How ACES Is Steering
The Car Into The Future

Car manufacturers have traditionally differentiated themselves through their brand values based on design and performance such as horsepower and torque. Over the years, safety and environmental standards have been added to the list of characteristics that consumers consider when choosing a vehicle. Today, visible differentiators – including features such as interior comfort and digital technology – also appear on drivers’ checklists when selecting a car. And as vehicles become more sophisticated, consumers are choosing cars that are rolling hyper-connected devices bristling with digital applications. Educated by their smartphones, consumers are demanding more updates and a continuous increase in and improvement of features. A car is no longer merely a mechanical, electrical monolith but becoming a manageable device as part of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). “The car is the biggest and one of the most complex IoT devices. Everything that can be digitized will be digitized,” says Ralf Gebhart, Global Automotive at NTT DATA.

Many in the industry see a four-wheeled approach as the future of mobility. Labelled ACES (Automated, Connected, Electric and Shared), the concept updates a number of the existing features of vehicles already on the road. It also introduces some that are more akin to those car-of-the-future visions from decades past. And it is telecommunications and IT companies such as NTT that will provide the technology and industry solutions to open the road ahead.

Automation

Improved and expanded connectivity – between vehicles and their surroundings and back – offers a platform for the A in ACES. “The automation of vehicles has generated a lot of hype in recent years,” says Houssem Abdellatif, Global Automotive at NTT DATA. While driver assistance systems are now routine on many models, he says that poor reliability, extremely high development and unit costs, and legal and regulatory concerns have delayed the development of true self-driving cars.Improved and expanded connectivity – between vehicles and their surroundings and back – offers a platform for the A in ACES. “The automation of vehicles has generated a lot of hype in recent years,” says Houssem Abdellatif, Global Automotive at NTT DATA. While driver assistance systems are now routine on many models, he says that poor reliability, extremely high development and unit costs, and legal and regulatory concerns have delayed the development of true self-driving cars.

Improved IT infrastructure will carry more data faster and more reliably. By offloading some computing processes from the vehicle to a central computing resource in the cloud, this can be achieved more effectively, Abdellatif explains. For example, last year, in a demonstration in Munich, Germany, NTT used a private 5G network to create automated valet parking. Drivers could drop off their connected vehicle at a designated parking garage, where a central computer then used smart infrastructure such as cameras and sensors to park them.

Connectivity

“With vehicle connectivity, a new means of mobility and business is wide open to serve customers with on-demand features and services using the internet,” Abdellatif says. “Our clients can expect cost savings, increased productivity and more reliable operations.”

Electric

Shared

Shared mobility – the S in ACES – has been the slowest of the four features to develop, perhaps because applications such as ride sharing and ride hailing are hard to monetize and make profitable. “The industry bets this will change soon, especially due to the electrification of the fleet,” Abdellatif says. “One key aspect of vehicle sharing is the aggregation of services to achieve scale effects.”

More powerful IT systems would allow sharing services to reach more people in real time, perhaps encouraging greater acceptance and broader market penetration. “Only this scale effect will make shared mobility profitable,” he adds.

Each of the four features of ACES can work alone and deliver benefits as they improve. But the real goal of developers is to harness the way they can interact and boost each other. Underpinning most of those applications is massively improved communication. In the car of the near future, connectivity will come as standard.

This content was paid for and produced by NTT in partnership with the Commercial Department of the Financial Times