Delivering the quantum advantage for the automotive sector

The automotive sector is among the first to recognize the disruptive computational power of quantum computing and the accuracy of quantum sensing. The frontrunners are already preparing to use that knowledge for competitive advantage.

Current transformations in the automotive industry are making unprecedented demands on IT. For example, the quest for sustainability necessitates sophisticated battery and fuel cell management and route optimization, all of which bring heavy computational requirements. As vehicles become more automated, the need for rapid communication increases, for example to enable sharing of safety data and up-to-the-minute routing information between vehicles. But this communication must be highly secure.

In the factory, too, commercial and regulatory pressure drives construction resilience requirements ever upwards – and the only way to satisfy them (especially given current talent shortages) may be through automation of inspection processes.

Quantum technology has the potential to tackle many of these challenges. Escalating computational requirements can be satisfied thanks to unrivalled compute processing of complex calculations at scale. Critical communications can be secured by combining “weird” features, such as entanglement, with established cryptography. And quantum sensing has the potential to take automated fault detection to the next level.