- New paths: INEOS Automotive backs MHP digital vehicle configurator
- Innovative and unique: MHP Immersive platform on Microsoft Azure
- First successes: website traffic and record levels of vehicle reservations
- Microsoft Experience Center: experience the INEOS Automotive Show Case virtually
Ludwigsburg – British car manufacturer INEOS Automotive has recently started using the digital vehicle configurator from the management and IT consultancy MHP. The aim is to offer customers a unique interactive and virtual shopping experience, whether on the website, at the dealer’s or in the showroom. The big attraction is that they can configure an off-road vehicle to match their own personal style and ideas, either by themselves or with the help of a salesperson. The result can then be displayed realistically in a range of scenarios in the highest resolution and in real time. This digital 3D vehicle configurator will revolutionise future car purchases and has now also won over INEOS Automotive, after convincing several other car manufacturers, such as Pagani, Aston Martin or Lotus.
Customise your off-road vehicle
Enabling interested customers to configure and design their new Grenadier 4x4 themselves playfully was particularly important for vehicle manufacturer INEOS Automotive. There are three different models to choose from: the 'Station Wagon', the 'Utility Wagon' and the 'Quartermaster'. Users can select their desired exterior and interior features, apply them and customise them again in real time.
Innovative technologies and solutions in action
This is all made possible by MHP's immersive experience platform. Thanks to intelligent virtual and augmented reality applications, the newly developed "Image-on-Demand" service - the first of its kind - provides the ultimate premium car buying experience. The basis of this Elastic Content Platform (ECP) is Unreal Engine from the computer and video game specialist Epic Games, which was used, for example, to realise the Battle Royale hit Fortnite. The ECP uses the game engine for rendering the graphics in real time. 3D product data and the configurator logic provided by INEOS from the SAP system are linked to the ECP platform. This allows 3D video streams or images to be visualised without the need to pre-render the images on demand. While the product of choice is being configured, the engine in the backend delivers the correct images or video streams on the fly.
For product visualisation, Microsoft Azure is used. Bernd Teufel, Microsoft Partner Manager at MHP, explains: "Microsoft has been a strong partner for us since 2019. Once again, our joint mission to shape the future of mobility through innovation came through convincingly in this project, too."
Record number of INEOS Grenadier vehicle reservations.
The result has convinced both customers and website visitors. "It allows us to offer a very cost-effective, unprecedented solution to create realistic product images of a car that has not yet been built," says Christian Rodemeister, project manager for INEOS Automotive at MHP. He continues: "The new online configurator is a complete success: On the day of the launch, not only was the highest traffic ever measured on the website achieved in a single day, but the reservation rate also gained enormous momentum, resulting in a new record for vehicle reservations being achieved on the first day after the configurator launch."
The 3D configurator at INEOS Automotive is currently being exhibited as a separate show case in the Microsoft Experience Center in Munich. The world's fourth Experience Center was opened to mark Microsoft's 40th birthday. MHP is the only consulting company in the automotive sector to have a demo stand at the Center and is presenting the INEOS Automotive show case there.
