Smart mobility looks like software from a distance. Up close, it's hardware. Every connected junction, charging bay, and bus stop depends on a physical product that has to be built, tested, and supported for years.
It's a fast-growing market, too. The global smart mobility market was valued at USD 59.3 billion in 2025, and is forecast to reach USD 180.4 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 15.3%. Behind that sit connected roads, smart parking, intelligent traffic management, EV charging, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) links that let vehicles communicate with the surrounding infrastructure, all running on real-time data.
Here are 15 products that are shaping the future of connected transport.
Let's start where the money is.
Eaton's AC charger is built for public charging networks and comes in 7 kW and 22 kW versions. A tempered glass panel about the size of a sheet of A4 houses the interface, and the charger connects over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, works with OCPP, and supports app-based cashless payment. Packing wireless modules, metering, and safety electronics behind that glass means testing it as one system.
Power Xpert EVX Business AC Series 7kW/22 kW
Alpitronic's Hypercharger scales from 100 kW to 400 kW in Power-Stack steps, so operators can add capacity later without a full hardware replacement. Silicon carbide electronics deliver up to 97.5% efficiency across a 150 V to 1,000 V DC range. High power in a compact footprint puts pressure on heat dissipation and long-term reliability.
Wallbox Pulsar Max is a smart AC charger delivering up to 22 kW, with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, OCPP compatibility, and dynamic power sharing between chargers on one circuit. It weighs just 1.3 kg. At that size and volume, unit cost, radio compliance, and repeatable test coverage decide whether a build stays profitable.
Next, the roadside.
SRL Traffic Systems Urban64 is a semi-permanent temporary signal system that replicates permanent junction control. It supports up to 64 sets of lights, against roughly 20 to 39 for traditional portable systems, runs on mains-fed 48 V cabling, and meets TOPAS 2500 for UK temporary signals. Low volume, high configurability, strict compliance. That's build-to-order territory.
A traffic light controller operated through a secure browser interface. Yunex says it's the first with an emergency processor that takes over from the main processor as a hot standby, and it supports over-the-air updates in operation. Safety-critical controllers reward suppliers who can manage functional test, traceability, and change control.
A family of radar sensors for intersections and highways. One sensor typically handles both stop-bar presence detection and lane-specific advance detection, and the radar is largely unaffected by weather and lighting conditions. Mounted above ground, it eliminates the need for embedded loop detectors and the roadworks that accompany them. Radio-frequency assemblies like these live or die on calibration and end-of-line testing.
Vaisala's RWS200 weather station measures surface and air temperature, friction, ice and water layers, visibility, and wind. Its remote sensors sit at the roadside, so nobody has to dig up the road to install them, and it's been supplied to authorities including Sweden's Trafikverket and the Estonian Transport Administration. A station like this can sit unattended through years of winters, so sealing and low-power design count for as much as accuracy.
Then there's the conversation between vehicles and the road around them.
Commsignia ITS-RS4 is a roadside unit supporting both C-V2X and DSRC radio, switchable at runtime as regulation shifts. Range exceeds 900 m, and it fuses camera, radar, and lidar data for transit signal priority, emergency vehicle preemption, and pedestrian safety. It holds OmniAir certification for DSRC. Radios, antennas, and security modules add certification effort to every build.
Cohda's sixth-generation roadside and on-board units include DSRC, C-V2X, LTE or 5G, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as standard. Cohda's technology has been fitted to production vehicles, including the Volkswagen Golf 8. One design, two mounting points, fixed at the roadside or inside a vehicle, each with a different environmental brief.
Some of the most visible smart mobility hardware is the kind you use without thinking about it.
UK-based Gemini 2000 builds contactless payment terminals for unattended machines such as parking meters and EV chargers. Yuzu accepts cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, and is IP65 rated with LAN and 4G connectivity and PCI-DSS certification. Regulation is driving demand, since UK public charge points now need contactless capability. Payment hardware is secure, so tamper protection and traceability are built in.
Flowbird's Strada terminals take coin, card, and contactless payments, connect over 4G, and are managed remotely through the Smartfolio platform. Manchester City Council has installed 242 solar-powered Strada Transfer terminals to replace ageing machines. Things get even more interesting when the whole car park is automated. Read our blog post on the automated parking systems making smarter cities.
Papercast e-paper bus stop displays are solar-powered, wireless displays that Papercast says can be installed off-grid within an hour. They remain readable in direct sunlight and connect to a cloud platform that supports the GTFS and SIRI data standards. E-paper draws very little power, so the surrounding electronics must be designed for ultra-low power from the initial schematic.
Finally, the layer that ties it all together.
Ericsson's Cradlepoint R1900 is a rugged 5G router for vehicles, with Cat 20 LTE fallback, Wi-Fi 6, and GNSS with dead reckoning. For a bus or service vehicle, it's the gateway that ties ticketing, cameras, and telematics to the network. Shock, vibration, and temperature swings set the brief.
The Nuvo-11531 is a fanless embedded computer measuring 212 x 165 x 63 mm, with up to 36 TOPS of AI performance and four 2.5GbE ports, optionally PoE+, for cameras. Running video analytics at the kerbside without a fan means the thermal design shapes everything else.
Now part of Signify, Telensa PLANet connects individual streetlights through wireless nodes, a dedicated network, and central management, with automatic fault reporting when a light goes down. The poles can then double as hubs for smart city sensors. With a node on every light, cost and reliability both matter enormously.
The range is wide, from a 1.3kg home charger to a 400kW cabinet. But the demands aren't. Almost every product here lives outdoors, stays connected, meets a stack of standards, and is expected to run for a decade or more.
Volume is where it gets interesting. Chargers and streetlight nodes are built in the thousands, where every second of test time counts. Temporary signals and traffic controllers are low-volume, high-mix, and configured to order. Few partners do both well. And EV charging infrastructure alone is forecast to grow 25% a year to 2033. As demand ramps, designs that work at pilot quantities start to fail on cost, test coverage, and supply continuity. That's why ruggedisation decisions made at the design stage matter so much.
ESCATEC is a privately owned electronics manufacturing services (EMS) partner with more than 40 years of experience in electronics manufacturing. From design and development through printed circuit board assembly, box build assembly, and mechatronics, a product can go from prototype to volume without changing partner, supported by sites across the UK, Malaysia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria.
Smart mobility isn't a single product or a single market. It's a connected chain of hardware, from the charger on the forecourt to the sensor on the gantry and the display at the bus stop, and it’s growing at a pace that punishes designs that can't scale. For OEMs building into it, the constraint is rarely the idea. It's about whether a design that works as a pilot can be certified, built repeatedly, and supported for 10 years outdoors.
If you're developing hardware for charging, traffic, or connected infrastructure, talk to our team about the design and manufacturing decisions that determine whether it survives in the field.
Smart mobility products are the physical devices that connect and automate transport networks. They include EV chargers, traffic signal controllers, radar and weather sensors, roadside and on-board V2X units, payment terminals, passenger information displays, IoT gateways, edge computers, and connected streetlight systems.
Grand View Research forecasts EV charging infrastructure, the clearest measurable proxy for smart mobility, to grow from USD 40.2 billion in 2025 to USD 238.8 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 25.0%. The wider category, which includes traffic, payment, and connectivity hardware, is not captured in a single published forecast.
Three things combine. The products are designed for outdoor use, so they need sealing, thermal management, and ruggedised design. They carry radios and payment functions, so certification and traceability add effort to every build. And volumes vary enormously, from thousands of charger or streetlight nodes to a few hundred configured traffic controllers, which calls for both lean, test-led production and flexible, build-to-order capability.