Twenty years after the last auto factory in the state closed, the automotive industry is in the midst of a resurgence in Massachusetts, where companies crank out software essential to the creation of the modern automobile. Just 12 miles from PTC’s campus of connected glass-and-concrete buildings on Route 128, the French software firm Dassault Systemes has established its North American headquarters in Waltham, where engineers are improving digital tools used by major automakers such as Ford, Honda, BMW, Jaguar, and Land Rover.
In Bedford, Progress Software provides Volvo and General Motors software to manage the streams of data flowing through their organizations. Automakers use products from MathWorks in Natick to help designers find errors before they reach the prototype stage. Local divisions of IBM, Autodesk, and Siemens also sell high-end design software that automakers use to digitally sculpt future models.
Meanwhile, the Changing Places Group at MIT’s Media Lab is working on a new vision for urban driving: a car that can be folded to fit into the tightest parking spaces.
“All the significant players in the manufacturing software that’s used in the automotive industry are here,’’ said Oleg Shilovitsky, a Massachusetts consultant who blogs about this cluster of companies in the Boston area.
Companies like PTC and Dassault Systemes represent a second coming of the auto industry to Massachusetts. In the earliest days of the motorcar, the state was home to dozens of companies experimenting with steam and electric cars. Even after the industry shifted to the internal combustion engine and the Midwest, Massachusetts kept a connection to auto manufacturing.
For decades, a Ford assembly plant thrived in Somerville, on the site still known as Assembly Square. The plant closed in 1958.
