“Just about everything you own will be connected,” James Lievois told a crowd of hundreds.
Lievois is Mazda’s CFO and senior vice president of finance, administration and information technology for North American operations. He spoke during a breakout session titled “The Car of Tomorrow.” Lievois said the average person looks at an electronic device 46 times a day, a frequency sure to increase in the future. The future’s cars, he said, need to address consumers’ desire to be connected at all times.
Technology topics were featured heavily in breakout sessions throughout the week. Connected and Automated Vehicles: The Future is Now (Almost). Manufactured Materials of the Future: Optimizing the Material Mix for Mobility. Automotive Cybersecurity: Protecting Privacy and Defeating Hackers.
But the push at the event for ever-advanced technology was balanced by recognition of the global need for affordable transportation and changes in consumer preference.
“Disruptors” — business startups that shake up an established industry — were a big topic of conversation during the week. Lievois mentioned several examples. Starbucks disrupted the coffee shop scene. Uber disrupted the taxicab industry. Netflix disrupted the television scene. Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry.
The auto industry faces similar pressure from several directions. Tesla carved out a niche with its electric cars. Two or more families who share a single car reduce the demand for new vehicles. Bicycles and mass transit, particularly in big cities, are many millennials’ transportation of choice.
Consumer demand will rule the future of the car industry, Lievois said. Carmakers need to adjust their thinking to satisfy that demand — and to head off possible disruptors. Two sessions at the seminars centered on how automakers can fight back against disruptors. Automotive Strategy: The Disruptors: The Good, The Bad, and the Opportunity. Advanced Powertrain Forum: Will the Disruptors Bring Disorder?
“This isn’t about us knowing exactly what we’re going to do,” Lievois said of Mazda. “We’re still figuring that out.”
The first step in creating competitive automotive products is figuring out what consumers really want. Those desires have over time included muscle cars, luxury cars, safe cars, plain cheap transportation and self-driving vehicles. Today’s consumers want all those things. But most of all, they seem to want emotional satisfaction.
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“Millennials want experiences, not things,” Lievois said. “Today we (automakers) compete with other brand-experience providers. Customer engagement is the new frontier.”
Carmakers today strive to connect their products with emotional experience. That’s why advertisements feature an existential Matthew McConaughey or a laughing group of well-dressed millennials out on the town. Car ads don’t highlight the car itself, but the emotion of experiencing life — in a car.
Practical people of all ages, though, also seek value. They want a car that is inexpensive to buy and operate. Some companies specialize in tightening efficiency to deliver the best possible vehicle at the lowest possible price.
Hinduja Tech Limited, part of the 70,000-employee Hinduja Group, staffed a booth at the seminars and displayed an example of a vehicle it designed and prototyped for Nissan. The Datsun Redi-GO will soon sell in India at a base price of just $3,559. Options with air bags, power steering and various electronics can bump the price to $4,214. Creating a vehicle that sells for such a low price requires efficiency in both design and manufacturing.
“It’s mostly removing what is not needed,” said Faiz Ahmad, senior vice president and global business head of engineering for Hinduja. “We don’t want to do anything that is not required.”
The company specializes in conceptualizing vehicles, creating efficient ways to design and manufacture parts and building prototypes. It blends manufacturers’ specifications for technology, features and price. Hinduja is done with the project once the prototype is complete. The carmaker itself — in this case Nissan — manufactures the vehicle.
“We contract the whole design,” Ahmad said. “After that, it’s a customer project.”
The Datsun Redi-GO features a 3-cylinder engine that allows the car to travel 60 miles on a gallon of gasoline. It has a very basic dashboard and interior, seats five people and has four doors. The car is small, but a 6-foot-tall American fit easily into the driver’s seat of the car parked outside GT Resort. It felt much like a 1960s Austin Mini, also tiny with a spartan interior.
Hinduja devoted a 240-person team for several months to design the Redi-GO and build a prototype from scratch, said Ahmad. The company has offices in Novi, Germany, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and India.
Other companies including Penske, Permatex, Covisint, Thirdware and Visual Components staffed booths at the resort to tout their products and services.
©2016 The Record-Eagle (Traverse City, Mich.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
