Herbst 2030. A family from Hamburg wants to go hiking in Berchtesgaden. The luggage is stored in the trunk of the car, now hurry up and get ready for the car to go on vacation. It is nearly 1,000 kilometers from Bavaria. So, once, mom and dad regarded themselves as digital drivers. In daily life, they like to drive by themselves, but they prefer to leave the dull highway marathon to the car’s computer control, which can be turned on as needed. Manufacturers deduct a few euros per hour for autonomous driving. But you are relaxed when you arrive at night, and parents can watch the new James Bond movie on the cockpit screen during the journey.
Then, of course, the storage expansion of the electric car battery: the holiday home is a remote mountain hut without its own charging station, so know that the electric storage capacity of the family car is a little more than usual. The merchant’s smartphone app can make spontaneous reservations. The journey is ready to begin. Wait, one more thing: the mountains should be cool-so heated seats will be ordered for the whole family in the next few days.
“Tesla is three to five years ahead”
Modify your own car and its functions as required, as if you were just folding the back seat-in 2021, this still sounds like science fiction. Engineers, IT experts, and marketing experts in the automotive industry are already serving this and many other products. Digitization, artificial intelligence and car networking make this possible. “If the customer’s needs change, then the car will also be able to change,” BMW sales director Pieter Nota promised. Alex Coster, an automotive expert at the Zurich Boston Consulting Group, is convinced: “This will happen to all manufacturers. According to their needs, customers can book services such as seat heating, additional engine power, and greater mileage. .”
Whether in Beijing or Potsdam, places that are practical and convenient for motorists may become a huge new industrial market. In the jargon of car managers, software-supported sales or “features on demand” is the name of this future business. They think it will be huge. “We will experience a software boom in the next few years,” said Harald Kröger, a member of the management of the Bosch Group, the world’s largest automotive supplier.
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And Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess A bold prediction in July: By the end of the decade, products provided by innovative software may have accounted for one-third of the automotive market, and therefore become the second largest pillar of traditional revenue after “hardware”, that is to say, it comes from automobile manufacturing. On the Volkswagen Strategy Day, Diss stated that by 2030, global sales will reach 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars.
Analyst of major Swiss banks UBS It is even believed that there are more billions in this new large market (see chart). For example, manufacturers can enter the auto insurance business because Hyundai vehicles collect a large amount of data about customers’ driving behavior, which can better draw conclusions about how high their accident risk is. According to Patrick Hummel, an automotive analyst at UBS in London, many other digital services related to automobiles cannot even be foreseen today. He compared this development to smartphones: “It’s like talking in 2008 about all the content that will be available in the app store in 2021.”
