the glovebox are NFTs, so that you can see the digital twin of the car. Volkswagen decided to go down the treasure hunt route in South America. You can do a treasure hunt for Volkswagen NFTs. I’ve put links to all of these campaigns and videos on my website, Metaversementor.com au. Just have a look for automotive industry and you’ll find it. But I thought it was interesting to see the different ways that NFTs are being used.

[00:08:59.740]
It’s not just a case of putting them up for sale and hoping people will buy them. Although I will say, with automotive brands, it’s easier to build an engaged community than for some product nobody’s ever heard of or interested in. I think brands are bringing out NFTs nobody wants, but definitely with the car brands, they do seem to be popular.

[00:09:22.730]
Let’s have a look at the Hyundai Metamobility universe.

[00:09:26.950]
Where do you want to go today? Where were you last time? Mars. Can we go to Mars? Do you want to feel the wind? Yes, but let’s go into the sand storm. Spot. Can we touch it? Wow. It feels like ice.

[00:10:07.170]
So it’s interesting because you have the physical world here and it’s possible that that’s being used for education and family time and different things, but particularly education. And then over here is Mars, where users, families, students can control the devices on Mars, such as those planet ambassadors, the robots. You know, this puts me in mind. Of a myth, a Hindu myth, actually. The goddess Saraswati, she’s one of the Tridevi. There’s Lakshmi, Parvati and Saraswati. And Saraswati rides a white swan, which is why I always remember her, because I love swans and I’m thinking of transportation, but also education, because Saraswati is the goddess that people pray to for education. “Please let me go to college. Please let me get into the course of my choice. Please let me raise the money so that I can further my education”. So it’s important for people that recognise the connection with Saraswati that she’s not only about knowledge and intelligence, but about education. And one of the reasons for this is the white swan. If you’re invited to hop onto the white Swan Saraswati takes us from the real world and then we swim or fly through these layers to another land where we can collect ideas. So if you ever get an idea for a business and bring it back and then work hard on it. If you ever get an idea for music or book, you hear some chords or you get that little nub of an idea and you bring it back into the

world and work on it and make it real you can thank Saraswati for that. Saraswati takes us on the White Swan through these different layers to get to a magical world of creation and creativity. She’s also the patron saint of artists to bring back those creative ideas which we then embody and incarnate in the world. So Metamobility for me kind of represents that concept. And it’s interesting that they Hyundai actually take you from the real world through an avatar and NFTs and layers, augmented layers into Saraswati’s world.

[00:12:43.810]
I don’t think that’s the end of all the (ed: Metaverse) campaigns and projects and initiatives in the automotive industry. Not by a long shot, but at the end of 2022 it’s a reasonable list and I look forward to updating it in the future. If you would like to have more information, you can always contact me on the socials. I’m LaurelPapworth on YouTube. LaurelPapworth on LinkedIn. SilkCharm on Twitter. SilkCharm on Instagram, Laurel Papworth on Facebook. And I will endeavour to update this video every so often with more projects and more ideas about the Metaverse and web3 in the automotive industry. Thank you.

[00:13:30.530] OutTakes for not being funny enough.
I’d like a DB9 (ed: DB5) real one thanks, but I’ll take a virtual one.

THANK YOU

If you liked this information on Web3 and cars, please send me an Aston Martin DB5. But a virtual NFT one (parking is an issue otherwise 😉 ) James Bond would approve. Fun fact: While DB probably stands for automotive company David Brown, the DB is also the D-Subminiature connector which kinda lends its name to tiny virtual NFTs. *mind blown* ok, that’s a tenuous connection at best… #geekingout