Digitalisation and connectivity is now the top trend on automotive executives’ strategic agenda until 2025, new research finds.

The KPMG research shows that alternative powertrain technologies were high on the list of trends in 2016.

Research for KPMG’s Global Automotive Executive Survey 2016 finds that the issue of connectivity has sky rocketed in importance, rising from #9 and #10 in the last two years, for the 800 global executives surveyed.

Meanwhile, the topic of market growth in emerging markets, especially in China, which has long been the number one answer of executives asked about key trends for the next 10 years, has slid to rank four.

The research also found that more than 80% of respondents are convinced that connectivity and digitalisation will strongly disrupt the auto industry by the end of this decade.

In response, KPMG said the value chain itself, product development cycles, sales and aftersales processes, the customer relationship, the overall business model, as well as the associated products, technologies and services, will have to transform significantly in order to keep up with the pace of digital innovations.

The KPMG research also shows that alternative powertrain technologies are high on the list of trends in 2016, with hybrid electric vehicles at #2, battery electric vehicles up from #9 to #3 and fuel cell electric mobility staying fairly constant at #5.

The aftermath of the ‘dieselgate’ scandal of unreliable emission test results from autumn 2015, alongside the increased importance of alternative drivetrains, is shown in the results: the formerly high-ranked trend of downsizing internal combustion engines has dropped from #2 in 2015 to #10 in 2016.

The surveyed executives also give more importance to autonomous and self-driving vehicles than one or two years before. Beyond that, the results reflect that executives recognize that vehicle or customer related data will be a crucial success factor for the coming years in the automotive industry. More than 40% estimate big data/user data as a very important key trend.

Generally, the ranking of this year’s key trends reflects that the auto industry is moving its focus increasingly towards the customer needs, rather than traditionally product and technology-led internal concerns, as the trend of rationalisation of production in Western Europe dropped from #4 in 2015 to #11 in this year’s survey.

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