Automotive digital transformation

Over recent decades, digitization and connectivity triggered many innovations in electronics, consumer, and high-tech industries, they have made information accessible to us, changed how we interact and communicate, and impacted our daily life in many different ways. As the automotive industry enters the era of connected and digital transformation, it also needs to embrace automotive specific technology advances such as electrification, adaptive driver assistance systems (ADAS), and autonomous driving.

Although new technologies will lead to business opportunities that the automotive industry has long been waiting for, they are disruptive and challenging even for the most established automotive companies. As different technologies converge into the automotive market, new opportunities emerge and also attract new and ambitious entrants from other industries, who overcome entry barriers with new business models, capitals, and capacities. To succeed, automotive companies must undergo a new paradigm shift to establish competitive advantages. They have to develop innovative solutions with new technologies and, more importantly, change organization and culture to survive and strive to win the digital transformation.

Developing and adapting new automotive technologies require software-centric approaches. Instead of the traditional hardware-centric model, automotive companies have to quickly build their software capacities to stay relevant and competitive in the new automotive landscape. New automotive technologies, such as electrification and autonomous driving, will dramatically increase system and software complexity, demand advanced data capturing and analytics, and utilize artificial intelligence to process massive sensory information and make critical decisions. Automotive companies must develop new processes to coordinate between automotive software and legacy hardware development. Automotive companies must take crucial roles to manage supply chain closely through entire life-cycle of the vehicle. The new supply chain will be different than the traditional tiered structure. Instead, it will consist of software and hardware suppliers who have different development processes.

New automotive architecture is essential to address system complexity from software and hardware. Automotive companies shall prepare for the further evolution from the current domain-isolated and gateway-controlled architecture to integrated and interconnected architecture with the anticipated trend of ECU consolidation and emergence of automotive ethernet backbone. It requires thorough system design and a more collaborative process.

New automotive technologies expose potential safety and security vulnerabilities; therefore, new cybersecurity architecture plays a vital role to ensure integrity, authenticity, confidentiality, and availability.  As the automotive industry embraces connectivity and digitization, cybersecurity becomes an immediate challenge to ensure the protection of digital assets as well as safety, security, and privacy of drivers and passengers.

As a part of the connected world, automotive companies not only have to quickly catch up the security technologies and measurements that the other industries have developed for decades, but also need to step up the game since connected and digital vehicles are under spotlight now from both cyber-attackers and security regulators due to high values and public safety concerns. Cybersecurity is a real threat that must be addressed seriously before the disaster strikes to protect valuable assets and company reputation.

Automotive digital transformation requires significant organizational and cultural changes for automotive companies. Talent is the key to success in the digital era. The top digital talent is still very rare and typically concentrated in the high-tech industry. The characters of the top digital talent are different, they have highly specialized skills, believe long-term learning, and attract to open and startup development environment.  Automotive companies will need to adjust their workforce strategy with an emphasis on career development and commitment to technology advances.

Automotive companies shall also find strategic partners with companies that can fill technology and capacity gaps. The complexity of the system and technology has increased greatly in the automotive industry, and many automotive solutions require extensive development and multi-discipline expertise. Automotive companies have to partner with other technology leaders to leverage their capacities and expertise to reduce the time, cost, and resources.

Challenges always come with new opportunities. Due to competitive nature and long development cycle in the automotive industry, those companies who adopt the changes quickly in technology, organization, and culture will take advantages in this rapidly evolving era of digital transformation.

CTSA Consulting can help our clients to make a difference. We have years of experience and proven successes in leading and developing new technologies and architectures in automotive and technology companies. We can help our clients to choose the right technologies and architecture and quickly grow the development capacities with our solutions and expertise in:

• Connectivity
• Technology
• Cybersecurity
• Architecture

We believe that every client’s product is unique and requires full attention and the best expert services. Client’s success is our mission.