Driving digital
2016 has been a breakthrough year for digital technologies in the automotive supply industry as we witness the transition away from analogue methods towards revolutionary technologies that can redefine the automotive experience.
Technologies such as automated driving and connected cars have made great strides already this year.
The success of the European Truck Platooning Challenge was an important step forward towards enabling the deployment of automated technology and I hope will pave the way for further developments in the digital sphere.
Continued technological advances and growing societal awareness will drive the development of higher levels of car automation. The car of the future will be increasingly intelligent, interconnected and will communicate and collaborate with other vehicles, traffic lights, parking bays and retailers.
The idea of fully autonomous vehicles will soon no longer be science fiction and will bring with it enormous benefits to safety and traffic flow while also reducing emissions. Cars that drive themselves could trigger dramatic shifts in car ownership, public transport, employment patterns, business and urban development.
These ideas are now being taken on board at national and European level, autonomous driving tests have taken place across Europe with fresh tests set to begin in the UK in 2017. Meanwhile the European Commission recently announced its target of reaching a cross-sectorial agreement on actions to be taken to improve Europe’s competitiveness in Connected Automated Driving by the end of 2016.
Autonomous driving is now not a question of if but when it will be implemented. Technologies already exist for varying levels of automation such as automated parking, automated cruise control (ACC), lane keeping and autonomous emergency braking (AEB), while developments such as artificial intelligence are on the horizon.
However, today there are many national initiatives aiming to deploy large scale field tests in the area of automated driving. I believe there is a clear need to coordinate and align these initiatives on a European level.
Digitisation is clearly a trend that is here to stay, delivering benefits to safety, decarbonisation, traffic and more. It is a trend that we at CLEPA are committed to lead on and embrace.
CLEPA CEO, Paul Schockmel
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In: CLEPA News, Connectivity & Automation, Growth & Competitiveness, Safety