The Auto Industry

The competition in one of the most traditional industries is increasing over time, many new comers are joining this competition while the incumbents are also seeking ways to boost their competitiveness to prevent themselves from losing out in this tight race. The incumbents are those traditional carmakers, such as Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and etc.; meanwhile, unlike the new comers in other sectors who are less financed, the new comers in the car industry are well financed, some even have greater market values than the incumbents, such as Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Apple (there is always some rumour saying Apple is inventing its own car). There are two fields where carmakers are competing against each other that one is electric vehicles and the other is driverless cars.

Electric vehicles are supported by many governments around the world, because they are much more environmentally friendly that they do not produce harmful air pollutants. Many governments provide electric vehicles with subsidies. Moreover, not only the sudsidies will benefit the carmakers, but the electric technology can improve people’s driving experience, as the acceleration speed can be faster and smoother. In addition, carmakers are bringing modern entertainment and control systems to new cars that some cars only have one big screen to control the entire cars, including the air conditioners, media players, car rada and etc. Many electric vehicles are already appearing in ordinary consumer markets for people to buy.

Meanwhile, driverless cars are not yet ready for ordinary consumers to buy. Tesla has some driverless systems available cars out there in the market; however, many countries and regions do not allow driverless cars to be operated without any human monitoring. There are several issues in driverless cars. First, when there is a car accident, who should take responsibility. Secondly, some driverless systems require network access; however, when cars are driving on roads, they do not always have access to the Internet. However, with the coming 5G, this issue might be able to be solved. Thirdly, the development in driverless systems is quite diverse, different companies have different thoughts about how to achieve driverlessness. There is one potential problem that when driverless systems are all different, would this increase the probability of car accidents because of the differences in the systems. Fourthly, the system that aims to work along with human drivers, when driverless cars are more, is this design still necessary?

Overall, the car industry may be like the smartphone industry that was transferred from the phone industry that it could be transferred into a smart car industry, the transformation will create much more opportunities for the carmakers like what we saw when the smartphone industry was rising.