“In the past, automakers focused on the mechanical components of vehicle development, leaving most of the software” to others, says Gartner senior research director Pedro Pacheco. “As digital technology makes all the difference in the car, software will become the main driver of profit growth for automakers”. Here’s Gartner’s top-five trend list:
1 • Automakers review their approach to hardware sourcing. Automakers are reevaluating their long-held just-in-time inventory strategy, which led automakers and tier-1 suppliers no buffer inventory to fall back on during the various chip shortages. As a result, automakers are reviewing how they deal with chip manufacturers and considering designing their own chips. Gartner predict that by 2025, 50 per cent of the top 10 automakers will design their own chips.
2 • Digital giants integrate the car into a holistic ecosystem. 2022 will see digital giants, such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba, and Tencent, expand their footprint in vehicle technology. “These tech companies are bringing the car closer to their respective ecosystems, which, in turn, opens new vehicle-connected services”, Pacheco says.
3 • Open Data and Open-Source collaboration models gain momentum. In 2021, several tech companies created open-source vehicle architecture operating systems and open EV platform. This approach of adopting new partnership models in the automotive sector will increase in 2022. In addition, automotive companies will increasingly look at data in a similar way to that of the tech world.
4 • Established automakers ramp up OTA as their main digital revenue channel. Last year saw major changes in the automotive over-the-air (OTA) software market when several car manufacturers began to offer software updates. As most automakers have updated hardware on the vehicles to enable software updates, they will begin to shift to a revenue model that is based on services rather than the sale of the asset.
5 • AVs: More regulations, but commercialisation hurdles persist. Despite sensing technologies improving, perception algorithms becoming more sophisticated and regulations and standards progressing, developers of autonomous vehicles continue to struggle to scale autonomous operations to new cities or geographies.Proving the safety and effectiveness of autonomous technology is taking a long time and extensive simulation and real-world testing are making commercialisation slow and expensive.
