TRW expects several growth trends to emerge in automotive electronics sector driven by continuing pressure from regulatory and consumer bodies to increase fitment of active safety systems, the company said in a press release. "Electronics is the fastest growing automotive commodity: industry estimators now place the percentage of a vehicle's cost attributed to this area to be as high as 40% to 50%, up from 20% a decade ago,” said Peter Lake, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Business Development for the company. Besides, the company expects crash avoidance systems to also become mainstream technologies in coming years. TRW also predicts growing focus on affordable radar and camera systems and increase in demand for open architecture systems.
Significance: Global organigations such as World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Commissions have stepped up pressure on the automotive industry to improve safety to reduce road fatalities by 2020. This is further supported by the New Car Assessment Programs (NACP), including EuroNACP, which are revising their rating programs to reward and promote safety improvement in new vehicles over the coming years. TRW expects this to push demand for driving assistance systems. The company is working with its customers to introduce new safety technologies to the market at an affordable price from the beginning. “We need to think about the technological evolution of a product right from the start – considering how technical advances and manufacturing process improvements can allow us to bring a product more affordably to market - but with the same performance,” said Dr. Hans-Gerd Krekels, Engineering Director, Global Integrated Electronics at the company.
