GSCW chat: Sandeep Kar, on automotive challenges, disruptions and opportunities

SPEAKER: Sandeep Kar, chief strategy officer at Noregon Systems

BIO: Sandeep Kar is a global thought leader in the commercial vehicle industry. He is the chief strategy officer at Noregon Systems and will be responsible for accelerating the company’s growth, development and competitive differentiation through strategic initiatives encompassing advanced technologies, econometrics, applications and markets. Kar works closely with commercial vehicle and component manufacturers, owners and operators, vehicle maintenance and service providers, and other stakeholding groups that are increasingly adopting technologies that reduce downtime through descriptive, predictive and prescriptive maintenance of mobile resources.

KEY QUOTES FROM KAR

“The commercial vehicle market typically is a very cyclical market. The OEMs are very tuned and familiar with dealing with crises of this shape, I won’t say this form, better than the passenger OEMs who are really exposed. I do believe the commercial vehicle market will do relatively better. The jury is out if things will get back to normal in 2023.”

On parts and chip shortages

“They were operating under the premise that there was [an] infinite supply of semiconductors, and then obviously you talk about CASE (connected autonomous shared electric) all these innovations that OEMs are doing, they all rest on the semiconductors. The presumption or maybe the false sense of security that was baked in the system was that we have infinite supplies.”

On how semiconductor shortages impacted personal vehicle OEMs

“[The] driver crisis [and] driver shortage is a huge crisis in the industry. But the fact is not many people know that the technician shortage is an even bigger crisis because these trucks are becoming more and more complicated. There’s more and more distributed electronics being added to these trucks, and there are not enough skilled technicians to service these trucks, especially in an era of just-in-time logistics when uptime is of prime importance.”

On challenges the industry is facing