y - is also a great advantage for dealers, who can avoid renting large areas or placing many cars in the physical showroom. With Virtual Reality, dealers thus have a perfect sales tool at their disposal.
Virtual Reality adds value to the product not only during the final step of the sale, but in every phase of marketing. The automotive brands that marry this technology in the events they organize, in the promotional campaigns, at the fairs or in the accessory equipment of the car, plant a flag on the planet of innovation: the early adoption of these technologies brings brands a great return in terms of image.
Think of the Virtual Reality applications in car entertainment: some brands have launched software that allows passengers with a viewer to experience exciting adventures, with virtual experience scenarios that move in synchronization with the motion of the vehicle.
Other types of software instead combine fun with education. For example, a well-known automotive brand has launched a sort of driving school in Virtual Reality designed for young people: thanks to an excellent simulation of road traffic, the platform teaches children to avoid distractions while driving.
In this perspective, Virtual Reality is therefore a valuable resource for car manufacturers in terms of marketing, helping to create engaging experiences for tomorrow's customers, partners and consumers.
In recent times, self-driving cars have been the focus of interest for several car manufacturers. However, ensuring these vehicles have a high level of safety is quite complicated.
The main difficulty in developing this type of cars is the complexity of the algorithms necessary for the vehicle to face the road. The only way to "teach" a self-driving car to be truly autonomous is to let it learn, covering thousands of kilometers and storing a huge amount of data. A process that takes years, even using the most sophisticated test software, ie the system that analyzes traffic scenarios and helps the car to "understand" how it should behave.
However, car manufacturers can drastically reduce the time needed to train their vehicles by having the tests run in Virtual Reality: in this way, instead of driving for thousands of real kilometers, the tests are carried out in virtual environments, allowing the software to learn faster and the manufacturer to cut costs for fuel and repairs.
Plus, if the road tests of self-driving cars cannot be performed without a person on board, in the tests with Virtual Reality the presence of a human being is not necessary.
As we have seen, Virtual Reality helps automotive brands reduce time-to-market and vehicle design costs. Used for staff training, it accelerates training and makes it more effective, increasing productivity and safety.
In addition, dealers can increase sales by offering a pivotal service: that of allowing customers to customize their dream car and test it safely. Virtual Reality can also reduce time-to-market for self-driving cars, speeding up tests on safety systems.
All of this testifies how technological advances are a real revolution for the automotive industry. Massive investments in technologies such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and IoT are projecting the big brands of the automotive sector in a future that cannot be postponed.