We need: high-tech systems talent
for the automotive industry

“The car of the future will be a high-tech system on wheels,” claims Maarten Steinbuch, professor at Eindhoven University of technology. “You are seeing a shift towards vehicle technology full of electronics, with a link to nanotechnology, embedded software and mechatronics. Brainport is strong in these fields. And this is why tens of companies have been successful in focusing on the automotive industry.”

Steinbuch is one of the experts that see cars going from hybrid, first, to fully electric, later. “There’s no stopping it. The engineering is in place. The situation for trucks is a little different, though, since the batteries they need are too large. Hybrid is probably the limit for them. Synthetic fuels are likely to be their future.”

Brainport is at the dawn of this and other new automotive developments, with increasingly more automotive related R&D concentrating in the region. Eindhoven University of Technology has even made ‘smart mobility’ one of its strategic spearheads. The automotive professor points out that the more the number of R&D activities grows, the more demand there will be for knowledge workers. He is not just referring to automotive specialists but also to what he calls ‘a new kind of knowledge worker’. “The door is open for developers and engineers that have a high-tech systems background first and foremost. Affinity with automotive is great but not essential, although it is necessary, for instance, to learn how a powertrain system works.”

Examples of high-tech automotive hits in Brainport with vacancies for knowledge workers include:

• NXP
  “A modern car contains more than 60 IC processors. NXP, a producer of intergrated circuits among other things, also makes processors for cars. Quite a significant portion of the company’s annual income. That’s why NXP considers automotive as a major growth market.”
  
  
• DAF Paccar
  “With annual turnover of a couple of billion euros, DAF Paccar is the second-largest truck supplier in Europe. The economic crisis prompted reduced production but this has begun to recover now to 160 a day. Like cars, trucks also contain increasingly more modern technology, like the modern diesel engine, which is absolutely a high-tech component. DAF makes unprecedented clean diesel engines: the air that comes out is almost cleaner than the air that goes in! This does involve a lot of software-based monitoring and control technology. There is also a hybrid truck in production that combines diesel and electric power.”
  
  
• TomTom
  “The TomTom R&D department in Eindhoven is bursting at the seams. Why? TomTom’s position as a supplier of navigation for in-car systems. The department needs knowledge workers that have a real understanding of ‘automotive specs’, predominantly to enable navigation to properly connect to other information systems to enable, for instance, road-user pricing possible.”

This is just a small selection of the Brainport companies in the automotive field, Steinbuch clarifies, and is by no means a disservice to the other companies. “Like VDL and APTS, manufacturers of hybrid buses and coaches, or Bosch Transmissions that sells three million variable transmission units in Asia each year. And all the ancillary suppliers that help their clients innovate in the automotive sector, or TNO Automotive and Benteler with their test facilities at the High Tech Automotive campus in Helmond.”

Demand for knowledge workers in the automotive industry is not only prompted by new R&D activities. “An additional problem is the large number of knowledge workers that will be retiring in the coming years. They need to be replaced. I see the ambition of companies and knowledge institutions in the Brainport region and the good cooperation among all those involved as a unique proposition.

One that makes Brainport a real pull to attract enough knowledge workers – an environment where you can work at a top level with sufficient challenge for ongoing self-development in a culture of open innovation.”