OEM&Lieferant Ausgabe 2/2018 / OEM&Supplier Edition 2/2018

132 As we move towards highly automated and autonomous driving systems, established OEMs, suppliers and engineering firms will need to develop and produce innovative, highly complex and cost-efficient components that meet the needs of their customers. At the same time, the market is changing rapidly with the emergence of new and unconventional players such as Google, Apple, Tesla, Faraday, Uber and others, some of which are pushing the industry in radically new directions thanks to their technology and business models. Those new players, most of them back- grounded in IT business, regard cars as “soft- ware on wheels”. The well-proven approach to new technology adopted by premium OEMs and their suppliers is based on mostly standalone functionality in- volving on-board sensors and embedded sys- tems in the actual vehicle. At the forefront of these developments are complex assisted- driving systems all the way up to automated driving (Automation level 3 / Conditional Auto- mation). These are on-board systems involving little or no active communication with the out- side world. Delivering automotive functions at level 4 and above (high and full automation or auton- Integrating the car into our digital world The crucial role of ON-BOARD/OFF-BOARD expertise in shaping the future of mobility By Dr. Hieronymus Fischer, Head of Innovation Center Automotive Division, ESG Elektroniksystem- und Logistik-GmbH The automotive industry faces a period of enormous change over the coming years. Zero-emissions mobility and highly automated driving are the two critical issues that OEMs and suppliers will have to grapple with. Embedded systems (ES) in the actual vehicle (i.e. on-board) and high-performance back-end IT systems (off-board) are paving the way towards achieving a series of ambitious goals in the areas of vehicle automation, autonomy and multimodal mobility. Highly secure networks will be one of the most crucial elements in this new automotive world. Technologi- cal advances will also be driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics (big data). Images: © ESG IT and Automotive