WASHINGTON, D.C. -

Startup companies are the lifeblood of the growing mobility movement in the global auto industry. The ideas for moving people from Point A to Point B, with new and innovative ways of navigating cities not imagined 10-to-15 years ago, has spawned a generation of determined risk-takers.

Cities like Pittsburgh; Columbus, Ohio; Montreal; Las Vegas and Madrid, where mobility initiatives are picking up momentum, are attracting startups to share in and help launch these mobilization efforts.

Some of the startups have partnerships with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. Others benefit from government grants and fellowships, or search for angel investors to advance through the tough stages of venture capital funding.

Three executives of mobility startups, in different stages of their company life cycles, gave assessments of their businesses at last week’s Mobility Talks International held just ahead of the Washington Auto Show at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The auto show runs through Sunday.

On the question of how they attract investors, John Pratt, senior sales director of Upstream Security, an Israel-based cybersecurity firm, said the enterprise had recently gained the support of Volvo, Renault-Nissan and Hyundai.

“We had to prove the technology and work with the business operations and cybersecurity departments of the companies,” he said.

John Xin, co-founder and CEO of Lunewave, a company developing advanced radar sensors for conventional and autonomous vehicles, said his company benefitted from a federal grant from the National Science Foundation. That allowed the company to develop its ideas to become part of accelerator programs with several OEMs, notably BMW.

Alex Thibault, vice president and general manager North America for Vulog, a company that created a platform for mobility services that is now used in cities around the world for car-sharing services, is well past the startup phase.

“We have not taken money from OEMs or strategic investors,” Thibault said. “We started in 2006 with a lot of proof points. Today, we have relationships with six OEMs and several vehicle distributors around the world.”

On navigating municipal ordinances and government regulations on car-sharing, the panelists agreed that the federal governments are not getting involved in over-regulation and basically “letting the market play out.”

“Local governments are trying to solve the problems of traffic congestion, emissions and scarce parking,” Thibault said. “In Madrid, we introduced city planners to app-based car-sharing platforms leading to people sharing electric vehicles on a 10-to-1 ratio.”

 As a result, he said Madrid introduced free parking for shared electric vehicles. “Cities need to put forth economic incentives for car-sharing,” he said. “The Madrid example went a long way toward alleviating the congestion, emissions and parking problems.”

On the issue of cybersecurity for autonomous vehicles, Pratt said the industry is focused on in-vehicle cyber technology. He said shared fleets are more at risk because more people are interacting with a single vehicle.

“It’s a growing concern in the cybersecurity industry to be able to protect fleets,” he said. “Imagine if a ‘black hat’ hacked a fleet of Amazon delivery trucks during the holidays and took them out of service?”

Cities that are actively promoting mobility initiatives are benefitting from the information being generated by connected cars and autonomous vehicle testing on city streets.

In a separate panel on “Smart Cities and the Future of Mobility,” officials from Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Columbus agreed that mobility initiatives are benefitting the residents of those cities.

“We have the 'Pittsburgh Principles,' where data comes back to the city to make streets safer,” said Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto. “The information is shared through Carnegie-Mellon University to focus on the public ability to benefit from the vehicle testing taking place on our streets.”