Automotive companies are undergoing a dual transformation toward digital and electric vehicles. Specifically, automotive companies are pivoting toward battery-electric mobility, which is recognized as an effective and efficient driver of net-zero goals. To deliver on these aspirations they are on an accelerated and ambitious digital transformation journey to become mobility-tech companies. This transition requires a data and digital-first mindset, and the journey comes with a myriad of challenges — digitizing production, enabling, retaining and attracting talent, meeting customer expectations, and protecting the digital environment — which we’ll consider in this blog post.
Digitizing Production to Meet E-Mobility Ambitions
Automotive companies across Europe are scaling up production cycles to meet an increased demand for electric vehicles. Manufacturers are faced with the challenges of meeting sustainability goals and minimizing unforeseen delays to meet time-to-market expectations.
The rapid production and deployment of e-vehicles must be tackled with a digital and data-led infrastructure that allows for the flexibility needed to secure future production locations and the building of electric architecture. This means that design and production facilities are becoming more intelligent, connected, and automated, while increasingly more reliant on IoT.
Enabling, Attracting, and Retaining Talented for the Digitalized Workspace
Rapid technology change places new demands on employers and requires a shift in employee skillsets. For example, data sits at the heart of enabling a connected e-vehicle network and is woven into every aspect of production, so automotive companies are delivering training to empower employees on this digitization journey.
Adoption of a company-wide digital data-mindset also enhances the employee experience by baking it into organizational processes and structures and offering new career opportunities. This, in turn, means that the connected organization benefits from new levels of efficiency, collaboration, and productivity. An example of this is AWL, which overcame the challenge of synchronizing data between multiple manufacturing sites and its headquarters and created a shopfloor that is 90 percent digitized with a stable and consistent employee experience.
Software arms and digital hubs are central to digitization strategies, helping to foster tech talent, deliver innovation, and develop a competitive edge by differentiating vehicles and services. In addition to internal talent, car manufacturers often collaborate with third parties to deliver new software-enabled driver and customer experiences. These partnerships can relatively quickly deliver scalable software advancements and digital services growth and are further proof that automotive companies are frequently technology pioneers.
Meeting Customer Expectations Through Electric Vehicles, Connectivity
Sustainability is just one customer expectation for e-vehicles. They must also be tech-enabled, connected, convenient, and safe. The innovation potential of new software is critical to delivering a next-generation experience for customers. Meeting these expectations and creating a premium digital driver experience to span a diverse automotive customer base, including regions, generations and “luxury” segments, is no mean feat. Manufacturers rely on their experienced designers to be at the top of their game, with the latest skills and tools to enable innovation and agility.
Protecting the Digital Environment
Finally, technology investments and IP must be protected from both external and internal threats. A breach can inflict immense damage to productivity, revenue, and brand, all of which are under increasingly under increased scrutiny. Connected devices and internal apps are often directly targeted. However, as The Ponemon 2022 Study, The Cost of Insider Threats report shows, IoT devices are at greatest risk, with 63 percent of organizations surveyed being most concerned about loss of sensitive data from unmanaged devices.
Car manufacturers, which are focused on intensive deployment of internal web apps as well as connected devices to scale operations, are turning to multi-layered security protection to prevent breaches and data loss. This Citrix blog post covers some of the security technologies used to meet today’s very real threats.
Conclusion
The environmental and consumer benefits of e-mobility are well understood and the race to meet expectations of sustainable, technology-enabled e-vehicles has accelerated. Leading automotive companies have already made significant inroads into the digital transformation underpinning e-mobility, implementing digital twins, connected devices, and new ways of working. However, digitization on its own is not enough to meet all the challenges. Digital talent and the right skills are vital for success.
Although digital transformation undeniably brings new challenges, like the threat from security vulnerabilities, overcoming these challenges paves the way for future innovation in products, driver experience, digital skills, and future profitability.
