Top Trends To Look Out For In The Automotive Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic created uncertainty across many industries. But, although the pandemic is still having an impact, it’s not all doom and gloom.

In the first quarter of 2021 prospects in the automotive industry have started to look up remarkably. The recent consumer shift from public and shared transport to personal mobility has made recovery a lot faster than originally anticipated and there are plenty of exciting trends, technological developments, and discoveries within the automotive industry to watch out for.

So what are the top trends in the automotive industry this year, and what kind of cars can we expect to see on our roads over the next few years?

1. Connected Cars

According to KPMG’s Global Automotive Executive Survey, ‘Connectivity and Digitalisation’ is a key trend within the industry, with 59% of automotive executives surveyed placing it as the most important automotive key trend up to 2030.

Connected cars aren’t a new concept. The first car with connected features, the OnStar, was launched by General Motors in 1996. Initially, the aim was to increase safety by contacting emergency services when there was an accident.

Things have evolved since then and connected cars are growing even more sophisticated. Connected services and telemetry data is viewed as a particularly important source of future new income for car manufacturers.

Automotive companies are using IoT technology to create innovative connected services and collecting telemetry data from vehicles to implement new applications such as predictive maintenance to improve the lifetime of a car, increased user experience, autonomous driving, and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS).

Connected cars are not only about making driving safer anymore, they’re also about making life easier. Connected cars have their own internet connection, generally via a wireless local area network (WLAN) making it possible for other devices around and inside the car to share its internet access.

Connected cars also enable drivers to control and communicate with other smart devices remotely, most often via a mobile app. For example, you could start up your car remotely five minutes earlier via a mobile app so that it’s warm and your windows are defrosted prior to leaving your house in the colder months. Some connected cars can also park themselves for you, making it a lot easier to park in smaller spaces.

There are plenty of new technologies and features that keep being added to connected cars, both increasing driver safety and user experience. We can certainly expect connected cars to be on our roads in increasing numbers over the coming years.

2. Self-driving vehicles

Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous, driverless or robo-cars are vehicles capable of monitoring their environment and potential threats to move safely, without any, or with very minimal human input.

Driverless cars are equipped with a range of different technologies, such as radars, sonars, lidars, initial measurement units, odometry, advanced control and GPS systems. These enable them to interpret sensory information and identify the most appropriate route, as well as relevant signage and obstacles.

There are already quite a few Level 2 autonomous cars on our roads. These are cars that can take on multiple functions from the driver and are technologically advanced enough to bring steering and speed systems together, using multiple data sources.

In 2020, Waymo was the first company to offer robo-taxi rides to the general public in Phoenix. Although there are as of yet no fully autonomous cars (Levels 4 and 5) on our roads, there are several projects in the works to develop the first fully driverless commercial cars, and we can hope to see those emerging in the next five to ten years.

3. Automotive digital retail

​Online retail has already penetrated the North American and Western European automotive markets to a certain extent, pushed by consumer demand that stems from digital retail and media experiences from other industries.

According to research done by the Internet Advertising Bureau, 84% of consumers in the UK use their mobile phone to research a car.

A paper released by Deloitte - Disruption in the Automotive Industry, How Digital is Changing Car Sales – states that

In order to bring the industry up to date with current retailing trends, OEMs and their partners need to put the consumer first, responding to their needs and wants by using technology to fundamentally change their operating models and reshape the way consumers engage with their brand.

Updating and improving a sales process that has not changed for decades poses a unique challenge, but it is one that we believe can be met by ambitious OEMs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the automotive digital retail trend, having made it a lot clearer how easy, fast, and convenient it is to purchase anything online, even important products such as a car.