In connected car news are Tesla, GKN, DENSO, Toyota, Seebo, Iteris, FCA, Synopsys and Pioneer.
Telsa Charging for Data
Telsa is starting to charge owners for advanced data plans. Tesla purchased on or after July 1, 2018, the company will soon getting charged for data. Tesla vehicles now come with a standard plan that includes basic step-by-step navigation, music and media streaming via Bluetooth, and over-the-air software updates via Wi-Fi. Premium Connectivity includes satelite-view navigation, live traffic data and video streaming. The Premium plan comes with a free one-year trial for buyers of premium interior Model S/X and 3. Standard model 3 buyers get a 30-day free trial. The cost for premium connectivity is $10 a month and an additional $9 a month for Netflix. Earlier this year Tesla put a 50GB cap on streaming and split into standard and premium plans.
Hagerty DriveShare Shares with Int’l Drivers
Hagerty, the world’s largest membership, insurance and media organization for enthusiast vehicles and owners, today announced it has expanded DriveShare by Hagerty to allow rentals to licensed international drivers visiting the U.S.
GKN 3-in-1
GKN Automotive has launched the next phase in its electrification strategy. The leading supplier of all-wheel drive and electric driveline technology and systems is standardising a range of intelligent highly integrated “3-in-1” systems for pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, in a move to decrease cost and increase efficiency.
The 3-in-1 systems effectively integrate an electric motor, inverter together with the single-speed transmission module that scales up the torque. The inverter retains its own separate housing for maximum serviceability. The company’s Automotive SPICE® Level 2- and 3-certifed software engineering processes enable it to manage the system’s complete integration.
GKN Automotive’s intelligent standardisation strategy enables three families of electric drive to cover all mass-market torque requirements. The systems distil the company’s substantial experience in industrialising electric axle and driveline systems, and harnesses data and system integration knowledge accumulated from 17 years of eDrive development and production of over a million eDrive units.
DENSO & Toyota Partner for Semiconductors
DENSO Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation announced that they have named the joint venture to be established in April 2020 MIRISE Technologies (“MIRISE”). The joint venture will conduct research and advanced development of next-generation in-vehicle semiconductors. MIRISE is an acronym for Mobility Innovative Research Institute for SEmiconductors. It also conveys “mirai” (a Japanese word for “future”) and “rise.” Yoshifumi Kato has been appointed President and Representative Director of the new company.
MIRISE will accelerate the development of next-generation in-vehicle semiconductors that play a key role in technology innovation for electric vehicles and automated driving vehicles from aspects of both vehicles and components by combining Toyota’s knowledge on mobility with DENSO’s knowledge on in-vehicle components.
MIRISE will work on three technology development fields: (1) power electronics, (2) sensing, and (3) SoC (System-on-a-Chip). In the power electronics field, the company will work on R&D mainly for in-house production (including contract manufacturing) by leveraging the semiconductor material technologies as well as manufacturing and design technologies accumulated by Toyota and DENSO in electrification technologies, mainly in hybrid vehicles. In the sensing field, the company will work on development for in-house production and cooperation with joint development partners. In the SoC field, the company will strengthen its ability to determine the specifications of optimal SoCs for mobility in the future.
Seebo Wins VW Challenge
Seebo, a pioneer in process-based Artificial Intelligence, annouced it has won the Konnect-VW Group Innovation hub TLV Startups Challenge. Seebo was chosen following a tough judging process, by a jury of experts from the Volkswagen Group leading car brands such as Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, Skoda, Porsche, VW Commercial Vehicles and more.
Seebo was selected out of dozens of start-ups that participated in the challenge. The prize recognizes Seebo’s ground-breaking technology and ensures a deep collaboration with the VW Group, for which a sum of up to 25K Euros is granted.
Seebo enables automotive manufacturers to reduce processes-driven quality losses and failures in production and assembly processes. Collecting and analyzing data from production lines and automated inspection systems, Seebo leverages predictive analytics and automated root-cause analysis, to ensure production efficiency is kept at its highest level.
Iteris Gets Sub-Contract for LA County
Iteris, Inc. the global leader in applied informatics for transportation and agriculture, today announced that it has been awarded a $2.05 million sub-contract from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) to provide traffic operations analysis and traffic engineering design services for a new light rail transit (LRT) system in Los Angeles County. The project represents the continued expansion of Iteris’ transit system solutions in southern California and nationwide.
FCA Re-Organizes
FCA is leveraging its technological, engineering and management talent by establishing a streamlined product development organization with central leadership and a global footprint.
The new organization will be led by FCA’s Chief Technical Officer Harald Wester.
The new organization consolidates three core activities: engineering; program execution and management; and program support. Until now, product development had been served by multiple organizations that operated as regional sub-groups or stand-alone units.
Synopsys & Calterah
Synopsys, Inc. and Calterah Semiconductor announced that Calterah’s new-generation advanced CMOS millimeter wave (MMW) radar system-on-chip (SoC) integrating Synopsys’ DesignWare® ARC® EM Processor IP has entered mass production. Calterah implemented an ISO 26262 functional safety development process to help ensure the Alps chip series met the standard’s ASIL B requirements for automotive safety. This included conducting functional safety-related monitoring and detection on more than 190 blocks in the design and analyzing over 1,000 failure modes, leading to the development of dozens of chip-level safety mechanisms. By using Synopsys’ ASIL-compliant ARC EM6 Processor, Calterah successfully reached its target functional safety ASIL level while enhancing overall processing performance and power efficiency for its Alps automotive radar SoC
Pioneer Invests in Nain
Pioneer Corporation announced that it concluded a capital investment and business partnership agreement on December 3, 2019 with Nain Inc., a startup in the voice UI solution business.This partnership combines Nain’s original voice UI technology and Pioneer’s in-vehicle mobility technology, aiming at creating new automotive products and industrial services, to help create new values in vehicle interior spaces, where user interfaces are becoming complicated, and at industrial sites, where operational efficiency is strongly demanded.
Under the new group vision toward 2024, “Steering the way to the future,” Pioneer newly instituted Transformation Enforcement Division and its subordinate organizations, the Innovation Management Group and the Key Component Management Group, to enhance activities developing its unique key component technology and creating new values utilizing the technology. Moving forward, Pioneer will actively promote partnerships with other companies, as well as create new business opportunities that contribute to resolve social issues.
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