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22 May 2018 | AutoData ESSAYS 2025 » THE FUTURE OF THE AUTO PARTS NATIONALIZE WHEN? Borgwarner understands that the no- velties will first come imported to meet lo- cal demand. Nílton Santos, its engineering manager, says the nationalizationwill come from demand as the company anticipates major changes in its production lines. The transformations that will come in the production lines of Aptiv in Brazil will also be significant and the international knowledge will be fundamental to follow the changes. The company already invests in advanced production technologies to keep its processes up to date with market demands, Campos says. Delphi guarantees it is already being through gradual changes and believes that the adaptations to meet future demands will increase in the coming years, whichwill require more and more of the companies in the segment. In the case of ZF, the changes will not only happen in production lines, as the company sought other companies in the market to acquire participation or even the total purchase in search of new systems and technologies, like those needed for environment monitoring sensors in urban mobility . Companies, globally, are already inves- ting heavily to meet new technologies, but in Brazil they are still waiting to understand the scenarios ahead - importationwill cer- tainly be the first door to be opened. Certainly, the new times will require changes in the factories. For no other rea- son, ZF points out that it has applied more than € 2 billion in R&D last year alone - and intends to invest even more, says Hadad: “We believe in electric drive systems and the ‘hybridisation’ of technology transmis- sions, aswell as vehicle safety systems and automated driving. New factories for the production of these types of components are already under study”. According to him, “in Brazil, these in- vestments will be an even a greater chal- lenge, since we still do not have a clear sectoral policy aligned with strategic ob- jectives that allow the country to stand as only a growing consumer of newmobility solutions, or as one of the world’s manu- facturing hubs. This will depend on a re- sumption of competitiveness, drastically reduced in recent years due to the crisis”. Borgwarner also points out that if there is demand for local production of the new components in the future the companywill make great investments, but everything will depend on the market and its policies. In the case of Continental’s division of systems, Sebbagh says that in the country, investments are not made in the produc- tion of new technologies yet, “but we are studying, for example, the local production of technology that will succeed the current ABS system and which will be mandatory in the future. It is one of our pillars of de- velopment”. NATURAL EVOLUTION Although the process locally faces a lack of definition scenario, Delphi Techno- logies sees the future as a natural evolu- tion of the industry, which almost ends up forcing the renewal of the line of products and factories. According to Santos, BorgWarner belie- ves that the main change over the compo- nents will be the extinction of combustion engine production as it is today, which will take many years to come: “Simpler changes are already happenning. We have Hello. I am an auto part. Nice to meet you. Disclousure/ZF