{"id":13318,"date":"2026-05-26T15:26:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T19:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/?p=13318"},"modified":"2026-05-26T15:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T19:26:07","slug":"how-digitalization-is-transforming-the-automotive-industry-transcript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/how-digitalization-is-transforming-the-automotive-industry-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"How digitalization is transforming the automotive industry &#8211; Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In this episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/podcasts\/category\/industry-forward\/\"><em>The Industry Forward Podcast<\/em><\/a>, Royston Jones and Ryan Martin discuss the ways digitalization is transforming how the automotive industry designs and produces the vehicles of today.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"embed-megaphone\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TLFIE5771794738\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><!-- Megaphone -->\n\n\n<p><strong>Kate Eby: <\/strong>Hello and welcome to <em>The Industry Forward Podcast<\/em>, where we explore key trends, transformative technologies, and real-world innovations that are reshaping fields from aerospace, industrial machine, and semiconductors to pharmaceuticals and beyond. I&#8217;m Kate Eby, and I&#8217;ll be your host for today&#8217;s episode as we take a closer look at the automotive industry and the ongoing shift towards software-defined vehicles. We&#8217;ve touched on what&#8217;s driving that change in past episodes, and today we&#8217;re going a step further to explore how digital technology is shaping the way that these vehicles are designed and built, as well as how tools like the comprehensive Digital Twin are transforming the industry at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kate Eby: <\/strong>Joining us today are some familiar voices. We have Royston Jones, Global Head of Automotive and Transportation here at Siemens, and Ryan Martin, Senior Research Director at ABI Research. Ryan, I&#8217;d like to start with you. One of the big advantages of digital technology is that it allows companies to move important decisions earlier in the product life cycle, whether that&#8217;s in design, production, or even operations. At Siemens, we often refer to that as shifting left. With the ability to simulate and test earlier, teams can gain valuable insights before a physical product or even prototype is ever built. That gives manufacturers the chance to make smarter decisions much earlier in the process. Ryan, can you expand on that a little bit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> Left shifting is significant in the automotive industry. Every day that a new product is not available is real money, and that actually translates to the manufacturing of the vehicles. A lot of it has to do with alignment, not just technology infrastructure, but especially of people to enable collaboration and get rid of some of the inefficiencies for bringing new product to market. So in setting up a new production line that could be instead of flying someone in the United States out to Germany to look at a production line that&#8217;s made and say, \u201cYep, this is it. That makes sense. We want it.\u201d And then that supplier disassembles the production line or the components and some of the machinery and ships it, transports it to the US, and then it&#8217;s rebuilt. Wildly inefficient when it comes to manufacturing. And so now what a lot of companies are doing is taking that process and doing it virtually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> So virtually commissioning the line so that things are built once the right way. And that can cut down a process from six months to two months, for example. Taking those same principles and applying them to the design phase is also significant because you can drive stronger alignment with the teams that are actually making the products. So between mechanical, electrical, and one of the hardest parts is getting from a design product to a manufactured product. So that&#8217;s a big opportunity to really tighten a lot of the process. When we think downstream also in terms of the value of that time, I mentioned before that Ford produces a new vehicle roughly every minute. If we assume that the average bill of materials for an automotive, for one of those vehicles is in the vicinity of 30,000 dollars, that means every minute of uptime is significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> And because the industry is so complex and there&#8217;s so many operations happening over the course of a day, I&#8217;ll give you one example, even just looking at the protocol translations that are used on the factory floor. Switching from OPC UA to a different option, and this is a live example from Honda&#8217;s Alabama plant. They saved roughly 10 milliseconds per API call. Those incremental savings amounted to 3,000 additional minutes of uptime per year, which means 90 million dollars of savings from a simple software change. And so when we think about the kinds of digital solutions and technologies that are making their way into the factory, these small changes can have a really big impact at scale, and especially when the result is bringing new products to market faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royston Jones:<\/strong> So I think, I&#8217;ve been living and breathing for the last sort of 15 years, this sort of designing these vehicles in that concept area. So this left shifting has been a really important area where we see excessive deployment of digital, particularly technologies like optimization technology and the rise of AI, they can fundamentally accelerate the development speeds. So there&#8217;s two areas. One is the rapid maturing of the design, but also reducing the amount of physical prototype testing by once again doing that within the computer and simulating the tests, but doing a different type of simulation where you&#8217;re actually starting to incorporate the variation within the simulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royston Jones:<\/strong> So I mean, I think the design portion will increasingly accelerate and the bottleneck within the design will shift to other areas such as tooling releases. So it&#8217;s a really exciting time, I think. And that trend will continue of shifting left and maturing the product a lot more. Yeah, that&#8217;s a path that the industry will keep on going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> Performing and executing design reviews is another really good example of left shifting in the design phase. And here what I&#8217;m thinking of is the application of VR and AR, really immersive solutions, which were completely misplaced in my view for the last decade or so. Where immersive has a really good role is actually in the office and it&#8217;s not in a full-time capacity, but for certain tasks. And here what you might envision is a designer completes a certain task where you have a physical product and you want to align with other teams in a certain space. And instead of working in VR for the entirety of that workflow, VR is an accessory to enable design reviews to scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> So maybe instead of being at a computer, you&#8217;re still at your desk, but you put on a headset for 20 minutes as does somebody else in a different locale to look at that design and what it might physically look like. And this can apply certainly to the product. It can also apply to the process or a factory space that&#8217;s being reorganized. And so this kind of new style of working can shift left both design and the implementation of production processes through virtual certifications and better alignment and collaboration across teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kate Eby: <\/strong>So Ryan, Royston, we talk a lot about digital technologies. At Siemens, we talk a lot about the role of the comprehensive Digital Twin as part of this transition, this digital transformation to leveraging more and more digital technologies. Can you talk a bit about what the comprehensive Digital Twin is and how it and or digital transformation are really helping push forward this idea, especially when it comes to something as complex as a software-defined vehicle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royston Jones:<\/strong> I think people have got different definitions for Digital Twin because I think if you look at the complete PLM cycle, then depending on where they sit within that cycle, they&#8217;ll have slightly different definitions which depend on what their activity is. But I think the complete Digital Twin, I think, is an ambitious vision, which, if you like, takes the product all the way through the complete PLM life cycle. And I think that&#8217;s tremendously ambitious. And I don&#8217;t know of a single company that, if you like, is taken that twin all the way through design, manufacture, and then out in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royston Jones:<\/strong> But I feel that various pieces are being assembled. And I feel that if you can put them pieces together, then I think you&#8217;ll have a really powerful PLM tool to help you really look at the complete life of that product. And I think the thing that will enable this is the prevalence of data. So if you look at the industrialization process when it&#8217;s going through its manufacture, then you&#8217;re gathering significant amount of data from that line relating to the product. So if you look at a body and wide structure of a vehicle, when it&#8217;s coming off the line, in general, it&#8217;s being scanned. So you can detect, you know, distortions, imperfections that the industrialization process has basically ingested into the structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royston Jones:<\/strong> And then when it goes out in the field, you&#8217;re receiving lots of over the-air-data, which can give you information on certain driving styles, all sorts of data being pumped back over the air. And I think it&#8217;s the data that will enable this complete comprehensive Digital Twin throughout the whole of a product&#8217;s life cycle. So each one of them twins because it&#8217;s experience going through the industrialization process and also when it&#8217;s out in the field will be different. So you&#8217;ll have a unique twin for every product that&#8217;s created. And that&#8217;s quite an ambitious vision. But I think the company that puts all this together will start to be the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kate Eby: <\/strong>And yeah, and the Digital Twin is not new. We&#8217;ve been talking about the Digital Twin for a long time. We tend to talk about it as the comprehensive Digital Twin that You just referenced, Royston, really looking forward to all of the implications. And I think it&#8217;s part of the reason that we also refer to it as a digital transformation or digitalization journey because no one&#8217;s really there yet, but the technology and pieces are coming together. So Ryan, could you talk a little bit from an industry perspective about the Digital Twin, maybe how it&#8217;s evolved and how like with the software defined vehicle, we&#8217;re maybe somewhere in the middle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> In its most simplest form, a Digital Twin is a digital representation of a physical object, which means Digital Twins have been around for some time. The most basic example is a digital sensor reading of a physical asset. Maybe it&#8217;s a pump or a heat exchange. Now twins have become much more comprehensive, complete, and contextual in the capabilities that they provide. And the phase shift is really solution-led, where a couple of years ago, what we observed was a lot of the industry said, \u201cWe got to have a Digital Twin. We got to have a Digital Twin.\u201d And then by the end of establishing a Digital Twin, they said, \u201cOkay, now what can we do with it?\u201d Today, the motion is very different. It&#8217;s, \u201cWe want to improve quality, performance, quality, and availability. And by the way, at the end of this process, we have a Digital Twin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Martin:<\/strong> The result of that shift in thinking around solutions has led the leading companies to realize there&#8217;s a lot of benefit to extending beyond a basic twin to something that is more comprehensive, spans domains, and also spans departments. So between mechanical, electrical, manufacturing production, after sales service and support, even marketing, and Having personas and individuals who are able to all benefit from the same coherent data structure in a way that caters to their role, and that can also include the customer as well, to tighten the feedback loop, accelerate design cycles, and make products more personal are some of the reasons why more comprehensive Digital Twin solutions are ultimately where the market is going. And the companies that are ahead are already starting to do this today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kate Eby: <\/strong>Well, Ryan and Royston, unfortunately, we&#8217;re out of time for today. But I&#8217;d like to thank you both for a great discussion on Digital Twin and the digital technology shaping the future of the automotive industry. Hopefully, we can have you both back soon to continue this conversation. I&#8217;d also like to extend a thank you to our listeners for joining us. We hope you learned something and that you&#8217;ll join us again soon to dive even further into the future of today&#8217;s industry. Once again, I&#8217;m Kate Eby, and we&#8217;ll see you next time on <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/podcasts\/category\/industry-forward\/\"><em>The Industry Forward Podcast<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Siemens Digital Industries Software<\/strong>&nbsp;helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens <a href=\"https:\/\/xcelerator.siemens.com\/global\/en.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Xcelerator<\/a> business platform. Siemens\u2019 software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn today\u2019s ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries.&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.siemens.com\/software\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Siemens Digital Industries Software<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 Accelerating transformation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode of The Industry Forward Podcast, Royston Jones and Ryan Martin discuss the ways digitalization is transforming how&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87014,"featured_media":13044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,194,11,2,8374,13761],"industry":[120],"product":[],"coauthors":[10345],"class_list":["post-13318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cars-of-the-future","tag-digital-transformation","tag-digital-twin","tag-digitalization","tag-siemens-xcelerator","tag-software-defined-vehicle","industry-automotive-transportation"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2026\/03\/automotive-neu_original.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13319,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13318\/revisions\/13319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13318"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=13318"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=13318"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}