Why are roadmaps important for the automotive industry?

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Road to Net Zero A ah, podcast from the Advanced Propulsion Centre. My name is Clem Silverman and I'm at Senex Expo 2024, the UK auto industry's showcase of zero emission and connected automated mobility. As ever, the automotive industry is changing as it transitions to zero emission vehicles. This is Julian Hetherington speaking in the background, revealing that the APC, on behalf of the UK's Automotive Council, has updated its roadmaps, documents that chart the path to a net zero future, that give clarity to help you navigate through where the innovations will likely be in the next decade and beyond.

Speaker B: Looking at the integrated systems for both

Speaker C: the mobility of people and the mobility

Speaker A: of goods, there are some important changes made to the roadmaps. But before we look at them in detail, I caught up with people at the show to ask why it's important to look ahead and how useful road mapping exercises are to the industry.

Speaker D: Hi. So I'm John Kane, I'm the Technical Director for AVL here in the UK.

Speaker E: So today I'm talking about, um, the APC's roadmap M& my question is, how important is it to set a future direction? How does that fit into your everyday thinking?

Speaker D: So it's really important to have those pathways in place at a total industry level. So one of the things that we do internally is we obviously have our views and we have our opinions, but those will be based around what we see and what we do internally. If we have the pathways that are coming through from the apc, the roadmaps from the apc, what we actually see is we see, uh, a digested level of total industry perspective and that allows us to reset some of our views. It also allows us to plan in a way that will be consistent with the rest of the industry as well. Um, and so we can put out public positions that show the direction the industry is generally going and we have a really good overview. Then, for general consumption, is there anything

Speaker E: which is surprising to you that you might have not expected four or five years ago?

Speaker D: I think there's very little that's surprising. But one of the things that we do see is the realism starting to creep in in terms of there's a limited number of engineers, there's a limited amount of budget, there's a limited amount of change that can occur within a certain time. So what that causes the roadmaps to do is just keep again that realism there to start to take that into account so we actually understand how fast things can change and that allows us again to re plan and just keep everything a little bit more real.

Speaker A: That was John Kane, Technical Director for AVL in the UK. The APC's funding partner, Innovate UK, has also this year refreshed its Transport Vision 2050, a publication that charts the drivers, enablers and pathways to Net zero. So how does navigating different pathways towards this goal help guide the sector?

Speaker F: Hi, my name is Claire Spooner, I'm a Director of mobility at Innovate UK, which is the UK's innovation agency, part of UKRI.

Speaker E: I'm looking, um, at road mapping and why it's important to look ahead and I'm interested in your vision, um, for the future. So I just want you to talk me through why it's important to have pathways, why it's important to have a roadmap and how your visions fit into that.

Speaker F: So in Innovate UK, we came up with a transport vision for 2050 and we've done this a couple of times now. And what it's really trying to do is just de risk and demystify what those pathways can, could be. So across a number of different lenses, if we have pathways, it enables people to say, well, this could be the route that we go forward in innovation or technology, or it might not be. And the certainty behind those pathways allow that, uh, um, investors to make decisions. It allows policymakers to say, I disagree with you. It allows them to say, well, it could go like that, but actually if we pulled this particular policy lever, well, that could totally change everything. And I think those are the reasons we need these pathways. It helps us come up with this certainty of which route we're going to go through. But it's really important because when we think about these pathways, it's all about interdisciplinarity. It's those whole systems. Because no pathway works in isolation. We do have to factor in societal behavior and norms, those traveler demands into, uh, the piece. We also have to look at what's going on internationally because that can affect how we consider our own pathways developing. So, so there's a number of different reasons why it's really good, but having an aspiration for 2050 of how we're going to get to those and deliver those key Net zero targets, I think actually just allows us to make those first steps.

Speaker E: You talk about certainty, but there's also a lot of uncertainty in the system. Right. But I guess this is why you do updates regularly. So, um, when you're doing an update, what do you look for first in trying to do that? Because Obviously, apc, we're refreshing our roadmaps as well. Um, and maybe things have changed in four years. So how do you approach that?

Speaker F: So, um, it's about canvassing a very wide community. So with our last, um, transport vision, we actually canvassed about 200 different organizations and individuals to try and inform what we were kind of working on. And that created a space that we hadn't really realised in the first version. This was all about our, uh, enabler digital. So we'd had digital as its own separate theme last time, but this time we realized actually it's kind of underpinning. It feeds into how connectivity works, it feeds, feeds into the energy vector systems, it feeds into autonomy. So it really was actually informing all of them. And we realized that actually by investigating digital, we were more likely to be able to actually deliver across all the other pathways.

Speaker E: So was that one of your strategic imperatives that was the most surprising or most interesting for this refresh?

Speaker F: For me, um, I quite like the way that we use the strategic imperatives. We have three of them. One of them is net zero and it's really how do we actually deliver the products and services in a net zero way? How do we deliver that system in that holistic net zero fashion? Um, if we don't meet the climate change targets, we are in a bit of a predicament, not just nationally as well, but internationally. This isn't just an isolated issue for Britain, this is the global problem. So we all really need to be committed to that. Another strategic imperative that we have is around that digitally enabling peace, because we realised when we were doing the work that that was becoming more and more important because the opportun opportunities are so vast in that section because we can deliver, uh, amazing opportunities, not just for efficiencies and reliability, but then underpinning that we can deliver, um, new modalities, new business models through these opportunities. And then the last strategic imperative is that resilient and responsive piece and that plays across the whole entire landscape. Because if we have a resilient, uh, system, especially one that can adapt to climate change, uh, because the new temperatures, the weather, the extreme weathers we're going to be dealing with could actually mean there's quite a variance, uh, of weather that the infrastructure needs to manage and mitigate itself against. So I think that's another strategic imperative. How do we have that resilience system across vehicles and infrastructure?

Speaker A: Okay, brilliant.

Speaker E: Thank you, thank you.

Speaker A: That was Claire Spooner, director of Mobility at Innovate uk. And as Claire says, a system level Thinking is required and there are now multiple cross cutting technologies that feed into each product or service in transport. This is also reflected in the Automotive Council APC roadmaps which have pinpointed four cross cutting themes or micro level drivers that influence all aspects including digitalization. It's also identified the need to introduce two system level roadmaps called the mobility of people and the mobility of goods. Here is Hadi Motsar Zoda, head of technology trends at the APC to explain more.

Speaker E: Yeah, great. So we're here on the government uh, pavilion stands. We've all just had cake celebrating the fact that the APC is relaunching its roadmaps. Um, tell me Hadi, what's new about the roadmaps in this version and um, tell me a little bit more about the work you've been doing.

Speaker C: So last round we updated our roadmaps. We developed and published three product roadmaps looking into the trains and drivers for light duty vehicles, heavy good vehicles and bus and coach. This round we obviously needed um, a little bit more system level thinking around the role of automotive industry and automotive sector in the broader transport ecosystem. What is the role of those automotive products connecting the um transport solutions across the society? So we evolved those product roadmaps into system level roadmaps as we call them and looking into the mobility of people and mobility of goods and the role of automotive products in those contexts.

Speaker E: Yes. So mobility of people and mobility of goods. Um, so how important is it to have um, this view or vision of future pathways in technologies and what does it ah, bring for industry to have this type of thinking?

Speaker C: So as we are moving towards these decarbonization targets and we are trying to move towards those net zero targets and decarbonise the sector, it's quite important to have um, understanding of the cross cutting uh, themes across different sectors from energy and infrastructure, charging infrastructure, what's the impact of that on the rollout of new um, um products in the automotive industry and how we can facilitate and how we can simplify the journeys of um, um people journey and goods journey in the society. That's why we moved and evolved our roadmaps into that context of mobility. We also looked at the cross cutting and underpinning technologies, um, for those products, looking into batteries and the trains and drivers for them, electric motors, power electronics, hydrogen fuel cell and all of those powertrain solutions to understand what are the gaps and what are the strengths and weaknesses in the supply chain and then industry can plan strategically for where they need to put some more Investment and some more focus where they need to build collaboration and partnership with nations around the globe and then uh, move faster and quicker and more efficiently towards those targets.

Speaker E: Is there anything that surprised you during this piece of work? Anything that's jumped out uh, that you might not have expected uh, when you started it?

Speaker C: Uh well two things probably. Uh one is around the uh, role of digitalization and the impact that digital solutions will have on the, on these products and on these uh, uh scenario planning from AI to all of those digital and data um, solutions for automotive industry. And the second one is more and um, more focus from industry and from the society and consumer perspective and of course from um, policy side on sustainability and circularity of materials and what is actually going to happen to those products and to those technologies at the end of life and what is going to be the scenarios for second use or recycling. So we need to think about it early on to be able to plan for that stage.

Speaker A: Thanks Hadi. In the research of these roadmaps Hadi and his team drew on the Expertise of around 230 organizations all the way from vehicle manufacturers and technology suppliers to consultants, academics and of course the government. One of those organisations was the National Composite Centre and they have views on why planning in this way is important.

Speaker B: Yeah, good morning, name is Will Grocott from the National Composite Centre and responsible for services at uh, the ncc. I think it's vital to be honest with you. I think we should learn from the mistakes that we made really with the electrification rollout where we didn't really have that long term view in the early days which really stifled adoption and uptake. I think it breaks parliamentary cycles, it gives investors the opportunity to interject at certain points within that cycle so they know through their intervention the impact that they're going to make. And I think it also accelerates the adoption of technology and starts to embed it in a supply chain that is local, supportive and resilient which often is things that we hear at the moment that are m not in case and uh, we need to, we need to have that longer term view to enable that.

Speaker E: Yeah. Some of the cross cutting themes are around software digitalization, also recyclability and reuse and things like that. In your role is that something you think about on a daily basis?

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think if you don't, I think again it stifles adoption innovation and I think it's so important that if you don't solve early the issues of in use and end of life applications then it's a barrier to adoption for many. Why would people adopt a technology or a material or a process if at the end of it they're going to be left with a problem that they don't have a solution for. So again the road mapping is vital in terms of being able to break down those barriers and provide a sense of what I can do with this technology and these materials at end of life. Um again it speeds adoption and it creates innovation and it seeds it within our uh community.

Speaker A: It's that take up of new technology which will be key and it's said that we stand on the cusp of a new era in the automotive industry. Not only with the transition to zero emission vehicles in all categories, but with the fast development of connected and autonomous or automated vehicles. The APCs sister organization Zensic is tasked with looking ahead in this area and it has done its own similar road mapping exercise the but with different challenges.

Speaker G: Um, I'm Mileen Nayak, I work as a technical delivery for Senzic. Um, one of my key role is working around the roadmap for connected and automated mobility. Um and particularly the recent roadmap that has been launched um now a couple of years ago is the UK CAM roadmap to 2035. We had a previous uh roadmap which took us to 2030 but a lot of things have significantly changed in the time since it was first launched to when it has now um, when we're talking about now if we're talking about 2035 and it has changed a lot even in the last year or so um with a lot of the changes in um the uk yeah it must

Speaker E: be challenging especially in an area like connected automated mobility or cam, uh where things are changing on a month by month basis. Must be crazy.

Speaker G: Which is um, something I've been always was like the roadmap is a great tool because it will help to at least to put your thoughts into some process form or like oh this is the way or this might be the journey we might be taking. And roadmap is a great tool to get people to talk to each other and like oh what you doing versus what are you doing? How can we bring those bridges together? That is something the roadmap can definitely provide. And um, once you clear where do you really want to go go then you can just you seeing those stepping stones and those milestones and you probably can. I think a lot of people do like the tick off market do a to do list once you can get to those check marks and it's like you know what progress you're really making and how it's really going to benefit in the, in the long run.

Speaker E: So one of the things obviously with the refreshed um, APC roadmaps is that looking more on a systems level so you've got a uh, movement of people, mobility of people and of goods as well. Well in CAM that's all you do really, isn't it? Because it's all connected.

Speaker G: So I think that's a very good question because I have, and in the past I have been always or I've been told in a way is like, oh, CAM is going to change the way the transport works in this, in the world. It's going to replace all the vehicles, which is not the case. I think the place that the CAM is trying to take is become an integrated part of the future transportation. So aligning with the mobility of goods and the mobility of people, the APC roadmaps and um, the system level roadmaps that we talk, you can see that CAM is playing a role in it as well. This is where we actually see it, um, CAM as well. It's not just ah, sitting outside of the whole future transport, it's sitting within all the other uh, whichever it might be, even the net zero and the electric vehicles.

Speaker E: Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker G: The power of.

Speaker A: This is Lillian Greenwood, a government minister at the Department for Transport, chiming in with how the government aims to work with industry to enable the future of transport, including connected and automated vehicles. So it's clear that the sector is planning on shaping a future that is as dynamic as it is sustainable. With the launch of the eight Automotive Council UK roadmaps covering the entire automotive supply chain, the APC looks forward to working with all stakeholders across industry, academia, R and D and the innovation ecosystem, as well as funding, policy and trade bodies. Here's Hadi Motsa Zoda once again to explain how you can get involved.

Speaker C: I think they are quite helpful uh, for three groups of um, audience we are targeting. One is industry. Obviously they are the main stakeholders for these roadmaps, um, to basically use them and as I mentioned, um, to uh, plan strategically for their future investment plan and for the future strategy and direction of travel, uh, of course for uh, academia and research institution to plan for their R and D activities, what research, uh, areas they should focus on and how they can support and how they can address those challenges faced by automotive industry. And thirdly, uh, uh, is the government and policymakers and funding bodies where they need to invest and why, why industry is asking for more investment and support in certain areas, they can always refer back to these roadmaps and say, look, this is what we're seeing across the globe in terms of the trends and drivers, and this is why we want to invest in those areas. So for these three groups, I would say it could be quite helpful to use them.

Speaker E: So that's all from Senex Expo this time.

Speaker A: Please download the Automotive Council UK roadmaps now, visit apcuk.co.uk and um, look out for highlights from the launch event, which took place on the 25th of September. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Road to Net zero. See you next time.