CEVT increases footprint in Innovation Hub - Oulu, Finland

Leif Axelsson, Innovation Strategy Director at CEVT

CEVT continues open innovation in Oulu in Finland, by sending a second test car to the Innovation Hub, where start-ups and entrepreneurs are welcome to test their products and solutions over time on our already developed product.

A while back CEVT started to cooperate with Oulu in Finland – the city of former Nokia. At that time Finland had a very small to no existing automotive presence, but the city has managed to reinvent themselves into an innovation cluster. As a result, there are many interesting start-ups and scaleups in Oulu, therefore CEVT decided to engage in a close cooperation with Business Oulu. One way was to engage in "Open Innovation", where startups and entrepreneurs can test their products and solutions on a stationed concept car on site.

“We want to explore what happens if we open up for a co-creation culture and combine two vibrant high-tech ecosystems. We now have three identical test cars in three locations. Three different cultures, three world-leading innovation hubs with CEVT in the middle as a facilitator, enabler and a bridge to the market", says Leif Axelsson, Innovation Strategy Director at CEVT.

“The cooperation with the Oulu Automotive Cluster has been fruitful and resulted in many new innovations, which we use to support the brands in the group towards sustainable mobility solutions,“ says Leif Axelsson. 

This has also resulted in that a second test car has now arrived in Oulu, Finland. A Lynk & Co 01, adapted for the European market, received by Päivi Laajala, the Mayor of Oulu. 

“We want to accelerate our innovation processes even further and as an example of that, we provided Oulu Automotive Cluster with our new concept car of Lynk & Co 01 EU," says Leif Axelsson, Innovation Strategy Director at CEVT.

"The new concept car is a fine continuation to our cooperation with CEVT and Gothenburg's automotive ecosystem since 2018. The digital transformation in automotive industry has just begun, and this creates big business opportunities for our companies and research institutions. As a world-leading hub of radio technology, IoT solutions and 6G research, we will support the automotive industry in achieving its visions of autonomous driving," states Juha Ala-Mursula, Director of BusinessOulu. 

Oulu Automotive Cluster
Oulu Automotive Cluster helps automotive brands design and develop sustainable electric and autonomous cars to meet new business models. With 100 companies and 22 research and development organisations, the cluster is one of the fastest growing ecosystems in Finland. Oulu Automotive Cluster is run by BusinessOulu, the business development agency of City of Oulu. www.automotive.oulu.com