Episode 234: Bosch President Paul Thomas

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Most of the technologies that shape our daily lives are invisible.

We don't see the sensors that keep us safe. We don't see the algorithms that manage complexity.

We don't see the infrastructure that makes modern mobility, manufacturing and energy

actually work. But we depend on them constantly, especially in the automotive space.

Very few companies operate more deeply inside that invisible layer of the modern world than Bosch.

Bosch touches nearly everything that moves, everything that's manufactured,

and increasingly, all that's intelligent. From vehicles and factories to energy systems

and consumer products, Bosch sits inside the systems that keep society functioning,

quietly, reliably, and at massive scale. Which means Bosch also sits at the center

of some of the most important transitions of our time. The shift from mechanical systems to

digital ones, from human control to assisted and autonomous control, from linear manufacturing

to intelligent, adaptive production, from analog infrastructure to connected software-defined

infrastructure. This isn't change at the surface. It's change at the foundation. And that raises

new questions. How do you introduce intelligence into systems that must never fail? How do you

innovate quickly in industries that demand extreme reliability? How do you lead transformation

when the customers, partners, and regulators all move at different speeds? And how do you build

trust in a world where technology is everywhere, but confidence in institutions is not? Those are

the questions my guest today spends his time with. From the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,

he's Paul Thomas, president of Bosch North America. And he leads Bosch Across Mobility,

Industrial Technology, Energy, Building Technologies, and Consumer Goods in one of the

most dynamic and demanding markets in the world. Paul's job is not just to adopt new technology,

it's to integrate it responsibly at scale across complex ecosystems of customers,

suppliers, employees, and communities. So today, we'll talk about what it really means at all of

those levels. How Bosch thinks about AI, automation, and software, not just as products, but as

responsibilities, and why manufacturing is becoming one of the most important technology

frontiers. This is a conversation about technology, trust, and transformation. From the Consumer

Electronics Show 2026, CES in Las Vegas, this is Cars and Culture. Hi, I'm Paul Thomas,

and this is Cars and Culture with Jesus Night. Well, we're at CES in Las Vegas 2026, the place

where technology really stops being theoretical and starts to become real. And what a pleasure

to sit with you, Paul. Thanks for being on the program. Thanks for being with me.

It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. And I always enjoy coming to Las Vegas as well to see what

is happening in the world a little bit, what our competitors are doing, and also with some of our

partners are showing. How many CES is for you? Yeah, I've been to about seven CES to this point,

and each year they get more and more interesting because I start to narrow or expand my views on

certain things, you know, specifically into robotics or specifically into different things

that you see in the industry. Or I see personally that I like to get involved. Yeah, this show is

really morphed. I mean, I remember back in the automotive, you know, the first installation

of automotive here was in a parking lot outside the convention center when Microsoft got together

with Ford and they talked about Sink, Mark Fields, former head of North America at the time was

was introducing some of the revolutionary additions to the vehicle. And now, I mean,

it's a must attend if you're in the automotive space, whether supplier or automaker or related,

right? Yeah, I think that the technologies that you see have to be part of an ecosystem, right?

The mobility fits in beautifully to an ecosystem that you and I deal with every day, right? So,

whether you're driving, whether you're parking, whether you're eating, whether you're, you know,

with your family, there's certain things that have to start being connected. Otherwise, it gets

frustrating. Yeah. And I think the world's getting to a point where, you know, digitalization is

important, right? And you can't ignore it. You can't ignore it any longer, no matter your age.

Even if you have, you know, parents, they have to be part of the digital technology. Otherwise,

it's tough. Yeah, there's no more pushing back on technology. I don't want to be a part of

technology anymore. Yeah, I think if you've, and that's what that's what's great about CES is

it's at least what we're trying to use CES for and what we're trying to do is have technologies

that you don't have to push against, that they feel real natural, in essence, and that they actually

help people versus just try to make money. Yeah, yeah. This, this has become a place where it's an

intersection of physical machines, digital intelligence. That's right where Bosch is. And I

know you expect software and services, that whole side of the business, to exceed 6 billion euros

by the end of the decade. Two thirds of that coming from mobility. You're right at the epicenter of

that. But I know that your message here at CES, simple, but it's profound. Software alone doesn't

change the world. Hardware alone doesn't either. But when those two things come together, that's

really where progress happens. Yeah, it brings me back when I was a younger engineer in my life,

we always talked about the fusion of hardware and software. And it was always one of these things

where it was a great thing to have. But there was never the software nor the, the relationships

amongst all of the different partners to make it work. One person wanted to protect his hardware,

one person wanted to protect his software. So you had very elegant solutions either on the software

side or the hardware side, but never could you find a solution that they could deliver together.

And I think now with the ability to develop software faster with AI, the ability to have

hardware that's now robust, cost effective, and reliable. When you bring those together,

this fusion has become a reality, which I think is super cool. And finding ways to

find the best ways to fuse technology between software and hardware, and doing it in a way

that doesn't create any critical errors, right? If you're dealing with safety components,

you've got to look out for all that. And being responsible for that collaboration of software

and hardware is extremely challenging. But that's what's rewarding. You can have a software engineer

that can develop a solution that uses a piece of Bosch hardware, or he says, you know what,

the Bosch hardware works, but so does competitor X. And that's great. And that's something that's

changing. I think we'll see it not only in mobility, but you'll start seeing it in other

areas. If you look at certain connectivity topics like matter, you know, you move from Bluetooth

to matter, the things where everything has to be connected somehow. And these, these, these barriers

are coming down. And it's fun to accept it. It's fun to watch it work and not be skeptical.

You know, looking at the energy, all of this needs as well is very, very interesting topic.

Yeah. The energy from the energy from the people that develop it, but also the energy to operate.

Right. Right. Yeah. When you, you generally look at your, your chat GPT or things, I mean,

the amount of compute power that's required to bring a sensor in a piece of hardware together,

it needs more energy. Right. Right. So the energy becomes critical. And you start looking at things

like silicon carbide, or you start looking at things that how do we reduce the energy in a

house or a vehicle so that we can add all of these features without driving energy usage up.

Is that where the biggest leap is going to take place over the course of the next five to 10

years? Yeah. I mean, my personally, I mean, this isn't market research based, but I think that

energy will become extremely more relevant here going forward in the next five to six years,

just because all of the data people are processing, you need to be able to power it. Right. Yeah.

And energy doesn't come without cost, whether it's coal based or whether it's fossil fuel or

you could use the word nuclear, whatever you want to use, it's still complicated.

And then distributing it, whether you use fuel cells or hydrogen, whatever, it hasn't been an

easy task for anyone. I think that people will continue to progress on this fusion that you

brought up. And I think that's super important. And then making sure you can power all of that.

I hope to be really 140 year old company this year, Bosch is, it's now positioning itself as a

leader in AI and software, digital services, it's no longer just an engineering company,

it's no longer just a part supplier, you know, some sort of former notions through those 14 decades.

How do you describe what Bosch is becoming in plain language?

You know, so I've been with them for 30 years. Right. I've seen the start of our software business,

I've seen the creation of our hardware business and making it more profound.

I think that the company, you know, has, we have a strong history, right, in inventing for life.

And I think inventing things in house will remain super important for us. So the number of patents

we create, what's going to become more relevant for us and much more important is how we bring

that technology to the market now. And I think we've had, there's some epiphany moments in our

companies, you know, past about certain technologies that have found their way to the market, where

we've been market leaders, and we've been able to retain those positions. Those are harder to find

now. And I think the company is going through a great revolution of saying, how can we now

take our great hardware expertise, billions and billions of products manufactured to

super high tolerances? How can we now translate that into using that advantage along with the

software skill sets that we have? I mean, we have over 400,000 people that work for the company

globally. So we've got a lot of smart people working on a lot of good things. And you saw

today on the manufacturing side, I don't think there's many companies positioned as well as us

that have made as many parts as we have had, and have been challenged with the industrialization of

clean rooms, been challenged with the industrialization of high tolerance welding,

semiconductor production, everything we do that can feed into a very robust

manufacturing process, which can make us more efficient, make sure we're around for another

150 years. Is it primarily an industrial company, a technology company, or something entirely new?

I think it's hard to put a definition in our company right now. I think that we want to be a

successful company that serves all the different areas we work in. So we're in industrial technology,

we're in appliances, we're in consumer goods, we're in power tools, we're heating, cooling,

we're in building security and technology. I think we are a very strong multination that wants to

bring all that together. I think we love our industrialization. And if someone asks us to make

parts for them or develop something, we can do that. But we also realize that our responsibility

to be able to manage that hardware is becoming more and more relevant. When you think about

Bosch from the engineering company perspective, and even a technology platform company,

the next iteration of it may not look anything like it does today, thanks to

agent of AI, thanks to many of the things that you've talked about here at CES.

What could it morph into? I mean, the platform's out there, and you can move in whatever direction

you want across it. I think the company will always be based upon the values of our founder.

Rather lose money than trust, invent things that are better for people. So we'll never

vary from those those directives, which I think are super important for us. We also, as you know,

don't have, we're not a company that has to manage to the stock market. So we don't make

short-term swings or we don't make changes that affect our people dramatically. We do have

challenges, right? We do have to manage what the market's offering to us. The market's a

super big challenge right now. As you know, I mean, volumes in the automotive industry

are plateauing, right? You see challenges in the power tool market. You see challenges in

home appliances everywhere right now. So I think the company won't morph into anything different

than we are now. We'll just be better at what we do. And we have to do it with better tools,

better software, get to the market faster than our competition, but do it in a way that

might not be the same as we've done. And our leaders, myself included, are all working towards

things along those ways and make sure that we don't have to reduce workforce dramatically to

meet our financial targets, but also to continue delivering the products. And that's the balance.

So will the company morph? I think we have to change the way we go to the market,

but we won't change the way that we are beliefs on how to do that, right?

CES, you're showing an AI-based cockpit. It understands language, visuals, context,

almost like a co-pilot. It was kind of described that way as a co-pilot.

When do you think drivers will experience this in everyday vehicles? And I guess what

problem does it solve first? Is it safety, convenience, or connection?

Yeah, I mean, if you ask me that question on a global basis, I would say that certain

consumers are already using it. But if you spend time in China or in Shanghai, I mean,

there's already use cases for smarter cockpits, not because United States citizens don't like

technology as fast, but the speed of adaption of things like this is happening faster in

countries than it is in the U.S. I think that we will start seeing, and you already see it today,

you have technologies from some OEMs which help you drive a little bit smarter, right?

On the highway, you can take your hands off the wheel, you have a level two plus

autonomy, and people are really reacting well to that. And once it became more affordable,

more people started to use it. So I think the affordability question will be a good one for us.

If we can introduce technology in the region that's affordable, and consumers don't think

they're spending too much money to use it, we'll start seeing a greater adaption of smart AI and

cockpit technology. And the way that the software is being developed now, and I mentioned it even

maybe earlier today, is if you're not creating bespoke solutions for car after car, but you're

creating a general solution, it will become more cost effective. And we're just not there yet.

I think the electrical architectures are coming along, and the vehicles to be able to handle the

high compute that we have, the hardware is there, the ideas are there. I mean, there's

certain automakers that, I mean, we can name a few of them on one hand, that are already in kind

of more of a consumer focus. We'll see the others catch up. And I think that consumers are ready

for it. I mean, if you do a lot of the surveys that we do, you see that they're ready for a safer

vehicle. You see that they're ready for a vehicle that has better fuel economy. You'll see a vehicle

that needs less service going along the ways or one that can predict their service topics.

So I do think that consumers will start adapting this and we have the responsibility

to make it affordable and make it available. Do consumers trust the technology more today,

or is that level of trust increasing? I think it's increasing. I mean, you can even see in

Las Vegas this week, you see a lot of autonomous vehicles. Advertise, you can scan them and get

rides, pretty significant, pretty easily now. I think the trust will come. I think the trust

will come. I think that there's a lot of trust in when you show them what the car or what the

vehicle is seeing, what the smart cockpit is providing. Some of them may think that the car

can drive better than them. Well, and related, you're also showing vehicle motion management,

which is it controls a vehicle across six degrees of freedom, if you will, to reduce

motion sickness, improve ride quality. That's a very human problem to solve. It must be just as

important, Paul, to have the autonomy and the software feel comfortable, not just capable.

Yeah, I think what I like to do is, I don't know what type of vehicle you drive, but when you get

in a certain vehicle, certain vehicles have a certain feel. And you would say that that's the

DNA of a vehicle. That used to cost a lot of money to say the steering feel or the braking

feel or the cornering feel was all based upon certain dampers and hardware and speed of control.

And if you had a great calibration engineer or someone that knew how a steering wheel was supposed

to feel, I think that the ability now to tailor that to the way an OEM wants the vehicle is a

lot easier now, because it's not hardware-based. So you just have to spend a lot of money on

what type of braking components you need. Exactly. Like I want the car to stop this fast. Well,

then you need a bigger braking system. Or now you can have a smaller braking system and the

software now can make it feel more sporty or stop or stop differently. So I think that's coming.

And that's why this vehicle motion management control is so important. And even when you get

into the suspension side, do you want it lower? Do you want it higher? How does the

vehicle act in corners? How does it act when you're on an open road? So that is definitely with

the steer by wire and brake by wire technologies where you can now really, you can touch everything

the vehicle is doing from six figures of freedom. It's really cool. So related to brake by wire and

steer by wire, you expect over 7 billion euros in cumulative sales by 2032. That's not flashy tech.

It's foundational. And is by wire the unsung enabler of software-defined vehicles?

I think that it opens up other possibilities. So you can still have a beautiful software-defined

vehicle without steer by wire and brake by wire. What it offers you then is flexibility, right? So

you don't have a lot of the hardware that you can eliminate, especially on the steering side.

On the braking side, there's redundancy and other topics you can have with brake by wire. There's

also elimination of hydraulics and certain components that you won't need in the vehicle. So

it's a progression. I mean, we're seeing a lot of customers make the move, but there's also

challenges related to how reliable it can be in load situations, right? So it's hard to overcome,

but you can also find combinations where you have a brake by wire system in a vehicle along with a

hard steering system or vice versa. So I think we'll see the progression of it. And you may see

maybe one, the front might be brake by wire, the rear might be conventional braking. You might see

steer by wire in certain vehicles, specifically when you get into autonomy vehicles or vehicles

that don't need steering wheels or you don't want steering wheels on, you've got to have them.

So it'll be a progression and we want to be a great provider of that technology.

In the U.S., you've announced a deep partnership with Kodiak AI around redundant platforms for

autonomous trucks. Why does trucking feel like the place where autonomy becomes economically real first?

Yeah, I mean, I have a personal point on this and I also have a Bosch point.

They both kind of intersect at one area. As trucks always, if you have a known route,

the truck has to get from point A to point B. And when you have a known route and you have a vehicle

that is instrumented and you have a load that is well known, that's where autonomy makes total

sense. And that doesn't differ between my beliefs and the company's beliefs. And that's where I

think the advantages of Class 8 commercial trucking can happen. Now, last mile deliveries, we'll see

how that operates. I mean, you see Amazon doing a lot of things with last mile deliveries, whether

they're trucks or other devices that deliver product. But I think in Class 8 vehicles, having

this known route with a known point A and a known point B, where you need uptime and drivers might

not want to do that. At the end of the day, drivers need to love their job as well. And is a driver

really going to love driving the same route every day back and forth, nine hours a day? Maybe not.

Maybe you take that driver and you teach him how to be a software reviewer and he's observing nine

trucks driving and using his skill set and stuff to deliver AI models to help the trucks do better.

So that's where I see this really starting. And it's glad with Kodiak that we do it on the commercial

vehicle side so that we see a big Class 8 opportunity. After the break, I'll continue my

conversation with Paul Thomas, president of Bosch North America. To see more cars and culture

interviews, visit the Cars and Culture YouTube channel, subscribe, comment, and check out

hundreds of conversations with the creators, collectors, and culture makers who are driving

the industry forward. Welcome back to the program.

Welcome back to Las Vegas and CES 2026. I'm your host, Jason Stein. Great to have you with us.

Now the continuation of my conversation from Las Vegas with Paul Thomas, president of Bosch

North America. To see more cars and culture interviews, visit the Cars and Culture YouTube

channel, subscribe, comment, and check out hundreds of conversations with the creators,

collectors, and culture makers who are driving the industry forward. A little more on AI. There's

manufacturing co-intelligence using agentic AI, really to optimize factories. You showed

something during your press conference of a factory floor optimization. Talked a lot about that.

When you say agentic AI, what does that mean in practical terms for workers who are on the factory

floor? Yeah, so I mean, agentic AI gives you the way I like to, I call it conversational AI.

Okay. Right, where you have an agent that might understand the hardware of the machine they're

working on. You might have another agent that understands the software of the machine they're

working on. And the operator would ask the agentic team, my machine went down. And then the AI agents

would then say, talk to each other and say, here's the failure mode. Agent one, is it hardware? Agent

two, is it software? And the agentic AI really comes through that when our operators ask questions,

the agents, whether it's software, hardware, let's call it hydraulics or air or pneumatics,

whatever's being delivered to the machine can then talk to each other. And those that problem

solving at the agentic AI level then gives, let's say, a most likely solution. And of course,

then the operator has to perform certain things to make sure that that's operative. And that helps a

lot. And as we talked about in the press conference earlier today, I know that the listeners weren't

part of that. That's improving our accuracy of failure modes by more than three times. So having

this agentic AI talking gives us better answers faster. And in that way, we hear a lot about the

improvements that AI will make in the workforce, how it will change business. How do you see it

adapting and or asking a different way? How do you see it changing the way?

A big question. Yeah, I think that there's great usage for AI. I mean, if there was ever

something that you was boring, you didn't like to do, or you could make errors on taking a big

table of numbers and comparing numbers and saying which one is the outlier or large data

models where you're trying to find patterns, AI is amazing at that. And even programming simple

robotic features like for having robots to pick up certain bottles used to have to program

the line of motion to the bottle. Now you just tell the robot from an AI standpoint, pick up the

bottle. It does those things. So I think there's benefits in that. There's also a great responsibility

with it in that you can rely on it to send you in the right direction, but not only you can't

rely on it to do everything. And I think that's what if you ask me personally as a leader, that's

where I'm really trying to find the great balance. When you use AI, you use it to make people's jobs

easier. So this efficiency topic we brought up earlier, as the company moves to a more

efficient organization, they see why. And they're happier, they're more enriched with the job they

do. And AI is doing things that they don't like. I use it a lot in my life personally and professionally.

And I find that it helps with things, but only to a certain extent. And then the human factor has

to come into play. Like you can ask it to analyze some software for safety relevant, but you're like,

okay, is it doing the right thing? And are the inputs? Where's it getting this data from and

things along those lines? Or in my blood test report. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know,

there's other industries that are really finding great benefits as well. I mean, in healthcare,

if you look like a radiologist, for instance, you know, they used to be a radiologist would get an

X-ray and have to look at it. Now AI can at least help that radiologist find certain things. And

maybe the radiologist can do more work and not make mistakes because they're standing up so late

working on things. So we're finding that the amount of mistakes that are made using AI when

you're looking at large data or large error proofing things really improve the errors become

less. Your tech compass survey shows 70% of people think AI is crucial for the future.

But 57% also wish there was a pause button. How do you lead innovation when people are excited

and anxious at the same time? I think it's all about education. We do a lot of things within

Bosch where we have thousands of people cohorts that go through our AI training and what that means.

We also then provide hack-a-pounds for AI where we bring different functions, whether it's our

communications team or legal team or manufacturing team or logistics team. And we say solve real

world problems with AI and then tell everyone how you did it. And we give rewards for people that

do a great job in that. So I think everyone's scared of AI if they don't know what it is.

But when you use it and you instruct and teach and people see the benefits,

then I think the 57% can start improving because people know that they want to use it.

If they don't know what it is, then that scares them. Yes, but fear factor. And I think everyone

worries about AI eliminating their job. I think that can happen in certain instances. I mean,

certain jobs definitely will be, I'll use the word, maybe more efficient call centers,

things along those lines where you have agentic things on simple problems like directing calls

to certain things, but other things that can't be replaced. Let's talk about a few other interesting

things here since we're at CES. Origify. Am I saying that correctly? Origify. You show this,

it gives products a digital identity based on physical surface patterns, essentially a fingerprint

for authenticity. In a world of, and you cited the example on stage, are the sneakers that I've

just bought or might buy real? Is the watch real that I may purchase? In a world of deep fakes,

of digital uncertainty, is trust becoming one of the most important technologies of all and

tell me a little bit about how Origify may change that? Yeah, I think it's a great concept,

whether it's counterfeit media, whether it's counterfeit products, whether it's counterfeit news,

that will always be a question I think in people's minds with the technology available today. I mean,

dancing politicians, you can see every day. You know sometimes you know when it's fake,

and there's not a lot of care and control right now on what's real versus what's,

we'll use the word fake for the time being. I think counterfeit products specifically

what Origify is looking for is getting to product level, understanding, and I think

on a physical product, the human eye won't be able to decipher as well as something that's

doing a pattern based recognition. You know there was a movie I watched the other day,

real interesting, I won't reference it, but someone had had a fake handbag and they met

the owner of the handbag company and the girl said I want you to see my handbag and the owner

of the company said that's not real, and this is how I know that because the stitching was the wrong,

like so there's certain things that general people will find that they'll believe is real,

but Origify really can get into the what the original intent of the product was meant to be,

and so it's an early idea of what we need to do and how we can do it. I think it

offers a good trend in the world today whether it's digital products, physical products,

you know, or something you're buying from a local vendor. You're also transforming,

because it's Bosch, you're transforming the kitchen, and here in Las Vegas you brought out a

a TV chef and had had him cook some steaks in front of journalists.

What do you learn from what you're doing in the home that can be applied in other parts of the

business? I think all of us all of us have a house or we have a place that we live in right,

so you want to make that frictionless, and what you can do with technology in the home,

you know, I've always been a proponent of a connected house, right? I've gone through many

different variables, right, of what a connected house looks like. Buy this Don, we'll do this,

use this hub, don't use that hub, and I think what becomes more important is the technology you have

fit within the suite of products that you have, and I think what we were able to show today with

our 800 series induction cooktop is that if you're not the best cook, or you don't have your eyes

on your meal all the time, there is technology that's simple that can help you, and it's already in

the product you've bought already, right, so I think integration of smart functions into products,

first thing having to buy a separate hub or do something different, and I'm sure you'll see that

across all of our across competitive products as well, but how smoothly you integrate that,

it doesn't make sense, like I think it was cool today that Marcel who we brought on,

I mean if you put a pan on a stove, it'll regulate the temperature of the pan

so that you don't burn the food that you're cooking, to me that's kind of cool,

and I think those are the little things that will happen, even if you look at some of our

espresso machines or some of our other products that we have, they're getting smarter, and they're

in your house, so you want them to be smart for you, and I think that's what's encouraging for me.

I think it was two years ago here at CES, there was the concept of my

smartphone will know that I'm on the route in the morning to work, so it will ping the local

coffee shop, which will have the coffee brewing by the time I arrive, it'll be ready when I'm there.

I think those Dreamscapes, they're amazing, like you can draw them up,

between you and I, I have a real problem with those Dreamscapes sometimes,

because I think they're very generic, and I really like to see this automation become very

personalized, and it being able to do what you want it to do, not what someone tells you the

best thing of the technology is, that's the worst thing that I believe can happen, if someone gets

in a car and it starts telling them where a coffee shop is, and they're like, I don't even care

about a coffee shop, I mean that's not what's important to me, what's important to me is where

is the hole in the road that I need to avoid, so I don't smash my tire or my rim, so I think there's

a lot of things that become very personalized, Jason, which I really think is what makes consumers

want it, what makes you want it or me want it is something that helps you. You referenced 30 years

at Bosch, you have seen, you are leading Bosch in North America through enormous technological

and cultural changes, what has surprised you the most about leading during this transition?

I think what I find is that the flexibility of our employees to really understand

that portfolio change has happened, that market dynamics create reasons for us to have to change,

and to really operate in scenarios that sometimes no one has control over, and I think in the past

you really, not in the past, but maybe what's called old school leadership was this is the way

that it is, and the market was very predictable, and you could predict what could happen, so you

look like a good manager because the market was very stable. Over the last 15 years you don't

have the answers to everything, so what I'm really encouraged by is that our associates are really

energized by scenario planning, I'm doing this because of this, and if the scenario changes

you'll know why I need to change my direction, and that's been very encouraging for me to watch.

We have a very low attrition rate at our company, if you talk to a lot of our workers, a lot of

people have 12, 15, 20, and some people may say, Paul, wow that's a disadvantage, you want people

that move around and learn different things, you can learn so much within Bosch, so in my 30 years

I've worked in automotive, I've worked in power tools, I've been on the manufacturing floor,

I've worked in quality, I've lived in multiple different countries, so you can fundamentally

at our company learn everything you need to do because we are so multinational, and what I really

appreciate our associates doing now, our employees, is dealing with scenarios and really wanting the

company to succeed, and in my 30 years I've never seen anyone sabotage our company, which is amazing,

right, we've never seen workers do something wrong on purpose, and that's I think a strong

testament to how much they love the company and what we stand for. When you look 10, 20 years ahead,

what do you hope Bosch will be remembered for during this period? Yeah, I mean when I started 30

years ago, what I liked about the company is what I hope exists today, that we're able to

not make knee jerk reactions to market dynamics, that we treat people with dignity, that we treat

people with respect, and that we continue to develop technology. I don't want to be a company

that always has to buy technology, I want to be a company that develops technology on our own, so

we fund all the technology we develop, we fund it on our own, we don't go to external markets,

and I'd like to see the company be able to maintain its independence, its financial independence,

its technology independence, and not be bound by a shareholder or a stock market that says you

have to do this to create more value, we want to create it from ourselves, from what they,

that's what I'd love to see. Finally, you announced today that you'll be back in what's known as the

big game, a big game with a pig skin involved. That was a significant move last year, positioning

the company from a marketing perspective into a broader audience, obviously a big play for a big

game. What did that do for you? Why are you coming back? Yeah, I think that generating brand

acknowledgement in the US is super important, it's something that you can't do with

one big game or even two big games, it's got to be something that is well thought out and a very

strong commitment from our company. We are known as a strong brand throughout the world and I think

reinforcing our brand recognition in the US isn't a short-sighted thing to do. I think it's great

that we're doing it, of course it's a significant investment that we need to make for our company,

and of course we want to see increased sales from it, we want to see increased product placement

from it, we want to see increased partnerships from it, but it's nothing that we're saying,

if we do this we're only going to do it one year and if it fails we're not going to do it again,

it's something that is a well thought out idea for us to improve the Bosch brand in the United

States to show that we're not just a dishwasher supplier, that we're not just an auto parts supplier,

but that we are a software hardware company that brings solutions to life and we want people to

really feel like the more Bosch products that they use, the more they improve their lives,

that's our, what you said, I mean North America is an enormously important growth market for you.

Yeah I mean right now North America represents somewhere, depending upon exchange rates and

things anywhere between 17 to 21 percent of the Bosch global turnover and we want to be 20 to 25

percent of the Bosch global turnover, but by creating value right and entering into new markets,

like you'll see in our Super Bowl ad, sorry in our big game ad we had last year,

we had our power tools featured, we had our home appliances featured, but it wasn't in a way that

was very product oriented, it was more brand oriented, and I think we'll start to see more and

that we want to be a brand that people trust and a brand that people want to use. Thanks for

spending time with me at CES, I appreciate it. And I want to compliment you, I've been listening

to you in my life for the last 15 to 20 years as well, it's really an honor to spend time speaking

with you and I really appreciate everything you've done, not only for the automotive industry,

but everything you do to generate interest and knowledge throughout the world, thank you.

Thank you Paul, I appreciate that, thank you.

Episode 234: Bosch President Paul Thomas

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