And that’s where the Urban-X initiative comes in. A collaboration between Mini and venture fund Urban Us, Urban-X is a start-up incubator, which is a fancy way of saying “we throw money and expertise at people with clever ideas that have an actual chance of seeing daylight.”

These ideas all revolve around improving the urban landscape and the experience of people who work and live there; but they can range from projects that directly impact automotive technology (such as Lunewave’s high-performance radar sensor system), to projects that address urban infrastructure (Roadbotics’ automated pavement-assessment technology), to the decidedly quirky (Sencity’s TetraBIN, an interactive trash can that’s connected to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). In terms of real-world implementation, they can be as immediately physical as Upshift’s car delivery service, or as abstract as Qucit’s AI-optimized city management software (which in no way resembles the basis of a summer sci-fi blockbuster).
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