This is "New Automotive". It's a revolution!

The Automotive Industry in Germany especially has been a slow moving industry for decades. If you wanted to become an automotive engineer you had to either work for one of the big OEMs in Ingolstadt ( AUDI AG ), Munich ( BMW Group ), Wolfsburg ( Volkswagen Group ), Stuttgart ( Porsche AG ) or work for one of the big TIER1s like Bertrandt Group , ZF Group , Continental , Bosch .

Becoming an automotive engineer or mechanical engineer was more or less your only option to enter the industry at all. The industry was dominated by mechanical and hardware design, manufacturing technology and so called "automotive processes".

The entry barrier for "new players" to become automotive OEMs or TIER1s was as high as it could've been. The market was sorted, strong players where dominating and some smaller ones where following. A pretty stable system.

In recent years this has changed.

• Diesel and petrol engines are being banned successively, battery and fuel cell electric powertrain systems are seeing wide adoption.
• From being hardware and mechanical design dominated machines new vehicle models are becoming software user experience dominated machines. This implies to radically rethink the development scope and needs very different competencies like especially all kinds of computer science roles.
• The traditional OEMs sales and marketing strategy was focussing on selling driving emotions, status symbol, ride comfort and passenger safety through mechanical and mechatronic systems (Build quality, Driving Dynamics, ABS, ESP, Airbag, Emergency Barking, Lane Assist). Customer behavior is shifting towards digital user experience, seamless integration with their smartphones and most frequently used online services (such as Spotify, Audible, Google Maps etc.). They want vehicles that not only keep themselves safe but avoid collisions at all, autonomously navigating the world. The traditional quality standards are becoming a "status quo", no selling point by itself anymore. Digital user experience and next generation active safety sells instead!

Those changes in customer behavior and industry standards are actually threatening a lot of traditional OEM's and Tier1's leading position. The automotive industry has a lot of vacuum for new solutions that meet the ever changing demand. This opened up the doors for "New Players" to disrupt the automotive industry.

Where the "automotive process landscape" so far was perceived as the entry barrier to the automotive industry, technological innovations like "3D Lidar", "Sensor Fusion", "Distributed Perception Systems" and "Autonomous Driving Platforms" opened the doors wide for all sorts of start ups to join the game.

What's new now is that automotive start ups are not trying to sell their products and subsystems to traditional OEMs or TIER1s but they are reaching all the way up instead. They are trying to become OEMs and TIER1s themselves instead. Well aware they somehow have to get "automotive process compliance" sorted, they still believe their core IP, the technological innovation at heart are giving them the edge to get ahead of competition with a heritage of 100 and more years in the business. For me it's breathtaking to see how rapidly the automotive industry landscape is changing! It actually is a revolution!

Sidenote: The solution to "automotive process compliance": So far it seems like traditional consultancies and engineering services are struggling to support those "new players" to get from 0-100% process compliance as they are used to work more along the 50-100% mark. There seems to be high potential for new companies thats core focus lies on providing this support.

This is a list of some of my favorite "new players":

Innoviz Technologies Ouster Argo AI Cruise Zoox RoboSense Rimac Automobili (Much ❤️ to Croatia!!) Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH Rivian Sono Motors Luminar Technologies and sooo many more!!

And now the question: How can you profit from these new developments within the automotive industry?

Think globally! Think working remotely! Think freelancing! Think offering your automotive core know how and experience to those "new players"! They do have their software domain experts, what they are missing is automotive domain experts.

So think about what you're good at, what you've done the last couple of years?!

• Requirements Engineering in Doors or Integrity?
• System Architecture Design in Enterprise Architect?
• Configuration/Release Management according ASPICE?
• Software Quality Assurance according ASPICE?
• Functional Safety Management according ISO26262?
• .....

Those skills are rare to find and desperately needed by #newautomotive players.

So tailor your LinkedIn profile to stand out and tell what's your core experience and start reaching out to people working at those companies, especially PMs, CEOs, POs, Recruiters and talk to them. You'll find your outreach is greatly appreciated!

If you need some leads, inspiration, someone to talk and exchange on experiences don't hesitate to reach out, connect on LinkedIn and subscribe to this Newsletter!

Best

Lukas