Hundreds of automotive professionals gathered at the fifth annual SC Automotive Summit in Greenville this week for industry insights, cutting-edge trends and, of course, the opportunity to go 120-miles-per-hour in some of most advanced cars on the market. We listened in and cut through the jargon to get you the latest.
Hot topics
Autonomous vehicles
“Google’s in this business. Tesla’s in this business. I can name three startup companies that we’re working with and they all have self-driving cars.” – KPMG Partner & National Automotive Sector Lead Gary Silberg
“In our autonomous world, it is unlikely that we will see a future of crashes the way we see them today. Will we spend our time making vehicles as safe as we do today when they never even touch each other? I don’t think we will.” – Local Motors co-founder and CEO Jay Rogers (Highway-ready 3D printed car manufacturer)
“The issue, as with any sort of system like this if you have the vehicles working together, is what happens if one of the vehicles is not properly maintained … and how do you design around that?” – Richard Brooks, Ph.D., Clemson University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
“If the safety application requires information from an instant that is going to happen in half a second, you probably don’t want to wait [on a slow network].” – Clemson University School of Computing Associate Professor Jim Martin, Ph.D.
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Electric & emissions
“If we don’t follow global emissions standards, we could become a technology island. Nobody would want to buy vehicles from us.” – IHS Managing Director Michael Robinet
“One of the issues that the electric market needs to deal with is being able to sustain volume and growth without the incentives.” –LMC Automotive Senior Vice President of Forecasting Jeff Schuster
Workforce development
“In athletics it’s easy – we see the professional athletes, we know what you need to do… students don’t know that their skills and talents are employable. Nobody tells them.” – STEM Premier Co-Founder & COO Casey Welch
“That’s the millennials. They have a causal approach to authority but they do ‘coop-tition.’ They learn from each other while they’re competing. They want to win, but they want to have fun.” – Local Motors Co-Founder and CEO Jay Rogers
By the numbers >>
Innovation
“We shouldn’t let the folks on the left coast lead the plant. The right coast, the folks in South Carolina, should lead these innovations as well.” – BMW Manufacturing Co. Vice President of Project Integration Rich Morris
“Industry 4.0 is coming and it’s here … and I sometimes think it’s similar to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ … It’s kind of like moving from shower stalls to a group shower.” – SC Department of Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt
“[With Proterra] South Carolinians opened up their wallets and pulled together a round, around $30 million. … That shows you we’re valuable. We can do it. We can pull the money together when we need to.” – South Carolina Research Authority Executive Vice President and SC Launch Zone Manager Mark Housley
“Fail fast and fail spectacularly.” – SC Automotive Council Executive Director Catherine Hayes
Trends
“Who on purpose is going to spend $34,000 on an asset that, the minute you buy it, will lose 11 percent in value … and that asset is idle 97 percent of the time? … Arguably it’s not a very smart idea.” – KPMG Partner & National Automotive Sector Lead Gary Silberg
“What we see is more and more companies want to produce ‘Made in America.’ … Look at the spike in sales for Volvo cars just when they announced they were going to produce here.” – SC Gov. Nikki Haley
“The plants we built in China are only supplying to a few markets. This plant will supply worldwide, and that is something we haven’t done in a long time.” – Volvo Car USA Vice President of Purchasing & Manufacturing Katarina Fjording
DEFINED
Connected vehicle: A car that can send and receive data among other vehicles, infrastructure and passengers personal communication devices
Hybrid manufacturing: A method aimed at increasing quality and efficiency by combining additive, subtractive, transformative, joining and dividing manufacturing processes
Industry 4.0: The idea of integrating data with manufacturing processes, or implementing an Internet of Things approach that allows proactive and intelligent manufacturing decisions
Autonomous vehicle: Also known as a self-driving or driverless car; a computer-controlled vehicle that uses sensors and software to make driving decisions without a human operator
Vehicle electrification: The global trend of moving from traditional propulsion methods such as fossil fuels to cars powered by electric means
Rapid prototyping: Producing prototypes using three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) data, often with 3-D printing technologies
Additive manufacturing: Manufacturing that prints layers of material rather than traditional methods such as casting or welding; this process can produce some parts and shapes that traditional methods couldn’t
V2V Communication: Wireless communication between vehicles, often discussed as a key component to developing driverless cars
Visible light communication: Data transfer and using certain frequencies of light, which allows high-speed communication
Collaborative robots: Automated machines, often without safety cages, that can work alongside employees to maximize the use of human-specific skills
New vehicle cadence: The frequency with which automakers release completely new vehicle model
