Companies in connected car news this week are Zubie, Ford, Argo AI, Arity, Sierra Wireless, VW, DENSO, Cinemo, Parkmobile, Chase, Renesas and UMTRI’s cyber security research.
We have announced some Tech CARS Awards Winners: Best Luxury EV, Best Analyst, Best Mainstream EV, Best Telematics Company and Best Chipmaker. Please check back to learn more winners or subscribe.
Gary Tucker to Lead Zubie
AUTO Connected Car News’ Tech CARS Award winner Zubie, named veteran automotive industry leader Gary Tucker as chief executive officer.
Tucker will guide Zubie’s efforts as it accelerates its growth across the automotive sector while building on a strong position within the insurance and fleet sectors. Growth in these markets will further expand the scale of Zubie’s data insights, which will in turn enhance the value proposition for all enterprise customers.
Tucker most recently served as CEO for DealerRater where he guided the company’s growth and led a founder transition resulting in a successful exit for investors as DealerRater was acquired by Cars.com in August of last year. Prior to that, Tucker was a senior executive with J.D. Power and Associates (JDPA) for 12-plus years.
Ford Invests in Argo AI
Ford is investing $1 billion during the next five years in Argo AI, combining Ford’s autonomous vehicle development expertise with Argo AI’s robotics experience and startup speed on artificial intelligence software – all to further advance autonomous vehicles.
Founded by former Google and Uber leaders, Argo AI will include roboticists and engineers from inside and outside of Ford working to develop a new software platform for Ford’s fully autonomous vehicle coming in 2021; through their equity participation, Argo AI employees will share in the startup’s growth. Ford will be the majority stakeholder in Argo AI. Importantly, Argo AI has been structured to operate with substantial independence. Its employees will have significant equity participation in the company, enabling them to share in its success. Argo AI’s board will have five members: Nair; John Casesa, Ford group vice president, Global Strategy; Salesky; Rander; and an independent director.
Arity Expands to Bay Area
Chicago-based Arity is expanding its operations with new locations in San Francisco and Palo Alto, California.
Arity currently has a team of over 200 technologists, comprised of software developers and data scientists, creating the telematics that will keep roads safer and help people drive smarter, in the rapidly changing personal transportation sector. The West Coast-based teams will help design and deliver the hardware and software for customer-facing, connected car offerings.
Allstate Insurance Company, Esurance and Answer Financial are currently using Arity’s software and analytics. These products and services are commercially available to other customers.
Sierra Wireless Selected by VW
Sierra Wireless a leading provider of fully integrated device-to-cloud solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that Volkswagen has selected Sierra Wireless AirPrime® AR Series modules and the Legato® platform for its next generation of connected cars. Sierra Wireless’ integrated 4G technology will reach the market beginning in 2018 in several Volkswagen models worldwide.
Sierra Wireless automotive solutions will deliver high-speed cellular connectivity for the Volkswagen Car-Net platform, which provides a variety of in-vehicle internet-based services, including remote vehicle access, roadside assistance, diagnostics and maintenance, and the ability to set speed and boundary alerts. Owners can use their applications over the integrated 4G-LTE connection provided by the Sierra Wireless AirPrime module.
Volkswagen will utilize Sierra Wireless technology to expand into additional value-added connected services and telematics. These services are enabled through the Legato platform, which provides an application framework and development environment that allows third-party applications to be built and hosted directly on the wireless module
DENSO Integrates Cinemo
Cinemo, a global leader in high performance and automotive grade multimedia playback, streaming, media management and connectivity middleware, has announced that DENSO, a leading supplier of advanced automotive technology, systems and components, has selected Cinemo’s multimedia platform for integration into DENSO’s new automotive Head Unit project.
The joint cooperation between Cinemo and DENSO will be dedicated to a major Japanese car OEM and includes Cinemo’s advanced file, stream and disc playback, media management, and UPnP based content sharing features, extending an already innovative concept in Infotainment usability and control. Cinemo and DENSO will work closely together to address the increasing technological demands of enhancing the digital experience in the car.
Chase Pay for Parkmobile
Parkmobile customers will soon be able to use Chase Pay for on-demand and prepaid parking on the street, at garages, airports and events across the United States.
Capgemini Enhances Connected Car Security
Capgemini, a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services, today announced the launch of a new offer designed to enhance the security of connected vehicles, vehicle manufacturing plants and the enterprise IT systems of automotive brands. The offer combines the specialist expertise of the Group’s global automotive, cybersecurity and consultancy teams, including its wholly-owned subsidiary Sogeti, along with its worldwide network of Security Operations Centers (SOCs). It provides a comprehensive offer for car manufacturers and suppliers to help prevent, detect and respond to possible cybersecurity threats.
The launch comes at a time when the automotive industry faces an unprecedented and unique cybersecurity challenge. As cars are becoming more advanced and increasingly connected, they are built with hundreds of sensors and many onboard individual computers controlling everything from steering to the headlights. Together they expose a multitude of entry points for hackers to gain access and control. It is not just the car that is vulnerable. With automotive manufacturing plants now increasingly connected there are potential targets too.
E2 Emulator from Renesas
Renesas Electronics Corporation (T a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the E2 Emulator, a new-generation on-chip debugging emulator. The E2 is intended as a development environment for the latest devices in the Renesas RH850, RX, and RL78 Families of microcontrollers (MCUs), and for a selection of automotive system(s)-on-chip (SoCs). The new emulator supports the extended debugging functionality of the RH850 Family and contributes to shortening the time required for CAN communication debugging and the current consumption debugging.
Renesas has integrated additional debugging features required for software development as solutions into the E2. Specifically, the new emulator reduces the time required to determine the cause of an error during CAN communication by providing a connection to the bus that allows message timing to be matched with executing code; it also makes it easier to determine the cause of current consumption peak by monitoring the current draw of the device and correlating that with the code. This enables system developers to potentially reduce development time in these areas to as little as one-tenth (Note 1) compared with the existing method of repeated program modification and downloads. Even when the modification/download cycle is necessary, the increased download speed of the E2 lessens its impact on the speed of the development cycle.
Hacking Remains a Concern
The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute released a new report by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, “Cybersecurity Concerns with Self-Driving and Conventional Vehicles.” The survey found:
1. Hacking of vehicles is of concern even for conventional vehicles.
2. Hacking of self-driving vehicles with controls is of greater concern than hacking of conventional vehicles. The respondents expressed more concern about hacking to gain control of vehicles or the main traffic-management system than hacking of vehicles to get access to personal information.
This online survey of American adults examined the issues of hacking vehicles to cause crashes, hacking by terrorists to use the vehicle as a weapon, disabling many vehicles simultaneously, and disabling the main traffic-management system.