In connected car news this week were Tesla, Toyota, GM, Microchip, Altair, Keysight, EVgo, Canvas, DENSO, Synopsys and Bosch.
Best a’ Tesla
There is a report that a Tesla Model S in a garage set itself on fire in a San Francisco garage. Apparently starting near the battery pack. The San Francisco Fire Department is investigating the fire. Similar fire occured to a Tesla S in a Shanghai garage but it also consumed adjacent vehicles.
Tesla’s EVs will be able to detect maintenance needs and order parts to fix them
EV Trucks from GM
“GM has an industry-leading truck franchise and industry-leading electrification capabilities. I assure you we will not cede our leadership on either front,” Mary Barra CEO of Gm said in an investor’s conference call, “We intend to create an all-electric future that includes a complete range of EVs — including full-size pickups.” Barra said GM would share more on the electric pickup “when competitively appropriate.”
Bosch Patners with Powercell
Bosch is entering the market for mobile fuel cells and paving the way for the breakthrough of this technology in trucks and cars. One crucial component here is the stack. As the core of the fuel cell, is converts hydrogen into electrical energy. To further improve and manufacture these stacks, Bosch has now formed an alliance with Powercell Sweden AB, the Swedish manufacturer of fuel-cell stacks. Under the agreement, the two partners will work jointly to make the polymer-electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell ready for production.
Microchip Sic Power Devices
Microchip Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MCHP), via its Microsemi subsidiary, today announced the production release of a family of SiC power devices that offer proven ruggedness and the performance benefits of wide-bandgap technology. Complemented by Microchip’s broad range of microcontrollers (MCUs) and analog solutions, the SiC devices join a growing family of reliable SiC products that meet the needs of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and other high-power applications in fast-growing markets.
Ridecell Partners with Dataspeed
Ridecell Inc., the leading platform for shared and autonomous mobility operators, and Dataspeed Inc., a globally established drive-by-wire solution provider, announced a strategic partnership to enhance autonomous vehicle (AV) safety. The companies will begin leveraging each other’s technology and testing new technologies in real world conditions to improve vehicle safety.
Altair Partners with ERM Advanced Telematics
Altair Semiconductor (altair-semi.com), a leading provider of cellular IoT chipsets announced it is partnering with ERM Advanced Telematics, a global provider of automotive technology and IoT solutions, to develop a new range of low-powered and installation-free automotive IoT solutions.
ERM’s new set of IoT and asset management solutions leverages Altair’s optimized cellular IoT chipsets to provide installation-free solutions for IoT, asset management, stolen vehicle recovery (SVR) and vehicle financial services. These will include event-based platforms for automatic vehicle location and asset management applications using various sensors. The ultra-low power consumption of Altair’s chipsets allows the device to be connected without having to be powered by the vehicle’s battery, significantly reducing installation costs.
KeySight Partners with Calterah
Keysight Technologies, Inc., a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has joined forces with China’s leading automotive millimeter wave radar chipset design house, Calterah, to support the design, verification, test and launch of a new generation of automotive millimeter wave radar chipset that will drive development of the connected car supply chain.
In March 2019 Calterah officially released the ALPS family of chips which integrates high-speed analog-to-digital converters, complete radar signal processing baseband and high-performance CPU core. In the process of design and verification of this chip, Keysight supported Calterah with the company’s E8740A automotive radar signal analysis and generation solution for 77GHz radar signal receiving and transmission characterization, radar target simulation, and testing of the basic radio frequency parameters of the chip. Engineers from both companies worked together to accelerate time to market of the chipsets, while ensuring they deliver the best possible performance.
Sacramento EVgos
The City of Sacramento joined with EVgo, the nation’s largest public electric vehicle (EV) fast charging network, to celebrate the public opening of California’s first-ever curbside high-powered charging plaza for electric vehicles at Southside Park.
Canvas GFX Partners with Spatial
Canvas GFX announced a partnership with Spatial, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes. The integration between Canvas and Spatial streamlines converting computer aided design files from the top CAD software providers into compelling illustrations and visualizations for service documentation.
The combination of Spatial’s renowned 3D software development toolkits and the Canvas illustration standard, used by professional technical illustrators to create incredible graphical documentation, allows for a seamless experience for engineering businesses worldwide.
With the technical illustration market at $3.2B/year, and growing at 4.7% CAGR, the market for detailed visualization of complex systems is tremendous. Canvas GFX is excited to produce a specialized application that combines the design and service lifecycles that saves businesses unnecessary costs and rework.
Spatial is the leading provider of 3D software development toolkits for design, manufacturing, and engineering solutions. For over 30 years, Spatial has been delivering 3D software components to the majority of industry players in the world.
DENSO Funds Bond’s eBikemobility
DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, has taken a stake in Palo Alto, Calif.-based Bond Mobility Inc., the world’s only speed eBike sharing company that delivers high-performance micromobility services. The close of Bond’s $20 million series A funding round was led by DENSO’s New Mobility Group out of its global headquarters in Japan, and Ininvest. DENSO will use Bond’s technologies to accelerate the development of its Mobility as a Service (MaaS) model.
Seoul Robotics Joins Renovo Ecosystem
Seoul Robotics, a South Korean startup that is a pioneering 3D computer vision software for Lidar, announces that it has joined the Renovo ecosystem. Renovo is a leading automotive software company providing an open platform for level-4 autonomous vehicles. Autonomous fleets built on AWare now have access to Seoul Robotics’ powerful Lidar Vision Software for object and environment understanding.
The 3D lidar object detection developed by Seoul Robotics has been a central technology for enabling autonomous vehicles. However, the cost for making lidar perception software is far more than the sensor itself — costing tens of millions of dollars and years of continuous development. Seoul Robotics aims to make all lidar sensors intelligent and is laser-focused on creating automotive-grade 3D computer vision for lidar sensors. Due to the robustness of the technology — supporting 18 different lidar models from 4 different companies and easily extensible to new lidars — global OEMs and Tier1s have recently begun licensing the Lidar Vision Software. Now Seoul Robotics aims to help customers through Renovo’s AWare ecosystem.
ABB Supports TriMet Portland
E-bus charging solutions from ABB, a global leader in electrification, will support TriMet’s objective to make Portland an even more environmentally friendly city.
TriMet has the eleventh largest bus fleet in the United States, which eliminates more than 210,000 car trips every day in Portland, Oregon metro area. As part of a pilot program, five New Flyer Xcelsior CHARGE™ whisper-quiet electric buses will run along one of TriMet’s routes to determine whether all-electric buses can be rolled out across the TriMet system in the near future. The ABB bus chargers will be powered by energy derived from wind power from Portland General Electric.
Accenture Acquires Zielpuls
Accenture has entered into an agreement to acquire Zielpuls, a technology consultancy headquartered in Germany. The acquisition will bolster the capabilities of Accenture Industry X.0 in the design of smart products and services for automotive companies and will be expanded to support clients in the medical technology, industrial equipment and high-tech industries.
Synopsys’ DSC
Synopsys, Inc. announced its DesignWare® Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA®) Display Stream Compression (DSC) Encoder and Decoder IP for visually lossless compression across display interfaces targeting mobile, augmented/virtual reality, and automotive system-on-chips (SoCs). The new DesignWare VESA DSC IP interoperates with Synopsys’ DesignWare HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort, and MIPI DSI IP to provide a complete display solution that is compliant with the latest VESA DSC 1.1 and 1.2a standards. The DesignWare VESA DSC IP enables embedded and external displays to deliver the required 120Hz refresh rate, high dynamic range, and wide color gamut for up to 10K, high-definition content.
The DesignWare VESA DSC IP can be used to increase pixel throughput without needing to redesign existing SoC architectures. A single instance of the IP can be shared across HDMI, DisplayPort, and MIPI DSI interfaces to further reduce power and area. The configurable IP transmits compressed data, distributed across up to 16 parallel slices in real time, to meet the high-performance requirements of target applications. The IP lowers power consumption by reducing video and image interface data rates, as well as video buffer size for extended battery life.
Microchip SBDs
Microchip’s 700 V SiC MOSFETs and 700 V and 1200 V SiC Schottky Barrier Diodes (SBDs) join its existing portfolio of SiC power modules. The more than 35 discrete products that Microchip has added to its portfolio are available in volume, supported by comprehensive development services, tools and reference designs, and offer outstanding ruggedness proven through rigorous testing. Microchip now offers a broad family of SiC die, discretes and power modules across a range of voltage, current ratings and package types.
CarPlay & Alexa Coming to 2019 Toyota Camry and Sienna
Toyota is committed to advancing the overall technology capabilities of its vehicles. When it comes to multimedia, we continuously seek to improve the experience and provide consumers access to the technology services they desire, always with an eye toward safety. Early last year, starting with the 2019 Toyota Avalon, we announced Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa would be accessible on many of our 2019 and most of our 2020 models.
To expand these features to current owners, Toyota is excited to announce that both Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa compatibility can be added to 2018 Camry and 2018 Sienna vehicles.
Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa installation will be performed at Toyota dealerships. All 2018 Camry and 2018 Sienna owners will receive a notification from Toyota encouraging them to contact their dealer for additional details or to schedule an appointment.
Eyesight Tech Partners with Calterah
Eyesight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has joined forces with China’s leading automotive millimeter wave radar chipset design house, Calterah, to support the design, verification, test and launch of a new generation of automotive millimeter wave radar chipset that will drive development of the connected car supply chain.
In March 2019 Calterah officially released the ALPS family of chips which integrates high-speed analog-to-digital converters, complete radar signal processing baseband and high-performance CPU core. In the process of design and verification of this chip, Keysight supported Calterah with the company’s E8740A automotive radar signal analysis and generation solution for 77GHz radar signal receiving and transmission characterization, radar target simulation, and testing of the basic radio frequency parameters of the chip. Engineers from both companies worked together to accelerate time to market of the chipsets, while ensuring they deliver the best possible performance.
Infineon New Sensors & Power Mods
Infineon Technologies AG will launch a new family of current sensors and is presenting its first member at this year’s PCIM trade fair. The family will consist of precise and stable coreless Hall sensors. They offer a high level of flexibility as customers can individually program product parameters such as the current range, the overcurrent threshold and the output mode.
The first product, XENSIV™ TLI4971, covers measurement ranges from ±25 A to ±120 A. It addresses industrial applications such as electric drives up to 50 kW or photovoltaic inverters. Further members of the product family to follow in 2020 will be qualified for automotive applications.
In order to support the automotive industry in building up a broad and cost competitive portfolio of hybrid and electric vehicles (xEV), Infineon Technologies AG is launching new power modules for xEV main inverters. At this year’s PCIM trade fair Infineon will present four new HybridPACK™ Drive modules optimized for different inverter performance levels between 100 kW and 200 kW. Furthermore, Infineon introduces the HybridPACK Double Sided Cooling (DSC) S2, a technology upgrade to the existing HybridPACK DSC. This module targets main inverters up to 80 kW in hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with high power density requirements.
All new derivatives of the HybridPACK Drive have the same footprint as the already established lead device (FS820R08A6P2x) in the product family. This will allow system developers to scale inverter performance quickly and without a major system redesign.
FCA Completes Sales of Magneti Marelli
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. announced the completion of the sale of its automotive components business Magneti Marelli S.p.A. to CK Holdings Co., Ltd., the holding company of Calsonic Kansei Corporation, a leading Japanese automotive component supplier. In connection with the closing, FCA received cash consideration of approximately €5.8 billion.
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