In connected car news this week were Tesla, ON Semiconductor, Foresight, SambaSafety, Valeo, Renesas and Octo Telematics.
Tesla has updated the software for Tesla 3 for uses of the steering wheel scrolls. Tesla confirmed to the NTSB that Autopilot was running during in the fatal Tesla X crash on 101 in Mountain View. The Tesla X hit the median, caught fire and was hit by two other cars.
“In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken…
Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents – such a standard would be impossible – but it makes them much less likely to occur. It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists.”
Fedex Reserves Tesla Trucks
FedEx Corp. announced it has placed a reservation for 20 Tesla Semi trucks. The fully-electric trucks, which are scheduled to begin production in 2019, will be operated by FedEx Freight, its less-than-truckload unit.
Tesla says its new big rig will deliver a far better experience for truck drivers, while increasing safety and significantly reducing the cost of cargo transport. Its advanced technologies, such as surround cameras and onboard sensors, help to aid object detection while also enabling Enhanced Autopilot for automatic emergency braking, automatic lane keeping, and lane departure warning. The company also touts electric energy cost savings that are half that of diesel.
Since 2008, FedEx has saved more than 158 million gallons of vehicle fuel by replacing vehicles with more efficient models and making greater use of electric vehicles, fuel cells, natural gas, hybrids and clean truck technologies.
ON Semi Joins Plug and Play
ON Semiconductor Corporation driving energy efficient innovations, announced their participation in the startup ecosystem of Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play, the world’s largest global innovation platform. They join Plug and Play’s Mobility and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, further showcasing their commitment toward advancing the widespread deployment of solutions in the automotive and industrial spheres.
The company’s node-to-cloud environment for the IoT solves customer challenges in prototyping, trials and systems deployment, and focus on value-added application and services. These advances have poised the company as a key partner in enabling ADAS, electric vehicles, factory automation, machine vision and industrial power management.
The strategic focus of ON Semiconductor automotive and IoT solutions, matched with the innovative solutions from startups in Plug and Play’s portfolio, sets the company up to take advantage of fast moving industry megatrends.
Foresight Completes Eye-Net Trials for iPhone & Android Smartphones
Foresight Autonomous Holdings Ltd., an innovator in automotive vision systems announced that it has successfully completed a multi-user trial of its Eye-Net accident prevention solution and met the pre-defined criteria set for its success.
The Eye-Net V2X (vehicle-to-everything) cellular-based accident prevention solution is designed to provide real-time pre-collision alerts to pedestrians and vehicles by using smartphones and relying on existing cellular networks.
120 Android and iOS users from across Israel participated in the trial. Part of the trial consisted of simulating collision scenarios in two different locations in a safe and controlled manner. The simulated scenarios included two vehicles moving towards each other with no direct eye contact between them and an additional scenario simulating an accident between a vehicle and a pedestrian. In all the simulated scenarios, the Eye-Netu application successfully alerted all users in a manner that enabled them to brake safely and on time. The information was streamed in real-time to a control room at the company’s headquarters and accurately displayed the location of the simulated collisions on a map.
The following pre-defined objectives were to be validated during the trial: the stability and usability of the application on both iOS and Android-based cellular phones; the server workload and its ability to handle data transfer; the ability to support a wide geographic distribution of users; the real-time functionalities of the dashboard; controlled scenarios validation (pedestrian collision warning and collision warning); and overall system stability. All objectives were successfully achieved.
This trial marks the successful completion of the system’s feasibility study.
SambaSafety Reaches 1 Million Subs
SambaSafety, the market leader of cloud-based driver risk management solutions, announced today it surpassed one million subscribers on its driver risk intelligence platform, Driver Risk Management (DRM). SambaSafety now provides data insights and monitoring to over 40 million unique drivers annually for employers and insurers, while proactively monitoring drivers in all 50 states.
Life360 Partners with PathSense
Life360 today announced a deal with PathSense, a precise positioning software development kit (SDK) for location-based mobile apps, where all of their employees will join the Life360 team, and Life360 has licensed the PathSense IP. While most GPS apps are notorious for draining smartphone batteries, the combination of Life360 and PathSense’s low battery location and sensor code technologies will provide the most advanced, battery efficient crash detection system available on the market.
Valeo Works with Ellcie Eyewear
Valeo is already active in the field, having introduced smart anti-glare glasses that synchronize with vehicle headlights. Now, it is partnering with Ellcie Healthy to capitalize on the start-up’s expertise in eyewear with integrated sensors. Teams from both companies will be working together, combining Valeo’s experience in connected vehicles with Ellcie Healthy’s knowledge of smart glasses. The aim of the partnership is to accelerate development of new vehicle applications, leading for example to improved road safety, more comfortable driving and enhanced human-machine interfaces.
The partnership with Ellcie Healthy is in line with Valeo’s open innovation approach, which involves engaging in day-to-day dialogue with universities, laboratories, companies in other industry sectors and start-ups across the world
Renesas Flash Chip MCU for Renesas Autonomy
Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the sample shipment of the industry’s first on-chip flash memory microcontroller (MCU) using a 28 nanometer (nm) process technology. To contribute to the realization of next-generation green cars and autonomous vehicles with higher efficiency and higher reliability, the revolutionary RH850/E2x Series MCU incorporates up to six 400 megahertz (MHz) CPU cores, which makes it the first on-chip flash memory automotive MCU to achieve the industry’s highest processing performance (Note 1) of 9600 MIPS. The new MCU series also features a built-in flash memory of up to 16 megabytes (MB) as well as enhanced security functions and functional safety.
Under Renesas autonomy, an open, innovative and trusted platform for assisted and automated driving, Renesas provides end-to-end solutions that advance the evolution of vehicles towards next-generation green cars, connected cars, and autonomous-driving vehicles. The 28nm-generation automotive control MCU is a new breakthrough product featuring next-generation technology for achieving vehicle control, which, together with the R-Car Family of systems-on-chip (SoCs) designed for cloud connectivity and sensing, constitute the two main pillars of the Renesas autonomy Platform. Car OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers, such as Denso Corporation, have already started to adopt the new 28nm MCU, recognizing the MCU’s superior processing performance capable of developing next-generation fuel-efficient engines, as well as its unparalleled scalability as a platform that addresses the expected electronic control unit (ECU) integration to come from changes in automotive electrics/electronics (E/E) architecture.
About Renesas’ Metal-Oxide-Nitride-Oxide-Silicon (MONOS) embedded flash technology
MONOS is a structure in which each transistor in the flash cell consists of three layers—oxide, nitride, and oxide—on a silicon base, with a metal control gate at the top. Renesas has accumulated more than two decades of experience in the use of MONOS flash memory technology by providing MCUs for IC cards. Based on the track record in MONOS technology, Renesas successfully extended the technology by developing a split-gate (SG) structure suitable for MCU internal flash memory. The new “SG-MONOS” –type flash memory realizes MCUs with high reliability, high speed and low power consumption.
Octo Telematics & RCI Bank
Octo Telematics Partnership with RCI Bank: Global Platform Approach to Offer Tailor-made here exists the concept of ‘incentivise to monetise‘, whereby most automakers are trying to achieve a balance of collecting data and offering benefits to the end-user, including discounts on warranties, free trials of services, etc. Meanwhile, in the B2B sector, there is a lot of talk about business models. One of the most mature data sets today is the user profile which is used for tailoring insurance policies. Right from basic data points such as speed, acceleration, braking, car model, trips durations, odometer, time, and driving patterns to in-vehicle driver monitoring (using biometrics) aid creation of profiles for insurance.
The platform boasts open and easy access to Application Platform Interfaces (APIs) and features the modular telematics-based insurance architecture through which partners can avail themselves of any mix of services. The first wave of offerings is built around the more mature set of services related to UBI such as coaching on driving skills, better pricing on insurance premiums powered by telematics data; fleet services such as dashboards which include driving behaviour, geolocalisation and financial data. But with Octo’s presence in the Mobility sector (Omoove and EasyOpen solution) and NGP platform, services related to Mobility and smart IoT integration with home and connected living services could be the next area of expansion.
All the RCI Bank and Services customers will be offered an option to include devices from Octo which will enable the company to collect data and customise the services based on the driving needs. This comes as a direct benefit for the customers who have not been a part of connected insurance and can realise discounts which, in turn, has a direct impact on the cost of ownership. This will essentially give traction to the on-demand business models especially for Mobility service providers and fleet companies – where insurance could be custom-made for a trip/number of miles/given time. Potentially in open platform architecture, there could be bids from insurance companies for a particular trip and the customers could choose the policy based on the value-adds they receive.
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