Scaling AI in Automotive
By: Daniel Davenport
Tags: Autonomous Cars, Voice Assistant, AI, Automotive

With the new realities of a pandemic sinking into the consumer mindset, technologies and processes that enable contactless commerce, facilitate last mile delivery and improve the efficiency of services seem ripe for broader adoption

.Artificial intelligence is still on the horizon for many industries and only slightly visible to end users, often in the form of voice enable assistants like Google Home, Amazon Alexa or Apple’s Siri. Less obvious are machine learning examples such as recommendations from Netflix or best route selection from Waze.

Now where can the existing adoption and pent up demand for AI tools be seen more clearly than in the automotive sector. From consumer facing tools like voice interfaces to improve efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chain, the automotive space has the potential to deliver some of the most revolutionary AI experiences as we approach advanced levels of autonomous capabilities.

In many ways, automotive has already deployed AI at scale for consumers in the form of voice interactions. In another recent Capgemini study, “Voice on the Go,” it is predicted that three years from now, nearly 95% of consumers are expected to use conversational assistants, including voice assistants, to access information in their cars. With around 270 million vehicles on the road in North America as of 2018, that’s roughly 250 AI enabled products in use every day, just in the US. It would be hard to find an industry with as much market penetration for consumer AI features.

New research from Capgemini based on a survey of 950 organizations has found that 51 percent of automotive companies have continued or even accelerating their artificial intelligence transformations during the pandemic.

I recently spoke with CBT News about the current impact of AI for automotive.

CBT New

One of the often overlooked aspects of AI integration is the role it will play in augmenting and empowering the employee experience. In most product and service businesses we know that the role of the employee and customer interactions in defining and reinforcing brand perception is critical. With that in mind, OEMs, dealers and third party providers need to devote some of their development time to making AI/ML driven tools specifically for the front of house employees so that they can perform better, be more relevant to each consumer and drive better overall outcomes from each interaction.

Other findings from this study include:

Of the 11 industries categorized within the report, Automotive ranks 3rd, with 17% of organizations successfully scaling their AI

Just 22% of auto organizations have scaled AI within their digital/mobility services

13% have scaled AI within their IT, and 12% within manufacturing and operations

Only 4% have scaled AI within their supply chains

As the industry make the long journey to fully autonomous vehicles there are many opportunities for significant improvements along the way. From drive assisted tools and features to employee augmentation and support all the way to increased efficiencies in the manufacturing and supply chain processes, AI and its related technologies are scaling rapidly in automotive and show no signs of slowing down any time soon.