Infosys: Building a Green IT Roadmap for Automotive

Automotive manufacturers, have you laid out your green IT roadmap? 

If you haven't- or don't even know where to start- help is here.

Ruchir Budhwar, Executive Vice President and Industry Head Manufacturing at Infosys lays out the building blocks in this insightful Q&A. 

Scroll down to learn more about how you can use IT to enhance your sustainability, meet your green targets and operate more effectively and mindfully.

How are IT systems supporting the fast-moving innovation seen in the automotive industry?  

IT systems are now ever-more integrated into modern automobiles, and they are equipped with software-driven features to make the driving and passenger experience more convenient and the journey progressively safer.

Connected cars are supercomputers incorporating 100 million lines of software code and ~ 150 electronic control units. It is estimated to grow to 300 million lines of code by 2030. The transformation of automobiles into software-on-wheels demands reliable connectivity to manage and update onboard software.

At the same time, robots and industrial control systems are used for manufacturing parts and assembling vehicles. These systems depend on the IT network for pre-programmed and autonomous operations.

To put self-driving vehicles in context, IT is the backbone - from rolling off assembly lines to cruising on the road. An autonomous car generates up to 20 TB data in a day. Data from industrial and onboard systems is transferred to data centres for real-time processing.

Massive high-performance computing (HPC) workloads increase energy consumption in data centres, which in turn, enlarges an already outsized carbon footprint of automakers.

As a result, manufacturers are under pressure to ensure that operations do not contribute to natural resources depletion, environmental deterioration, or emissions that aggravate climate change.

How can manufacturers implement green IT practices to improve their sustainability profile?

A sustainable technological landscape prioritises energy efficiency, energy conservation, and waste reduction.

Carmakers should implement green IT to align technology systems with sustainability principles, enabling substantial reduction in the carbon footprint of digital infrastructure. It allows enterprises to focus on energy efficiency in hardware procurement, leverage virtualisation and cloud resources, reissue, and refurbish IT assets, recycle hardware, and ensure responsible disposal of electronic waste.

Pivoting to renewable energy sources is a primary catalyst to reduce the environmental impact of IT operations.

Similarly, edge computing to process data at source minimises data transmission and centralised processing, which optimises bandwidth usage and reduces energy consumption. Moreover, energy conservation can be enhanced via automated control and dashboards that monitor and analyse IT energy consumption.

A unified solution that ensures highly available and reliable connectivity as well as secure data access while rationalising energy consumption across IT resources enhances the sustainability profile of automakers.

The principles of sustainability can also be applied to the IT landscape of automobile enterprises, addressing key challenges such as: 

1. Managing data-driven assembly lines, 
2. Processing continuous data streams from onboard systems in real time
3. Growing revenue through the on-demand mobility business model, which increases IT workloads, network traffic and energy consumption.

How should automakers assess their IT carbon footprint?

Carmakers should set the foundation for their green IT roadmap by getting a 360° view of the current operational landscape through the sustainability lens, which helps in setting realistic goals and timeframes.

Enterprise goals may range from a simpler and leaner landscape to reduce energy consumption for extending the useful life of equipment for saving CapEx and OpEx.

For instance, an assessment may identify several devices that consume excessive energy. The insights enable an auto manufacturer to develop a replacement strategy for phased procurement of low-power and energy-efficient assets, which takes into account budget constraints vis-à-vis savings in energy costs on prompt replacement.

What can manufacturers do to reshape their IT infrastructure with energy efficiency in mind?

An important step to take will be optimising the compute, storage and data landscape. Automakers should develop a framework that supports virtualisation, cloud migration, and data centre rack consolidation.

It establishes a scalable and energy-efficient infrastructure for high compute enterprise workloads and facilitates due diligence processes for migration to cloud systems or green data centres. Optimal data formats based on specific application requirements eliminates redundant data transmission and messaging loads on the network, which reduces energy usage.

Can resourcing and procurement play a role in the overall green IT roadmap?

Yes, it can and as a priority, manufacturers should align their enterprise sourcing strategy with the principles of circular economy and UN sustainable development goals. This step mitigates environment risks by streamlining IT asset disposition (ITAD).

Sustainable procurement combined with ITAD practices for end-of-life equipment boosts the lifetime value of assets. Further, automotive manufacturers can partner with ITAD service providers to resell, reuse, recycle, refurbish, repurpose, repair, or dispose worn-out electronic devices.

What other options can auto manufacturers pursue to hit their net zero goals?

Green coding is an option for auto manufacturers to minimise energy intensity of software applications, thereby achieving net zero goals.

This approach allows software developers to be cognisant of the energy footprint when writing and designing code. Green coding encourages engineers to realise program functionality with minimal lines of code.

The elimination of superfluous code saves energy consumption by avoiding unnecessary processing and memory usage. By leveraging microservices-based application architecture and DevOps, companies can enable intelligent orchestration of workloads to distributed cloud infrastructure and data centres powered by renewable energy.

How can manufacturers make sure that individual employees are aligned with their company’s green IT practices?

Environmental consciousness among the workforce itself is imperative for implementing sustainability programs.

With a green IT framework, automakers can institutionalise a culture of energy efficiency and incorporate the philosophy of ‘sustainable by design’ by converting employees into sustainability champions.

Green IT awareness sessions and change management workshops inculcate an eco-friendly mindset across the organisation. Further, e-Learning content helps enterprises build green IT communities.

Will auto manufacturers see many benefits from adopting green IT practices?

Adopting a green IT roadmap is a win-win situation for car manufacturers. Sustainable IT practices not only reduce environmental impact but also lead to cost savings and a more efficient digital infrastructure.

This paves the way for a future where automakers can develop and manufacture vehicles with a minimal environmental footprint, while ensuring a smooth transition towards a software-driven future.

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