Accenture and Faurecia Group partner to tap into connected car market

French automotive supplier Faurecia and consulting firm Accenture have agreed to a five-year partnership. The collaboration will see the pair develop innovative products and services for connected and autonomous vehicles.

At the start of 2018, Faurecia Group, a leader in the global automotive industry, announced a memorandum of understanding for a five-year collaboration and co-investment with consultancy Accenture. The alliance created a “digital services factory”, with the aim of shaping the future of autonomous and connected car cockpits.

The alliance will hope to be well-positioned to capitalise on the growing demand for innovative car interiors for a digitally advanced and automated future. In order to do so, the partners intend to use AI, advanced analytics, augmented and virtual reality, as well as blockchain systems and quantum computing. 

Faurecia boasts world-class expertise in automotive seating and interior systems, being the world’s largest supplier of seat frames and the third largest supplier of complete seat systems. Accenture, one of the leading technology consultancies, brings the key company strength of “translating technologies into marketable products,” according to Marc Carrel-Billiard, Accenture's Managing Director for global research and development.

Echoing his colleague’s assertion, Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme added, “By combining Accenture’s ability to turn disruptive technologies into business results with Faurecia’s expertise in leading-edge automotive technologies and our two companies’ common focus on innovation, we intend to invent the future of the automotive industry.”

The partnership will initially focus on two areas: cognitive technology to evolve the user experience and advanced health and wellness services. Examples of automotive cognitive technology include computer vision, which can determine if a driver is distracted for example, and speech recognition and voice control. Health and wellness services might include functions like measuring passenger stress levels through sensors and the car interior responding with a change of seat position, the activation of a massage, or a change of music station.

Accenture and Faurecia announced their first test project – using Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa to control the functions of the automobile cockpit. Though other automotive companies are integrating Alexa into their designs, the partnership’s innovation is the ability for every passenger to direct Alexa to complete different tasks.

With motorists spending up to an average of 500 hours a year in a car, and with the continued development of self-driving automobiles, the car interior figures to be the great differentiator for automobile purchasers.  "It's where they will find diversity – it's not going to be in the powertrain," said Faurecia CEO Patrick Koller.