MUNICH, Germany — The automotive industry — at least in Germany — is more reluctant to innovations than other industries. This is the core statement of a study from technology consulting company Invensity GmbH (Wiesbaden, Germany).
Cost pressure and reliability requirements can act as the main obstacles for innovative designs towards mass production in the automotive realm, said Invensity automotive expert Utz Tuber. For his study, he interviewed 100 development team leaders, R&D managers and design engineers from automotive OEMs and tier ones in Germany. 46 percent of them said that in the automotive industry, innovations are more difficult to implement then in other industries, while only 26 percent are convinced that the automotive industry is more innovation-prone than other industries. On the other hand, while cost pressure frequently inhibits innovative approaches, it can also work as a catalyzer for innovation if it is combined with competition pressure, the study finds.
Beyond these generic considerations, the study also unearths some interesting assessments relevant to automotive electronics industry. For instance, a relative majority of 32 percent of the experts interviewed believes hybrid drives will prevail in the year 2030 — not the diesel technology which currently is the favorite of all German OEMs. Only 8 percent of the insiders think that diesel drives will have a future. 23 percent bet on hydrogen as the fuel of the future.
Similarly, 47 percent of the experts believe that hydrogen technology will make the strongest contribution to the reduction of emissions. Also improvements in battery technology are seen by many engineers as a significant contributor to this end. And batteries are the place in the car that changes most significantly through innovation, followed by the drive section and the safety equipment. Also navigation and telematics are seen as major gateways for automotive innovation.
In terms of future additional electronic equipment, steering assistants were the favorite of the experts; 46 percent of them believe it will be standard in luxury cars by 2015. Also external video cameras, night vision equipment and anti-collision radar are likely to be found in luxury cars in the not-so-distant future. 19 percent of the engineers even see biometric identification devices embedded in the steering wheel as a feature of the future.
When it comes to globalization, German automotive creators bet big on the Chinese market. They believe this geography will expose the strongest growth in the time frame through 2015, with India and Eastern Europe including Russia ranking second and third. At the same time, two thirds of all interviewees see China as the strongest potential competitor, followed by India (34 percent).
