Tech is Driving Change in Driving

The world around us is changing, drastically. And with the rise of Silicon Valley and the tech industry, not only are traditional industries being revolutionised, but often there is no clear separation anymore between them. The tech giants are no longer limited to the original purposes of their foundation, but have been expanding their networks to more and more business opportunities. Hotels are being challenged by the likes of Airbnb, taxis are fighting against Uber and Lyft. But even traditional medical and pharmaceutical research is being complimented or partially replaced by biomechanical inventions coming from subdivisions of Google, Apple, and other big players shaping our future. It is no surprise that the car industry is also heavily affected, with experts stating that the next five years will show bigger changes than the last 50 years has declared...

Electrification

Electrification has been a focal point in the automotive industries for decades now, at first more limited to the replacement of a plenitude of mechanical functions and processes inside the car, then in form of driving assistants making life at the steering wheel much more comfortable, and finally with the electric engine. For some years the electric engine was developed in parallel with other propulsion systems as a successor to the combustion engine which after more than a century of development and fine tuning seems to be very close to its efficiency peak. Electric always had a small edge compared to natural gas or hydrogen, and found a broader market acceptance in form of hybrid technology, combining traditional combustion engines with electric motors, as range anxiety - the fear of ending up stranded in the middle of nowhere with an empty car battery - wasn't relevant in these cars.

A basic research shows that the first electric cars were being worked on almost two full centuries ago and before the turn of the 19th to the 20th century there were many hybrid and fully electric prototype car(riage)s on the streets. Among them, a car that is considered the first Porsche - the Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, or just P1 (Porsche 1), designed and built by the company's founding father Ferdinand Porsche. Considering this, it is not such a radical change that the first modern fully electric Porsche sports car will be launched in the next few years, on the basis of the concept car Mission e.

While it is obvious, thus, that Tesla didn't invent the battery electric vehicle (BEV), the company sure has to be considered a pioneer in this field for many reasons since the launch of the first Tesla Roadster in 2008. Named after the Serbian-American genius inventor, engineer and visionary Nikola Tesla, this Palo-Alto based company is more than just an automaker, but heavily invests into energy storage and solar panel manufacturing, among others. Tesla cars are in many ways closer to the tech industry than to the traditional car industry, from the interior design to the sales network and the customer service with not only physical workshops, but remote online updates. And automaker is also a much too limited term, considering that CEO Elon Musk announced the first Tesla semi truck for September 2017, to add to the Roadster, Model S, Model X and Model 3, and to be joined in the future by further vehicles for all kinds of terrestrial transportation. As many critical voices as the company, its products and its CEO might hear, it has also convinced a manifold of investors, customers and fans.

Autonomous Driving

Tesla cars already have many semi-autonomous driving functions in place, but many more companies are pushing hard into this direction. While the legislations in all the countries are not ready yet to just allow unconditional human-less steering of vehicles on all public roads, the technology is available, being tested and companies claim to be ready to launch fully autonomous cars in 2020. Again, Silicon Valley plays a major role in this development, which is supported by the fact that California is the main public testing ground for autonomous cars. Apart from Tesla, companies that have been issued permits by the DMV in California also include Alphabet-Google-spin-off Waymo, Ford, Volkswagen, Daimler, and General Motors, with the most recent addition of Apple.

Again, companies like Waymo and Apple show that the car industry is currently being reinvented under heavy influence of the new technologies. And I didn't even mention every single one. Not in California, but in Arizona, Uber made it into the news very recently with an unfortunate accident of a self-driving car. Apparently, the human-driven car failed to yield and caused the accident. Despite not having been the responsible party in this incident questions about the safety of autonomous driving technology were raised in the media again, and Uber decided to temporarily suspend their various tests, among them the ones in Pittsburgh, where autonomous vehicles already picked up passengers, obviously still under the supervision of a technician present in the car, ready to take control of the car in any situation.

While experts doubt that all the necessary regulatory changes will happen short-term, it is evident that autonomous driving will find its way into our lives, even if not necessarily in general, but situational - to avoid having to pay attention in stop-and-go-traffic, or having to find a parking spot by yourself. And tests seem to show that when self-driving cars communicate among themselves (yes, they actually do!), accidents can be reduced significantly. Nevertheless, until there are only self-driving vehicles out there, for many years they will have to communicate with human drivers, too.

Car Ownership

Product lifecycles get shorter and shorter. We change our phone every year, or every two at the maximum, yet car lifecycles are traditionally much longer. Already now, we own less, and lease more - especially in the volume segment, whereas the premium and luxury car brands continue to have their customer base. In times of continuing urbanisation we (and above all the young generations among us) don't need (to own) a car, we need mobility. Car pooling and car sharing concepts have been at the rise, although they will only be sustainably successful with the autonomous car. Even the luxury and premium companies are working on different services to attract customers that are not looking for car ownership, and not just for mobility, but for experiences.

And then there are other ideas, that some years ago we would have put on the shelves marked science-fiction, but seem very real now. Aviation and aerospace company Airbus recently presented Pop Up, their own concept of future urban mobility, alongside Italdesign. According to them we might soon move around in crowded cities in little passenger capsules, that can detach from their wheeled based and attach to a set of rotors and fly. Part car, part drone.

All this just scratches on the surface of what is happening right now. A truly amazing, fascinating, but also nauseatingly fast and a bit scary development into the future. Now more than ever it is "keep up or stay behind".