Inno­va­tion is essen­tial across indus­tries, but ASUG research indi­cates that SAP cus­tomers in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor feel they are still stuck in the man­u­fac­tur­ing world of the past. In many ways, the vehi­cles we build and dri­ve today aren’t that dif­fer­ent than the mod­els Hen­ry Ford pop­u­lar­ized at the start of the last century.

At the same time, the auto indus­try has seen dra­mat­ic inno­va­tions — robot­ics-enabled man­u­fac­tur­ing, high per­for­mance elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs), and cars that are gen­er­al­ly mor­ph­ing into elec­tron­ic devices. 

Enter Frank M. Rinderknecht, founder and CEO of Rin­speed, Inc. If you ask him, the car of the future is not a car at all — it’s an entire rethink­ing of the way we move peo­ple and things. The aver­age per­son may be most famil­iar with Rinspeed’s most pop­u­lar inven­tion: the inte­gra­tion of the radio and oth­er con­trols with­in a car’s steer­ing wheel.

But Rinderknecht’s true focus is on more rev­o­lu­tion­ary innovations.

“In the future, auto­mo­tive and oth­er trans­porta­tion will all blend into mobil­i­ty,” he says. ​“It will be a new mod­el, a seam­less trans­porta­tion envi­ron­ment based on what’s fastest, most con­ve­nient, and most comfortable.”

“Snap”: A Mod­u­lar Vehi­cle Concept

Rinspeed’s newest inno­va­tion, the ​“Snap” sys­tem, attempts to solve two prob­lems: the amount of time our cars sit unused in park­ing spaces and the mis­match between the life cycles of cars’ IT and mechan­i­cal com­po­nents. ​“Snap” frees the chas­sis, or ​“skate­board,” to dis­con­nect from the body, or ​“pod,” of the vehi­cle so it can con­tin­ue to oper­ate in oth­er capacities.

ASUG News had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down with Rinderknecht and ask him to help con­nect auto­mo­tive inno­va­tion, mar­ket pres­sures, tech­nol­o­gy, smart cities, and the emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with our vehicles.

Ann Marie: Tell us what Rin­speed does in the auto­mo­tive industry.

Frank: Well, you could call us a think tank or a thought leader in the mobil­i­ty indus­try. Rin­speed does two things. For one, we’re an inspir­ing part­ner to com­pa­nies who want to under­stand the future of mobil­i­ty and the pos­si­ble impact on their ser­vices or prod­ucts. The auto­mo­tive mar­ket­place is chang­ing extreme­ly quick­ly, so what makes you mon­ey today might not be viable tomorrow.

And sec­ond, we are a ser­vice to the tier 1 and tier 2 auto­mo­tive com­pa­nies. We build con­cept cars, team­ing up with the best of the indus­try to demon­strate inno­va­tion with mod­els that make future pos­si­bil­i­ties more tangible.

Ann Marie: What inspired you to found Rinspeed?

Frank: I am curi­ous to under­stand the mech­a­nisms of mobil­i­ty. Mobil­i­ty is not only trans­porta­tion of your body — it’s also asso­ci­at­ed with a lot of emo­tions. Those emo­tions range from per­cep­tions of safe­ty to com­fort and so on. It’s most inter­est­ing to look at it holis­ti­cal­ly, from the point of view of the customer.

Ann Marie: Your mis­sion con­nects mobil­i­ty with sus­tain­abil­i­ty, among oth­er things. What are some oth­er core prin­ci­ples that guide you?

Frank: Design plays a strong role. Many times, form fol­lows func­tion. With the ​“Snap” vehi­cle, to use more of the inte­ri­or space I must sac­ri­fice a lit­tle bit on the design. But peo­ple do not want to buy a sus­tain­able car that looks awful. You do not get the recog­ni­tion as a pio­neer if the design is not pleasing.

Ann Marie: How does Rin­speed help com­pa­nies reimag­ine the kind of cars that con­sumers want today?

Frank: Here I would counter with a provoca­tive ques­tion: Does the cus­tomer real­ly know what they want? Did peo­ple 10 years ago know they want­ed an iPad? They couldn’t even imag­ine an iPad. You must guide the cus­tomer to what they want or like. It’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for an OEM to retune their employ­ees to what we’ll call Mobil­i­ty 2.0, because they’re all stuck in Mobil­i­ty 1.0. At the end of the day, what makes peo­ple change is pain. The high­er the pain lev­el, the more you and I and the OEMs will change. Right now, this pain may be dri­ven by the new com­pa­nies pop­ping up out­side the tra­di­tion­al industry.

Ann Marie: It reminds me of the Hen­ry Ford quote: ​“If I asked cus­tomers what they want­ed they would have said faster horses.”

Frank: Exactly.

Ann Marie: Why do you think every­thing has changed so dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the past six to eight years?

Frank: From the out­side, it’s the issues of con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion. From the inside, it’s IT. In my opin­ion, IT is the real game chang­er. IT enables elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and auto­mat­ed dri­ving, and that con­nects back to find­ing relief for pol­lu­tion and congestion.

Ann Marie: How is ​“Snap” help­ing break the old patterns?

Frank: First is the fact that Lev­el 5 [com­plete automa­tion] in the auto­mo­tive indus­try will rede­fine trans­porta­tion vehi­cles, their usage, and busi­ness cas­es. Lev­el 5 is not just tak­ing the steer­ing wheel and col­umn out of a Chevy Mal­ibu, and here you go. It will be too expen­sive for that. In ear­ly stages, we are talk­ing about $50,000 – $100,000 per vehi­cle to achieve, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly elim­i­nates 95% of peo­ple as poten­tial owners.

Sec­ond, you have to bring the life spans of IT and mechan­i­cals togeth­er, which means that you have to get val­ue from the expen­sive com­po­nents and the time-sen­si­tive com­po­nents of the vehi­cle with­in three years.

In a giv­en day you have two trans­porta­tion peaks: from 7 – 9 in the morn­ing and from 4 – 6 in the evening. The rest of the time, those vehi­cles sit around. They are used maybe 30% of the time over­all. Our idea with ​“Snap” is to make trans­porta­tion mod­u­lar. Mod­u­lar­i­ty allows you to use the mobile parts over the whole day. Now it’s used up to 80% of the day, which means that the life span auto­mat­i­cal­ly shrinks because it’s dri­ven more and not sit­ting around.

Ann Marie: Why do you feel that flex­i­bil­i­ty is so impor­tant to the future of the mobil­i­ty industry?

Frank: The big ques­tion for every­body becomes, ​“When is L5 hap­pen­ing?” There is no black-and-white answer. It’s not hap­pen­ing at one place and time. And the auto­mo­tive indus­try is so afraid of not know­ing when it’s com­ing. You need to be flex­i­ble so once L5 takes off, you won’t lose your pace or be left out.

Ann Marie: How does mobil­i­ty con­nect with emotion?

Frank: Mobil­i­ty will not be just a vehi­cle. Maybe Lev­el 5 shut­tles or taxis come in dif­fer­ent lev­els of com­fort and con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Maybe new com­pa­nies enter the world so that a brand like Louis Vuit­ton has its own vehicles.

I will go so far as to sug­gest mobil­i­ty in the future might be free, like Google. You will get a lot of ser­vice, but you will pay indi­rect­ly because you will have to look at ads. Or, for exam­ple, Ama­zon could enter the mobil­i­ty mar­ket by offer­ing trans­porta­tion to cus­tomers who spend a min­i­mum amount on their Ama­zon Prime accounts each month.

Or a restau­rant will pay for your trips if you order a cer­tain amount of food.

Ann Marie: How do you think these new types of vehi­cles and urban mobil­i­ty will change our rela­tion­ship with the car?

Frank: Few­er peo­ple will own one, and shar­ing will not be for every­body. With Uber, you have Uber­Pool, UberX, and Uber Black. It will still be an extreme­ly seg­ment­ed means of trans­porta­tion. Rather than a bus or train, where you have to catch it some­where, the pos­si­bil­i­ties in indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ties will be much wider.

Ann Marie: If brands like Ama­zon or Louis Vuit­ton get into mobil­i­ty, what will that do for emo­tion and status?

Frank: If I arrive in a Louis Vuit­ton vehi­cle, every­body knows that I’ve spent more mon­ey. That’s also why you buy it — to show off that you are doing well. Take air­planes. Obvi­ous­ly, the lev­els of com­fort between first and busi­ness and econ­o­my are dif­fer­ent, but you still get to your des­ti­na­tion at the same moment. If this works in the air­line busi­ness, why couldn’t it apply to indi­vid­ual trans­porta­tion on the ground? The main idea remains: Mobil­i­ty will stay emo­tion­al, whether you are in your own vehi­cle or one oper­at­ed by some­one else.

Ann Marie: And with the ​“Snap” frame­work, you’re try­ing to change those emo­tions, right?

Frank: Yes. To cre­ate sen­si­ble, sus­tain­able, and effi­cient mobil­i­ty, we have to rede­fine vehi­cles. The mod­u­lar vehi­cle — ​“Snap” — is one approach. We know that the solu­tion we have made with ​“Snap” is not yet 100% there, but if you don’t try, you don’t find new ideas. It’s a jour­ney, and jour­neys are about learning.

Ann Marie: What is Rinspeed’s vision of what mobil­i­ty looks like in smart cities?

Frank: We will see a dif­fer­ent arrange­ment than today. Today, the city paves the road, they install the sig­nals, they do what­ev­er makes it pos­si­ble for you to dri­ve and park — but they don’t get a direct ben­e­fit. They only get a ben­e­fit by you park­ing and doing busi­ness or shopping.

I could eas­i­ly see a new sys­tem like is already com­mon­place in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion with the auc­tion­ing of band­width. If I am the may­or of New York City and I know I need, let’s say, 100,000 indi­vid­ual vehi­cles, I can say, ​“Okay, I’ll do a ten­der for a max­i­mum of four com­pa­nies. I don’t want a monop­oly. Those com­pa­nies that can give the best deal in trans­porta­tion safe­ty, com­fort, and city rev­enues can serve the peo­ple.” The influ­ence of cities could become much stronger than they are today.

Ann Marie: That’s very dif­fer­ent than what we imag­ine the future of trans­porta­tion to look like.

Frank: At Rin­speed, we try to imag­ine pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios and their prob­a­bil­i­ties. If you see a rather big like­li­hood, you ask, what would that mean? What does that trig­ger? Then you start to under­stand. And if it hap­pens, then you’re prepared.

Ann Marie: Fas­ci­nat­ing ideas. Thanks for shar­ing them with us, Frank.

Don’t miss your oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear about trends in the indus­try from auto­mo­tive SAP cus­tomers at our vir­tu­al expe­ri­ence ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Indus­tries in Sep­tem­ber 2020.