Turkey’s Automobile Enterprise Group Senior Manager Karakas said, “We will be the first SUV manufacturer to emerge from new generation companies like us, which are not classic producers in Europe.”
According to the statement made by the Automotive Suppliers Association of Turkey (TAYSAD), TAYSAD carried out its first activity under the “R&D Competence Development Program” for 2021 with Turkey’s Automobile Joint Venture Group Inc. (TOGG).
The subject of “Global and Turkey’s Mobility Ecosystem Future” was discussed at the online event organized within the scope of efforts aimed at integrating TAYSAD members with the electric vehicles’ world of the near future.
In the online meeting held with the presentations of TOGG Senior Manager Gurcan Karakas and TAYSAD Vice-Chairman Kemal Yazici, the current situation and near-future predictions of electric vehicles in the world and in Turkey were first discussed. In the event, which 300 people consisting of senior executives and R&D department managers followed online, the point where the TOGG project reached and TAYSAD’s “New Technologies Roadmap” was announced.
In the statement, Karakas stated that the rules of the game have changed all over the world and the car has turned into a fast and smart device.
Karakas summarized the future of automotive in numerical terms, “In the classical sense, the profitability of the cars produced today and their numbers within the economy of scale are also decreasing. We see that especially the revenues from new technology and mobility bring double-digit profitability and are growing rapidly. We see that all manufacturers, whether they started a journey 150 years ago or just recently, should turn to these profitable areas. Activities in this new field are multidimensionally outside the framework that a company will control alone. This situation shows us that organizations that are more open to collaboration and user-oriented will be successful. In the future, we see that those who can be agile will be successful, not those who have big and a lot of money.”
“We want to form the core of Turkey’s mobility system”
Referring to Turkey’s automobile project, Karakas said:
“First of all, we have two goals. We want to create a global brand which is intellectual and its industrial property rights belong entirely to our country. Our goal is to have a new generation technology in its basic components, to be designed as a completely innate electrical and smart device rather than a transformation, and to be globally competitive. The automobile world is the sector with the highest global competition after consumer electronics. In line with our plans, we will be the first SUV manufacturer to emerge from new generation companies like us, which are not classic manufacturers in Europe. Secondly, we want to form the core of the Turkey’s mobility system. The classic car world begins with the production concept and ends with sales. It starts here as well, but if we manage to be smart, empathic, connected, autonomous, and shared, new worlds are opened. The user-oriented mobility approach is our philosophy. “
75% of TOGG’s domestic business partners are TAYSAD members
Referring to the cooperation with TAYSAD, Karakas said, “We provided our supply infrastructure with organizations consisting of 75% of our business partners from Turkey and TAYSAD members, and 25% with foreign-based organizations. In 2023, we will be 51% domestic at the beginning of production. We believe we will increase this to 68% by the end of 2025. We see that this figure is between 30 and 62% in other passenger vehicles. TAYSAD members need to quickly organize new collaborations with software, the electronics world, startups, and other members as pioneers, not followers. We need to produce ideas and solutions rather than products in the future.”
TAYSAD’s new technologies roadmap
Kemal Yazici, Vice Chairman of the Board of TAYSAD, reminded the processes waiting for the automotive supply industry and made the following statements:
“A carbon-neutral world is aimed in 2050 and electrification is important in this regard. We can say that the proportion of internal combustion engines will decrease to 50% in 2030 and below 40% in 2035. The proportion of autonomous level 3 and 4 vehicles will reach 15% by 2030. As a supply industry, we need to be ready for the software required for autonomous driving. While the ratio of parts produced for conventional vehicles to total produced parts is around 85% today, this ratio will decrease to 40-45% by 2030. In other words, if the supply industry cannot change, it will lose business and perhaps face the danger of closing. As the supply industry, new technologies; we can have it through technology transfer through license or partnership, or through domestic R&D studies, and we must try both ways simultaneously. “
Referring to the TAYSAD New Technologies Road Map, Yazici said, “Within the scope of our 2030 vision, we aim to move the Turkish automotive supplier industry to the top 10 in global production with design, technology, and supply power in the global automotive market. In this direction, we have determined 4 main titles: ‘New Technologies’, ‘Export Increase’, ‘Competitive Supply Industry’ and ‘Strong Association’. We have prepared detailed plans for 2021 under these headings. “
Plans for 2021 and “R&D Competence Development Program”
Within the scope of detailed plans, Yazici also mentioned TAYSAD’s 2021 New Technology Plan and R&D Competence Development Program and stated the following:
“First, we met with TOGG CEO Gurcan Karakas to understand OEM expectations. We would like to repeat this event with other OEM CEOs and managers. We would like to talk to the relevant ministries on the government side for new parts and systems on how to reach technology on cooperation and incentive mechanism. We will conduct trainings, technology presentations, and technology visits under the R&D Competence Development Program. In this context, what is the technology roadmap, how? What is the innovation culture? How will we prepare for issues related to the 2050 carbon target that we encounter as barriers to exports?
Along with the answers to these questions, we discuss topics such as R&D, project management, R&D infrastructures, systems for electrical and autonomous vehicles. We aim to bring together experts in their fields with our members, bring together our members with startups, and offer them our capabilities both financially and technologically by making technology days for OEMs. Again, this year, we will organize a 19-day training program covering many topics from R&D strategies to innovation management, from part designs to virtual-physical test interpretation. “
Source: AA / Translated by Irem Yildiz