Why mobility is transforming the automotive industry

Spiros Liolis | June 2023

Digital transformation is impacting all industries and rapidly changing consumer expectations of brands. This conversion of new technology and societal trends is impacting the automotive industry in ways it never has before.

Megatrends of connectivity, autonomous driving, shared mobility, and electrification are shaping technological innovation and altering the way people access transportation. This holds the promise to improve sustainability, traffic flow, safety, and convenience. These developments are driving the automotive industry to rethink the way vehicles are marketed and distributed – shifting from solely vehicle manufacturers to mobility companies.  

A new software-driven era

The CEO of Mercedes-Benz recently stated the company “is on a journey to become a software company.” This is not an easy task for an industry more than a century old, and when new strategies, processes, knowledge, skills, and technologies are required to transform into the more agile and innovative companies needed to succeed in the new software-driven era. 

With electric and autonomous vehicles the future of transportation, technology continues to shift the market toward commercialization. Vehicle manufacturers are looking for technologies that can help them develop innovative and intelligent products more efficiently – speeding up resource-intensive design and engineering workloads and providing access to data across the globe to foster collaboration, maximize resources, and reduce development costs. And they are making significant investments in new technologies and operating models to transition from product-centric to customer-centric mobility vehicle manufacturers. 

Automotive ecosystem is key to growth

At the same time, manufacturers cannot lose ground in their core business of building vehicles, and therefore need to increase efficiency, especially in production lines. One key area where efficiency can drive large cost savings is in manufacturing and supply chain management.

Today’s automotive ecosystem is among the most complex and broad in the market. Manufacturers are looking to connect a vast number of machines, factories, suppliers, logistics companies, and other value chain partners to create actionable insights and optimize manufacturing and supply chains to improve quality and increase machine uptime and performance. 

Automotive Industry 5.0 v1

The world of the automotive data center

One consistent element across this ecosystem is the ability to create value from data – and data centers are at the core as they allow combining large quantities of data from various internal and external sources.

Data centers host advanced analytics and machine learning systems to develop actionable insights, connect to high-speed networks for content delivery, and provide high-performance computing capabilities. They must also be cyber-resilient and maintain data protection and privacy to offer consumers personalized vehicle experiences before and after sale. As a result, manufacturers must receive maximum value from their data center platforms. 

The modern role of the automotive data center

Eliminating system and process barriers and supporting seamless collaboration beyond organizational and regional boundaries are essential for automotive manufacturers to reduce overall lead times, as well as the costs of engineering processes, while increasing overall quality.

Manufacturers must take major steps to enable their data centers to transform to higher overall performance, with this transformation based on some fundamental principles:

  1. Standardize and rationalize the number of data center infrastructures, with systems and data physically located in dedicated, highly secured facilities
  2. Large, high-performance clusters located within data centers for flexible allocation of resources to engineering workloads
  3. Introduce private cloud or cloud-like infrastructure to further drive standardization and operational excellence

Ramboll can help

We have extensive experience assisting clients in the automotive industry and help clients to define the best strategy, either by upgrading an existing data center or using a third-party data center provider. Our services include: 

  • Assess space, power, and cooling density on schedule for high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, using unique methodology and tools and years of collective intellectual property
  • Project capacity of current and for growth, including unpredictable spikes in use, with data center grade tools and solutions
  • Identify and manage (multi)vendor selection and evaluate risks, environmental factors, and legal/compliance, with a complete risk valuation methodology

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About the author

Spiros Liolis
Senior Data Center Consultant & Chief Technologist

Spiros has built a reputation as a technology visionary and transformation catalyst. With over 20 years of experience, Spiros is known for maximizing revenue and growth by driving forward-thinking business development strategies, revolutionary solution development, and proactive sales enablement. His extensive background spanning data centers, digital transformation, emerging technology innovation, and cyber resilience enables him to provide data center strategy analysis to help clients address their forward mission goals – including IT and network architecture, application portfolios, data center sourcing needs, topology, reliability, and associated financial analysis for decision support requirements. Spiros holds multiple technical certifications and is a member of the distinguished Forbes Technology Council.

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