3 Questions for… CTO Christian Gruber

“Let’s see if we’ll be flying by then.”: says Christian when asked how he imagines the car in 2040. In this interview with our CTO Christian Gruber, he talks about his job and his future of the car and VAIVA.

Hi Christian, when does a CTO do a good job?

The CTO`s job is multi-faceted, on the one hand it`s about defining VAIVA`s technological roadmap and being the contact person for many when it comes to questions about it. On the other hand, of course, it is also about bringing new and innovative technologies into the company and developing them in order to secure a competitive advantage for us and thus also create a technological identity for VAIVA. In addition, it is very important to me that existing knowledge, procedures, tools, etc. are disseminated and used within the company in order to be able to develop our solutions and products in a high quality and efficient manner. If we have achieved all that, our customers are happy and my colleagues are working on exciting topics with cool technologies, then I probably haven’t done that much wrong. 😉

How do you imagine the car in 2040?

Let’s see if we’re already flying by then (winking). It will probably still be difficult to enable autonomous/highly automated driving everywhere due to mixed traffic of older cars, bikes, people. Nevertheless, I expect that new sensor technology and new algorithms will enable driving in more controlled environments, such as highways, or even in dedicated application areas (e.g. shuttle services) without a driver. But also in other areas of the vehicle, things will certainly change, e.g. there will be new interior concepts due to autonomous/automated driving, which will pose many new challenges.

What opportunities do you see there for VAIVA in the future?

Vehicle safety will always be necessary, unforeseen events will always occur. When the driver is no longer responsible for the driving task, new seating positions or other activities (e.g. streaming videos) will have to be taken into account, and as a result, passive as well as active safety systems (e.g. pre-crash functions) will naturally have to be adapted or even completely rethought. Also, in the context of autonomous/automated driving, the boundaries between driving and safety will become more and more blurred. Since VAIVA combines competencies in many areas (active & passive safety, Car2x, prediction, etc.) in-house and we are also at the forefront of processes, methods and tools (e.g. ASPICE, cloud-based toolchains, machine learning), we are very well positioned to profit in a growing market in the future.

by Tim