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In the next 20 years fully autonomous vehicles are expected to be in the market. The advance on their development is creating paradigm shifts on different automotive related research areas. Vehicle interiors design and human vehicle interaction are evolving to enable interaction flexibility inside the cars. However, most of today’s vehicle manufacturers’ autonomous car concepts maintain the steering wheel as a control element. While this approach allows the driver to take over the vehicle route if needed, it causes a constraint in the previously mentioned interaction flexibility. Other approaches, such as the one proposed by Google, enable interaction flexibility by removing the steering wheel and accelerator and brake pedals. However, this prevents the users to take control over the vehicle route if needed, not allowing them to make on-route spontaneous decisions, such as stopping at a specific point of interest.

This paper focuses on the product development process. It analyzes state-of-the-art collaboration workflows, and industry-standard collaboration tool functionalities. It then compares these with new tool and process concepts from industrial and academic research and development. New concepts of user-interaction are introduced, which will allow the linking of virtual and hardware prototypes collaboratively in a mixed-mode, for project reviews. The “virtual co-location” concept is explained based on several use-cases derived from the cross-functional development of mechatronic systems. Furthermore, based on business case analysis from real distributed development projects, it explains why there is a need in the automotive industry to further explore advanced technology solutions for collaborative product development.

The current business model of the automotive industry is based on individual car ownership, yet new ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft are well capitalized to invest in large, commercially operated, on-demand mobility service vehicle fleets. Car manufacturers like Tesla want to incorporate personal car owners into part-time fleet operation by utilizing the company’s fleet service. These robotaxi fleets can be operated profitably when the technology works in a reliable manner and regulators allow driverless operation. Although Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) models of private and commercial vehicle fleets can complement public transportation models, they may contribute to lower public transportation ridership and thus higher subsidies per ride. This can lead to inefficiencies in the utilization of existing public transportation infrastructure.