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Germans like to take credit for his invention, an innovation that ensured the prosperity of the country for much of the last century.
Now they are trying to prove they can do it again.
Germany laid the foundations for the automotive industry and further developed over the past 100 years, it's time to make the leap into the digital infrastructure minister, German Alexander Dobrindt said Whoever wants to generate growth, jobs and wealth that reaches mainly by digitizing the car.
Just as Carl Benz motorcar transformed the fledgling car company in the 19th century, technological changes roiling the automotive world today will determine the future of the industry for decades to come.
The next 10 years will be more exciting than the last century, Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, CEO boasted at a recent meeting of legislators and industry leaders in Berlin.
With strong and deep pockets brands, German carmakers argue that they are well placed to seize the opportunity to take car of her smoke spewing this to a connected own future.
Unlike internal combustion engines developed by the likes of Benz and Rudolf Diesel, the next decades will be more motivated by a computer code that gear Even though execs German car boast re the challenge, it is far from clearly, they can participate in a world where software is more important than power.
In a world powered smart self-driving cars, major traditional strengths of the engine performance of the German premium manufacturer and handling are less important.
Europe has a lot riding on the success of Germany, the country is a rare bright spot on the economic map of the continent in recent years been the largest economy in Europe, Germany will only grow in importance after the UK left the EU.
The automotive industry, in turn, forms the backbone of Germany 3 5000000000000 economy just as the German car industry goes, so goes Germany, and so is Europe.
Traditional auto manufacturers have begun to take their plans to the drawing board to the showroom, offering a growing range of digital services that go beyond the film and music streaming to sensors that detect all of a motorist careering to a moose.
Instead of trying to introduce a killer product, like Apple did with its iPhone in 2007, automakers old line continues a more evolutionary approach by gradually introducing new features.
Mercedes E-Class station wagon again, for example, can automatically change lanes, brake and park, the features that are becoming the norm in the industry.
So far, this deliberate approach has saved people from Mercedes and BMW the kind of embarrassment caused by the newcomer Tesla US -Based pioneering the electric car took several blows to its reputation after a series of mishaps including a recent fatal accident involving a Tesla driver who put his car on autopilot.
Privately, German car execs scoff at what they see as misplaced arrogance Tesla The upstart California company may have carved a niche for itself in the luxury-car segment E, but it has yet to prove that it can make a profit, they said.
However, the autopilot function Tesla and software updates always offering new digital bells and whistles have captured the imagination of consumers and investors means the Germans haven t For all its problems, Tesla is worth 30 billion, which compares with 55 billion for BMW, a company with 26 times the sales of Tesla.
Volkswagen Director Matthias Müller, whose brands include stability Porsche and Audi, insists that in this new era, it will take longer to fast cars to succeed.
It is clear that building great cars will not be sufficient in itself, he said ahead of the Paris Motor Show this month, but it is also clear that high performance IT development will itself not even be enough, whether it is to combine both auto and digital worlds.
Volkswagen, which is the center of a scandal over the manipulation of engine emission systems, learned the cost of cutting corners to rough.
The German automotive industry has been built on the premise that quality comes first question is whether this emphasis on perfection is compatible with a world of risk-taking and rapid technological changes.
Consider Mercedes Paris, Daimler unit presented its new generation of electric car Baptized EQ, the new line represents Mercedes first major foray into the fully connected car Equipped with a full menu of autonomous driving functions, the new Mercedes will also able to automatically check the owner on flights and receive deliveries of groceries in the trunk.
We see the car the processing on the ultimate platform, said Zetsche of Daimler.
It looks impressive, but the first model, an SUV, won t hit showrooms until 2019 Mercedes predicts he will dominate the luxury car market connected by 2025.
BMW and Volkswagen plan their own Tesla killers in the coming years.
The greatest threat, however, is Silicon Valley automobile companies are forced to weigh customer expectations for interoperability between cars and devices such as smartphones, with their own competitive interests Some opened their cars to the software of Apple and Google, but both of these tech giants have connected the aspirations of their own car.
Connected cars with sensors that measure everything from location to speed and braking frequency, produce amounts of valuable data for marketers and advertisers.
The result is what some analysts have called coopetition a tug of war between rivalry and cooperation that should increase the market for connected car services explodes value of the connected car market is expected to nearly quadruple by 2020-115 billion from 32 billion in 2015, according to analysis by PwC.
So far the battle has focused on the OBD-II port OBD II interface integrated in most cars that allows drivers to connect to the Internet by plugging a key Resembling a memory stick, the key can turn the old school analogue cars connected cars, able to perform basic Internet-based functions such as music streaming.
Although most new models are equipped with integrated connected vehicle technologies provided by car manufacturers in the coming years, vintage cars aren t This makes control of the OBD interface a rich prize, more than 90 million cars Europe will be connected to the Internet with dongle or similar solutions by 2020, compared to 70 million due to integrated embedded technologies, according to estimates from Munich firm Roland Berger consultants.
There is only one port per OBD vehicle so the first to reach a critical mass will win the race for connected automotive customers, the report published in September, predicted.
Technology companies like the giant California or Korean Samsung, who are staking their claims by providing cheap dongles drivers overseas, provoked the ire of the German automobile industry.
As soon as I plug something in the OBD port that does not come directly from the manufacturer, warranty differences, warned Oberkersch Benjamin, a spokesman for Daimler research and development.
The hope technology companies is that once they've invaded the car, it will be impossible to get them out as the drivers insist on having access to their services.
Supported by Berlin, German carmakers are determined to fight at the end of September, they announced a new data exchange between connected cars to go online next year based on a mapping service called here as Audi, BMW and Daimler bought Nokia last year, the move is seen as a key step in the deployment of autonomous driving in Germany.
The normally fierce competitors recently banded together to push wireless broadband standards common for connected cars Dobrindt, the Minister of Infrastructure, meanwhile, have pledged to install 5G mobile networks along major transit routes of Germany 2025.
We should not run after innovation, but we need to actively open the way, he said last month.
Everyone is convinced that high-tech companies will be successful in the automotive world Daniel Göhring, who studies mobile robotics and autonomous vehicles at the Free University of Berlin, compares car aspirations of Google and Apple to Microsoft to late 1990s Despite Microsoft's dominance in software to the time he has failed to become a major player in Internet search.
Microsoft has learned in the 90's, early 2000 that even if you dominate all computers, it does not mean that you necessarily dominate the search engines as well, said Göhring.
Indeed, some observers of the automotive industry indicate that their biggest obstacle is not technology but the regulation of Driverless vehicle technologies, for example, will require a new legal and regulatory framework Until now, fundamental questions liability for injury, death or property damage unanswered.
The biggest challenge will be the legislation, said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, professor of automotive business at the University of Duisburg-Essen we still need insurance or manufacturers will be automatically liable.
In an integrated Europe, these issues must be decided in Brussels, rather than national level, industry officials say a patchwork approach would make it impossible to travel across borders.
The EU must agree on standards of the necessary digital infrastructure, said Eckehart Rotter, spokesman VDA lobbying arm of the German automotive industry is a legal framework and conditions responsibility.
This article is part of a special report POLITICO The future of driving.
German carmakers exchange power for POLITICO software, German carmakers, horses.