Suppliers and OEMs embrace collaboration in tech-heavy vehicle race

Something was different. Here was Marelli CEO David Slump to introduce the Italian supplier’s technology offerings at the CES tech event in Las Vegas, but alongside him were representatives from Amazon’s AWS automotive cloud services division, chip maker Qualcomm and QNX, the operating system from Blackberry used by many car companies.

CEOs didn’t used to share the limelight, but a shift is happening in the supplier sphere that reflects one also occurring among car makers. 

As the development of the car progresses from a system designed to create harmony from moving parts to one where software now controls those parts, so traditional suppliers are having to open up the opaque ‘black box’ of their hardware to tech companies to solve problems they couldn’t do on their own. 

“Collaboration now goes deeper for us than just our customers.