00:00:04: Welcome to the Human and Technology Podcast.

00:00:07: This podcast is for anyone who develops, distributes or uses technology For all those that always have a feeling that technology overwhelms or dominates them... ...for everyone wants know how to deal with technology in everyday life.. ..For Anyone Who want's understand what technology does do us And How we can get our lives back!

00:00:33: is for those who want to make technology sexy.

00:00:37: All the product developers, designers, UX-UI professionals, product managers, CTOs and CEOs... And it's for you!

00:00:47: My name is Dr Peter Oreska.

00:00:50: my friends call me Dr Peter.

00:00:53: I am your host ...and i'm happy that you are here.

00:01:03: Hello hello and welcome this new episode of the Human Technology Podcast.

00:01:12: This will be... The beginning of something new!

00:01:18: Most of my episodes are single-episodes, that the episode as is stands for itself and every now and then.

00:01:27: in the past I had double headers like two episodes belonging to one.

00:01:33: if i have too much thanks to talk about if there was too much stuff to think about.

00:01:40: I decided to split it in half.

00:01:44: today's episode is the beginning of a row off three episodes and so yeah this is a premiere, This Is New!

00:01:58: We...I will have this episode today and two more Being together having focusing on one thing and the One Thing is The past five years of the CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas Trigger for this.

00:02:24: The reason for This was that I'm starting my preparations For twenty-twenty seven So it sounds pretty crazy right?

00:02:32: Twenty-Twenty Seven just a little more than three months away from when I record this episode.

00:02:40: When you hear it, its less then three months!

00:02:46: Yeah anyway with all these preparations beginning...I thought i'm gonna have to look back into the past five years.

00:02:57: twenty-twenty two, twenty-three, twenty four, twenty five and twenty six.

00:03:03: I am writing a report every year, that is the white paper.

00:03:08: So if you want to have your copy of any of these just let me know.

00:03:14: and so decided everything post-pandemic will be part this row of podcasts episodes.

00:03:25: Five years off CES not talk about single highlights or things that happened, what I want to do is analyze the larger lines of development.

00:03:46: What has happened?

00:03:53: Yeah, that they were interesting to the big lines.

00:03:56: and of course these lines are not independent.

00:03:58: They cross them into fear in a. yeah this is something we will analyze under next three episodes on.

00:04:10: find out.

00:04:10: okay it's not independent but I just want have the bigger picture.

00:04:14: The Bigger View.

00:04:18: five times Las Vegas thousands of exhibitors Hundreds of conversations, talks discussions countless new technologies.

00:04:28: In quite a few miles walking through the exhibition halls cars displays sensors software already official intelligence robots and Of course plenty of solutions that made me wonder what problem they were actually supposed to solve.

00:04:54: With these reports, with the analysis of their parts I put them side-by-side and try to find out what are the big lines in there.

00:05:01: And... ...with what i did.. ..I'm interested in a slightly different question.

00:05:08: What does all this actually mean?

00:05:14: Suddenly something became visible that is almost impossible to see in a single year.

00:05:20: Technology's changed!

00:05:21: Of course something much more fundamental change as well.

00:05:25: On twenty-twenty two, I wrote about for example new electric vehicle manufacturers micro ability charging leader driver monitoring software ecosystems and CES was still heavily effected by the pandemic.

00:05:40: many companies were missing And um i hope that one day it will return to what is used to be.

00:05:49: In twenty-twenty six, more than hundred forty eight thousand people were back in Vegas.

00:05:54: Four thousand one hundred companies.

00:05:56: so CES was huge again and maybe even more relevant then ever before.

00:06:03: only the automotive industry did not really come back.

00:06:09: many of the major car manufacturers that once dominated Las Vegas with enormous booth they have disappeared or dramatically reduced their presence.

00:06:24: At the same time, software companies, AI startups, sensors manufacturers platform providers robotics companies.

00:06:33: they have become much more visible and the car isn't disappearing but it's just losing its leading role.

00:06:43: that is only one of.

00:06:47: So software went from a feature to foundation of cars.

00:06:51: AI moved almost invisible, too ubiquitous within few years.

00:06:57: Autonomous driving shifted from spectacular promises about what happens in the future to surprisingly concrete applications.

00:07:06: Displays became bigger and bigger until we were really asking is bigger still better?

00:07:15: so we have a certain saturation there.

00:07:19: Computers suddenly got arms and legs, reading my five reports today I don't want to list all the trends.

00:07:31: what i see here is transformations from products to platforms Ecosystems from interfaces to HMIs human machine interfaces two relationships.

00:07:51: From AI on screens, To AI in the physical world and focus.

00:08:01: The question that the past question was is it technology?

00:08:06: Is this technology possible?

00:08:09: We're switching more and more into.

00:08:11: which of these things should we actually do?

00:08:16: And this is what this row of podcast episodes is focusing on.

00:08:21: It's not the ten coolest technologies over five past years, but for five years CS tells us about where technology has actually been heading and what might matter when we walk through the halls of Las Vegas in January at twenty-twenty seven?

00:08:42: And most important insight into the past five years of CES may be a very simple one.

00:08:49: The future doesn't arrive the way we expect it to.

00:08:52: There is no single future, the future isn't a train that has already left the station and now we just need to jump on or its not a wave rolling towards us as in... We just need adapt as quickly as possible.

00:09:04: there are many possible futures.

00:09:08: then.

00:09:08: some of them will drive autonomous cars others may no longer own car at all.

00:09:14: And one future we constantly talk to AI agents.

00:09:18: In another future, AI works almost invisibly in the background.

00:09:24: Perhaps human-eyed robots will eventually live with us and perhaps we'll discover that a robot does not need look like a human at all!

00:09:36: All these futures are imaginable today but there's others which do NOT think about or don't talk about... Which of those?

00:09:44: Becomes?

00:09:44: reality is not determined by technological progress alone.

00:09:49: It depends on decisions, on companies investing billions in certain technologies and rejecting others... ...on engineers and designers developing products.. ..on politics and regulation , on markets and ultimately on us as humans who adopt technologies ignore them or simply refuse to buy.

00:10:16: We are not at the mercy of future.

00:10:18: we produce it every day through our decisions.

00:10:25: What I want to do now is ten and a half big development lines, And i will talk about three Development Lines this time four in the next episode and then Three-and-a-half In The final one.

00:10:42: what these half trend Is?

00:10:46: I Will trigger you here.

00:10:49: I will tell you in the last episode of this row of episodes.

00:10:56: Free things today, CES came back.

00:10:59: Automotive didn't.

00:11:01: Number two mobility instead of automobiles.

00:11:08: Software.

00:11:08: number three software from a feature to The foundation.

00:11:15: let's start with number one.

00:11:16: CES Came Back.

00:11:18: Automotive Didn't.

00:11:21: twenty-twenty two was a very strange CS did.

00:11:24: the first one post pandemic.

00:11:26: so COVID wars still very present and many companies had cancelled some of them at very short notice.

00:11:34: instead of the four thousand far four hundred five hundred exhibitors of Twenty-Twenty only about two thousand three hundred came to Vegas.

00:11:42: visitor numbers fell even more dramatically from hundred seventy thousand to about forty thousand.

00:11:49: The halls were empty.

00:11:51: Yeah, I always had this Gary Moore song Empty Rooms in my ear when i walked through the halls.

00:11:57: and back then My hope was pretty simple Hopefully the old CES will come back one day And spoiler it did.

00:12:09: In twenty-twenty three more than three thousand exhibitors said a hundred and seventy thousand visitors.

00:12:15: um...the West Hall established itself as the automotive hall was sold out.

00:12:19: Twenty-twenty four, four thousand three hundred exhibitors more than one hundred thirty five thousand visitors.

00:12:27: twenty twenty five more than four thousand five hundred exhibitor including fourteen hundred startups and one hundred forty.

00:12:35: more then one hundred and forty thousand visitors in twenty twenty six again more than for a thousand exhibitors an almost one hundred fifty thousand the visitors.

00:12:47: so CES was back.

00:12:49: but Automotive wasn't and that is interesting.

00:12:53: for many years.

00:12:54: CES had turned into one of the world's most important automotive shows Perhaps even more Important For, for the future of the car industry than any other traditional auto shows.

00:13:09: And it made sense because The car became digital connected automated electric software defined suddenly displays, chips, sensors, software cloud services and the connected user experience.

00:13:23: They mattered just as much as engines.

00:13:26: chassis's and transmissions were better to discuss the future of the car than at The World's Biggest Technology Show.

00:13:35: so the car manufacturers came to Las Vegas Mercedes BMW Audi Toyota General Motors Stellantis.

00:13:44: They built enormous booths.

00:13:47: Yeah, they showed concept cars, autonomous vehicles gigantic displays and sometimes pretty wild visions of how we're going to move in the future.

00:13:59: when something started shift In twenty-twenty four it became absolutely clearly visible for all.

00:14:08: Stenantis was gone.

00:14:09: BMW Mercedes significantly reduced their activities.

00:14:14: At the same time, other players became more important.

00:14:17: Automotive startups, agricultural construction machinery suppliers tool providers service companies.

00:14:25: and in my twenty-twenty four report I wrote that innovation power had always shifted between OEMs and suppliers.

00:14:36: In that year in twenty-four it seemed like its moved more to the supplier side or even more visible to the tech side, to the service provider's site.

00:14:51: Yeah and then the gap grew.

00:14:52: in twenty-twenty five Audi Mercedes and Volkswagen were completely missing.

00:14:57: General Motors, Ford, Ceylanders where barely visible are totally absent altogether.

00:15:03: an even major suppliers as Magna ZF and ZF NN for wear state the way all reduced their presence.

00:15:15: Automotive was still there, of course, Haudner showed its new electric vehicles.

00:15:19: BMW presented in next generation of iDrive Sony and Haudna finally turned this Sony concept car that had been shown for years into the Fila one And The West Halls still hosted about two hundred fifty companies from automotive suppliers technology services tools.

00:15:38: at the same time micro mobility with motorcycles, e-bikes, scooters was already spread into the Norfolk.

00:15:47: So automotive had not disappeared.

00:15:49: but something had changed this year.

00:15:53: in twenty twenty six it was impossible to miss Mercedes... Not there Audi.. Not There Toyota.... Not There Cylinders..... Not There.

00:16:01: BMW was more or less The only established Western OEM with a clear official presence.

00:16:08: Gili and Great Wall Motors represented China and Yanai was there as well.

00:16:17: Yanai interestingly not with a traditional automotive presence, Yanai showed robotics and automation And that alone tells us the story.

00:16:28: A car manufacturer comes to the CES and doesn't show cars.

00:16:33: Perhaps this is more important than any other new fancy concept car.

00:16:39: Is Automotive retreating?

00:16:40: Yes & No?

00:16:43: If you count the logos of traditional OEMs, The answer is obvious.

00:16:47: The automotive industry has lost massive visibility at CEA.

00:16:53: But if we look at technologies that will define the car for future, the picture completely different.

00:16:59: AI chips sensors software cloud platforms cyber security robotics voice interaction, incoming sans and haptics digital ecosystems.

00:17:09: All this was at CES.

00:17:11: twenty-twenty six And all of these is automotive.

00:17:16: There just isn't necessarily a Mercedes an audio or Volkswagen logo above the booth anymore.

00:17:23: CS.

00:17:23: Twenty-twty six were strongly shaped by technology companies software and platform providers AI startups sensor manufacturers.

00:17:31: mobility increasingly appeared as an application layer on top of a digital, data-driven and I-based technological infrastructure.

00:17:41: Sorry that changes the perspective.

00:17:44: perhaps automotive isn't really retreating from CES.

00:17:48: Perhaps traditional automotive industry is simply losing its authority to define what automotive actually is.

00:17:56: That's the difference.

00:17:58: Ten or fifteen years ago car manufacturer could quite naturally put it vision for future cars on stage.

00:18:06: The vehicle was at the center, technology was built around it.

00:18:09: today.

00:18:11: The order may be reversing.

00:18:13: AI develops independently of the car chips develop independently off-the-car cloud platforms developed independently off the car robotics develops independently on the car consumer electronics develops independently off a car and eventually all these developments meet.

00:18:33: The car is no longer automatically the place where the future is invented.

00:18:40: It becomes a place, where future technologies are applied.

00:18:55: For an industry that has spent more than one hundred years defining its own products Technologies and unvalued change This Is A Dramatic Change And perhaps it also explains why the absence of OEMs at CES strikes me as so remarkable because actually the opposite should be happening.

00:19:19: If AI, software platforms, chips, sensors and user experience are becoming increasingly important to the car then a show where all these things come together should become more important in automotive industry not less.

00:19:33: In my twenty-twenty six report I therefore ask what role CES might play for Automotive in future.

00:19:40: My answer was not non.

00:19:42: It's quite the opposite.

00:19:44: CES is simply changing its function, less automotive show more technology marketplace and above all it is a radar for future technologies that may be relevant for cars A place to observe how quickly industries outside Our own industry are moving with which technologies are emerging?

00:20:11: Which developments or which dependencies are developing, which new players aren't peering and And which parts of our own value change may suddenly be defined by companies that had nothing to do With cars yesterday.

00:20:27: The wrong question is why so few car makers So few OEMs coming to CES?

00:20:36: the more interesting questions Can car manufacturers afford not to look at what happens at the CES?

00:20:45: CES may need the automotive industry less than it used too, but the automotive Industry needs CES more then ever.

00:20:59: Let's move on to number two.

00:21:01: The car disappeared.

00:21:03: Mobility didn't.

00:21:05: when we talk about CES and automotive something happens almost automatically.

00:21:10: We look for cars.

00:21:13: Which new vehicles are being shown, which new manufacturers appear?

00:21:16: Which concept cars our on stage?

00:21:19: who has the most spectacular cockpit?

00:21:23: and I did that too over all The years.

00:21:26: And in twenty-twenty two there was a lot to see.

00:21:29: Winfest showed five electric vehicles.

00:21:31: Fisca was their talk presented itself.

00:21:34: Sony showed its second concept car announced plans to enter the automotive business itself.

00:21:40: Indie Vee was another new name.

00:21:42: Yeah, they were also electric motorcycles scooters small urban vehicles and all kinds of other forms on electric mobility.

00:21:51: And what are the big questions that he asked?

00:21:54: back?

00:21:55: there was who will build cars in the future?

00:22:00: Today I think that question Was far too small Because while watching new car manufacturers something else was changing The definition of mobility itself.

00:22:14: For years, the future of the automotive industry was described using four letters C A S E case connected autonomous shared and electric at CS.

00:22:28: twenty-twenty three.

00:22:30: I added a fifth letter Canes.

00:22:34: Well, I added the N in the middle on the end stood for new mobility because suddenly there were things moving everywhere that where no longer traditional cars.

00:22:46: Autonomous delivery parts, e-bikes, scooters, motorcycles small electric vehicles, electric boats... Vehicles designed for highly specific transportation tasks.

00:22:58: Some had four wheels some two and none.

00:23:02: with the summit was difficult to decide whether they should still be called vehicles at all.

00:23:07: The interesting thing wasn't the individual scooter, or one single delivery robot.

00:23:15: It was... ...the diversity.

00:23:18: Mobility was beginning to detach itself from the product we call car.

00:23:26: At first that sounds trivial.

00:23:29: Bikes motorcycles and public transportation have existed for decades.

00:23:35: but technologically something new was happening, electrification connectivity sensor software and later AI suddenly made it possible to develop very different mobility solutions using similar technologies as building blocks.

00:23:53: So an e-bike autonomous delivery robot in a software defined vehicle look completely different underneath.

00:24:00: under the hood they are increasingly similar technologies sensors connectivity cloud software navigation batteries AI.

00:24:11: And suddenly the boundary between automotive and the rest of mobility becomes rather blurry.

00:24:21: in twenty-twenty four this became particularly obvious.

00:24:28: might see us report that year.

00:24:29: I wrote a sentence that sounded slightly strange electric is over, I didn't mean that electric mobility was over, quite the opposite.

00:24:41: It had become so normal... ...that it was no longer particularly useful as a stand-alone future trend.

00:24:50: An electric drivetrain was not automatically an innovation.

00:24:53: That is important moment in evolution of any technology.

00:24:58: Technology are loudest while they're new.

00:25:03: Eventually They became infrastructure.

00:25:06: Nobody walks around CES today shouting, look this device uses electric electricity.

00:25:13: Electric power?

00:25:16: nobody does it because its normal most of the devices use electricity to run.

00:25:23: something similar was happening to electrical ability.

00:25:25: The interesting question Was no longer whether a vehicle was electric?

00:25:31: It was what we could do with that technological foundation.

00:25:35: What do we have developed?

00:25:39: That is why I buried case in twenty-twenty four and also buried Keynes, I invented a Diaz.

00:25:50: And Diaz stands for diverse intelligent automated and software defined.

00:25:56: We can argue about the name.

00:25:58: i thought it was funny but behind the acronym there Diverse.

00:26:05: Mobility had stopped being merely an evolution of the car, yeah?

00:26:13: Then we have Intelligent.

00:26:14: everything somewhere is Intelligent automated big thing and at a very anti-S for software defined.

00:26:23: in twenty twenty five you could see this development In The Geography Of The CS.

00:26:29: over the Years the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center had become the automotive hall.

00:26:35: OEM suppliers, technology companies service providers they were all located there.

00:26:40: in twenty-twenty five around two hundred and fifty companies exhibit their but mobility no longer fitted.

00:26:49: inside a North Hall increasingly featured e-bike scooters motorcycles other electric mobility solutions.

00:26:57: my report I described this as an almost an extension of The West Hall.

00:27:03: Looking back, I find that almost symbolic.

00:27:09: Mobility escaped the automotive form.

00:27:13: The mobility of the future could no longer be placed into a box we had previously reserved for automotive.

00:27:22: In twenty and twenty six this became even more obvious.

00:27:27: There was a remarkable number of two wheelers manufacturers, electric motorcycles, e-bike scooters, micromobility providers, shared mobility platforms, light word urban transportation solutions.

00:27:38: In my report I described this as shift away from the car centric perspective towards more diverse urban and flexible mobility concepts.

00:27:49: The car were still there but it only one possibility.

00:27:55: One answer to the question how do i get from a to b?

00:28:01: and maybe for the future our categories are wrong.

00:28:05: yeah that find is pretty fascinating.

00:28:08: or industry on neatly organized.

00:28:10: you have automotive motorcycles bicycle public transportation logistics aviation marine agricultural machinery construction machinery.

00:28:20: we have companies Define themselves into one of these groups, associations, trade shows.

00:28:27: You have different development processes and often even universities and institutes following these categories.

00:28:34: Humans don't.

00:28:37: Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking today I need automotive They need to get to work they Need to take their children to school?

00:28:45: They're not to go shopping.

00:28:46: They need a sender package that you to drive three hundred kilometers To see your customer or per Serbs.

00:28:52: They just want to have some fun at the weekend.

00:28:55: The need is mobility, for many discates that the car has been an incredibly successful answer to this need of mobility but it isn't answered.

00:29:15: It's not a question and perhaps That Is The Bigger Change We Have Been Watching At CES Over The Past Few Years.

00:29:22: we are moving from world where products define categories towards a world where usage situations, use cases services and technological ecosystems matter more.

00:29:35: So the car becomes part of a system.

00:29:38: that it doesn't mean the car will disappear.

00:29:41: now I enjoy driving myself in an eye drive driving motorcycles even more And i do not believe future were everyone suddenly gives up their private vehicles and happily gets transported through smart cities and autonomous parts.

00:29:58: What would be exactly the idea of one single future that I rejected at the beginning of this article?

00:30:07: There will be different futures.

00:30:09: Individual mobility in rural areas will look different from mobility in Berlin, Shanghai or Los Angeles.

00:30:17: A commuter has different needs than a family A twenty-five year old have different needs for an eighty years and someone riding a Harley through the Swabian Alps obviously has different mobility goals from someone trying to get into an airport as efficiently possible.

00:30:34: Mobility isn't just transportation, it can be.

00:30:37: freedom, efficiency work comfort status experience are simply fun!

00:30:43: That is why I don't believe that car will disappear but its role is changing From the center of mobility to one component in a mobility ecosystem.

00:30:54: This is where things become interesting for the automotive industry, because when mobility becomes a system building the best individual product there's no longer enough.

00:31:05: It becomes about the connections between products data services software infrastructure energy interfaces and who controls all these connections.

00:31:18: in twenty-twenty six Cyan increasingly had that.

00:31:23: Mobility at CES had become an application layer on top of a much larger technological infrastructure.

00:31:31: AI companies, sensor manufacturers and software platform providers supply the building blocks.

00:31:44: Mobility is one of the areas where those blocks are assembled which shages the crucial question again At CS twenty-twenty two I was still asking who will build The Car Of The Future?

00:31:57: Today's Question Is More Like who will build the system in which car of future is one component.

00:32:07: Because perhaps that is exactly development we miss when go to a technology show and keep looking for next spectacular car!

00:32:15: The car didn't disappear, it just stopped being the whole story.

00:32:23: Point number three, software from feature-to foundation.

00:32:29: Cars have had software.

00:32:32: Yeah, let's start it with in the mid-eighties.

00:32:35: In nineteen ninety five BMW had their first infotainment system out there software based.

00:32:40: I worked myself from nineteen ninety nine on a company that was focused on automotive software only.

00:32:51: first CAA then Harman and so yeah software is there long time for engine control, navigation infotainment driver assistance climate-control air condition comfort functions.

00:33:05: Software was everywhere.

00:33:08: and yet the car wasn't a software product.

00:33:12: Software Was A Function Inside The Car developed For A Particular Control Unit A Particular Task In A Particle Vehicle!

00:33:22: The actual Product Remained The Car Engine Chassis body, interior, hardware first.

00:33:31: Some software somewhere inside.

00:33:35: Reading my CES reports today you can almost watch this order fall apart within just a few years.

00:33:45: and in my twenty-twenty two report I wrote the automotive industry becomes more and more software driven from Today's perspective.

00:33:53: that is almost cute.

00:33:55: yeah of course Automotive is becoming software driven What else?

00:34:01: and in twenty-twenty two the consequences were far from clear.

00:34:04: software was appearing everywhere inside their vehicle in connectivity and mobility services in V to X application when the car talks to components in its environment Digital ecosystems.

00:34:17: we're developing around a vehicle.

00:34:19: And even then one question emerged that remains unresolved who actually does all this?

00:34:27: The OEMs traditional suppliers, tech companies startups.

00:34:32: And back then I described a largely open distribution of roles.

00:34:37: only one thing was clear software would increasingly determine what the vehicle could do and how we experience it when you're later hours considerably less cautious.

00:34:51: The headline off my twenty-twenty two report at twenty twenty three report was It's not horsepower It's software-defined vehicles.

00:35:02: And that is a totally different claim, Software no longer supports the product.

00:35:08: Software defines the product and that changes what car manufacturers compete on.

00:35:15: for more than hundred years it was relatively clear performance chassis fuel consumption quality design craftsmanship safety and none of these things will become irrelevant.

00:35:27: But how do you differentiate a vehicle in an electric world where acceleration figures Once reserved for exotic sport cars suddenly appear in family SUVs?

00:35:40: even more power Zero to one hundred kilometers per hour sixty miles per hour and two point seven seconds instead of two point nine.

00:35:49: Congratulations.

00:35:50: Yeah, that will put your focus.

00:35:52: no it won't not at all.

00:35:55: And for most people that will eventually have a rather limited influence on the purchasing decision.

00:36:04: The differentiation is shifting towards features, services user experience personization connectivity updates integration with my other digital systems of my digital life with my ecosystem and all.

00:36:26: And in twenty-twenty three, I wrote that the user experience of a car was increasingly being created by bits and bytes.

00:36:33: But i wrote something else too.

00:36:36: Something looking back may be even more important.

00:36:39: The automotive industry talks about software.

00:36:43: Why do they still carry it?

00:36:45: Oh its old steel and copper and rubber genome.

00:36:49: Car makers Still think in Steel and Copper and Rubber.

00:36:54: And then the problem Was Not the technology.

00:36:58: It was The organization behind it.

00:37:02: Yeah, a software defined vehicle isn't simply a car with a lot of software.

00:37:09: if I take an existing Vehicle and keep adding more software i don't automatically have a software-defined vehicle first Of all?

00:37:17: I Have A Car With A Lot Of Software And Probably A Lot of ECUs in it.

00:37:22: and yeah That The Problem Is.

00:37:25: the Difference Goes Deeper.

00:37:28: In a software defined vehicle, software is no longer a collection of isolated functions running on more or less fixed hardware.

00:37:37: Software becomes the architecture of the product.

00:37:40: Functions can change throughout the product lifecycle.

00:37:43: new capabilities can be added existing ones can be improved data can used across areas that were previously separated.

00:37:52: The vehicles continue to evolve after it has been sold And that changes something fundamental for the automotive industry.

00:38:01: SOP, The Start of Production is no longer at the end of development.

00:38:08: Traditionally, SOP is a big moment and vehicles are finished.

00:38:12: there will be updates bug fixes one day a facelift but essentially product or customer buys remains.

00:38:23: they receive software.

00:38:25: products work differently.

00:38:28: My smartphone today is functionally no longer the same device I bought three years ago.

00:38:35: The hardware's the same, the product isn't.

00:38:39: and why should cars remain anyhow differently?

00:38:46: By twenty-twenty four software defined vehicles was an established term at CEA.

00:38:53: yeah then Hyundai went one step further.

00:38:56: they called it SDX.

00:38:58: software defined everything, not just the vehicle.

00:39:03: The entire mobility ecosystem was supposed to become software-defined and that was the point where I started becoming slightly dissatisfied with a term itself—not because software wasn't important but because the real question had changed.

00:39:20: what are we doing with all this technology?

00:39:24: A software-defined vehicle is not a value in itself.

00:39:27: No customer wakes up and the morning thinks, I urgently need a software defined car!

00:39:34: They may want a vehicle that adapts to them... ...a navigation system that works an HMI you machine interface that doesn't drive them crazy New functions without having to buy your car A problem fixed with out visiting workshop Or Simply a product that works better after five years than it did on day one.

00:39:57: and software is the foundation for all of them.

00:40:01: It isn't the customer value itself, but this distinction matters because as often in technology industry there's a danger of confusing the technical solution with the value its supposed to create.

00:40:20: And that made even more things interesting.

00:40:25: AI came up and because I doesn't believe behave like any other traditional vehicle function.

00:40:32: Yeah, I need stator it needs computing power It needs access to different systems two contacts through updates Cloud services the powerful edge systems And above all Ai needs a software architecture that isn't made of over hundred largely isolated islands.

00:40:52: certainly The software defined vehicle is no longer merely an interesting vision for more flexible vehicle development.

00:41:00: It becomes a prerequisite for the next wave of technology, and AI agent inside a vehicle can only act intelligently if it has access to more than infotainment that needs to understand the vehicles driver current situation route interior sensors condition the person's digital life outside of their car.

00:41:26: Their software architecture therefore becomes a foundation for what they vehicle can become at all.

00:41:33: and technology is waiting in the automotive industry, before the organization I essentially wrote.

00:41:41: The Software-Defined Vehicle will happen!

00:41:43: The interesting question no longer whether software defined vehicles are technically possible.

00:41:50: Of course there.

00:41:51: The more difficult question is, can the automotive industry do software?

00:41:56: Now I don't mean whether automotive companies can employ software engineers.

00:42:00: Of course they do!

00:42:01: And then...I mean something different.

00:42:05: Canon Industry whose development logic has been shaped by hardware cycles for decades suddenly work at software speed.

00:42:15: Can it develop products that are deliberately not fixed Release continuously.

00:42:25: Can it deal with errors the way software companies do?

00:42:30: Can a truly decouple hardware and software organizationally make decisions fast enough, perhaps most difficult of all can give up control without losing its

00:42:45: product?".

00:42:47: In twenty-twenty six I wrote that many OEMs had not yet fully mastered necessary tools.

00:42:54: The process is, and above all the necessary change in mindset.

00:42:58: And that's remarkable!

00:43:00: We have been discussing software-defined vehicles for years... In the end, the biggest obstacle may not be the software itself.

00:43:09: it will be the organization.

00:43:13: The question is who actually owns this car?

00:43:18: If software defines a product whoever defines the software becomes powerful player.

00:43:24: Who owns the operating system?

00:43:25: who owns data.

00:43:27: Who controls cloud, defines AI and designs user experience?

00:43:33: Who controls a customer interface?

00:43:38: And who decides which new functions will be allowed to run on vehicle tomorrow?

00:43:45: These are not IT questions.

00:43:46: these are strategic questions.

00:43:49: A car manufacturer can of course buy chips by cloud services, by AI models operating systems software platforms navigation voice assistant and they make total sense at the very end.

00:44:02: but nobody has to develop everything themselves.

00:44:06: At some point a rather uncomfortable question appears.

00:44:12: if I buy technology that defines my product what exactly do i still define myself?

00:44:20: Perhaps this is one of the biggest transformations visible across five years of CES.

00:44:28: In twenty-twenty two, The story was that more and more software was entering the car.

00:44:33: Twenty three software defined the vehicle.

00:44:37: Twenty four software were suddenly supposed to define everything.

00:44:41: Twenty six?

00:44:42: The question had become who controls That software and therefore shapes the rules of future mobility ecosystem.

00:44:52: This is quite a leap.

00:44:53: in only five years.

00:44:55: Software went from feature to foundation, that's why for me the software defined vehicle now has less technological question than a strategic one.

00:45:06: The crucial questions no longer how much software isn't our car?

00:45:12: it is.

00:45:13: How Much Of Our Future Product, can we still shape ourselves?

00:45:22: All right.

00:45:23: That's it for today The three points I discussed the day.

00:45:27: there will be four points in the next episode.

00:45:31: Look forward to it.

00:45:32: It stays interesting.

00:45:34: and then And the episode after the next one.

00:45:37: that would be a free point five Aspects of the past five years of CES I want To discuss.

00:45:52: That's it for today.

00:45:54: Thank you for spending time with me.

00:45:56: I hope to are able to take something with you and do something for yourself.

00:46:01: that will be forever.

00:46:03: For an unknown exchange, we will find me on a LinkedIn And my websites beta minus rusco comm and beyond minus HMI dot de.

00:46:17: write me an email under podcast at Beyond Minus HMI DTE.

00:46:23: Do it next time, take care and stay healthy.