By Eli Anna
How the biggest names in luxury cars are turning to electrical engineers to fine tune quality, performance, and even provide logs which give car manufacturers precision cars.
The automotive market has been short in electrical engineers for the past half a decade. Without them, the car industry struggles to maintain its recent high levels of evolution. There are few other industries where the redesign of current products is so vital than in the vehicle industry. From design to completion, auto and electrical engineers are the ones raising the game.
The Digital Skills Gap is Hitting the Automotive Industry
First, the digital skills gap is a leading cause of the slow growth of the industry. People will always need ways to get around and cars are viable transport, but the evolution of vehicular and electrical engineering is trending towards the electric vehicle. As big brand names like Porsche.h and Mercedes finally work those kinks out, and as prices fall, we could all be driving electric cars in the next ten years.
But that is assuming that we bridge the digital skills gap to keep up with the rate of evolution within the industry. There are only two real ways to do this. In big brand car businesses, it takes a full team of experts to advance even the smallest car parts. They keep a fleet of automotive engineers, designers, materials experts, and other professionals, to keep a factory running.
How are big brands tackling this skills gap?
The major names in car manufacture can only bridge this gap in two ways. They can train up existing employees and take the gamble that those workers won’t leave once they have these new skills. The second way is to search online for electrical engineering jobs or software developers. If they can hire new employees perfectly suited to the role, then there is no training cost other than onboarding.
The Automotive Industry is Redefining what Electrical Engineering Does
The way electrical engineering relates to the automotive industry is changing how we design and build cars. Twenty years ago, your car had minimal electronics. Nowadays, the better the electronics within the vehicle, the less the driver needs to do. Since high end car companies like BMW, Bentley, and Jaguar, produce top quality vehicles with all the mod-cons and luxurious comfort thrown in; it makes sense that they would be pushing the electronics harder than ever before. But what sorts of things to electrical engineers do for them?
Examples of Electrical Engineering in Action
What type of improvements can an electrical engineer make in the auto-industry? Here are examples.
Autonomous systems
Onboard guidance systems, autonomous emergency breaking, and automatic locking or unlocking, are all autonomous systems that require the design and development skills only found with electrical engineers. Some of these systems use things like radar, lidar technology, and cameras to sense what is on the road around the car and help avoid collisions.
Interpretative Software
State of the art cars such as the Google car enjoy an onboard interpretative software systems. This records the behavior of other road users, and notes patterns in locations. Using this technology, a car can help its driver to make better driving decisions based on what is essentially the same analytical feedback SME owners use to drive traffic to websites… but it’s inside your car. There are Toyota cars out there with more lines of code than a fighter jet.
Adaptive Cruise Control
Cruise control is evolving too. Within the next decade, consumers are going to see the emergence of the truly self-driving car. Audi and BMW7 series cars both already have a start and stop cruise control which gives the car more authority to drive alone. Even at the time of writing, Tesla just announced a Beta update which solves the issues their autopilot controls had. Every passing day, we are closer and closer to this technology. Again, this is thanks to electrical engineers constantly developing new tech.
Increased Climate Control
You can do more inside your car to make it comfortable for the passengers than you have ever been able to do before. GPS systems, diagnostics, emergency lights, cruise control, emission control, temperature control, electric seats, heated seats, touch-responsive buttons, light up dashboards, and even ports to connect and charge your devices, are all examples of electrical engineering in the automotive industry.
Electronics are Changing Vehicles Constantly
By the time this article reaches publication, there will be a half dozen new tech tricks that car manufacturers are fighting over each other to use in their vehicles. As technology advances, so does our understanding of how we can improve existing designs. Who knows? The flying cars imagined back in the 60s are not so far from reality as you think.
