Innovations in Automotive Manufacturing Fueled by the Metaverse

The metaverse holds significant potential across the value chain, from product innovation to smart manufacturing, marketing, and sales. Digital twins can be created for assets, specific production lines, products, or any real-world scenario in a production setting.

Product innovation: Virtual prototypes and product lifecycle management

Utilizing digital twin simulations for product designs allows multiple reviewers to assess and improve asset safety and efficiency without the need for costly and time-consuming physical tests. Technology platforms can facilitate collaborative product design reviews, engineering automation, and the integration of AR/VR. Avatars can be utilized in the collaborative design process as well. For instance, Tesla generates digital simulations of all its vehicles using data from onboard sensors uploaded to the cloud, aiding in understanding real-world behavior and enhancing over-the-air updates.

Smart manufacturing: Intelligent shop floor quality inspection

Effective product quality inspection is essential for reducing costs and ensuring customer satisfaction. Early identification of equipment issues enables technicians to minimize repair time and costs while enhancing uptime. The metaverse empowers shop-floor workers to conduct inspections rapidly, ensuring high quality and error-free products at lower costs. For example, Volvo has deployed an enterprise AR suite as part of a comprehensive solution to scale a digital thread focused on production quality.

Smart manufacturing: Vehicle assembly

Modern smart vehicles incorporate numerous sensors for enhanced passenger comfort. The complexity of vehicle assembly means that shop floor workers must be proactive, multi-skilled, and creative. AR has proven to be an effective solution for assembly lines, allowing workers to don head-mounted displays (HMD) that provide step-by-step instructions and visual aids overlaid on their work environment. This technology enables hands-free operation through voice commands, allowing workers to concentrate on assembly tasks, which significantly boosts efficiency and quality.

Smart manufacturing: Virtual replica of factory production line

The metaverse provides manufacturers the ability to explore diverse configurations and assess how scaling operations might impact profitability. Automation and simulation technologies can boost output and productivity while optimizing resource management. BMW’s Debrecen EV plant serves as a virtual replica of its physical counterpart.

Connected supply chain: Inventory management

The metaverse offers a virtual visualization of the supply chain, enhancing process coordination and synchronization, reducing lead times, and improving inventory management in automotive manufacturing. NFTs will play a pivotal role in this context.

Connected supply chain: Warehouse order picking operations

In traditional order picking, workers would spend excessive time searching for products. Now, consider a worker equipped with AR glasses that guide them through optimized routes, highlighting items on shelves to be picked along with their quantities while providing real-time inventory updates. This overlay of virtual information in warehouse operations minimizes human error, ensuring that the correct products are packaged every time. The use of AR enhances warehouse efficiency and profitability.

Connected supply chain: Procurement

AR technology allows procurement teams to visualize product specifications, pricing, and availability in real-time, streamlining their processes and reducing human error by eliminating time-consuming document searches. Moreover, the procurement process in the metaverse may incorporate virtual currencies, smart contracts, and blockchain technology to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, promoting sustainability by decreasing the necessity for physical transportation and lowering the carbon footprint of traditional procurement methods.

Sales and distribution: Virtual showroom

The virtual showroom, a digital rendition of physical showrooms, enables potential buyers to immerse themselves in dealership environments, customize vehicles (such as car color, tires, and wheel types), and obtain quotations from an AI avatar assistant. This experience is facilitated in VR, involving headset use for an interactive touch-and-feel experience.

Sales and distribution: Virtual test drive

The automotive sector is increasingly exploring VR to offer prospective buyers virtual test drives, allowing them to evaluate cars remotely. This innovative method lets buyers engage with various car features—starting the engine, adjusting mirrors and seats, activating lights, and employing safety features like lane departure warnings and forward collision alarms—from anywhere, at any time. This approach negates the necessity for physical dealership visits and enables exploration of a wider array of models, even those not available nearby.

Employee training and onboarding

Transporting heavy equipment, such as engines, for training is costly. The automotive industry can harness VR and AR tools within the metaverse to create engaging training experiences for new employees. This strategy helps retain valuable skills as experienced workers move on and fosters better knowledge sharing within teams. Intel has developed a VR-based training solution, providing both retirees and newcomers with MR headsets to document their work and apply this knowledge to trainees.

After-sales services: Field service operations

AR-enabled field service operations equip technicians with real-time guidance, 3D visuals, and collaborative remote capabilities. AR overlays digital information—including service manuals, diagrams, maintenance histories, and digital annotations—onto physical items to assist technicians in executing complex tasks while reducing the likelihood of errors. The remote collaboration feature allows technicians to work alongside experts through live video conferencing, using features like sticky annotations and screen sharing for troubleshooting service orders. This collaboration method significantly cuts travel costs, boosts customer satisfaction, enhances knowledge sharing, and improves response times.