E-Chips Connected Car News Tips: Zubie, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, HERE, Lamborghini & TomTom

In embedded chips and connected car news tips this week are Zubie, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, HERE, Lamborghini, Route Monkey, Sygic, Infenion and TomTomh.

Zubie Sharing Data with Automakers

Zubie,  connected-car platform and telematics announced it is partnering with major auto manufacturers to leverage its repository of data and analytics to enhance the manufacturers’  understanding of vehicle performance and reliability. Zubie recently entered into an agreement to provide select aggregated data to a top-tier global auto manufacturer, and is in discussions with others.

Zubie’s data, collected as frequently as every second, includes various aspects of vehicle performance such as RPM, miles driven, speed, battery voltage, engine diagnostics and other elements. Zubie aggregates this data, and further augments it with information such as location, weather and traffic. This data aggregation and analysis helps paint a clearer picture of vehicle performance, and wear and tear under different driving conditions. In accordance with Zubie’s privacy commitment and policies, the data aggregation utilizes advanced cleansing techniques to ensure that no customer’s private information is shared.

SolarRoadways for Conway MO?

The Missouri Departmet of Transportation may deploy Solar Roadways at the Historic Route 66 Welcome Center at Conway, MO. Solar Roadways
is a modular system of specially engineered solar panels that can be walked and driven upon.

Nissan Reduces CO2 and Increases “No Charge to Charge”

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today published its annual Sustainability Report showing that the global automaker’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have fallen by  22.4% over the past decade.
Nissan’s “No Charge to Charge” program is now available in 38 of the top markets for Nissan LEAF sales, including Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chattanooga, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland/Akron, Columbia, Columbus, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Fresno, Houston, Indianapolis, Knoxville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Monterey, New York, Nashville, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., Providence, Raleigh-Durham, Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Seattle, Washington D.C.

Toyota Patents

Whether it’s creating artificial skin for pedestrian safety mannequins, helping autonomous vehicles detect and safely react to emergency vehicles or fabrics that clean themselves, Toyota leads the way in anticipating and engineering the cars of tomorrow for today.

This is the second consecutive year the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued more patents to Toyota’s innovative designers and engineers than to any other automaker. This achievement is according to a recently released publication by the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO).  In 2015, Toyota received 1,636 patents and over the last eight years has been awarded more patents than any other automotive company. This achievement illustrates the company’s commitment to ever better cars that achieve greater safety, environmental and technological advancements.

Lamborghini AR

Lamborghini Magazine, the brand’s glossy and multiple award-winning six-monthly publication, will become the first automotive magazine with augmented reality content starting from Issue 18. Its pages are now enriched with digital elements thanks to an enhanced reality app, “Lamborghini AR”, which can be downloaded free of charge from Apple Store and Google Play Store.

When readers aim their smartphones or tablets at the corresponding symbol they can now access significant additional content from the magazine’s pages, which come alive with videos and images to offer a unique interactive digital experience.

BMW ReachNow Reaches Seattle

BMW Group  announced the launch of ReachNow, a free-floating premium car sharing service, at a press conference held in conjunction with the city of Seattle. In addition to debuting the ReachNow car sharing service in Seattle, BMW Group Member of the Board Peter Schwarzenbauer also announced the establishment of ReachNow’s North American headquarters in the city and its plans to expand the service to three additional cities in 2016 – with the intention of servicing 10 North American cities. ReachNow is another example of the BMW Group’s continuing commitment to the development and expansion of sustainable urban mobility solutions.

ReachNow selected Seattle as the pilot market for its interest in welcoming greener mobility services that make life easier for its residents. Additionally, Seattle was recently ranked the third most electric vehicle-friendly city in the U.S. by ChargePoint, the largest electric vehicle charging network.

Route Monkey & Sygic

Route Monkey has signed a partnership agreement with global GPS navigation expert Sygic.

The partners plan to jointly develop a fully integrated optimization and navigation platform for electric vehicles (EVs). After determining the bet route the platform sends the best route for the entire itinerary to each driver, directly into the Sygic Navigation app. Working together, Sygic and Route Monkey can also schedule stops at charge points en route to top-up the batteries, and provide real-time navigation to recharging stations.

HERE New Universal Data Format

HERE, the location cloud company, today announced a significant step forward in efforts to drive a global standard for vehicle-to-cloud data – a development which in turn brings the promise of automated vehicles closer to reality.

Following successful months-long discussions with international automotive and mapping companies in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, HERE has now submitted the design for a universal data format called SENSORIS to ERTICO – ITS Europe, the European public/private partnership for intelligent transport systems, which has agreed to continue as an Innovation Platform to evolve it into a standardized interface specification for use broadly across the automotive industry.

To date, 11 major automotive and supplier companies have already joined the SENSORIS Innovation Platform now under the coordination of ERTICO. They are: AISIN AW, Robert Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Elektrobit, HARMAN, HERE, LG Electronics, NavInfo, PIONEER and TomTom. More organizations are expected to join in the coming weeks..

Autonomy Won’t Work Says Transport Proffessionals

More than 33% of transport industry professionals do not believe autonomous vehicles will work, according to findings published today in the Microlise Transport Conference post event report.

The statistics, covered in full in the dossier which has been released today, were captured during interactive voting on questions at what is now the largest road transport conference in Europe, attended by more than 1,000 delegates.

The report goes further than last year, by providing an in-depth view of the road transport industry in 2016 on a range of key issues, with responses broken down by sector, age, job position and gender.

Infinenon ICs

Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) released the IR1161L and IR11688S secondary synchronous rectification (SSR) family of Controller ICs to complete Infineon’s product offerings for SMPS applications.

The IR1161L and IR11688S SSR ICs meet the new 2016 standards set by the U.S. Department of Energy and the “European Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in Data Centre” which demand a 1 to 3 percent efficiency improvement over previous requirements. Taking 2 percent saving as an average for new adapters, US adult notebook users alone can save 525 GWh per year – which is enough to power New York City for at least 40 days.

TomTom Indoors and SatNav with Live Data

TomTom announced a technology collaboration with a leading provider of indoor positioning technology, sensewhere Limited. This collaboration will enable the two companies to conquer GPS black spots and bring location based services indoors.

TomTom Indoor delivers accurate customised indoor maps of public and private venues for site operators and other partners that enable increased efficiency, cost savings and an improved customer experience. sensewhere has developed a proprietary and patented positioning solution for mobile devices. The combination of TomTom’s maps – both indoor and traditional navigation maps – and sensewhere’s accurate indoor positioning will enable a seamless navigation experience indoors and outdoors.