🎙️ THE SILICON SHIFT, DECODED

At AEK 2026, one theme ran through every hallway and keynote: automotive chiplets, and the deeper shift they signal. In this special edition of Automotive Storytelling, I sat down on the floor of the Automobil-Elektronik Kongress with six people shaping the industry's next decade, from semiconductor CTOs to a Microsoft engineer to the congress chairman himself, to unpack what is actually changing under the car.

🎯 KEY INSIGHTS

Silicon vendors have become tier ones for real
The old OEM to tier-1 to tier-2 chain has reorganized into a value network, where automakers now go straight to the chipmaker to secure innovation early. The differentiator is not raw performance, it is the tool chain built around it.

Power is the ceiling, and chiplets are the answer
Compute got cheap; moving data did not. With power and memory proximity emerging as the true limits, the industry is betting on chiplets, packaging specialised pieces so the fast-moving AI parts can evolve without dragging the rest along.

The car is becoming the blueprint for physical AI
Get the hardest machine right, and you unlock robotics at large. As coding agents mature, code turns into a commodity and high-quality specifications become the advantage, which reframes automotive's mountain of standards from burden to asset.

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Map your silicon relationships early: The chipmaker you choose shapes your architecture, so treat SoC selection as a strategic, upstream decision rather than a procurement step.
• Budget for data movement, not just compute: Power draw and memory proximity are becoming the real constraints, so design and message around them.
• Turn your spec libraries into an asset: As AI writes more code, rigorous specifications and standards become the differentiator, not the paperwork.

🌟 THE VOICES IN THIS EPISODE

Lars Reger, CTO of NXP Semiconductors. Aish Dubey, VP at Renesas on the SoC side. Martin Spiegel of HARMAN Automotive, working on IVI and cockpit domain controller systems. Dominik Wee, Corporate VP of Forward Deployed Engineering at Microsoft. Alfred Vollmer, newly appointed Chairman of the Automobil-Elektronik Kongress and a journalist with roughly forty years covering the industry. And Roger Lanctot, one of the sharpest analysts in mobility.

Ready to hear where the industry is really heading?

"Under the Hood: Automotive Storytelling" uncovers the human narratives driving innovation in an industry that impacts lives worldwide. Hosted by Stéphane Lagresle, this podcast explores how the power of storytelling ultimately connects technology to humans.