Often, it is not the creator of a great novelty who becomes best known for it, but the person who popularized it. The automobile, for example, was created by Germans, but popularized by American industrialist Henry Ford. He is credited with saying “you can buy a Ford Model T in any color you want, as long as it is black”.
The famous saying portrays a disappearing reality in the creation of products, threatened by the advancement of industrialization and technology. Instead of imposing products on the customer, who were forced to accept without significantly different options, today production needs to be thought of from the point of view of the consumer’s experience. And this often involves breaking down some barriers between different industries.
It may seem obvious, but this is a challenge that still affects the automotive sector, especially when we talk about vehicles aimed at logistics and cargo transport, with a great need for technological integration.
An example of the benefits of this integration is Tesla, a company that, despite having only recently started making a profit, became the most valuable automaker in the world in June this year. With a market value valued at US$185 billion, Elon Musk’s company is worth more than the sum of GM, Ford and FCA combined. What really differentiated it from the others, its great idea, was putting wheels under its computer, not discovering ways to put technology inside cars.
For logistics companies, these advances are very relevant. Greater connectivity in trucks helps, for example, in strategic route planning, increased productivity and even safety, with more traceability and protection against theft and more qualified monitoring of the truck driver’s trip. Another very important possibility is to obtain strategic data during deliveries, making in-depth analyzes of the fleet’s performance and the development of improvements possible.
It may seem like a distant reality, but the fact is that there are even some autonomous vehicles being used in Brazil. Mercedes-Benz, for example, operates trucks with level 2 automation in sugar cane fields, in which the driver is only required in extreme cases.
To advance and popularize this type of technology, which involves legal and even infrastructure issues (such as 5G connection available on roads and rural areas), we face the challenge of raising awareness among workers in this area about its availability and applications. Many technologies that began to be widely used during the pandemic, such as cargo search applications, were already available before it, and logistics companies only became aware of the possibility of taking advantage of them at an opportune moment.
For this development to occur, industries (automotive, logistics and technology) need to be in constant interaction, with the common objective of producing vehicles that are increasingly able to use technology as their main differentiator.