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July 13, 2015

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Home » Business » Autotalk Special

Continental prepares for ‘intelligent driving’ era

By Anna Lu | July 13, 2015, Monday | Print Edition

With a history dating back to 1871, Germany-based Continental AG is a time-honored player in traditional manufacturing, but the company maintains a young, adventurous heart.

While supplying chassis, powertrain, interiors, and tires for global carmakers, Continental is also actively exploring new business opportunities in the “big data” age, particularly in China.

This country’s up to 600 million smartphone users, its integration with the mobile Internet, its cloud computing and its Internet of Things have shown an ability to create a ruckus in the development of any industry.

The Internet Plus strategy announced by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier this year reinforces the country’s big vision of using the Internet to reshape modern manufacturing.

For Continental, the opportunities go far beyond the realm of e-commerce, according to Elmar Degenhart, chief executive officer of Continental, and Ralf Cramer, president and CEO of Continental China. Both men sat down to an exclusive interview with Shanghai Daily this month.

The future is promising for an intelligent transportation system that utilizes the value data, they said.

“In the past, a vehicle was an isolated shell,” said Degenhart. “In the future, it will be part of the Internet. A vehicle today comes with up to 100 electronics, which collect data we can use to make driving more intelligent, safer, more efficient and more comfortable.”

More than half of Continental’s sales nowadays are related to electronics. To handle the high data volume required in a vehicle, the company is working with IBM and Cisco to establish a cloud back-up. Around the corner is Continental’s dynamic eHorizon, a cloud-based content service platform that can provide relevant information to drivers, such as traffic conditions, weather advisories, tips for driving efficiency and warnings about accidents.

There are more than 1 million fatalities on the world’s roads every year. The grand ambition of Continental’s Vision Zero goal is to relegate accidents to museums one day.

Autonomous driving

The company’s driver assistance system, based on sensors, radar and cameras, has laid the technological foundation for its study of autonomous driving, the ultimate stage of data-driven intelligent transportation.

Its agenda is to achieve autonomous freeway driving over long distances by around 2020.

However, in cities with more complicated driving scenarios, the commercial potential for such technologies is higher. Drivers would no doubt appreciate some help when passing through construction zones, navigating merging lanes and truck traffic, or creeping along in traffic jams, bored to tears.

A bigger complexity lies in accountability. From an insurance point of view, who will accept responsibility for system failures that result in accidents or injuries?

It always takes time to build consumer confidence. Thirty years ago, the industry cut the brake line and put a hydraulic mechanical electronic unit in between, creating the anti-lock braking system, or ABS. It’s now a standard feature in every car, Cramer noted, but at the start, everyone agonized over the same question: Who would be responsible for any failure?

“In China, automatic driving may come sooner rather than later, or sooner than we expect,” he said.

According to surveys, up to 65 percent of people in China are positive about the idea of autonomous driving, a percentage higher than in Japan, Germany or the US.

Though surprised by the findings at first, Cramer said he can now understand the confidence, given the popularity of the smartphone and the emerging Internet of Things. Autonomous driving technology could sweep the industry faster than the ABS did.

Information technology and Internet-related industries, with their dazzling speed of innovation, are seeking to participate in this new trend but have yet to play a defining role.

“Most of them will never build cars,” Degenhart said. “Their interest is the safe usage of the Internet in the vehicle, which is currently a white spot, and then the development of the driver into a source of valuable data. Autonomous driving is a pre-condition for achieving all these.”

He said he doesn’t believe that IT or Internet companies have what it takes to be the new breed of auto specialists, despite their advantages in the software area.

The way to validate functionality and test technologies in a car is more sophisticated than the approach used for consumer electronics or Internet user experiences. After all, a car has very low tolerance for error.

Then, too, the hardware is not easy. In the future, the electronics cluster in a vehicle will go down in numbers to simplify the architectural structure and cater to expanding computing power, which in turn will encourage more implementation of sensors.

Still, the Internet Plus car is a big project that neither the auto nor the IT industries can take on by themselves. The race for data ownership is already on in Europe, where discussions have been intensifying to the point of being overdone, said Degenhart.

For eHorizon, Continental feels comfortable incorporating data systems as long as they don’t compromise the privacy of car owners’ personal information.

Autotalk Special


 

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