"Smartphone on Wheels" – A Misleading Analogy or a Necessary Inspiration?

One common strategy for tackling complex problems is analogy—using a simpler, familiar system to visualize and make sense of something more complex. This is precisely the approach behind the concept of the "smartphone on wheels." It’s a term frequently used by generalists in the automotive industry to explain software-defined vehicles to broader audiences.

However, many industry experts—those deeply involved in the design, engineering, and development of modern vehicles—find this analogy frustrating, and perhaps with good reason. After all, today's vehicles are remarkably complex machines, integrating thousands of components, multiple safety and security systems, and running on over 100 million lines of code. Reducing this incredible sophistication to a mere comparison with smartphones feels reductive and dismissive of the engineering feats involved.

Yet, here’s where my argument stands: If companies like Apple—and later Samsung and Huawei—hadn't taken bold, visionary steps, radically reimagining what a mobile device could be, we wouldn't be talking about the "smartphone on wheels" today. These companies didn’t just iterate on existing designs; they leapfrogged the competition by redefining what a phone could do, leaving behind former giants such as Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson, Sony, Motorola, BlackBerry, and HTC.

In the automotive world, Tesla has played a similar role, and now BYD, XPeng, Nio, and Geely (along with a few smaller players from China) are following suit. These companies have cracked the code, taking a leap of innovation rather than simply building incrementally on old designs.

Meanwhile, traditional OEMs—the legacy giants of the automotive industry—continue to lag behind, thanks to their lazy approach. Despite some incremental progress, they remain bogged down by legacy thinking and slow innovation cycles.

The moment has arrived, once again, for these manufacturers to reimagine mobility at a fundamental level—to shift focus from simply designing better vehicles toward rethinking the very purpose of mobility itself. As they did over a century ago when the automobile was first invented, it’s time for them to be radically creative once more. The road ahead will reward those who are bold—not those who simply tinker.