From mobile to mobility: how tech is eating automotive design

We’ve heard it many times before: while 2G, 3G, and 4G were all about connecting people, 5G is about connecting things. Among those soon-to-be-always-connected objects, cars are the most promising ones. The time is right for mobile industry players to lay down their roadmaps for their expansion beyond mobile, with automotive being one of the most sought-after sectors to expand their reach. At Mobile World Congress 2022, the trend was evident. Among the general talk of what's next for automotive, new players invested big in their presence at a tradeshow where car manufacturers have usually been invited as partners. Fisker, for example, had its own booth with a soon-to-be-launched Ocean on display, just in front of Nokia and a few meters away from Xiaomi. 

“Europe is essential to our company as we work toward the start of production in November at a carbon-neutral factory in Austria”, said Henrik Fisker, explaining the company's presence at the tradeshow. “We aim to make the world’s most sustainable vehicle and to start deliveries in Europe this year. Ultimately, we expect to sell 60,000 units annually in the region”.

Connected cars were one of the hot topics at Qualcomm’s booth. At MWC 2022, the chip manufacturer laid out its roadmap for the next few years, outlining a future where innovations brought by 5G and AI-capable chips will expand beyond mobile and disrupt sectors such as industrial manufacturing and the automotive industry. While it’s still unclear when innovations like self-driving cars and interconnected 5G-vehicles will be part of our everyday lives, considerable disruption is already underway. Major players admit that products like Qualcomm's Snapdragon Automotive platform are already contributing to reshaping the fundamentals of car design and software-defined vehicles (SDV).

“We will go from a car with hundreds of chips, each taking care of a specific car function, to an architecture based on a few main chipsets,” said Thierry Cammal, Renault Software Labs director, during a Q&A after Qualcomm’s opening press keynote. “This is already happening, and we’ve started to rethink the way we design our cars architecture to accommodate this change”. In Cammal’s view, this will also change the value perception of cars, which could cost more but won’t lose value for a much longer time, thanks to the software enhancements companies will be able to deliver during the vehicle’s lifetime. A strategy that’s not too different from Tesla’s, in an eerily similar re-enactment of what we’ve seen in the mobile industry with the iPhone and the flurry of Android makers coming after Apple in the following years. A particularly fitting similarity, considering that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips enabled growth for most of Apple’s competitors in the last ten years. The San Diego company is ready to replicate the same script with the automotive industry.