ADAS & Autonomous Vehicles Special Report - December 2024 - 21

FROM TOP: VOLVO CE; CONTINENTAL
Navigating the future of AI in the CV industry
E
very fall, SAE International's
COMVEC symposium brings
leaders from the on-highway, offhighway
and defense sectors together
to collaborate on solutions for the
macro and micro challenges within
the commercial vehicle industry. One
of the executive panels at this year's
conference tackled the intricacies of
AI's effects both present and future
on the industry and how various OEMs
are approaching its implementation.
" There's a lot of things going on in
the industry that really aren't getting
a lot of airtime but are actually really
important, " said Alan Berger, managing
partner at abcg and moderator for
the panel. " One of those things is the
hype around generative AI. Is this topic
relevant in our industry? What about all
the data that we're generating? How do
we use that? Do these technologies have
an impact on business models and how
we go to market? And how do we get
the right talent into the organization?
We need to untangle all this. "
A panel of perspectives
Dr. Ray Gallant, VP of sustainability
and productivity services for Volvo
Construction Equipment, gave his
general view on AI in the industry.
" There's a lot of talk in the industry
about generative AI and classical AI.
How do we use the new AI to take
those mountains of millions of data
points and make sense of them? We
can't possibly build a spreadsheet
the way we used to and try to spot
trends. There's just too much data
coming in and it overwhelms us. So, we
can use AI to help us spot the trends
and take direction from that data. "
Gallant continued, " What's really
exciting and what's different than
most of the innovations that I've seen
in my career is now we have three
completely different technology sets
converging with each other. So no
longer is it a technical innovation in
one area that may disrupt that part
of the industry, it could be a technical
innovation for an [entire] industry. "
ADAS & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES SPECIAL REPORT
car today it is available with telematics.
The car talks back to the cloud and
gives all diagnostics. Think about how
long it took to come full circle to get
that, what the barriers of entry were
for a lot of these Tier 1s. And I love the
startup topic here. That's also a great
way of forcing the industry forward. "
Volvo's autonomous, battery-electric LX03 is a
" self-learning " wheel loader concept that can make
decisions, perform tasks and interact with humans.
" I believe over the next 10 years,
we're going to see more change to
this industry than we've seen in the
last 100, which can induce anxiety, "
said Steve Greenfield, general partner
at Automotive Ventures. " But if you're
positioned correctly to leverage some
of these trends it should really energize
anybody in the audience, especially
younger folks in the industry, which
has been somewhat of a challenge. "
Phil McEwen, VP and general
manager of commercial and special
vehicles for Continental, provided
his perspective on the business case
for utilization of AI in the industry.
" One of the big questions about AI
on the business side is how do you
enable this technology faster than
we've done it before, " he said.
" My best example is telematics, "
McEwen continued. " If you buy your
Driving development
abcg's Berger asked the panel
specifically if there were actual
applications being employed in their
respective businesses. " I think that the way
to look at AI is practical, " Continental's
McEwen said. " Say you're a venture
capitalist and you're raising a 10-year fund.
So, whatever technologies you're investing
in and effectively betting on have to
manifest within 10 years' time. The adage
is that being too early is worse than being
wrong. This is very true in venture capital,
and then how I look at it is really this
framework, whether this is right or wrong. "
McEwen continued, " Compared to
even three years ago, it's crazy how
much AI has improved. The quality,
the throughput, the effectiveness
of a software developer because
they've effectively got this little copilot
on the righthand side of the
screen where it can be writing code
for them or correcting their code in
real time. So, the methodology of
writing the code is very different. "
An example of the " end state " for
AI is Tesla's Optimus robot, which
Continental employs
AI technology in its
autonomous and
electric Contadino
agricultural robot
used on farms for
seeding, weeding,
spraying, fertilizing
and monitoring.
DECEMBER 2024 21
ADAS & Autonomous Vehicles Special Report - December 2024

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