What do Amazon, GM, Samsung, Honda, Blackberry and AT&T have in common?
Aside from being household names, they are among the many companies shaping the future of mobility. This evolution can be summed up by the acronym “CASE” for its four key elements: Connected vehicles, Autonomous vehicles, Shared mobility and Electric vehicles.
Technology is bringing us closer to a world with fewer human drivers and little to no vehicle emissions. Electronics manufacturers and component suppliers are making these changes possible on a greater scale.
Technology-Driven Transport
Does your vehicle warn you of upcoming construction or traffic jams? With connected technology, the millions of hours in time wasted in traffic could become a thing of the past.
Connected vehicles are designed to avoid construction, crashes and congestion: your car alerts you of stopped traffic and changes your route. Meanwhile other connected vehicles are also rerouted appropriately so that traffic stays in balance and congestion is reduced.
As new types of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) and Cellular to Everything (C2VX) technologies emerge, manufacturers of antennas and RF solutions will be challenged to create robust technologies with lighter components that occupy smaller footprints. Also, network infrastructure upgrades will be needed to process, analyze and prioritize up to 4,000 GB of telemetry and location data per day as required for connected urban transportation. There is huge opportunity waiting in this market.
Autonomous vehicles can also prevent the more than 5 million crashes and almost 40,000 highway deaths that occur each year in the U.S. alone. By integrating connected technologies with next-gen sensors, autonomous vehicles will avoid roadway obstacles and potential collisions. And, as systems are refined with better testing, they’ll likely react faster and more accurately than human reflex allows.
We’ve already seen driverless vehicles in use both before and during the COVID-19 outbreak, from grocery delivery robots in Scottsdale, Arizona and Houston, Texas, to tests of driverless delivery trucks and passenger vehicles. At current rates of implementation, experts say that by 2030, 80 percent of Chinese, European and U.S. miles will be covered by self-driving vehicles.
In agriculture, the use of autonomous tractors is also set to increase. Driverless technology and connected systems could increase production for farmers exponentially.
The challenges for device designers and electronic component manufacturers are even greater in these areas. Signal and data downtime are unacceptable when a vehicle’s safety depends “seeing” the traffic around it. Vehicle hardware will have to handle information at unprecedented speeds, and many potential suppliers and business partners for these new technologies will not be traditional transportation companies.
Shared Vehicle Revolution
Unlike ride-hailing or ride-sharing with privately-owned vehicles, shared mobility – collective, organized use of a vehicle by a number of people – is likely to disrupt the current car-ownership model, especially in urban areas. The millions of workers who began telecommuting during the global coronavirus pandemic could accelerate a move away from personal vehicle ownership as the norm in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Shared vehicles could become the preferred option for commuting, going shopping or travelling to leisure activities. The financial or quality-of-life benefits of no longer owning a vehicle could lead to fewer vehicles being purchased – and in turn, a shift in demand for components such as wiring harnesses, sensors and connectors. However, we can also expect greater use of mass-transit services and greater demand for multi-passenger vehicles. This means an increase in the number of larger, more complex wire harnesses and components needed, even as cities see a net decrease in the number of vehicles.
Finally, electrification will continue to impact not only passenger vehicles, but shipping fleets and OTR trucks. The three biggest drivers of electric vehicle purchases have been reductions in battery price; increased range on a single charge; and lower lifetime cost of ownership (maintenance, gas/electricity, etc.).
Electric vehicles are not a thing of the future – they are here now. Tesla continues to set milestones for passenger electric vehicles and Volvo already has electric commercial vehicles on the road. It is not a matter of if or when this change will take place, but a matter of how quickly we’ll see it.
Again, this evolution creates new challenges for makers of wiring harnesses, connectors and power electronics – not just to design safe, reliable in-vehicle systems, but to create an entirely new infrastructure to deliver this energy to homes, business and public charging stations.
The New Inflection Point
A century ago, in 1920, automobile pioneer Henry Ford was quoted as saying, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Instead, Ford supplied the invention that brought society to the first great inflection point in mobility, the family car – and with it, a new American landscape.
Advances in electronic components and technology are bringing us to a new inflection point, making the next evolution in mobility happen even more rapidly.
A version of this article originally appeared in the June 2020 issue of Electronics Sourcing North America.
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