Yansong Chen, senior vice president of strategy and technology at Ricardo—an environmental, engineering, and strategic consulting company—says advanced technologies are changing the way the industry looks at its value proposition, at a fundamental level. “They’re also changing the way that the industry perceives its role in interacting with the customer.”
Beyond net zero: Data, design, and digital connections
The rise of electric vehicles (EVs) clearly shows how change has swept across the auto industry over the past decade. Global sales of passenger EVs in 2022 exceeded 10 million for the first time ever. One in every sevenpassenger cars bought globally in 2022 was an EV, compared with just one in every 70 cars sold in 2017.
As EV adoption grows, technology and software advancements have become increasingly critical to connect customers digitally and improve their experience. “Our ability to access data and apply it to the design processes in real time is how we will change the industry, reduce costs and carbon output, personalize the driving experience, and create new value for customers,” says Chen.
However, continual advances in software require a deep understanding of how technology can be applied to the auto industry. Traditional manufacturers, in particular, need to balance legacy operations with new tools and designs. “Advanced technology and AI are helping to make cars more intelligent, but they are also changing the fundamental nature of the car, both internally and externally,” according to Luc Julia, chief scientific officer at French automaker Renault.
Therefore, bridging the gap between the auto industry and technology providers is essential. For example, Ricardo has partnered with Digital Twin Consortium, which allows it to collaborate with technology organizations such as Ansys, Dell, Lendlease, and Microsoft. The open-membership consortium is an international ecosystem of industry, government, and academic experts shaping digital twin development.
Rise of the digital twin
In recent years, digital twin technology has become an almost indispensable tool in auto production, changing how vehicles are made. Renault, for example, has modeled its physical assets into digital twins, and each factory has a replica in the virtual world. This is part of the automaker’s effort to accelerate digitization of its production lines and supply chain data across the enterprise. “By optimizing data, we are able to use AI more effectively on the factory floor and increase the efficiency of our operations,” says Julia.
Renault’s factories are fed with supplier data, sales forecasts, and quality information, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning–thereby enabling the development of multiple predictive scenarios. For instance, predictive maintenance for robots can anticipate and address potential breakdowns across the operational chain, at each part of the assembly line, before they occur.
In addition, Renault’s Refactory initiative, which is organized around four key activity centers—Re-trofit, Re-energy, Re-cycle, and Re-start—uses digital twins to reduce its carbon footprint. “It’s not just a question of electric cars, but how the batteries are sourced and the recycling of cars and materials,” says Julia.