What's the plan?
Before delving into the technicality, we need to define our common thread. For that I need to explain my initial motivation.
Finding a direction?
As far as I can remember, I was always fascinated by physics and maths. As a kid, before becoming an awesome extravert adult, I was a solitaire, curious about every single aspect of my environment, and Science became quickly the fondation of my inner world.
Thanks to that and skipping some part of the story, I decided to embrace the way of engineering: using science to solve problems! But engineering is a vast discipline, it is difficult to decide what specialization to pick.
I was always conscious this ease and interest to aquire those technical skills come with a responsability: using those to be useful for society.
That thought helped me to orient myself toward renewable energy and sustainable transportation sector. I also felt in love with automation, programming and control system. Therefore, I specialized in embedded system to be an actor of transport sector transformation.
Not a dream, an objective ...
That being said, graduated and specialized, how do we become an actor of the change in transport sector? what does that even mean? Well, these questions have unique answers to each individual, but I am going to share my personal vision here (which is not a general answer once again).
Why transport sector?
The use of transportation represents 16.2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
The production of vehicules is included in 'energy use in industry' section (24.2% of global emissions).
Those simple numbers demonstrate the amont of work we have to accomplish to fix the situation. Even if we decide globally to change our consumption habits, that only would not fix the problem. Basically we have to change the use and the technology of transportation of an entire world. That's an exciting challenge!
Where to begin?
As I was taught during my studies, the automotive sector represents an easier and faster way to innovate:
Faster project: Compare to other transportation sector, the estimated time for a new vehicle release (from project start to SOP) was arround 4 years last decade and keep accelarating (2 to 5 years now compare to 5 to 10 years for a plane).
Norms and reglementation not that restrictive: Of course the automotive sector has a LOT of norms and reglementation but compare to aeronautics, it is manageable.
Early adopter: Thanks to a lower safety needs and less restrictive norms, automotive can adopt early systems and technology (usually processors are adopted a decade after in aeronautics, to make sure the technology is mature enough and the behavior completly known).
Mass market: Automotive is the most mass market transport sector, which create opportunities to create fast.
Automotive is for me a good way to solve problem fast, get in touch with a lot of tools and tech and learn a lot (even if I studied aeronautics at first...).
My ambition
My goal is clear, I want to master my craft. I want to be one of the best embedded system engineer.
My mission: Help to design, test and produce better sustainable cars.
My values: Intellectual honesty, personnal discipline, resourceful, optmisation, creativity, improvement.
My vision (for the next 10 years): Become an expert, gather other talents and create a team of specialist.
I know it is ambitious, I know I still have a lot to learn but I am ready for that journey.
What to do?
I don't know yet how to fullfil that ambition, and under what shape (creating a company, working inside another one, creating an association?). But as a colleague once told me: "How to eat an elephant? Piece by piece".
First step is to become an expert. For that I have to learn a lot of concept, software and skills that I am going to document. Through that website I am going to share my journey, my discovery and knowledge.
You can follow my progress by subscribing to my newsletter here:
© Pierre Congiu Consulting - 2023