It’s advantage customers
The positive fallout of all these disruptions will be for customers as well as regulators in the form of cost efficient, safe, environment-friendly and productive mobility
We believe there are four significant disruptions taking place in the automotive industry due to changing preferences of two key stakeholders — customers and regulators.
The disruptions essentially comprise autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles and more and more connectivity features, on-demand mobility as opposed to personal mobility and alternate fuel vehicles to promote sustainable transportation in future.
It’s extremely difficult to put a timeframe as to when these disruptions will start impacting in a significant way on the traditional business model.
With autonomous and alternate fuel vehicles, new OEMs have entered the global automotive market and on-demand mobility players are now becoming more and more powerful customers in the personal mobility space.
Regulators are increasing their oversight on the automotive industry, especially in the areas of safety and emissions. Congestion is also becoming a key issue for regulators, especially in populous countries such as India where there is an increase in number of vehicles.
Cost, safety, emissions, enabling regulatory framework, infrastructure and overall vehicle performance will be the key as to how quickly these disruptions will impact the automotive industry.
At this point in time, all OEMs, including new players, are doing more and more innovation to bring down the cost of technology, increase the safety features and address the vehicle performance-related issues. Regulators, at the same time, are working on creating infrastructure as well putting in place an enabling regulatory framework to promote sustainable transportation.
Looking at the increasing congestion, if public transportation is unable to address the personal mobility requirement the government might start promoting on-demand mobility through proper regulatory framework and incentives, and sharing of vehicles will become the new norm in the future.
The positive fallout of all these disruptions will be for customers as well as regulators in the form of cost efficient, safe, environment-friendly and productive mobility. These disruptions will also help OEMs to become more agile and nimble to take on the challenges.
Abdul MajeedThe writer is partner, PwC