The Future 100: 2024

The automotive industry braces for another tumultuous year. With a seismic shift from traditional to agency models, bricks-and-mortar to e-commerce, and internal combustion engines to connected electric vehicles (EV), the landscape transforms. Expect a surge in electric innovation as carmakers intensify their competition with Tesla and Chinese brands such as BYD, NIO, and XPeng. The pivotal question looms: Can traditional automotive giants adapt and flourish, or will consumers seek alternative avenues for a connected electric drive?

Discover the latest automotive trends!

Key Automotive Trends

Imagination stores

New concepts for fantastical digital spaces unshackle retail stores from physical boundaries as brands are using innovative tech to transport shoppers to new destinations using metaverse tools. This direction explores new ways to engage the next generation of consumers, who are dreaming and living more and more in the digital space.

Why it's interesting
Brands are creating immersive, imaginative spaces that allow consumers to step into the company’s world and showcase creative flair and a preview of the future of ecommerce.

World-building brands

A brand is no longer a distinct, static entity; it’s an all-encompassing universe. Creating a brand means creating the macrocosm that that brand occupies—and inviting consumers into it.

Why it's interesting

Consumer-brand interactions are moving from distinct, standalone touchpoints to interplay in all-encompassing worlds. Moving forward, Smith and Wilson said, brands will need to “place storytelling at the center of everything they create.”

Symbiotic tech

Our relationship with technology is more human than ever. Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet and Google CEO, once said, “I’ve always thought that technology should be adapting to people, not the other way around.” With the growing power of AI, this is becoming the reality. Instead of complex processes and commands, we can now use simple gestures and natural conversation. Technology is speaking our language.

Why it's interesting
Personal AI can now see, hear, and speak with us naturally. The more data our digital companions amass, the more symbiotic and human our relationship with them will become, as they adapt to our needs.