In this week we will zoom in on a technology that has disrupted a certain industry. The focus of our short research is the automotive market, or more specific, the ‘electrification of vehicles’ and ‘Intelligent Transportations Systems’ (ITS). First the electrification is covered, secondly ITS and, finally, the similarities and differences between these two disruptions will be discussed.
The first aspect of cars that is important to notice is the fact that all cars are essentially energy conversion devices: they turn stored energy into kinetic energy. In a conventional car, this happens with sparks in a combustion engine and in a electric car also use stored chemical energy, but, in contrast with conventional cars, they release it electrochemically.
For this disruptive technology a SWOT analysis is conducted and gives an understanding of the future of the development of electrical vehicles. First of all, the number of electric vehicles is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, since major players in the current market are now changing their focus from conventional internal combustion engines to complete electric vehicles. The cost of batteries is decreasing, which leads to reduced vehicle production costs and better cost competitiveness regarding conventional cars.
In addition, the number of outlets have seen a huge growth since 2013, which decreases the importance of the second weakness.
All in all, the future for the completely electric vehicles looks bright and is expected to gain a significant market share in the upcoming years.
Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) describe technology applied to transport and infrastructure to transfer information between systems. It can make transport safer, more efficient and more sustainable. It includes stand-alone applications such as traffic management systems, as well as cooperative ITS applications involving vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle-to-vehicle communications and autonomous driving.
Also in the case of ITS, a SWOT analysis is used to describe the future possibilities of ITS, which is clearly a promising technology to decrease accidents and make living in a city more comfortable. Within the sector mobility, data is becoming more important to gather and use it to influence the traffic flows, however the privacy issue/data security is a serious issue and must be correctly dealt with.
One major difference between the two technologies is the degree of industry disruption. ITS is much more disruptive to the industry because not only the car technology is changing, but the whole infrastructural system we are used to is about to change. It requires availability and storage of a lot of data to make communication between vehicles possible. So there also need to be new rules and regulations for the sake of data security and privacy. Both technologies focus on increasing environmental benefits in cities. Electrification of vehicles is more focused on emission reduction and ITS is more focused on road safety.
So now we have discussed two disruptive technologies in the automotive sector it turns out that we are yet at the beginning of a huge revolution in the car industry.
Group 20
