Automotive IQ recently presented the Top 20 Voices in Automotive 2025 – a carefully curated list celebrating the individual’s driving innovation, progress, and transformation across the global automotive industry.
During the selection process, we asked our Top 20 Voices three pivotal questions to understand their perspectives on where the industry is headed:
- What technological advancement can you see having the biggest impact over the next five years?
- What is your biggest concern in the automotive industry right now?
- What aspect of the automotive industry are you most excited for in 2026?
Here’s what some of our experts had to say:
Aymen Ismail, Director Customer Services, smart Europe GmbH
Biggest technological advancement impact (next five years):
AI-driven personalization will fundamentally shift the automotive experience, enabling predictive maintenance, adaptive in-car functions, and customer engagement that goes far beyond traditional touchpoints. It turns vehicles and mobility services into proactive partners for their users.
Main concern right now:
My main concern is making sure the electric mobility transition in Europe remains genuinely customer-centric in the face of major changes. With charging infrastructure expansion, supply chain constraints, and evolving climate targets all posing challenges, it’s crucial that industry progress translates into accessible, everyday benefits for customers without losing sight of sustainability.
Most excited for in 2026:
I’m excited to be part of the talented teams across Europe and China preparing for the smart #2’s global premiere in late 2026. Together, we’re channelling the iconic spirit of the original smart fortwo and evolving it for a new era of intelligent, all-electric city driving, delivering innovation that truly meets the needs of modern urban life.
Florian Rohde, Managing Partner, iProcess LLC
Biggest technological advancement impact (next five years):
AI, no question! AI has already huge influence on how we develop and test cars and mobility, but we are simply just scratching the surface. At one point (maybe not in 5, but in 10 years) we will have new cars being fully AI driven (pun intended). And I am not referring to a chatbot telling me the weather.
Main concern right now:
Many in the industry are talking about more personalization, and to build the car specifically to what the user wants. My biggest concern is that the car makers have absolutely no channel for the user to let them know what they want, neither actively nor passively. I see this as a big black hole in the strategy of pretty much every legacy car maker out there.
Most excited for in 2026:
Integrations. While also posting plenty of technical challenges, we will see much more integrations coming, vehicle to everything (V2X) is just getting started.
Hemanth Tadapelli, Senior Cybersecurity and Compliance SME, May Mobility
Biggest technological advancement impact (next five years):
The biggest impact will come from the integration of AI and autonomous systems, but specifically, the security of those systems. As vehicles adopt agentic AI models for perception, diagnostics, routing, and customer interaction, they also inherit new classes of attacks like those defined in the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs. We’re now dealing with threats such as prompt injection into vehicle assistants, model supply-chain poisoning, AI hallucinations influencing operational decisions, and data leakage through LLM interfaces. These attacks don’t exploit traditional code, they exploit model behavior. The organizations that can secure AI pipelines, model training data, and in-vehicle AI interfaces will shape the future of safe, scalable autonomous mobility.
Main concern right now:
My biggest concern is the increasing complexity of modern vehicles and the corresponding gaps in cybersecurity and supply-chain readiness. Vehicles today rely on dozens of suppliers, complex software stacks, OTA updates, and interconnected systems, yet many organizations still struggle with consistent security validation, secure development practices, and post-production monitoring. The industry is moving fast, but not all suppliers or partners are keeping pace in areas like software hygiene, vulnerability management, and regulatory compliance. This creates systemic risk that can impact safety, reliability, and consumer trust.
Most excited for in 2026:
I’m excited for the continued expansion of driver-out operations and the commercialization of autonomous mobility at scale. By 2026, we’ll see more cities adopting AV deployments, clearer regulatory frameworks, and stronger safety and cybersecurity standards. This is when years of engineering, testing, and validation translate into meaningful real-world impact such as improving accessibility, reducing crashes, and offering new transportation solutions for communities. The shift from pilots to sustained operations is what I’m looking forward to the most.
Dr. Ahsan Qamar, Senior Manager Systems and Software Architecture, Software Defined Vehicles, Ford Motor Company
Biggest technological advancement impact (next five years):
AI will have a massive impact on conceiving new designs, finding solutions for new designs, and helping identify vulnerabilities and loop holes so engineers can focus on problem solving. Simplified electrical architecture with less number of modules as building blocks with software stack will become the norm. Virtualization will shift another gear to be the norm for integration and test. Another big impact area is how robotics will impact automation across several industries, including in automotive.
Main concern right now:
Ability to integrate and test fast from multiple suppliers and in-house teams, from finding a bug to making a fix through diverse and at times disconnected pipelines is a major challenge major companies struggle with.
Most excited for in 2026:
Brand new silicon designs building a platform concept on silicon towards upper layers of software stack. Collaborations to design and build SDV platforms for various consumers funded by a consortium of companies who are each good in specific aspects of it. Ability to build safety critical platforms with domain-specific libraries that allow reusable pieces to be deployed in domains such as automotive, aerospace, robotics.
Dominic Neumann, EA to the President, Bosch
Biggest technological advancement impact (in the next five years):
I believe the biggest impact over the next five years will stem from the widespread application of AI, particularly GenAI and advanced machine learning, across all automotive functions. This will profoundly enhance vehicle capabilities, enabling levels of personalization, predictive intelligence, and continuous optimization, thereby accelerating innovation cycles and fundamentally transforming the driving experience, especially when combined with SDV’s.
Main concern right now:
My biggest concern is the geopolitical fragmentation, which critically destabilizes global supply chains and trade routes essential for our industry. This volatility significantly complicates our efforts to manage the rapid technological transformation, and the immense investments required. Navigating this unpredictable landscape while ensuring continuity and profitability demands constant strategic adaptation and resilience.
Most excited for in 2026:
I'm most excited for the maturing of Software-Defined Vehicle architectures by 2026, which will unlock the transformative power and will unleash the inherent advantages of by-wire systems, enabling new levels of dynamic vehicle control, performance, comfort and safety. This synergy will lead to more personalization, continuous over-the-air feature enhancements, and a true redefinition of driving experience.
Read the full article to find out more about all the Top 20 Voices in Automotive.
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