Changing Social Environment Around Vehicles and Mobility’s New Role

The automotive industry is currently undergoing a major transformation that goes beyond just electrification. The concept of mobility is evolving from individual ownership to shared use within society.
Driving this change are serious social issues such as traffic accidents causing the deaths of more than a million people worldwide every year, the urgent need to achieve carbon neutrality, and the need to support mobility-challenged individuals in an aging society.
The key lies in the advancement of CASE, an acronym that represents the four next-generation trends in the automotive industry: Connected, Autonomous, Shared/Service, and Electric. In particular, autonomous driving has evolved from conditional operation under specific scenarios to a roadmap for implementing fully autonomous driving that leverages communication technologies. However, communication latency and electromagnetic interference pose significant challenges to ensuring absolute reliability. To achieve the ultimate goal of zero traffic fatalities, an advanced communication infrastructure is essential—one that enables automobiles to instantly communicate with infrastructure and detect and respond to a wide range of events.
In this period of transformation, the Sumitomo Electric Group will leverage the expertise it has gained, primarily in wire harnesses—often called the “nervous system” of automobiles—and integrate these with digital/AI and energy networks to help establish the foundation that will support the next generation of society.
At the heart of this strategy is AutoNetworks Technologies, Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “ANTech”). From this cutting-edge technology research hub, the Sumitomo Electric Group envisions the future of mobility.