IAA Transportation

What happens when you give a real industry challenge to a room full of developers and one day to build?

At IAA TRANSPORTATION 2026 in Hannover, digital.auto joined forces with prototype.club, Bosch and Deloitte for a full-day hackathon focused on software-defined commercial vehicles. Teams spent the day turning industry challenges into executable concepts - moving the conversation from vision to practice.
At the center was a challenge closely connected to our Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative: How can customer devices be securely integrated into the platform of a light commercial vehicle and become part of useful digital experiences? The teams explored applications ranging from cargo monitoring to fleet optimization.
One result made the BYOD idea particularly tangible: Tools Detection. The awarded concept uses a camera to scan tools and equipment stored in the vehicle. Before the driver leaves, the software checks whether something is missing and can use the vehicle connection to alert the driver. The concept also demonstrated how image processing could run directly on a modern smartphone - turning a device the user already owns into part of the vehicle experience.
For digital.auto, this is exactly the kind of environment we want to create around BYOD: start with a real use case, bring different perspectives together, build something executable and learn from what actually works.
A big thank you to Chris Cheng from FSTI for helping make this happen, and to Christian Schweizer and the prototype.club team for creating the space to turn the challenge into a hands-on hackathon.
And, of course, congratulations to the Tools Detection team - a great example of how quickly an idea can become tangible when the right people, technology and challenge come together.