Supervisory Board Continues Strategic Realignment

Source: Continental announcement

HANOVER, Germany — The Supervisory Board of Continental AG agreed to an important next phase of the strategic realignment of the mobility supplier. It supports the future organizational realignment of the business with systems for advanced driver assistance and automated driving.

From January 1, 2022, the business is to be elevated to the independent “Autonomous Mobility” business area within the Automotive Technologies group sector. Its core will consist of the current Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) business unit.

“We are implementing our strategy with determination. Accordingly, we are investing in our growth areas and future technologies, seizing market opportunities, enhancing our capacity to respond and providing for greater transparency,” explained Continental CEO Nikolai Setzer. He added: “The autonomous mobility market will more than double in the next three years. Owing to the strategic significance of the necessary technologies and their promising growth prospects, we are intensifying our focus here by creating new structures to research, develop and industrialize these technologies. This also enables us to provide all of our business areas with the additional freedom to concentrate even more on their core areas.”

As part of the publication of its preliminary annual figures on March 9, 2021, the company announced that it would be spending an additional sum of around €200 million to €250 million on developing its technologies for assisted and autonomous driving this year alone. Its aim here is to fully exploit the attractive opportunities that continue to arise from the rapid development of these markets and turn them into profitable growth.

Setzer commented: “We already have a strong position in this area. We are expanding this position extensively, giving our activities in the area a big boost and gaining momentum as a top team in the autonomous mobility market. At the same time, we are opening ourselves up even more to potential large-scale cooperation with technology partners and start-up companies. After all, our goal is and will continue to be global technology leadership when it comes to assisted and automated driving.”

In the years 2018 to 2020 alone, Continental received orders in this area totaling more than €9 billion from customers worldwide. The mobility supplier intends to increase this amount substantially, as the potential scope of supply will go up in value many times over in the coming years as the degree of vehicle automation grows.

“It is software that will clearly make the difference in the future. Its development and industrialization require that we have extremely short response times and the utmost flexibility as well as agile, interdisciplinary cooperation within our organization and with our external partners in all regions,” Setzer explained.

To view the entire announcement, click HERE.