Who will build the automotive future?

Over the last few months, and for a variety of reasons, our attention here at Performance Communications has turned to the future of the automotive industry, as well as what our clients are doing in the ‘here and now’.

I’ve become somewhat fascinated by the topic, although I must admit that it’s not entirely unselfish; after all, if the industry and the businesses it comprises are no longer, then Performance Communications’ client base is also no longer.

Thankfully, while there is doubtless much work to do to sustain an industry that has a hugely rich heritage, there are people and organisations out there doing great work to help Britain maintain its place as a global leader in engineering innovation.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be behind the scenes as the finalists were selected for this year’s Autocar Courland Next Generation Award. The award is a springboard for fresh, young talent to get a foothold in the automotive industry and the innovative ideas presented were genuinely exciting in terms of what they indicate about the future.

A semi-floating car, a biometric steering wheel that tells you when you’re too tired to drive (or over the drink drive limit) and a gaming console-inspired car control system were all among the concepts that the panel considered. We’ll find out next week at the annual SMMT dinner which of the three finalists wins the 2014 award and gets five months’ worth of work experience at five different manufacturers.

But the initiative has already proven to work, bringing much-needed new talent to a very competitive industry. Last year’s winner, Jake Larsson, had all but given up on a career in the automotive world before submitting his idea for the Award. Now he is studying for his PhD at Cranfield University and, while his area of study is outside automotive, he turned down a role at a major OEM for the chance to get his PhD and the contacts he now has as a result of taking part in the Autocar Courland initiative means that he has a raft of options open to him, should he decide to pursue a career in cars later.

Another previous winner (from 2012), Roberto Pace, is now working as a design engineer for McLaren Automotive, having designed a key steering rack part on the new P1 hypercar. And it’s not just in engineering that the Award works – SEAT media relations manager Holly Williams reached the semi-finals of the process with a marketing-based concept and Katie Jones, who also came through the Award semi-finals, is now working as part of the colour and trim department at Jaguar Land Rover.

It’s not just the automotive sector that needs this kind of help to attract important new talent – the engineering industry as a whole is in even more of a fix. The Engineering UK report estimates that 87,000 new engineering and technicians are required every year between now and 2020. And that’s in order to simply maintain the current level of personnel, let alone grow the sector.

Clearly, graduates are what’s needed and that’s what the new University Technical Colleges are designed to provide. But to get graduates, you need to look much, much wider. Young people need to be able to see the appeal of an engineering career from an early age so that they take the right subjects at school and apply themselves to the core maths and physics topics in the right way.

The problem is that engineering has an image problem as a career path. It is perceived as something dirty, greasy and oily. Whereas it could and should be perceived as high-tech and, dare I say it, glamorous.

Less Fred Dibnah and more Adrian Newey.

Again, there are businesses out there doing what they can to change this perception and bring on the next generations of great British engineers. Electronics giant, Siemens for instance, has a huge education programme that is central to its marketing and corporate strategy. The work it does with the Greenpower Education Trust charity is proving instrumental in getting kids as young as primary school age interested and involved in hands-on engineering.

We have worked with Greenpower since June, when it was named as the official education partner to FIA Formula E. Its series of race championships engages 500 schools, colleges and universities across the UK and 9,000 students, who design and build their own electric racing cars, which they then race in Greenpower events.

Again, I’ve been privileged to see first-hand how this initiative inspires young people and turns them on to the prospect of a career they would never otherwise have considered. In turn, I have been inspired to do what we can to promote the valuable work that Greenpower, and others, do.

When I spoke to Jake Larsson last week, he told me: “I’d almost accepted that I’d never work in the industry because it’s so competitive and because of all the hoops you have to jump through to get your foot in the door. But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who have great ideas and then never do anything with them. So that’s why I entered the Autocar Courland Award and I now have that foot in the door.”

If there’s anything that working with Autocar, Courland and Greenpower has shown me, it is that the passion, creativity and expertise is out there. It is now about harnessing it in order that Britain’s great tradition of engineering and innovation is not lost.

Andy