NOVEMBER 2023AUTOTECHOUTLOOK.COM8IN MY OPINIONEVOLUTIONS IN THE AUTO TECH INDUSTRYAn Interview With Nick Rumberger, Director Of Engineering, BILSTEINNick Rumberger, Director of Engineering in BILSTEIN, leads a technical team in designing and delivering top-tier performance products for OEMs. With expertise in performance, ride comfort, safety, quality, and profitability, he ensures projects meet cost and time targets while maintaining superior standards.1. What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the Auto tech industry lately? On the supply chain side, we continue to struggle with chip shortages. We do not have a concern with chips in our dampers, but instead chips inside the manufacturing equipment that we utilize to produce our product. In some cases, we are seeing machine vendors with PLC lead times longer than our vehicle customer timelines! It's difficult to be timing competitive in that situation. On the product side, the big trend has been developing damper technologies for EV vehicles. The majority of new business acquisition projects BILSTEIN is working on are for EV vehicles. Generally speaking, when a vehicle transitions from combustion to EV, there is a significant mass increase largely due to the batter capacity. The increase in mass on the vehicle side translates to greater demand from the shock absorber. Damper technologies and system sizes developed 10 to 15 years before for combustion vehicles are simply not
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