In connected car news this week were Tesla, Porsche, Samsung, Ionic Materials, Fair, TomTom, Hyundai Mobis, Renault-Nissan-Mistubishi, Keysight, Sumitomo and NEC.
Best a’ Tesla
Tesla updated it’s mobile app to include cold weather features including battery preconditioning, with the ability to turn on the seat heaters, defrosting, and heated wiper blades.
During the financial earnings call, Elon Musk announced Tesla plans to produce 2,500 per week by the end of March and 5,000 per week by the end of the second quarter.
Tesla 3 models are now on display in Chicago and Washington state. For those buying the cheaper standard battery pack Tesla 3, they are not due out until late 2018.
Musk stated during the conference call that he expects real ‘Fully Self-Driving Capability’ to be demonstrated and released in the next “3 to 6 months.”
E-Mobility Future for Porsche
Porsche has been putting together an unprecedented future development plan: By 2022, the sports car manufacturer will invest more than six billion euros in e-mobility, focusing on both plug-in hybrids and purely electric vehicles. The decision was made by the Porsche AG Supervisory Board at its most recent meeting
Samsungs 256 GB eUFS
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass production of a 256-gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) solution with advanced features based on automotive specifications from the JEDEC UFS 3.0 standard, for the first time in the industry.
Samsung’s 256GB eUFS extends the temperature range to between -40°C and 105°C for both operational and power-saving modes. Warranties for conventional embedded multimedia card (eMMC) 5.1 solutions generally cover -25°C to 85°C for vehicles in operation and -40°C to 85°C when in idle or power-saving mode.
Sequential reads for the 256GB eUFS can reach 850 megabytes per second (MB/s), which is at the high end of the current JEDEC UFS 2.1 standard, and random read operations come in at 45,000 IOPS. In addition, a data refresh feature speeds up processing and enables greater system reliability by relocating older data to other less-used cells.
Ionic Materials Funded for Solid Plastic Batteries
Ionic Materials announced it has secured $65 million in a Series C financing round from a leading group of financial and strategic investors. The strategic investors include companies from the battery manufacturing, consumer electronic and electric vehicle ecosystem who will be working with the company to speed the development of its solid polymer electrolyte battery material. These funds will fuel Ionic Materials’ accelerated growth, support its hiring plans and help the company meet the significant market demand for its novel polymer electrolyte.
Current batteries are manufactured with an expensive and flammable liquid electrolyte and use costly active materials. By replacing the liquid system with Ionic Materials’ solid plastic polymer material, solid-state batteries that are safe, cheaper and operational at room temperature become possible for the first time. The special properties of Ionic Materials’ polymer electrolyte allow the use of high-energy materials and support lithium-ion cells with little to no cobalt in their cathodes. Further advancements made possible by Ionic Materials’ polymer will support very inexpensive and low-cost rechargeable alkaline batteries as well.
Ionic Materials will provide its polymer to the battery industry as an advanced materials supplier. Through this approach, it will reach the broadest market segments and establish a complete ecosystem of cell manufacturers serving the consumer electronic, electric vehicle and energy storage markets.
Zenuity Buys Beyonav
Zenuity, a company at the forefront in the development of system software for advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) technologies, announced that it has acquired the intellectual property and trademarks of Beyonav, a technology services company delivering innovative, location-based solutions that go beyond traditional applications of navigation technology.
As part of the agreement, Beyonav’s Founder & President, Jens Nitzschke, will join Zenuity as Director Map Infrastructure, based in Chicago. Zenuity will own the Beyonav name.
Fair Raises More $$$ Buys Skurt
Faiannounced the closing of their latest round of strategic equity funding, led by next47, the Siemens-backed global venture firm. Also making equity investments in the round are BMW, CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, Millennium Technology Value Partners, 137 Ventures, G Squared, and Upfront Ventures.
In offering leases to Uber drivers and acquiring Uber’s Xchange Leasing subsidiary Fair has also acquired the vehicle-delivery app, Skurt, as part of its plan to quickly scale a cost-effective platform for vehicle delivery, pick-up and fleet management. Skurt’s platform enables the digital initiation and monitoring of customer car deliveries from a central dashboard, as well as real-time notification, fleet location tracking, and instant communication throughout the process.
TomTom Audio Traffic & On-Street Parking
TomTom announced the launch of TomTom Audio Traffic – personalised and relevant traffic reports delivered over voice to drivers in a non-intrusive way. Audio Traffic is available as an Application Programming Interface (API) for developers.
Although personalized traffic information is one of the most requested features by daily commuters driving known routes, they don’t necessarily want to use turn-by-turn navigation which typically includes traffic information about the route ahead. TomTom Audio Traffic solves this problem by delivering an accurate traffic news bulletin that is relevant to the specific route that is being driven. And because it’s delivered via voice, drivers can keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, helping with safer driving.
TomTom Audio Traffic, which was developed with provider of smart multimedia applications, Duel, is based on TomTom Live Traffic. Using the API, developers can easily integrate it into popular applications including music streaming services, internet radio, voice assistants and more.
TomTom’s On-Street Parking service, a game-changer for drivers on the hunt for that hard-to-find parking spot, has expanded availability to 100 cities in Europe, marking a major milestone for the offering. The service provides drivers with the probability of finding a parking space on the street, as well as the average search-time.
TomTom On-Street Parking supports parking probabilities across cities – including locations where parking costs are free. This provides a distinct advantage to services based on parking payment transactions, which provide a narrow, imprecise view that limits their results to specific geographies and roadways. This leaves better-placed, free parking locations unaccounted for.
TomTom On-Street Parking complements the existing Off-Street Parking (parking garage and lot) information service. It’s offered to OEM and Enterprise customers, as well as via an Application Programming Interface (API) on the TomTom Developer Portal.
Hyundai Mobis Braking & Parking
Hyundai Mobis announced that it has developed cutting-edge braking and parking technologies and will be the second to supply them in the world.
Hyundai Mobis has positioned itself to begin mass-producing iMEB (integrated MOBIS Electronic Brake) and RSPA (Remote Smart Parking Assist) respectively at its Cheonan plant and Jincheon plant in Korea.s.
● iMEB (integrated MOBIS Electronic Brake)
A regenerative brake system is a key component used exclusively for environment-friendly cars, which generates electricity with a motor while the car is decelerating and charges the batteries. Because this system allows for a 70% reduction in energy loss compared to internal combustion cars and accounts for 40% of fuel efficiency improvement of hybrid vehicles, this technology is essential to fuel efficiency competitiveness.
● RSPA (Remote Smart Parking Assist)
RSPA is a system that automates transmission, handling and acceleration and deceleration required for parking and unparking combined with remote control functionality using a smart key. After 12 front and side ultrasound sensors explore a potential parking space, a driver can allow the car to park itself in the space, whether in the car or not, using a smart key. It is also possible to unpark the vehicle via a remote control.
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance Allies with DiDi
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s leading automotive, today announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with DiDi Chuxing (‘DiDi’), the leading Chinese mobile transportation platform, to explore future business cooperation on a new electric vehicle car-sharing program in the People’s Republic of China./
Keysight PSAP NavCert-ified
Keysight Technologies, Inc., a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers, and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, announced that the Keysight E6951A public safety answering point (PSAP) emulator has been certified by NavCert GmbH. The E6951A is part of Keysight’s E6950A eCall Conformance Test Solution. The certification was awarded Dec. 18, 2017.
Sumitomo & NEC Collaborating for Mobility
Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (President: Osamu Inoue; Head office: Chuo-ku, Osaka City; “Sumitomo Electric”) and NEC Corporation (President and CEO: Takashi Niino; Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; “NEC”) have begun collaborating in the mobility business, including planning and development of automotive components.
In December 2017, the collaboration started with vehicle connectivity support business using networks. The two companies will now plan, develop, demonstrate, and commercialize hardware and software for in-vehicle and transportation infrastructure systems by capitalizing on their cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, while expanding the business in stages.
The two companies will take full advantage of their strengths to develop AI- and IoT-based connectivity products with advanced security and to expand mobility business.
Details of this collaboration:
Design Interactive Altheer AR
Design Interactive, Inc, a virtual, augmented and mixed reality development firm and Atheer Inc., the leader in industrial enterprise augmented reality solutions, are excited to announce the launch of their first joint product: AUGMENTOR™ powered by Atheer AiR™ Enterprise.
It brings together the AUGMENTOR purpose-built augmented reality troubleshooting application developed for the Microsoft HoloLens by Design Interactive (DI) and Atheer’s AiR™ Enterprise augmented reality solution for industrial enterprise customers.
Atheer’s award-winning AiR™ Enterprise is a breakthrough enterprise-class AR application that uses smart glasses to connect a worker’s physical and digital workspaces – and provides a Web console that can be used for online step-by-step “taskflow” creation as well as secure, cloud-based data storage of those taskflows (allowing taskflow content to be accessible across the enterprise).
The combination of these two products into AUGMENTOR powered by Atheer AiR™ Enterprise allows any procedure to be authored from Atheer’s web accessible portal or in the field through DI’s tools in the HoloLens.
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