Big leap in innovation for China’s carmakers, study says
The CCI innovation ranking is published regularly by the Center of Automotive Management (CAM), a Germany-based independent institute for empirical automotive research. “The established manufacturers from Europe and the USA are increasingly facing competition from rising stars from China in the field of Connected Car technologies,” comments CAM Director Stefan Bratzel. “In some cases, they not only catch up, but can often even increase their innovations. Manufacturers from Europe, Japan and the USA are coming under pressure from the new Chinese players and are now having to catch up enormously in development.
According to CAM analysis, the number of Connected Car innovations (CCI) in the areas of assistance and safety systems, operating and display concepts, and information and communication systems in 2018 remains at the previous year’s level with 649 innovations. CCI innovations accounted for more than 53 percent of all innovations made by automakers worldwide. The Chinese carmakers in particular were responsible for this level: Without their innovations, the number of innovations would have fallen from 543 to only 507, which would have meant a decline of almost seven percent compared to the previous year.
If we look at the innovative strength in the Connected Car sector by country group, the German manufacturers can be satisfied, according to the study. Their innovative strength rose to 320 index points compared to 2017, their Chinese competitors are well behind in second place, but also improved strongly from 98 to 175 index points. On the other hand, the innovative strength of the American and Japanese manufacturers has dropped significantly to third and fourth place respectively and is now only around 60 points each. (Figure 1).
innovation strength) Source: CAM
Looking at innovation strength by company, however, three German manufacturers are still ahead. Daimler is the leader in Connected Car innovations. In the new Connected Car Innovation Ranking (CCI), Daimler even overtook the VW Group with a firework of innovations and took second place. BMW ranks third in the ranking and is one place down on the previous year (Figure 2).
Source: CAM
All in all, the Chinese manufacturers have also improved considerably in the individual assessment and, with nine car manufacturers, are among the top 20 – more than ever before. Geely (including Volvo) is the first Chinese car manufacturer to advance to fourth place, taking a giant leap – in 2017 Geely was still in 13th place. SAIC also improved strongly from 16th to 7th place. This was followed by the Chinese manufacturers NextEV (10), Great Wall (12), Dongfeng (13), Changan (14), FMC (15), BAIC (16) and Chery (20).
The Chinese are significantly stronger than Germany, especially in terms of market size and the number and strength of big data players, which are particularly important for the implementation of car-connected innovations and services. The demand for CC technologies in China is almost seven times greater than in Germany. The worldwide ranking for market size and digital strength of the country continues to lead China by a large margin ahead of the USA, while the German index value for market size and digital strength has halved within a year.
Stefan Bratzel, head of the study, comments: “In the networked mobility of the future, cooperation between automobile manufacturers and big data players is playing an increasingly important role. Chinese manufacturers are profiting more and more from the enormous digital strength of their home country. For German automobile manufacturers, on the other hand, the digital weakness of their country of origin could prove to be a brake pad for further networking innovations.”
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