In connected car news this week are HARMAN, Caruma, Allstate, Velodyne, Micronas, PWC, TomTom, Microsoft, HERE and BYD, details follow.
HARMAN CEO @ DC Auto Show
Dinesh Paliwal, chairman, president and CEO of HARMAN, will deliver the annual industry keynote address at the 2017 Washington Auto Show’s Public Policy Day Thursday, Jan. 26, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Caruma Goes Pro for Commerical Fleets
Caruma Technologies, aannounced a strategic partnership to design and develop the Caruma Cam Pro, an intelligent connected camera and software platform for commercial drivers and fleet operators.
Caruma Cam Pro combines computer vision, artificial intelligence, and sensor fusion into an open, connected car platform to provide Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and Driver Monitoring System (DMS) capabilities. Integrating advanced video analytics into the telematics solutions will bring modern ADAS elements to a wide range of commercial vehicle applications.
Standford Researches Self-Driving for Allstate
Allstate Insurance Company announced a multi-year research agreement with the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Stanford University to research a future where more autonomous vehicles are on the road. Allstate’s goal is to help pave a way for safer roads.
The research project scope includes machine learning, artificial intelligence and highly autonomous vehicle systems. Allstate, which has a legacy of more than 85 years spent protecting drivers on the road, sees this as an opportunity to help shape the future of the insurance industry. Stanford Professor Mykel Kochenderfer will serve as the principal investigator during the three year project.
Velodyne Shrinks Price and Size of LiDar
Velodyne LiDAR Inc., the recognized global leader in Light, Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) announced a groundbreaking design for a solid-state LiDAR sensor that can deliver a subsystem cost of under $50 U.S. when sold in high-volume manufacturing scale.
LiDAR sensors that leverage this new design will be less expensive, easier to integrate due to their smaller size, and more reliable as a result of fewer moving parts. The technology can also be integrated in Velodyne LiDAR’s existing Puck form factors.
Velodyne LiDAR’s new approach to the development of solid-state LiDAR sensors reflects the application of a monolithic gallium nitride (GaN) integrated circuit, developed in partnership with Efficient Power Conversion (EPC). The design consolidates components and results in significant advances in sensor miniaturization, reliability, and cost reduction. Each integrated circuit is less than 4mm square, which just covers George Washington’s nose on the U.S. quarter.
Velodyne LiDAR’s design is currently being tested and integrated into future products, and a release date announcement will be made in 2017.
OEMs for Ethernet Report
Fears over high cost, data compression and the availability of rival protocols have limited Ethernet usage mainly to diagnostics ports at many car OEMs. However, the latest developments indicate greater desire by auto makers to adopt Ethernet than ever before.
Kevin Mak, Senior Analyst at the Automotive Practice of Strategy Analytics, said, “The emergence of new, higher-speed standards, interoperability testing and the participation of more vendors will encourage more auto makers to adopt Ethernet. These factors are crucial in order for Ethernet to lower its cost and to encourage competition. This needs to be in place before new applications arrive which will demand gigabit speed multiplexing, such as autonomous vehicles, connected services, as well as high resolution cameras and displays.”
“But more crucial still will be the deployment of efficient, scalable E/E architectures that can be deployed as standard to new vehicle platforms. They will feature data ‘backbones’, which will enable further cost reductions and provide auto makers the flexibility to add new high bandwidth applications in the future, but without requiring a redesign of their architectures,” Mak added. “Such a strategy may see a wider implementation, beyond the luxury-branded, high model segments, as early as 2018.”
Micronas Uses OpentText
OpenText, a global leader in Enterprise Information Management (EIM), announced that Micronas, a TDK group company that develops and manufactures semiconductor-based sensor and IC system solutions for automotive and industrial electronics, is using OpenText Connectivity Solutions to cut time to market, protect proprietary information and centralize data operations for more rapid execution of research and development.
Micronas designs and manufactures semiconductor-based sensors for all major automotive electronics customers worldwide. The company has its operational headquarters in Freiburg, Germany, with part of its Research & Development (R&D) team located in Munich, and currently employs approximately 900 people.
Connected Car Packages Are Valueable
A recently published comprehensive research by PWC indicates that the global car market has the potential to build considerable value from the sale of connected car packages to end customers – fully $155.9 billion in 2022, up from $52.5 billion in 2017, an average annual growth rate of 24.3 percent. Despite the enormous potential however, car manufacturers are going to have to take certain measures in order to reach the numbers projected. For example, car makers have to integrate and bundle features into a simple car experience, be prepared to move from premium to volume sales and more.
TomTom & Microsoft Enterprise Locations for Azure
TomTom and Microsoft announced they will partner to bring enterprise-grade location-based services to Microsoft’s Azure platform, based on TomTom’s maps, traffic and navigation software. TomTom plans to integrate its services into Azure to make it even easier and more flexible for developers to build and manage enterprise, mobile, web and “Internet of Things” applications that are location aware.
Microsoft Selects HERE for Bing Maps & Cortana
Microsoft has selected HERE, the Open Location Platform company, as its largest global provider of map data and services as part of a multi-year strategic commercial agreement between the two companies.
The agreement extends the companies’ long-standing collaboration, enabling Microsoft to integrate HERE’s data and services into Microsoft’s Bing Maps platform that powers Bing.com, Cortana, and many other Microsoft services, and into Microsoft’s Bing Maps API offered to developers through the Azure Marketplace. The agreement also permits Microsoft’s expanded use of HERE data and services in connection with in-vehicle productivity scenarios.
In addition, Microsoft users will benefit from HERE platform services such as real-time road traffic flow and live public transit data, as well as regular map updates made by HERE.
Leonardo DiCaprio BYD Spokesmodel
BYD Company announced that Leonardo DiCaprio will serve as new brand ambassador in China for BYD’s line of new energy vehicles. The commitment to new energy vehicles is part of BYD’s “Cool the Earth by 1°C” campaign.