holoride wants to turn vehicles into moving theme parks and revolutionize in-car entertainment. The team’s vision is to build a unique future for in-vehicle experiences using location and motion-aware content. holoride intends to transform everyday travel experiences into impressionable joy rides. This hyper-immersive journey combines vehicle information such as acceleration, steering, traffic, geographic, and other telemetry data with Extended Reality (XR).
Taking this a step further, holoride has integrated with Elrond’s blockchain platform. This makes sure all ecosystem partners have transparency and compelling economics. Plus, a user can personalize using NFTs, which further are used within the ecosystem to represent in-game items like personalized avatars, skins, tools, and more.
Table of contents
About holoride
holoride was born in 2015, in Autonomous Driving and Digital business units at Audi. It left the German car manufacturer’s hierarchy in early 2019. The project is now independent of the manufacturer, even though Audi remains a minority shareholder in the company.
With Extended Reality (XR) becoming mainstream, holoride will benefit to a large extent from the timing of the launch.
Growth Outlook
XR headset shipments are expected to have grown at 66% to reach 9.7mn units in 2021. This was driven primarily by the launch of Oculus’s latest model, Quest 2 and rising adoption of XR use cases in the consumer segment. VR based gaming and virtual fitness are growing in popularity. So is the need for socializing during the pandemic. This helped spread the word about XR with companies like Oculus making the technology more accessible.
XR adoption is expected to accelerate further in 2022 and 2023 with several awaited product launches from Oculus Quest series, Sony PlayStation VR2 and the Apple AR glasses.
Total XR headset shipments are expected to grow to ~44mn units by 2025 growing at a CAGR of 45.9%
holoride’s Value Propositions
In today’s world, individual mobility and media consumption are growing parallelly, and closer together. Therefore, cars make for an important area of growth for the media industry. holoride aims to be the standard of technology backend for any automobile company looking to have in-vehicle entertainment.
Award-winning Platform
- In 2021, holoride won the first prize in the Entertainment, Gaming & Content category at the 13th Annual SXSW Pitch. Moreover, it was recognized as the Best in Show, out of all categories.
- A year prior, in 2020, holoride won the best in location-based entertainment at the annual AWE Auggie awards.
- In 2019, it was named as one of TIME’s 100 Best Innovations of 2019. It also won Best of CES by TechCrunch and Best Experience by Aurea Award.
Revolution of Traditional Media
Automotive and Entertainment Industry
- So far, immersive experiences were mostly visual. But holoride adds an extra element – real-time physical feedback of the vehicle. This makes the in-car entertainment even more real.
- Every ride feels like a new adventure because the XR content is never the same. holoride’s content adapts to a route’s length and type, driving style and location. Thus, the experience is tailored for the journey.
- It combines what the passenger sees and feels with near-zero latency, and hence reduces motion sickness.
Fair Participation for all Parties
- Traditional media compensation models favour monopolization. Majority value is accrued to centralized media platforms, very little to content creators and ecosystem participants.
- holoride has built a usage time-based compensation model that rewards all its ecosystem partners fairly. It leverages Elrond’s blockchain technology, ensuring the integrity and transparency of usage data.
- The largest revenue share will be dedicated to content creators. Car manufacturers will receive remuneration for providing real-time vehicle data. This data will fuel holoride’s applications. Transportation as a Service (TaaS) providers will also be compensated for upselling through their booking applications. The remaining amounts will be used by holoride and for additional ecosystem partners (like XR device stores).
- The Web 2.0 gaming industry keeps 100% of the revenue generated. On the other hand, holoride will keep just 15% of revenue from NFT sales. The rest will go to the NFT creators.
Solid Partnerships
holoride’s list of partnerships is illustrious, with some of the biggest brands in the automobile and entertainment sectors.
Value Addition for Ecosystem Participants
- Passengers
They’ll benefit from a radically new and immersive in-car experience. They can also use their transit time for meaningful purposes, with reduced symptoms of motion sickness.
- Car Manufacturers & Mobility Companies
They can use the car for several media use cases, delighting their customers with a first-of-its-kind experience. They can also monetize existing car data as well as their passengers’ time.
- Content Creators & Media Companies
They can monetize captive audiences using an automobile distribution channel. They can also introduce a new media category – Elastic Content – that is location and motion-aware. Elastic content can help reduce the friction between digital and physical experiences.
- XR Platforms
They can enable their devices (such as XR headsets) for in-car usage. This will help unlock new use cases for a highly captive audience in outside of home, business, and location-based entertainment segments. In Feb’22, holoride announced its partnership with HTC Vive to make Vive Flow the first holoride-ready VR device for integration in cars.
- Brands
They can indirectly monetize their products through product placements integrated into holoride experiences. In addition to that, they could also purchase metadata generated by holoride users. This will help them target their audience in more interactive ways.
How holoride works?
holoride Tech Stack
holoride is building an end-to-end tech stack with the goal of minimizing integration efforts for ecosystem participants, easing adoption.
- holoride Platform: Connects car manufacturers with content creators and passengers, giving necessary web services, tutorials, and documents.
- Vehicle Localization: Car manufacturers use this for real-time synchronization of a car’s motion, route and location data. Its autonomous driving software is modified for media use cases.
- holoride App: Runs on personal devices of the passengers (such as headset) for user authentication and content browsing.
- Elastic SDK: Used by content creators and media companies to design, test and deliver holoride experiences with existing game engines.
NFT Marketplace
holoride will use NFTs to represent in-game items, personal upgrades or individualization offers in the form of digital items.
This unique feature will revolutionize the in-game economy. Passengers can truly own items through NFTs and transfer assets from one adventure to another. NFTs will also help holoride create a single digital identity for all experiences.
As is with several existing gaming ecosystems, they earn the majority of the revenue from in-game items. Therefore, we expect that the NFT marketplace will contribute a significant portion to holoride’s revenues in the future.
holoride’s Business Strategy
Target Customer Segment
Initially, the target customers for holoride are teenagers aged 13 to 19 years. This was arrived at considering a significant number of VR headset owners fall under this segment. They’re a captive audience, plus they’re also into gaming. They’re also more likely to share their unique experiences on social media, which will help spread the word.
Most of these customers are not digital assets native. However, holoride is building a user-friendly interface. This UX will make it easy for new and inexperienced users to interact with blockchain or digital assets.
Target Industry
The platform wants to focus on the highly attractive entertainment and gaming markets, to begin with. This corresponds well with its initial customer segment, too. As the product as well as VR penetration mature, holoride intends to expand into other industries such as –
- Education (eg. interactive learning)
- Travel & Tourism (eg. interactive exploration)
- Productivity (eg. working on the go)
- Well-being (eg. relaxing experiences)
- Marketing (eg. brand experiences)
Customer Acquisition Strategy
holoride intends to distribute its application through respective VR devices’ stores.
Its marketing campaign will piggyback on car manufacturers’ marketing campaigns because holoride is a huge value-addition to their current offerings. Hence, car manufacturers are eager to promote it. holoride also wants to advertise on manufacturers’ websites and during test drives at their dealerships.
To us, this strategy seems highly beneficial given the large marketing budgets of car manufacturers and their significant audience base. In fact, Audi has already begun marketing holoride on its social media channels.
Revenue Model
B2C
- holoride will initially act as a publisher, and sell content subscription packages to passengers.
- The fees will be 15% on primary NFT sales and 5% on secondary sales.
B2B
- holoride will license its technology to popular XR applications, helping them enter the mobility space.
- It will sell metadata to brands or automobile manufacturers
Capturing Value Through the RIDE Token
Creating value for ecosystem partners and reducing difficulties for end users is important to holoride. Therefore, a dual token model was considered by the team.
The HOLO token will provide sustainable engagement value for users by powering the platform’s in-car experience economy. The RIDE token will propel holoride’s partner network, allowing participants to capture the value created.
RIDE Token
The RIDE token is the Utility and Governance Token for holoride’s content ecosystem. RIDE is designed to stake, accrue network value and incentivize the platform’s use. It’s at the heart of holoride’s ecosystem. This token is important for a vibrant, sustainable economy that connects car manufacturers, content creators, brands, and passengers.
The token’s utilities are as follows:
- Marketplace Currency
holoride’s marketplace allows minting NFTs in exchange for RIDE tokens. Moreover, all digital items can be purchased in this marketplace using RIDE tokens. Through this, users can enhance their experience by purchasing new skins or upgrading items.
- Platform Access
User subscriptions, developer access, and brand placements can be purchased using RIDE tokens, at a discount from their fiat price.
- Buyback Program
A portion of holoride’s revenue (through fiat purchases, smart contracts, royalties, and the like) will be used for buyback of RIDE tokens every month. The team will decide between burning the tokens or building the ecosystem through grants and other incentives.
- Governance
RIDE token holders will be allowed to participate in governance of the holoride platform. They can make important decisions about feature developments and strategic content directions.
holoride continued to drive utility for RIDE token by launching the Metastaking program on Maiar exchange in February 2022. The program will allow RIDE holders and EGLD-RIDE liquidity providers to stake their holdings and earn additional tokens (21.75mn RIDE will be distributed to the community over the course of 12 months). This program will build a strong community and ecosystem around the platform by converting early token holders into long term supporters.
holoride’s Challengers
The platform has no direct competitors since its offering is unique, and they want to capture a niche market. They will defend their market position through –
- First-mover advantage in in-car virtual reality entertainment.
- More than 70 patents and patent applications in in-vehicle XR.
- Copyright protection over games and other applications built in-house.
- Licensing deals with popular content IPs from major gaming and entertainment studios like Disney, Universal and more.
- Working relationships with well-known car manufacturers such as Audi, Ford, Porsche and others. This has helped them acquire localized vehicle data and early beta testing at popular tech conferences as well as theme parks.
The Team Behind holoride
holoride is led by an experienced and passionate team of leaders and innovators. They’ve previously worked with and headed the Immersive Technology team at Audi. We strongly believe they have the wealth of knowledge and expertise to successfully execute their vision while creating a strong defensible market.
 |  |  |
| Nils Wollny | Daniel Profendiner | Marcus Kuehne |
Nils Wollny
He’s the CEO and Co-founder of holoride, bringing with himself over 10 years of experience in Digital Business Strategy and Consumer Experience.
Previously, he served as the Managing Director of SinnerSchrader – one of Europe’s leading market-listed digital agencies. He’s also the former Head of Digital Business at Audi. It was here that Nils started working on the idea of an immersive in-car experience, ultimately leading to holoride. Nils also recently received the illustrious ‘Rising Star 2020’ award by Automotive News Europe.
Daniel Profendiner
Daniel is the Director of Advanced Development and Co-founder of holoride. Before this, he was the CTO.
He comes with 9 years of experience in programming and concept development for piloted driving as well as virtual technologies. At Audi, he served as a developer of self-driving car algorithms and former Lead for Immersive Technologies.
Marcus Kuehne
Marcus is the Director of Intellectual Property and Co-founder of holoride. He has over 18 years of experience in product marketing, development and strategy at Audi.
He has filed more than 200 patents for infotainment and immersive tech applications. And is also the founder of VR Forum – one of Germany’s biggest VR communities.
Advisors
In addition to these 3 powerhouses, the holoride team has a strong network of leaders who act as advisors for their product. Prominent advisors include –
- Anthony and Joe Russo (Directors, Avengers: Endgame & Infinity War)
- Palmer Luckey (Founder, Oculus VR-Facebook)
- Dirk Ahlborn (Founder & Chairman, Hyperloop TT)
- Thomas Alt (Founder & CEO, Metaio AR-Apple)
- Kathleen Cohen (Founder, The Collaboratorium)
- Greg Castle (Founder, Anorak Ventures)
- Clark Parsons (Managing Director, Internet Economy Foundation – I.E.F.)
Conclusion
holoride’s platform is novel and revolutionary for the media and mobility sectors. It’s an entirely new category of mass-market entertainment, built upon Elrond’s blockchain ecosystem. The platform’s applications are vast and its business model is well-defined.
With technologies around the globe moving towards metaverse, immersive experiences, and disruptive gaming models (play-to-earn), holoride perfectly sits at the intersection of these trends. It has worked to create a never-before-seen experience that benefits all participants in the ecosystem. These include users, creators, car manufacturers, XR platforms as well as brands. Moreover, a robust bank of resources and patented technologies gives it an edge over competitors.
We strongly believe that the platform is well-positioned to reign with an award-winning product backed by leading industry giants.
holoride Links
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Author – Vanshaj Kandhari, Research Associate, Woodstock
