ROME (ITALPRESS) – Italians like the automobile sapiens: it will be the queen of the market. This is what emerges from the new research of the Luiss Business School’s Auto and Mobility Observatory “From the automobile sapiens to the motorist sapiens. Reactions, expectations and fears towards the car of the new species and analysis of its market diffusion.” The research analyzes the perception of intelligenzan in the automotive industry, focusing on factors influencing the acceptance and intention to use AI systems integrated into vehicles, and analytically observes the spread of the automobile sapiens phenomenon in the market made evident by the number of software-defined vehicles coming in the next few years. “The situation we are experiencing in Europe, in Italy, in the world, as far as automotive is concerned, is very delicate, it is part of the energy transition, so it was something absolutely predictable,” said Michele Crisci, president of Unrae, Unione Nazionale Rappresentanti Autoveicoli Esteri.”What we are trying to clarify today are the steps that have been taken so far and the steps that need to be taken in the future to ensure not only a development of the automotive in the correct sense that the standards are defining, so going toward decarbonization in a very clear and very sharp way but also doing it in an economically and socially sustainable way trying to return as Italy to an important automotive country.” The results of the study show a clearly recognizable numerical characterization: more than half of potential users see themselves as already ready to enter the age of the automobile sapiens. According to the research data, intention to use is expressed by 55.2 percent of respondents, while 67.9 percent expressed a medium to high level of familiarity and eight out of ten, 75.8 percent, described the technology as highly innovative. This, for a product clearly identified as revolutionary and not yet available in its entirety on the market, is undoubtedly a very advanced starting point. Resistance is related to the possible high cost of maintenance and upgrading in case of technical problems or IT vulnerabilities with 83.2 percent of respondents expressing significant concerns about total delegation, from a decision-making perspective only 28 percent of respondents were in favor.The study outlines obstacles and opportunities for integrating artificial intelligence systems into other sectors as well by placing the active and conscious role of the user at the center.”The research starts from a discovery that a new type of product was emerging: the car sapiens, with artificial intelligence on board,” explained Fabio Orecchini, scientific director of the Luiss Business School and Guglielmo Marconi University Car and Mobility Observatory. “In this research we went to understand if the user might be interested in getting on board this car and how many are really coming on the market. The users were much more ready than we thought.” The growth of artificial intelligence is, moreover, bringing new concepts and new approaches in the development of Sapiens car safety systems: turnover for Incabin Sensing systems is expected to grow from the current $2.5 billion to $6-8 billion by 2030, also driven by increasingly stringent approval standards. The World Economic Forum (WEF) says that computing capacity allocated to AI globally is doubling every hundred days. The Semiconductor Industry Association reports in its 2024 report that automotive has risen from 14 percent to 17 percent of the semiconductor market in the U.S. and is the only sector to show an increase (+15 percent over the previous year). All this with a global semiconductor market valued at $611 billion, $92 billion of which involves AI chips by design, or 15%.In this highly expansive scenario for AI, there are already eleven platforms launched on the market in Europe, designed to underpin models belonging to the SDV (Software defined vehicle) family. At least eighteen more will be added in the next two years, a number likely to grow as more revelations come from auto brands, since as many as twelve of those already known are scheduled to arrive on the road in the very short term, by 2025.Chatbots, i.e., software capable of written and spoken dialogue with the user, are the currently most successful, simple and widespread expression of Artificial Intelligence within all processes of the automotive industry. Thirty-eight auto brands were analyzed and all of them offer a proprietary in-car voice assistant and allow Google Assistant and Siri to be used in the car. As many as thirteen allow Alexa to access and command on-board functions within the same car, six brands use (or can use) Alexa built-in (embedded and delegated by the system), five Google Assistant built-in. Four houses associate their voice assistants with an avatar, and fourteen already incorporate ChatGPT.
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