Nand Kochhar, Vice-President, Automotive and Transportation Industry, Siemens Digital Industries Software, speaks to Autocar Professional about the growing impact of digitalisation in the automotive ecosystem.
13 Jul 2023 | 7096 Views | By Mayank Dhingra
The global automotive industry is undergoing a massive transformation, with sustainability determining an accelerated shift towards zero-emission-propulsion technologies. The need to conform to renewed cost, quality, and performance attributes is driving rapid adoption of digital solutions that are enabling change management across OEMs and suppliers. Siemens Digital Industries Software, ...
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The global automotive industry is undergoing a massive transformation, with sustainability determining an accelerated shift towards zero-emission-propulsion technologies. The need to conform to renewed cost, quality, and performance attributes is driving rapid adoption of digital solutions that are enabling change management across OEMs and suppliers. Siemens Digital Industries Software, which is a global leader in product lifecycle management (PLM) software, as well as offers model-based systems engineering (MBSE) tools, is empowering automakers to handle the increased complexity with EVs and autonomous vehicles and helping them stay agile in uncertain scenarios of semiconductor shortage.
In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Siemens RealizeLive event held in Las Vegas in mid-June, Nand Kochhar, Vice President, Automotive and Transportation Industry, Siemens Digital Industries Software, spoke about the importance of digitalistion for change management as the megatrends of electrification and autonomous driving are making speedy inroads into the global automotive ecosystem.
What challenges do you see the global automotive industry grappling with, and how is technology enabling companies to power through the mega transformation underway?
The automotive industry is witnessing its biggest transformation in decades. While we have been producing cars for over 100 years and consistently making them better, the need for sustainability is upon us right now and is pushing us towards making renewed emphasis into electrification from all angles. And, with all the technology, both on the design and manufacturing fronts, we can accomplish some of the things which we could not even imagine before.
After electrification, autonomy is the next biggest trend, with there still being a dream to achieve full autonomy for its potential to transform businesses, particularly those in the logistics and transportation sectors. However, it is a paradigm that we would need to follow to incrementally go from ADAS features to complete autonomous driving. What this will translate into is an increase in the vehicle cost. While the cost of an EV has reduced in the last few years, it is still much higher compared to its equivalent internal-combustion-engine-powered options. At the end of the day, things must balance out, and therefore, OEMs will have to balance cost, weight, and performance, and that is how technology will take off to solving real, practical problems.
The automotive business is very complex to begin with, and when one adds these factors of electrification, and autonomy, the complexity just goes through the roof. So, one of the ways for addressing the complexity at the higher level is digitalisation. There are still a lot of unknowns and uncertainties across OEMs and suppliers, and digitalisation is going to help companies address these grey areas. While no one can come out and start giving answers to these uncertainties, digitalisation is letting companies innovate, and within its framework, model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is the way forward to handle complexities as it allows companies to continuously optimise the design phase, starting from the concept modelling itself.
Almost 80 percent of the cost, quality and sustainability is built into the product upfront, and that is where MBSE allows architectural modelling, assessing different concepts, getting into detailed designs, and ultimately reaching the stage of attribute trade-offs to deliver on the parameters of cost, quality, and performance. It is one of the key enablers which will aid optimisation and allow us to manage through this transformation.
What is the level of adoption of digital tools across the automotive ecosystem and with chip supplies remaining uncertain, how is digitalisation allowing companies to remain agile?
Digital transformation is a journey, and different companies are in the different stages of their digital journeys. But when we talk about digital solutions, their uptake is very high across automotive OEMs, Tier I suppliers, small-and-medium businesses, and lately, across start-ups in the EV space which have come up over the last decade.
Digitalisation is enabling end-to-end networking of the industry’s design, manufacturing as well as supply chain operations, and therefore, with the power of data, it is allowing companies to make decisions based on real-time inputs. For Siemens, our biggest differentiator is that our digital-twin technologies are not just about product development, but they also go into manufacturing as well as factory automation. With our capabilities such as Siemens Digital Logistics as well as Supplyframe, which are within the manufacturing domain, we have been able to allow companies to select alternatives to circumvent the shortage, while also undertaking swift design modifications.
Our supply chain suite — Supplyframe — which is connected to our backbone product lifecycle management or PLM software christened Teamcenter, helps design teams execute modifications in accordance with the available chip varieties. Moreover, Siemens Digital Logistics brings transparency to the information in real-time, and allows for tracking of a chip, right from its raw material and design to manufacturing and shipping stages. Therefore, based on this data, an OEM can adjust its production schedules and synchronise all operations. It is the PLM backbone which is connecting all the different domains to bring the information together.
Your view on the evolution of software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and is Siemens exploring collaborations across various operational domains to drive faster growth?
An increasing number of electronics and chips are coming into modern vehicles, and these circuits are being powered by software — be it embedded or application software. Moreover, automotive software is further defined into two categories — safety critical and not safety critical. While the latter is seeing rapid adoption in applications such as infotainment, the vehicle being open for perpetual software updates through the Cloud, forms the aspect of an SDV.
At Siemens, our Capital suite of embedded software, along with the Siemens EDA portfolio, offer a range of embedded software solutions to derive various vehicle functions, including full autonomy. I believe while there are a lot of challenges, the future in the SDV space is bright, and it would not just depend upon the technology, but also on the people, processes as well as homologation and certification aspects, which will all come together to make SDVs a reality as the space evolves continuously.
It is not only us, but the entire automotive industry has recognised the value of partnerships as no company can do everything on its own. We are already collaborating with the likes of Microsoft for adaptive AI, while our tie-up with Amazon Web Services or AWS is great from a computing standpoint. We are leveraging the computational solutions from Siemens and combining them with Cloud solutions from Amazon.
Therefore, we always welcome collaboration to create a win-win situation and partner with many players to augment the collective offering. While we have progressed significantly in the last ten years across all these trends, there still is a long way to go. Innovation remains the key and we will continue to drive that.
How are Siemens solutions helping the industry in its electrification journey?
One of our key differentiators — the Siemens EDA — formerly Mentor Graphics, empowers PCB design and embedded software development. Coupled with our engineering solutions from Capital, and with our foundation in mechanical systems design originating from NX and Solid Edge, along with the Teamcenter PLM, we are in a unique position to offer these cross-domain capabilities to help our existing and potential customers to get through this transition from internal-combustion engines to electrification. Our tools allow precise designing of electrical wiring and circuits in EVs to achieve weight reduction and maximise battery efficiency.
From an environmental standpoint, India would be at the forefront, trying to adopt electrification. However, it is not just the technology but government policies, certification as well as availability of infrastructure that is going to dictate the rate of adoption. While countries such as Canada are generating ‘green power,’ charging infrastructure is going to play a critical role in determining the uptake of EVs in the Indian market.
While a lot of OEMs leverage Siemens tools, each company has its own strategies and plans about how it is approaching electrification. We work with Tata Motors as it is a part of our Global Automotive Advisory Group.
How do you see ADAS and autonomous driving in India?
While the Indian traffic and road conditions are completely different from other regions, I am very encouraged to see what is going on in the road infrastructure that is currently being laid out. So, we must let go of the past and look into the future, and when we consider projects like the Delhi-Mumbai expressway, safety is going to play a critical role.
If we look at the number of road fatalities globally, it is still on the higher side. As cars become more capable, and the road infrastructure allows them to achieve higher speeds, both ADAS and autonomy are going to play a vital role in India as much as they are making a difference in developed countries. While most global players, including Indian manufacturers, have upped their product quality to match global standards, if there is a rapid enhancement in road infrastructure, it is equally important to drive focus on spreading awareness and educating people on the safe road practices. All these things need to go hand in hand.