The automotive industry is undergoing big changes. After last year the American engineering company Ford and the Chinese tech giant Baidu signed a $ 150 million contract to create lidar sensors used in self-driving cars, everyone once again realized that innovations would come to the industry.
According to the study, by 2022 there will be three significant trends that will affect the automotive industry: the rise in the popularity of car sharing, the rise in the popularity of electric cars and the production of self-driving cars. If you are eager to know the rest of the automotive industry you need to check one of the most popular automotive sites.
Innovation always has consequences, and one of the downsides to change is that innovation will pose an existential threat to today’s dominant auto companies.
The Number of Limited Editions Will Grow
A study of the changing consumption habits of luxury goods conducted by McKinsey for GQ magazine showed that the demand for exclusive items will grow in the future. They will be bought for personal use, and the rest will increasingly be used through sharing platforms. Apparently, the same conclusion is reached by Land Rover, which is not afraid to bring truly unique niche models to the market.
It would seem that after the crossover-convertible Evoque it is already difficult to surprise us with something, but the 3-door coupe based on Range Rover, created specifically for the 70th anniversary of the brand, coped with this task. With a 5-door brother, only two body parts have in common: the lower part of the tailgate and the hood, under which a 5-liter 557-horsepower engine is hidden. In total, 999 copies will be collected manually.
Several Types of Transmission
Business leaders from around the world predict that in 2040 we will observe a fairly balanced distribution of automotive vehicles, which will look like this: battery-powered electric vehicles – 30%, hybrids – 25%, fuel cell electric vehicles – 23% and cars with internal combustion engines – 23%, with the former taking the lead. Consumers say no and are not ready to fully switch to alternative transmission types. At the same time, the most common answer to the question “How do you see your next car?” became a hybrid, and only then – a car with an internal combustion engine.
Car – A Gadget
Throughout the history of modern cars, their on-board computers have been a nightmare. The long production cycle meant that while the machine was going through all the tests and improvements, its multimedia became so outdated that it looked no better than a regular calculator against the background of any smartphone.
The MBUX multimedia system, which debuted in the new Mercedes-Benz A-Class, shows that these times are in the past, like analog instruments. Two huge touchscreens on the front panel bring the ergonomics of the most modern gadgets to the interior of the car. It is significant that for the premiere of the new on-board system, they chose the A-Class – Mercedes-Benz for young people, and as a platform for its first demonstration – not a car dealership, but an electronics exhibition in Las Vegas. It turns out that even the manufacturer himself decided that this novelty is no longer so much from the world of motors as from the world of gadgets.
In many ways, this news is even more interesting than the release of new generations of CLS, G-Class, GLE and electric EQC, because the more electronics in cars, the more important their operating system.
And all these electronics need to be developed by experienced engineers. Those ones are presented at engineering marketplaces. Automotive engineering consulting companies at Engre.co could help to deal with all issues needed to come up with a modern technology.
Car Sharing
This innovation has had the greatest practical impact on how people move around today. In simple words, “carsharing” is a service of renting a car for a short period of time with a per-minute payment. The essence of the service is as follows – if you need a car, you take it at the nearest rental point, use it for your purposes and return it at any other rental point. It is similar to a bicycle rental system, where a two-wheeled “friend” can be left at any bike parking lot.
This way of using cars was practiced even before the advent of taxi services in America. In several neighborhoods of New York, for example, in Manhattan, people often relinquished their car ownership and traveled in mass transit or taxis.
In the future, when car rental for a short period of time will be one of the methods of transportation, companies such as Zipcar, Uber, and Google will be able to succeed in the automotive industry by becoming the main services for ordering.
However, car-sharing as such does not pose a big threat to the automotive industry, since such a service is still too expensive for mass distribution. If you live in a suburban area, it is cheaper and more convenient for you to maintain and use your car. And if you live in a densely populated area, public transportation, walking or cycling are more affordable options.
However, according to forecasts, by 2020 in Europe there will already be 15 million users of “car-sharing”, and the number of available cars will reach 240 thousand. It is also predicted that the rise in the popularity of car-sharing will reduce the number of car buyers and dealer outlets.
Development of the Electric Car Market
Sales of electric cars are gradually growing in the whole world. So, every year the number of such cars almost doubles. According to some experts, the electric car market grew by 56% in 2019. And in order for these positive trends to continue to develop, it is important to change the very structure of the market, because now imports are mainly used cars.
The state supports this industry by reducing the cost of cars through exemption from duty and VAT. The number of parking spaces with chargers is also increasing. But the authorities are in no hurry to finance the development of their own production of electric vehicles. The expert notes that bills aimed at supporting the production of electric cars have already been registered in most of the countries.
