Dr. Bernhart outlines two big trends:

1. Electric cars are coming
Already today 40% of all customers consider an electric vehicle when buying a new car. Also costs for battery cells are expected to drop below 100 US per kWh in 2015.

2. Autonomous driving and shared mobility
With self-driving cars becoming reality, new services, such as autonomous taxis will appear. Big players like Google have already started to develop technologies and business models. Research shows, that consumers in markets like China and India already have a high acceptance (> 80%) for such services.

Paul Knecht

„When talking about the current change, we’re mainly talking about disruption“, says Dr. Wolfgang Bernhart.
For him disruption means that change is not linear anymore: „In the last 100 years the change within the automotive industry has been linear. But now it is starting to become exponential. This means we can’t just react to change anymore, but instead need to proactively act in order to keep up with that development.“

Paul Knecht

How to start the conference better, than with an overview about the future impacts of upcoming technologies and new trends? Dr. Wolfgang Bernhart is a senior partner at the well known consulting firm „Roland Berger“.
In his opening keynote, he will talk about the impact on future vehicle electric and electronics architectures, what that means for OEM engineering and the strategic consequences for suppliers.

Paul Knecht