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What Really Matters to Executives Building Intelligent Systems?

According to 56% of automotive leaders, the most important intelligent systems characteristic is using simulations or emulations during development and operation to increase productivity and reduce time-to-market.

The next most important characteristics are protecting data and guarding against cyberattacks (46%) and being able to sense and react based on goal-based algorithms (44%). Find out what else we learned from 500 of your peers.

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>>  One In Five Automotive Industry Leaders See Intelligent Systems As The Future Predominant Business Model >>  Characteristics of an Intelligent Systems Future

“

“Connected networks of vehicles, cities, devices, and roads will support completely autonomous driving.” 1
frost & sullivan

On the Edge in
Autonomous Vehicles

For the future of full autonomous driving, Frost & Sullivan predicts the technology will mature and be accepted for trucks and off-highway vehicles first, then in passenger vehicles. Already today, there are many examples of robotic trucks being tested on highways in the U.S., Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Nonetheless, Frost & Sullivan expects we will have to wait until 2035 before “connected networks of vehicles, cities, devices, and roads will support completely autonomous driving.”1 Read the Article.

1 Deenadayalan, Mugundhan, “Autonomous Driving Will Convert Drivers to Pilots,” Frost & Sullivan, September 13, 2019

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On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles: Finding the Road Ahead

ADAS

On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles: Part 3
Finding the Road Ahead

The future for automakers, suppliers, and technology providers — and even for insurers, regulators, urban planners, and others — is not well mapped. But all stakeholders need to gather every insight they can to meet the coming risks and opportunities.

To that end, McKinsey offers an insightful model. It was developed for the auto industry but can also help guide the strategies of a broader array of industry participants and stakeholders. As McKinsey states, “New transportation use cases are emerging, largely driven by factors such as what is transported, type of vehicle ownership, and where the vehicle operates. Since use cases drive business models, value chains, and strategic decisions, we believe the industry should focus on how the most prominent use cases are developing.”23

To aid the development of effective use cases, the McKinsey framework suggests drilling down to the particulars in four key dimensions:

“Since use cases drive business models, value chains, and strategic decisions, we believe the industry should focus on how the most prominent use cases are developing.”
McKinsey & Company

What is being transported?

Passenger transportation is vastly different from moving goods. Each of these markets demands specific technologies, regulations, business cases, and more.

Where can the vehicle operate?

Highway requirements differ from urban use cases in multiple ways, including the need for different lengths of distance sensing and narrower or wider fields of view.

Who owns the vehicle?

Vehicle sales and profits depend on who the owners are, which affects business models for all the players.

What technology is being used?

AD will expand to new uses as the technology improves, which will also impact profit pools and business models.

Executives can use the above questions to develop scenarios that will reveal their coming risks and opportunities.

5 Next Steps for Automakers

Automakers themselves constitute the group most directly and profoundly impacted by an ADAS/AD/ACES future. They must consider several critical moves:

01

Embrace the ACES: According to Asutosh Padhi, a McKinsey senior partner, “Car companies need to get a handle on a viewpoint that the revenue pools from the traditional technologies and the traditional business models — which is where we are primarily selling a car to a consumer — have essentially flattened out.” Going forward, says Padhi, “all the growth of the future is going to come from the combination of the ACES. It’s new technologies, it’s new business models.”24

02

Pursue mobility as a service: As ride-sharing and ride-hailing become ubiquitous, fewer people will buy their own vehicles, meaning the world will shift to a fleet as opposed to an individually owned model. In response, Accenture suggests that an OEM can consider becoming a fleet operator, offering its own car-sharing or ride-hailing services or becoming a “full mobility provider combining multiple means of transportation.”25

03

Explore data-driven businesses: Automakers should also look for ways to monetize data. In an ACES future, key players will have access to enormous amounts of data relating to operations, geography, and consumer behavior. General Motors is already heading down this path, having announced in November 2020 that it would launch a car-insurance business and set its rates according to driver behavior as tracked by its vehicles.26

04

Adopt agile: These shifts — away from building and selling cars toward a focus on services, technology, and software — will eventually force a sea change within the industry. As automakers become more like tech firms themselves, their challenge will lie in transforming the linear product-development method of manufacture they have developed over the last century into a more agile, rapid, and iterative model.27

05

Move now: OEMs have made enormous progress. But — even in spite of a pandemic, in spite of a dwindling “financial cushion” — Bain & Company analysts insist that the industry needs to “seize opportunities and manage threats for the impending EV- and AV-driven future by making strategic investment trade-offs and forging critical partnerships.”28

Speed is imperative, as the race is on against not only other automakers but also against rising tech companies. For example, Intel’s AV division, Mobileye, has received a permit from German regulators to test its driverless cars in real-world traffic on public roads. This is a first among nontraditional manufacturers, meaning new types of companies are seizing opportunities to surpass traditional manufacturers in the realms of development and testing.29

Steps for Automakers
Parallel Transformations: Other Key Industries

Parallel Transformations: Other Key Industries

Automakers themselves constitute the group most directly and profoundly impacted by an ADAS/AD/ACES future. They must consider several critical moves:

Industries and groups other than automakers will also experience profound change, leading to both risk and opportunity. Some of the more noteworthy include:

Insurance

David T. Carlson, a managing director at Marsh & McClennan, says that “driverless cars should eventually reduce the frequency of collisions and total liability costs.” But at least initially, collisions will increase as “human drivers adjust to sharing the road with driverless cars.” But the largest change to come is that “as drivers become less responsible for road safety, more liability risk will be assumed by manufacturers, component suppliers, and technology companies involved in building autonomous vehicles and the software that controls them,” says Carlson. “For highly autonomous vehicles, there will be a strong argument that drivers can’t be at fault and that any collisions that occur are the result of product failures.” Going forward, OEMs and insurers will need to “use the data to create hybrid insurance policies and ensure that liability can be fairly … defined while protecting vehicle owners’ personal information.”30

Materials

According to Deloitte, the coming “dramatic increase in autonomous and shared vehicles” will greatly shift materials demand, presenting a range of new opportunities. For example, as autonomy leads to reduced crashes, there will be “less need for exterior car coatings and crash resistance.” In parallel, Deloitte predicts heightened demand for a more “rewarding passenger experience [such as] enhanced lighting and visibility [along with] anti-bacterial interiors.” For OEMs and their suppliers, this means shifting needs and therefore innovation required in terms of specialty materials, composites, and plastics. All told, Deloitte estimates that 47% of materials currently in use by the auto industry will shift to something “new” as a result of autonomy.31

Components

At the edge of autonomy, automakers are going to need new gadgets galore. This includes everything from advanced semiconductors and circuits to high-speed processors. Certainly, the industry is going to require massive investment, considering that specialized equipment, highly educated and trained employees, and costly materials will all be required to manufacture the high-end electronic products being envisioned and developed. Since 2010, about two-thirds, or $206 billion, of total investment in autonomous vehicles went to technologies and smart mobility; another $123 billion was spent on connectivity and electric vehicles (EVs).32 Future developments seem set to include sophisticated vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology (so that traffic lights, roadways, and other environmental factors communicate with vehicles to optimize traffic flow and safety) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications equipment (so that cars are aware of each other’s whereabouts). Development of a universal device to support communication between vehicles of any make or model could well become an investment requirement.

Autonomous vehicle services

According to Frost & Sullivan, the autonomous vehicle services market is expected to grow from $1.1 billion in 2019 to $202.5 billion in 2030, at a CAGR of 60.1%.33 This rapidly expanding pie, however, is likely to be fought over in fierce competition — and not simply between mobility providers such as Waymo and Baidu. Rather, this sector will also be contested by the world’s leading OEMs, such as GM’s Cruise division and Ford Motor’s Argo AI.

Healthcare

Another study from Deloitte says the rise of autonomous vehicles means “demand for trauma care falls as road traffic accidents decrease.” In addition, “customer access to health care grows as consumers get new options to reach existing providers, and providers develop mobility networks that allow them to access consumers.” In turn, medical supply chains will face disruption as the emergence of “nimble transportation networks allow more efficient supply networks.” Overall, the authors say, this is a new paradigm for the industry, where business models will become unstable, and healthcare organizations should begin adapting now.34

Autonomous delivery robots

They’re not cars. But they are autonomous, and they are benefiting from and contributing to many of the advances in the field. According to Frost & Sullivan, the global warehouse automation market is projected to nearly double, from $14 billion in 2019 to $27.2 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) market is forecast to reach $4.6 billion, and the market for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) $6.8 billion. In addition, the impact of COVID-19 on the industry will vary: In countries such as the U.S. and China, the recovery time will be much faster due to their strong technology development and adoption of warehouse automation solutions.35

Urban planners — and people at large

The degree of change to come will be profound. Summarizing so much change over so many dimensions, a senior executive from U.K. insurer Aviva Plc posits the following in City Monitor: “It’s 2040, and Tom’s home virtual personal assistant has summoned an autonomous car to his home in Edinburgh. He will be attending a meeting in London in a couple of hours. The autonomous car is taking him to a mobility hub, where he will board a prebooked seat on a Hyperloop. Half an hour later he’ll arrive in London. Tom will walk the rest of the way, or he may even get into a shared shuttle to get to his ultimate destination.”36

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Do you have questions about autonomous vehicles, cars as intelligent systems, or the increasing criticality of software in the automotive industry?
We should talk.

23 “Autonomous Driving,” McKinsey & Company

24 “How the Auto Industry Is Preparing for the Car of the Future,” McKinsey, December 12, 2017

25 “Mobility as a Service,” Accenture, 2018

26 Mike Colias, “GM to Sell Car Insurance, Using Data on Your Driving to Set Prices,” Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2020

27 “How the Auto Industry Is Preparing for the Car of the Future,” McKinsey, December 12, 2017

28 Klaus Stricker, Thomas Wendt, Wilko Stark, Mark Gottfredson, Raymond Tsang, Michael Schallehn, “Electric and Autonomous Vehicles: The Future Is Now,” Bain & Company, October 29, 2020

29 Klaus Stricker, Thomas Wendt, Wilko Stark, Mark Gottfredson, Raymond Tsang, Michael Schallehn, “Electric and Autonomous Vehicles: The Future Is Now,” Bain & Company, October 29, 2020

30 David T. Carlson, “The Autonomous Vehicle Revolution: How Insurance Must Adapt,” Marsh & McClennan

31 “When Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Your Industry?” Deloitte

32 Daniel Holland-Letz, Matthias Kässer, Benedikt Kloss, Thibaut Müller, “Mobility’s Future: An Investment Reality Check,” McKinsey & Company, April 14, 2021

33 Francesca Valente, “Increasing Acceptance of Autonomous Vehicles Uncovers Multi-billion Dollar Opportunities in Mobility Services,” Frost & Sullivan, March 27, 2020

34 Ralph Judah, Josh Lee, Adam Hewson, Sarah Slater, “New Roads to the Health Care of Tomorrow,” Deloitte Insights, February 27, 2018

35 Francesca Valente, “Autonomous Delivery Robots Market for Warehouse Management to Boom and Top $27 Billion by 2025, Says Frost & Sullivan,” Frost & Sullivan, June 8, 2020

36 Andreas Mavroudis, “How Will Cities Be Impacted by the First Wave of Autonomous Cars?” City Monitor, January 8, 2020

On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles: Jumping the Hurdles

ADAS

On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles: Part 2
Jumping the Hurdles

According to McKinsey, “AD and ACES are mutually reinforcing developments in the automotive industry, disrupting the automotive value chain [and] impacting all stakeholders.”6 Consequently, the coming changes will drive “seismic consequences for incumbent automakers and suppliers.”7 Changes that drive seismic consequences often face numerous hurdles, even as various forces work to clear them. Consider the following:

Legislation

A key obstacle is the lack of a clear, reliable, and consistent regulatory platform. For example, McKinsey notes that though the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe joins several governments in actively drafting legislation for autonomous driving, exact requirements are not yet clear.8 Few if any legislative standards have been enacted, leaving the various industry players with a lack of scale, never certain whether a development that is accepted by one authority will pass muster with others.

Unquestionably, regulators face many serious issues. To what extent should autonomous vehicles (AVs) be granted exemptions to federal safety standards? Which specific standards can be loosened to allow thorough testing? With issues of data security and privacy, legislatures must consider the degrees to which data generated by AVs is accessible to vehicle owners, insurers, manufacturers, and other parties, and who has the right to resell this data.9 There are also issues of jurisdiction. For example, in the U.S., the federal government sets motor vehicle safety standards, but states are mainly in charge of registration, licensing, infrastructure, safety inspections, traffic law enforcement, and insurance and liability.10

Next consider the technical issues. Many different players, complex technologies, and capabilities are all moving at breakneck pace. The question becomes whether lawmakers can even begin to keep up with key developments — which means that innovation is held back due to ongoing revisions to safety regulations. AV advocates fear rules could become obsolete before they even come into effect.11

Like technology, legislation can be used or misused. While vague or missing legislation represents an obstacle, legislation can also become a key enabler. For example, the U.S. Congressional Research Service says that “on February 6, 2020, NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] announced its approval of the first autonomous vehicle exemption — from three federal motor vehicle standards — to Nuro, a California-based company that plans to deliver packages with a robotic vehicle smaller than a typical car.”12

Finally, the U.S. Air Force has emerged as an unlikely champion in the legislative arena by testing and then issuing its safety endorsement of a fully autonomous helicopter:

helicopter
The U.S. Air Force has emerged as an unlikely champion in the legislative arena by testing and then issuing its safety endorsement of a fully autonomous helicopter.

Like technology, legislation can be used or misused. While vague or missing legislation represents an obstacle, legislation can also become a key enabler. For example, the U.S. Congressional Research Service says that “on February 6, 2020, NHTSA announced its approval of the first autonomous vehicle exemption — from three federal motor vehicle standards — to Nuro, a California-based company that plans to deliver packages with a robotic vehicle smaller than a typical car.”12

Finally, the U.S. Air Force has emerged as an unlikely champion in the legislative arena by testing and then issuing its safety endorsement of a fully autonomous helicopter: The equipment is now available for military use sans pilot. This approval is ultimately meant to set the stage for civilian certification of the technology — including approval of autonomous flights over urban areas.13

Helicopter
The U.S. Air Force has emerged as an unlikely champion in the legislative arena by testing and then issuing its safety endorsement of a fully autonomous helicopter.

Cybersecurity

ADAS, AD, and eventually ACES technologies offer a potpourri of attack surfaces. Many of these technologies are internet connected, and for purposes of coordination they also connect with one another. With so many access points, smart cars become highly vulnerable to hackers. At the annual Pwn2Own cybersecurity challenge, a team of two white hats was able to break into the infotainment system of a Tesla Model 3. From there, they ran minimal code of their own and soon took over operation. In other words, the car became theirs. Of course, the security flaw was reported to Tesla, and the car company soon issued a patch to fix that vulnerability.14

However, the point is that all systems attached to the internet are, at all times, targets for hackers. Regulators, academia, and industry leaders are taking a proactive approach to this problem. In the U.K., the Resilient Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (ResiCAV) consortium conducted a three-month study into the means for “detecting, understanding, and responding in real time to emerging cybersecurity threats across the mobility ecosystem,” releasing their findings in May of 2020.15

Communications Standards

Another key hurdle is the uncertainty of communications standards. As Frost & Sullivan reports, “regulatory indecision is hampering automakers in North America and Europe. The U.S. government’s call for OEMs to comment on what existing/future technologies could be used for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications — dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), LTE cellular-V2X (C-V2X), or 5G New Radio (NR), among them — evoked widely differing responses. A similar exercise in the EU resulted in a majority of member states rejecting the Wi-Fi–based DSRC system.”16

Lacking clear regulatory direction, the global market is today split into two principal camps: proponents of DSRC and backers of C-V2X. Ultimately, Frost & Sullivan believes C-V2X will emerge as the most prominent industry standard. However, the group recognizes that most automakers will not commit until they determine their own preferences and strategies and see how regulations unfold.17

Of course, one of the greatest challenges in V2X communications in an ACES world is the achievement of low latency. As Srini Kalapala, VP of technology and network cloud for Verizon, explains, “It’s got to be low latency because you’re dealing with machines [moving] at high speeds. Things are being decided at a much faster pace. So we’re going to [move] from human-centric connectivity, delivering reliable connections for humans to do things, to now [needing] connectivity [at the speed of] machines.”

Listen

Click to listen to the full interview with Verizon’s Srini Kalapala The infrastructure leader of the second-largest carrier in the world talks about cloud infrastructure on the intelligent edge in this Forbes “Futures in Focus” podcast.

 

Test Tracks

Another obstacle is the fact that ADAS, AD, and ACES capabilities must be tested and proven in real-world conditions. But to do so on just any highway or byway places the public at risk. Fortunately, the solution is at hand. According to a fall 2019 survey from Forbes Insights, 37% of OEMs and their suppliers “are making use of smart roadways for their connected vehicle testing, [with] another 42% intending to do so within three years.”18

Jeff Rupp, former chief technical officer and chief safety officer at the American Center for Mobility, describes the testing track his ACM group maintained as consisting of "500 acres less than an hour west of Detroit offering just about any characteristics you might need, from highway and rural roadways to urban environments.” The facility “includes features such as a 700-foot highway tunnel, a hazardous weather simulator, and a triple-deck highway overpass.” The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) offers a similar facility. Jim Sayer, UMTRI’s director and chief investigator, is tackling communications standards head-on. “Roadways will be smart, equipped with sensors so that traffic is directed based on real-time conditions (I2V), not historic trends,” he says. “It is important to demonstrate that cellular V2X and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) can occupy adjacent channels in a real-world environment.”19

For both Rupp and Sayer, safety is paramount. “There’s an understanding among those working in this area that we cannot afford to make mistakes — as any missteps are likely to result in disproportionate pushback and delays,” says Rupp.

“What’s particularly important to appreciate about this future is just how many different disciplines and interests have to come into play for mobility to safely achieve its optimized future potential,” says Sayer. “So much learning and so many advances are taking place at such a rapid pace in interrelated fields, from materials sciences to AI and 5G. Even better understanding of the human factors within behavioral sciences can have a huge impact on safety [and effectiveness].” Creating partnerships with universities and research centers becomes essential. “Getting it right, bringing everything together, building in the needed safety requires a disciplined, systems-based approach aligning research, industry, and government,” says Sayer.20

“What’s particularly important to appreciate about this future is just how many different disciplines and interests have to come into play for mobility to safely achieve its optimized future potential.”
—Jim Sayer
Director and Chief Investigator,
University of Michigan Transportation
Research Institute (UMTRI)
Irby Thompson

Networks

Another key challenge for the industry will be finding the perfect balance between cloud-resident and edge-resident data and applications. According to Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer at AT&T, “The network itself is going to become a lot more intelligent, because basically it will no longer just move packets from point A to point B but will actually route application flows and enable this whole ecosystem to work. That has huge implications on network, network design, and also edge compute. Compute is going to have to come closer to where the processing and where the data applications are, and networks are going to have to become much more intelligent.”

Better-designed networks, along with low latency processing and broad connectivity, will bring the world many steps closer to what Verizon’s Kalapala calls “collective intelligence.” AI will be “extremely prevalent, [with] lots of decisions, lots of proactive conclusions being drawn from available data,” he says. As more data is drawn from more sensors on the vehicle, on the road, and all around, and then is processed within mere milliseconds, a state of collective intelligence can be achieved. It’s here, says Kalapala, that such a system can “drive all these deeper insights [leading to the] most profound outcomes — elevating your car to drive without having an accident.”

Listen

Click to listen to the full interview with Roman Pacewicz AT&T’s former chief product officer discusses the deep future of the cloud and its effect on society and the world in this Forbes “Futures in Focus” podcast.

 

Chipmakers

A key challenge for ADAS, AD, and ACES is the fact that so much research and development is in flux. The amount of data being returned by sensors and analyzed leads to constant adjustments in the algorithms running in vehicle applications. This requires chips that are configurable while in use.

This also means that automotive companies are facing a major change in viewpoint. They need to start thinking like electronic systems companies, analyzing the system level, the chip level, and everything in between.21

Apparently, this mindset is already changing as chipmakers move deeper into working relationships with manufacturers. Chipmaker Hailo, for example, says it is working with leading OEMs and Tier 1 automotive companies to empower smarter edge and IoT devices. Key goals for advanced, specialized chips include not only advances in heat reduction, wattage, and latency but also in high-resolution segmentation and real-time object detection. The company says chips can now be designed and built to become highly compatible with neural networks, a trait that is a key enabler of autonomy. Accordingly, edge devices are becoming better than traditional solutions at running deep-learning applications at full scale with increased efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability — all while significantly lowering costs, according to Hailo.22

6 Ondrej Burkacky, Johannes Deichmann, Jan Paul Stein, “Automotive Software and Electronics 2030,” McKinsey & Company, 2019

7 Georg Doll et al, “Private Autonomous Vehicles: The Other Side of the Robo-Taxi Story,” McKinsey & Company, December 1, 2020

8 Georg Doll et al, “Private Autonomous Vehicles: The Other Side of the Robo-Taxi Story,” McKinsey & Company, December 1, 2020

9 Bill Canis, “Issues in Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Deployment,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 23, 2021

10 Ben Husch, Anne Teigen, “Regulating Autonomous Vehicles,” National Conference of State Legislatures, April 2017

11 Bill Canis, “Issues in Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Deployment,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 23, 2021

12 Bill Canis, “Issues in Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Deployment,” Congressional Research Service, updated April 23, 2021

13 Andy Pasztor, Andrew Tangel, “U.S. Air Force Gives Lift to Flying Taxis,” Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2020

14 Stephen Ornes, “How to Hack a Self-Driving Car,” Physics World, August 18, 2020

15 “ResiCAV Project Calls for Urgent Need for Road Transport Cybersecurity Programme,” Government Computing, May 13, 2020

16 Suhas Gurumurthy, “What Is Required for a Scalable and Industry-Wide Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Deployment?” Frost & Sullivan, September 18, 2020

17 Suhas Gurumurthy, “What Is Required for a Scalable and Industry-Wide Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Deployment?” Frost & Sullivan, September 18, 2020

18 Bill Millar, “Paving the Way: How Leading Businesses Are Shaping the Future of Transportation and Mobility,” Forbes Insights, October 2019

19 Bill Millar, “Paving the Way: How Leading Businesses Are Shaping the Future of Transportation and Mobility,” Forbes Insights, October 2019

20 Bill Millar, “Paving the Way: How Leading Businesses Are Shaping the Future of Transportation and Mobility,” Forbes Insights, October 2019

21 Ann Steffora Mutschler, “Growing Complexity Adds to Auto IC Safety Challenges,” Semiconductor Engineering, November 5, 2020

22 “AI Chipmaker Hailo Releases Industry-Leading Deep Learning Processor,” IoT Business News, May 14, 2019

On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles: The Rise of ADAS, AD, and ACES

On the Edge
in Autonomous Vehicles On the Edge in Autonomous Vehicles
The Rise of ADAS, AD, and ACES

Starting on the road toward fully autonomous driving

Fast-evolving advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) lead to fully autonomous driving (AD), and from there, the world races to ACES: autonomy, connectivity, electrification, and ridesharing. Collectively, these developments are poised to revolutionize all forms of transportation — and society.

Car enthusiasts often obsess over the speed at which a vehicle can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour. But the gauge for the evolution from wholly unassisted to fully autonomous driving, developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers, goes from 0 to 5 only.

Speaking in broad terms, at level 0, the human is in complete control of the vehicle, managing all aspects of steering, braking, and general control. By level 1, the car may include steering or braking aids as well as adaptive cruise control or lane centering. Level 2 substitutes each “or” from Level 1 with “and,” making all mentioned devices into requirements.

At Levels 3 and 4 the vehicle is, to varying degrees, able to operate autonomously. Then, at level 5, no driver need apply — the vehicle does not need human input beyond requesting a destination.

Today, more than 60 million vehicles in the U.S. are equipped with ADAS. The percentage of total vehicles is rising rapidly, as features that were once offered only on luxury models are being included in entry-level vehicles.1

As for the widespread arrival of truly autonomous driving, the technology exists but has far to go. As Brandy Goolsby, director, Product and Solutions Marketing at Wind River®, explains, “Level 5 is being achieved within very limited scenarios only.”

For the future of full AD, Frost & Sullivan predicts the technology will mature and be accepted in trucks and off-highway vehicles first, then in passenger vehicles. Today there are already many examples of robotic trucks being tested on highways in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, Frost & Sullivan expects we will have to wait until 2035 before fully autonomous driving will be supported by connected networks of devices, autos and other vehicles, cities, and roads.2

Along the way, an enormous amount of industry investment and spending growth is ADAS focused. Prior to COVID-19, the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility was forecasting that “the market for ADAS could double by 2021, reaching $35 billion in revenue.”3

ADAS on Trucks
For the future of full AD, Frost & Sullivan predicts the technology will mature and be accepted in trucks and off-highway vehicles first, then in passenger vehicles.

For the future of full AD, Frost & Sullivan predicts the technology will mature and be accepted in trucks and off-highway vehicles first, then in passenger vehicles. Today there are already many examples of robotic trucks being tested on highways in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, Frost & Sullivan expects we will have to wait until 2035 before fully autonomous driving will be supported by connected networks of devices, autos and other vehicles, cities, and roads.2

Along the way, an enormous amount of industry investment and spending growth is ADAS focused. Prior to COVID-19, the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility was forecasting that “the market for ADAS could double by 2021, reaching $35 billion in revenue.”3

ADAS on Trucks
For the future of full AD, Frost & Sullivan predicts the technology will mature and be accepted for trucks and off-highway vehicles first, then in passenger vehicles.

Since then, the global slowdown stemming from the pandemic has significantly dented such forecasts. Yet the long-term trajectory of ADAS and AD looks virtually inexorable.

For another perspective on future growth, consider the trend lines of ADAS and AD viewed as a percentage of total automotive manufacturing costs. According to Deloitte, back in 2013 vehicle electronics averaged 18% of the total manufacturing cost. Today, the figure is 40% of total costs, and by 2030, the average vehicle’s electronics footprint is expected to represent 45% of total costs.4

As for the degree of commitment to becoming less like a traditional automaker and more like a tech company, consider just two examples from leading OEMs. Four years ago, Ford Motor Company was running a connectivity team of approximately 300 programmers. Today the number is about 4,000. Meanwhile, Volkswagen, the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer (by sales) said in 2020 that it would invest nearly $32 billion in digitization by 2025, which is double the amount it had planned on the year before.5

1 “ADAS and Autonomous Vehicles — the Cars of the Future,” I-Car Collision Repair News, July 22, 2019

2 Mugundhan Deenadayalan, “Autonomous Driving Will Convert Drivers to Pilots,” Frost & Sullivan, September 13, 2019

3 “Autonomous Driving,” McKinsey & Company

4 “Semiconductors — The Next Wave: Opportunities and Winning Strategies for Semiconductor Companies,” Deloitte, April 2019

5 Stephen Wilmot, “Cars Are Going Digital, but Detroit Has a Long Road Ahead,” Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2020