Congress Conversations supplement - S2

LEAD SPONSOR
A note from our
EXCLUSIVE
ACCELERATING THE
FUTURE OF MOBILITY
Despite the challenges of the pandemic and global chip
shortages, innovation in the automotive industry continued
its forward momentum. In some ways it even accelerated.
Industry leaders at this year's Automotive News Congress
Conversations shared their insights on the changing consumer
experience, the acceleration of vehicle innovation
enabled by software, supply chain resilience, opportunities
created by new mobility ecosystems, and the continuing
high-speed evolution to electric vehicles which has continued
at an even more furious pace into 2021. This wouldn't have
seemed likely when the world locked down in those early,
shocking months of the pandemic. Even driving became
nearly irrelevant for many. Traffic thins out when there's
almost no place to go. COVID-19 touched us all, every community,
every home, reaching to factory floors, warehouses,
and disconnecting a supply chain we're only now starting to
weld back together. It's a crisis that continues to reverberate,
of course, but the horizons are lighting up again because,
despite everything, in both the technology and automotive
industries, the lights never really went out.
The automotive industry stayed on the road. The car of
tomorrow is more than ever the car of today because one
of the world's most indispensable industries didn't stop, or
even back up. To look in the rear-view mirror at 2020 and
the first half of 2021 is to marvel how the driving revolution
underway when COVID-19 hit has continued. At the
heart of it - data. The marriage of cutting-edge technology,
of data radiating from the cloud and edge to inform the
hands on the wheel, not to mention hands off the wheel of
self-driving vehicles, is no longer just a vision of the future.
It's our present, despite a year of historic roadblocks.
The automotive industry continues to re-invent itself.
It is happening with the ongoing transformation of new
customer experiences, intelligent factories, and connected
and autonomous vehicles, the data centers on
wheels that instantaneously and meticulously analyze
the world around every vehicle to plot direction, enhance
2 * CONGRESS CONVERSATIONS
in-vehicle experiences, warn of danger, and predict how
much energy you'll need. It is critical for automakers to
build deep software competencies internally to enable this
transformation and build the required digital platforms. In
the past year, the automotive industry hired 35% more
software engineers than mechanical engineers. More and
more customers, in short, are as concerned with computing
power as they used to be with the chrome detailing.
Partnerships between automakers and technology companies
like Microsoft are here to stay. It is essential for
automakers to build their own digital platforms to thrive
and evolve in this rapidly changing world. The pivot to
connected, autonomous, shared mobility, and electric will
continue to require agility, openness, creativity, and trust
between tech and automotive. As the industry sets its
strategy and plans for its future, it is crucial for technology
companies like Microsoft to support the business models
of its partners. As 2021 began, in January, for example,
Microsoft and General Motors and Cruise announced a
long-term strategic relationship, combining their hardware
and software engineering expertise. The aim is to
accelerate the commercialization of self-driving vehicles.
Commercial vehicles on the road with no one in the driver's
seat aren't here just yet. But it is coming, with potentially
enormous economic, environmental and safety benefits
as the technology is perfected. It is a significant aspect
of what the global supply chain will look like in the future.
Or consider the factory floor. Also, as the year began, ZF
partnered with Microsoft and PwC to build their Digital
Manufacturing Platform. This is a giant step into the factory
of the future, which will mean the computing power to
translate complex technical information instantly into realworld,
real-time business insight. Factory 4.0 is a smart
factory that works faster, more reliably and with a higher
degree of adaptability. It will bring bottom-line financial
benefits to ZF, and, as importantly, in human terms, smarter
factories also mean more secure, engaged employees,
https://web.cvent.com/event/a22165d0-f8ff-437b-b587-3039cbb3bf04/summary https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2021/jan/0119-cruisegm.html https://press.zf.com/press/en/releases/release_23296.html
Congress Conversations supplement

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