In connected car news this week were Tesla NXP, CarShare, Cepton, Hyundai, Quanergy, Marvell, Daimler and Solace.
Tesla Surfs Up
If you can’t afford a Tesla car, you may be able to afford a limited edition Tesla surfboard. There will two-hundred produced by the Lost surfboard company with at $1500 price tag.
Qualcomm Nixes NXP Buy
Qualcomm Incorporated announced the termination of the acquisition of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) (“NXP”) by Qualcomm River Holdings B.V., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, effective immediately. In accordance with the terms of the purchase agreement, Qualcomm River Holdings will pay a termination fee of $2 billion to NXP on July 26, 2018. In connection with this termination, Qualcomm River Holdings has terminated its previously announced cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of NXP.
Enterprise Provides CarShare for Princeton Uni
Enterprise CarShare has partnered with Transportation & Parking Services (TPS) at Princeton University in a sustainability drive to help reduce campus traffic congestion while also meeting student needs for on-demand transportation. A service of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Enterprise CarShare offers an automated way to rent a vehicle by the hour, the day, or overnight
The university recently began an effort to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles on campus. As of fall 2016, most undergraduate students were no longer allowed to park vehicles on campus during the academic year.
To encourage faculty and staff to leave their cars at home, Princeton’s Transportation & Parking Services implemented the Revise Your Ride program last year. The program includes automatic enrollment in the Enterprise CarShare program along with other incentives. Graduate students and undergraduates are also eligible for the Enterprise CarShare program.
Cepton 3D LiDAR for Koito
Cepton Technologies, Inc., a provider of 3D LiDAR solutions for automotive, industrial, and mapping applications, today announced it will provide Koito Manufacturing Co., Ltd. a leading global tier-one supplier of exterior automotive lighting, with its miniaturized LiDAR solution for autonomous driving.
The compact design of Cepton’s high performance LiDAR sensors enables direct integration into a vehicle’s lighting system to take advantage of the latest autonomous driving technology without impacting its sleek design. With its innovative Micro-Motion Technology (MMTTM) platform, Cepton’s LiDAR sensors enable vehicles to recognize and track objects from all four corners for a true 3D image of its surrounding environment.
Cepton’s MMT LiDAR sensors feature advanced technology free of mechanical rotation and frictional wear, producing high-resolution imaging of a vehicle’s surroundings to detect objects at a distance of up to 300 meters away. Cepton is continuing to innovate and evolve its low-power and high-resolution LiDAR technology for integration into automotive lighting systems.
As the No.1 tier-one automotive lighting supplier, Koito is looking for a variety of sensors to meet the growing demand for autonomous vehicles. Koito is interested in the potential of the miniaturized LiDAR solution developed by Cepton, and with the customized LiDAR shipment, Koito is pursuing verification of its functionality, performance and reliability.
Custom AV Steering from Huyndai Mobis
-Hyundai Mobis succeeded in developing a customized steering system optimized for autonomous vehicles. It is an electric power steering system which uses the redundant control mode that takes advantage of two electronic circuits during autonomous driving to maintain normal steering capabilities under any circumstances.
The normal operation of the steering system in the autonomous driving environment, in which the vehicle operates on its own without the driver’s control, is a requirement directly related to the safety of passengers. Even if the steering system runs into an unexpected problem while the car is being driven, the system must detect the issue by itself and normally control the steering wheel before stable autonomous driving is possible.
inride Subs for D.C.
Alex Perdikis, co-founder of automotive startup inride, announced it plans to offer consumers in the DC area access to its subscription car service. This growing model of car ownership is available for sign up now, and provides subscribers with the option to flip into new cars personally delivered by the inride concierge team.
car2go in Chicago
car2go, the world’s largest and fastest-growing free-floating carshare service, officially launched in Chicago today, marking the company’s 25th global city. car2go is the first service of its kind to operate on the streets of Chicago, a city ideally suited for flexible one-way carshare. Chicagoans can now reserve affordable, eco-friendly compact vehicles through the car2go app, as well as register for free membership at www.car2go.com/US/en/Chicago.
ISO Cert for Quanergy
Quanergy Systems, Inc., a global leader in the design and development of solid state LiDAR sensors and smart sensing solutions, today announced that it has achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification, following an audit by DEKRA Certification, Inc.
Obtaining ISO 9001:2015 certification is critical for Quanergy since it is required by the company’s large global customers across multiple industries. Certification is especially important to Quanergy’s work in the automotive industry, since automotive standard IATF 16949 quality management requirements cross over to ISO9001:2015.
Porsche Invests in Miles
Porsche Digital is investing in US start-up company “Miles”. The company based in San Jose, California, and founded in 2016 is launching the first smartphone-based rewards programme for all forms of travel. Miles has developed a digital platform that rewards users simply for travelling how they travel every day, across various modes of transpo
Tires Tested in Outer Space
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plans to test tire components in space as part of a project in the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory, through an experiment expected to launch later this year.
In the microgravity environment of the space station, Goodyear will study the formation of silica particles, a common material used in consumer tires. By gathering knowledge from this evaluation, Goodyear engineers and scientists can determine if further investigation of unique forms of precipitated silica should be considered in tires.
Daimler Get Solace for Mercedes me
Solace announced today that Daimler, one of the biggest producers of premium cars and the world’s biggest manufacturer of commercial vehicles, has selected Solace to provide the technology that powers their “Mercedes me” app and associated services by streaming information between their vehicles and back-end applications.
Daimler decided to use MQTT for communications to and from vehicles and needed a technology that could handle the sophisticated routing required at massive scale. Daimler chose Solace’s message broker to power MQTT and other communications because it is the only technology capable of not just collecting information from tens of millions of vehicles but sending vehicle-specific alerts and instructions to specific cars or groups of vehicles.
Link Motion & AutoNavi
Link Motion Inc.,, a leading smart car and smart ride company, has formed a new strategic partnership with AutoNavi Software Co., Ltd., a leading digital mapping, navigation and location service solutions provider in China and a subsidiary of e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group.
Ridecell Powered by ReachNow
Ridecell Inc., the platform of choice for leading carsharing, ridesharing, and autonomous fleet operators, announced that its new mobility cloud service is powering the new ReachNow App, which makes ReachNow the first company in the world to operate both car sharing and ride hailing services within a single app.
ReachNow is the first Ridecell customer to build and enhance a new mobility solution using the recently announced Ridecell API suite. With the new ReachNow App, members can seamlessly select between available services, including driving themselves, getting a ride or scheduling a pick up for later. By offering members a choice between multiple services from a single app, ReachNow is eliminating the need for members to juggle between apps when they have somewhere to go. Additionally, these services are all built on top of the same shared fleet, reducing the number of additional cars added to city streets.
Marvell Passes JASPAR
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. confirmed that its 88Q2112 solution, the first IEEE® 802.3bp 1000BASE-T1 compliant automotive PHY to deliver 1 Gigabit/s data rates, has completed the conformance tests outlined by Japan Automotive Software Platform and Architecture (JASPAR) and passed 100%.
JASPAR was established in 2004 to facilitate the adoption of new automotive related technologies throughout Japan. The organization helps improve development efficiency and ensures reliability through standardization and sharing of sophisticated electronic automotive software and networks. It does this by providing common specification guidelines that can be referenced by the country’s automobile OEMs and their tier 1 partners. Among its membership are globally recognized auto manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Suzuki, DENSO and Bosch.
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