Review of Digital Twin in the Automotive Industry on Products, Processes and Systems

Review Review of Digital Twin in the Automotive Industry on Products, Processes and Systems Heli Liu 1,2, Benjamin Zhang 1, Vincent Wu 1,2, Xiao Yang 1,2, and Liliang Wang 1,2,* 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK 2 Smart Forming Research Base, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 17 February 2025; Revised: 10 March 2025; Accepted: 20 March 2025; Published: 24 March 2025 Abstract: In the era of digital manufacturing, digital technologies are rapidly revolutionising the automotive industry. Among these, the digital twin, an enabling industry 4.0 digital technology first introduced two decades ago, is characterised by the seamless integration of physical and cyber realms. The digital twin is undergoing extensive investigations within the automotive sector, covering various perspectives including design, manufacturing, and application. By leveraging the big manufacturing data captured by spatially distributed sensing networks, the digital twin shows the capacity to create high-fidelity models of actual manufacturing practices, thereby significantly improving the precision and efficiency of production processes. Integrated with other digital technologies such as big data analytics (BDA) and the Internet of Things (IoT), the digital twin mirrors components in the physical world into the virtual environment and facilitates the exchange of real-time information to achieve fully converged cyber-physical spaces. This in turn minimises costs and improves the overall product quality, flexibility of manufacturing processes, and system integration. This work reviewed recent advancements in digital twin applications in the automotive industry focusing on automotive products, manufacturing processes, and manufacturing systems. Insights were provided into the future of digitally enhanced technologies in automotive manufacturing towards digital manufacturing and developing digital product passports (DPPs) for circular economy (CE).