Cognizant becomes a digital innovation partner around connected, autonomous, and electric cars for the German automotive industry with ESG Mobility acquisition

This week, Cognizant announced the acquisition of ESG Mobility, a digital automotive engineering R&D provider for connected, autonomous and electric vehicles. The investment will see Cognizant take on over 1000 research and development specialists from Germany-headquartered firm. According to Cognizant, both firms combined will service eight of the world's top 10 automotive original equipment manufacturers.

Leveraging 30 years of industry experience and over 5000 successful projects, ESG Mobility offers clients a full range of services from data sciences, connected applications, and cybersecurity. Effectively working across the full stack of technology requirements facing automotive manufacturers as they design the car of the future.

The acquisition makes perfect sense for Cognizant and this step fully supports the roadmap they illustrated to the analyst community in October 2020. In short, becoming a digital innovation partner with a more globally diversified foot print to drive co-innovation closely together with clients. The acquisition of ESG Mobility fits perfectly in this picture.

Undoubtedly, the automotive industry is going through a huge transformation. It is summarized under the term CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric), a transformation that affects the whole transport and mobility sector. Indeed, across the globe, governments are ramping up long-term plans and incentives to boost the demand for electric cars, for example. And several leading regions are building a strong vision for the role of autonomous and connected vehicles. All of these efforts require a robust technology infrastructure and dynamic research and development capability. Cognizant, alongside ESG Mobility, can offer the scale and breadth automotive firms need to tackle many of the technology-related hurdles in the way of broader market adoption for electric, autonomous, and connected cars.

Take the EU's plan for safe, clean, and connected mobility - which Cognizant recognises as a key growth driver in the region - the agenda contains a raft of guidance and legislative initiatives with an overarching goal of turning Europe into a world leader for fully automated and connected mobility systems, supported by the necessary safeguards to protect citizens. Many of the challenges the industry must overcome will have a solution founded in technology. For example, the safe and secure transfer of data between devices will have a cybersecurity element that both the focused R&D efforts of ESG Mobility and the highly scalable and experienced enterprise security capability of Cognizant can help to solve.

Germany, where ESG Mobility is headquartered, is a world leader in the automotive market, making the acquisition an intelligent move to get more brains and brawn in proximity to many of the largest players in this field. A benefit compounded by the firm's already strong relationships with many of the leading OEMs in the space. Through the acquisition of ESG Mobility, Cognizant is now well equipped to support the German automotive industry with digital transformation projects around their core element – the car itself.