Biathlon as a metaphor for Electrification Development - Taking risk and ownership over the consequences

Introduction

The transition to electrified heavy trucks is inevitable and tremendously challenging for the business. It opens up for new players challenging the incumbent OEMs. Some of the old truck manufacturers feel they entered the race late and lag behind. The question they ask themself is if they should cut corners in the development to close the gap. In this post, I draw a parallel to biathlon, and what we can learn from an athlete entering the last shooting slightly behind.

I am a cross-country ski nerd

The spring is coming to Sweden. I don’t know about you, but I love this time of the year. I count in the migratory birds and enjoy morning runs when it is no longer dark. But I also miss the winter. What I especially miss with the winter is the cross-country skiing. I really am a cross-country nerd. I love plan for it, I am excited to prepare for it and there a few times I feel so alive as when a pursue it. Not to mention the satisfying and exhausted feeling after a long training round on the Swedish bare mountain. And I slavishly follow FIS world cup races. Lately, it has been rather pleasant as a Swede, since the Swedish woman’s team has dominated, something that is hard to say about the men’s team. However, this year I have expanded my winter sport TV consumption to also incorporate Biathlon. I have always looked upon Biathlon as a strange combination of incompatible sports for sportsmen who can’t make it in cross country-skiing. My reasoning has gone along these lines: “I might not be the fastest 100 meter runner, but if I combine it with simultaneously dribbling a basketball, playing chess and reciting Shakespeare, then I might make it to the Olympics”. But after a season of immersion into the sport, I must say I am filled with respect for the athletes. What is especially intriguing to me is the element of risk taking during the shooting events. For those of you who are less familiar with Biathlon, here comes the fifteen second recap. 

Biathlon

Biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. A competition consists of a race in which contestants ski through a cross-country trail system whose total distance is divided into either two or four shooting rounds, half in prone position, the other half standing. Depending on the shooting performance, extra distance or time is added to the contestant's total skiing distance/time. The contestant with the shortest total time wins. The shooting part is always a risk moment. The athlete can choose to shoot slow, with higher likelihood of a hit, but more seconds added to the total race time, or she can choose to shoot fast with an opportunity to gain time on the competitors, but lower average hitting percentage and time penalty as a consequence.

Correlation between shooting speed and shooting accuracy

Now, what is actually the correlation between shooting speed and shooting accuracy. Well, the correlation is not as obvious as first guessed. Luckily for an engineer as me, biathlon collect a thorough set of data to do statistics on. In the graph below, all shots in the world cup are sorted according to the shooting interval (i.e. time between previous shot and the actual shot). That results in “buckets” with shooting intervals (1 ,2, 3,….seconds). Above the x-axis, the number of shots in each bucket is shown. Below the x-axis, is the missing percentage per bucket.

Source: https://www.realbiathlon.com/blog/index.php/tag/shot-accuracy/

The majority of shots fall 1-4 seconds after the previous shot. As can be seen, the shooting missing percentage increase from 1 to 7 seconds, meaning the athlete, on average, miss more if she waits longer between the shots i.e. shoot slower. From 7 to 13 seconds shooting interval however, the hit percentage goes up again, meaning it pays off in accuracy to take the time to aim well and shoot. How can this relation be interpreted? One explanation is that if the conditions are good, it is more a question of the biathletes physical and mental state. Shooting with flow (fast and consistent) result in good hitting percentage. But if things mess up during shooting (with gear, rifle or the athlete being disturbed), then flow is disrupted and hitting percentage goes down (describes the 1-7 seconds interval). On the other hand, if the conditions are hard, for example gusty winds and snow, the athlete is more dependent on outer conditions and shooting with consistent flow is not an option, then it pays of to be thorough and take time to make it right (true for the 7-13 second interval).

If we look at a single athlete, the picture gets clearer. Below you see the shooting accuracy of Emma Lunder from Canada the season 2017/2018 to the season 2020/2021. The y-axis describes the average shooting accuracy for the season and the x-axis shooting speed relative to the average in the field.

Source: https://www.realbiathlon.com/blog/index.php/tag/shot-accuracy/

Emma is a fast shooter, but her accuracy influences her accuracy. Going from season 2017/2018 to 2018/2019, Emma increases shooting speed on expense of accuracy. However, from 2018 to 2021 she gave up some on the speed and gained accuracy.

So, on an individual basis, on average, it seems to be a trade of between shooting speed and shooting accuracy.

Biathlon as a metaphor for electrification development in automotive business

I work with powertrain development in the automotive business. Right now, we are in the midst the most radical transformation of the century. Converting our complete offer of internal combustion-based vehicles into electrified is a humongous task. In times of radical change, the incumbents often feel threatened by new players. That is definitive the case for the big heavy truck OEMs’ of today.

New players like Tesla and BYD are competitors to take seriously. It might even be so that it is obvious that the old players lag behind the upcomers. 

One metaphor that can be used to describe the situation in the heavy truck busines is that of a biathlon race. Imagine the manufacturers of heavy trucks as contenders coming to the last shooting of a biathlon race. Some of the traditional OEMs come in slightly after the new players. The question they ask them self is, if they should opt for shooting fast, with higher risk of failing but with a chance to gain time on the leader, or if they should go for high likelihood of hitting the target but less chance of closing the gap. How would a biathlete in the same situation reason? Most probably she would go for a fast shooting-series to give herself a chance to finish on the podium, at the same time, perfectly aware that this might lead to worse final placement in the result list if the bet on fast shooting does not pay off.

When we in the automotive business cut corners to close the gap to our forerunning competitors; do we take the same ownership of the causal relationship between accuracy and speed?

Sometimes I feel we fool our self and pretend that we only “shoot faster” without any consequence on “hitting accuracy”. The biathlete who took a chance at the last shooting, and went for a fast series but missed both the target and the podium, have to own the outcome of her risk-taking. So must we in the automotive development business when we opt for faster-than-normal development.

If you ask me how I would do when lagging behind for the final shooting?  I would go for the fast shooting-series every time.