Before the Covid pandemic, I had the pleasure of visiting "Motor City" Detroit in November 2019. I met with several automotive companies, suppliers, startups, and cloud providers to discuss use cases and architectures around Apache Kafka. A lot has happened. Since then, I have also met several OEMs and suppliers in Europe and Asia. As I finally go back to Detroit this January 2022 to meet customers again, I thought it would be a good time to update the status quo of event streaming and Apache Kafka in the automotive and manufacturing industry.
Today, in 2022, Apache Kafka is the central nervous system of many applications in various areas related to the automotive and manufacturing industry for processing analytical and transactional data in motion across edge, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments. This article explores the automotive event streaming landscape, including connected vehicles, smart manufacturing, supply chain optimization, aftersales, mobility services, and innovative new business models.