OEM&Lieferant Ausgabe 1/2018

112 Images/Graphic: © ESG This digital transformation will open up tech- nical possibilities that will also impact on con- sumer behaviour. The old business models will fade in importance, while new usage models will become established. This trend means that manufacturers will have to prise themselves away from principles that, in some cases, they had stuck to for decades, and come up with new solutions. As they work to create highly automated and autonomous driving features, long-established OEMs, suppliers and engineering service pro- viders are having to implement innovative forms of highly complex customer function- ality in a cost-effective manner. At the same time, the market is rapidly evolving with the emergence of new, unconventional players such as Google, Apple, Tesla, Faraday, Uber and others, some of whom are forging radical- ly new paths in terms of both their technology and their business models. This competition, coming mainly from the IT sector, sees the car primarily as “moving software”. The proven access to technology that the pre- mium OEMs and suppliers have tried and test- ed over and over again is based on the largely autonomous mapping of functionality using on-board sensors and embedded systems in- side the vehicle. Cutting-edge developments currently include complex driver assistance systems all the way through to conditionally automated driving (automation level 3). And, as mentioned earlier, all of this happens on board and essentially without any active com- munication with the outside world! The car as part of a digital world ON- and OFF-BOARD expertise is the key to shaping change By Dr. Hieronymus Fischer, Head of Innovation Center Automotive Division, ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH The automotive industry will be facing major upheaval in the next few years. Emission-free mobility and highly automated driving will be the hot topics of the future, influencing OEMs and suppliers alike. Against this backdrop, on-board embedded systems (ES) and high-performance off-board back-end IT systems will pave the way for ambitious goals to be achieved in automation, autonomy and multimodal mobility. Highly secure networking is becoming crucially important, with other technology drivers being artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics (“big data”). Engineering Partner