Copyright Newsweek
This year’s IAA Mobility transportation industry trade show in Munich, Germany, was billed as a tour de force of Chinese automakers by the German press. Attendees wondered out loud if Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz and BMW Group were going to be able to keep up with Geely, Xpeng and BYD. One of the keys to those legacy automakers competing with the Chinese, Mike Nefkens, chief executive officer of HERE Technologies, told Newsweek is their ability to speed up production timelines. That’s where software-defined vehicles, known for characteristic connected technologies that are able to be updated via cloud-based communication, come into play. “I think people are realizing that software defined vehicles are much more complex than they thought. You know, many companies have put together software defined vehicles software stacks that have ended up being Frankensteins,” he explained. As HERE’s CEO, Nefkens leads a team that works with automakers globally to reduce time-to-market for software and lower total operation costs. It isn’t just the vehicles themselves that need to be created faster than before, but also the software that governs them. Autonomous drive technology, currently available in a variety of models in various levels of application, is a defining driver in high-tech mobility of the future. Key to this is the co-mingling of navigation and hands-free, eyes-free technologies. HERE was one of the first in the world to digitize maps and continues to be a leader in that space with transportation companies in the sea and on land using those maps today. That co-mingling is a commonality that automakers share, no matter where they are located. “What I think is exciting about that is that the best of Chinese technology means the best European native technology. That's very rare in this world. These things are more and more segregated,” Remco Timmer, senior vice president of product and technology at HERE, told Newsweek, intimating that competition is fiercer than ever before. While it’s clear that products made by Chinese companies are ruling the talking points of 2025, Timmer points out that there are reasons for German automakers to be hopeful. “European tech should be proud with some of the improvements that Mercedes has done, especially in the CLA program, and, of course, also our BMW customer with Neue Klasse, I think it's actually really a competitive offering,” he said. The Mercedes-Benz CLA debuted last year and is currently on sale globally, including China, with some markets receiving it later than others. BMW’s first Neue Klasse vehicle, the iX3, goes on sale later this year. Both vehicles, software-defined models, have operating systems that are leaps forward for them. Mercedes-Benz’s MB.OS heavily leverages artificial intelligence to make navigation and driving technologies seamless experiences for the user. BMW’s new-age iX3 set up changes the user ballgame with projected imagery and a rhombus-shaped screen inside a simplistic cabin, echoing the design themes of many of its Chinese competitors. AI is the red thread that connects the development of those models to the vehicles on the streets. “AI accelerates everything,” Timmer said. Software that uses AI within a single software stack is the golden ticket that automakers are working to integrate, as companies like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Chinese electric vehicle makers already have. “The new automakers that have come out, whether it be Chinese or even Tesla, these guys have the advantage of being vertically oriented. They own pretty much the entire stack so they are able to integrate very, very quickly, and they're able to get things out to market in 18 months to two years,” Nefkens said. “The Western original equipment manufacturers are not vertically oriented. They spend the majority of their time trying to piece together all of these different vendors,” he explained. HERE Technologies debuted a new business concept at IAA Mobility designed to do that heavy lifting for automakers. “Western OEMs spent all their time trying to what we call build a Frankenstein that's got multiple vendors, multiple integration points. Integration points mean single point of failure, and they spend all their time integrating versus innovating,” Nefkens continued. “I think the OEMs have learned that they have to get out of Build Mode, and they have to get into [buying] these pre-integrated stacks, so that they don't have to do all that work, and they can move much quicker.” Nefkens believes that by bringing pre-integrated stacks to the table, automakers will save time in development and be able to push new product to market sooner. “The OEMs’ focus needs to be on differentiating their brand, on innovation, and let the ecosystems partners focus on the build and the integration and getting the software robust,” he said. The CEO shone a light on the fact that there are currently 14 automakers that use the exact same navigation stack. But, in market, each one is skinned differently and matched with unique-to-OEM services. Those skins and services can now be tested quickly in real time using a digital twin, and in some cases thousands of digital twins, as opposed to the months and years spent testing using less AI-enabled methods. The new HERE software solution is the product of a partnership with AWS, which already provides technology to automakers globally, in many different respects.
