In connected car news are Tesla, Rivian, Fisker, Karma Automotive, ATWEC, Amperex, Honda, Volvo, Hagerty, Cirulor, Mitsubishi, Jinoid and Driivz and Renesas.
Tesla’s Battery & Price Cut
Telsa is expected reveal it’s super “Road Runner” battery and shareholder meeting on September 22 at its Fremont factory. The Tesla Model 3’s price has been cut by $3,000.
More Funding for New EV Startups
Rivian raised another $2.5 billion with funding from Soros Fund Management LLC, Coatue (a hedge fund), Fidelity Management and Research Company, and investment firm Baron Capital Group. Amazon and another previous investor, BlackRock, also participated in the funding round, which was advised by T. Rowe Price.
Fisker has received an addition $50 million in funding with the help of Louis Bacon’s investment firm, Moore Strategic Ventures, LLC and may go public with the help of Apollo Globel Managment.
With these proceeds, we will be able to support the next phase of engineering work on the Fisker Ocean, our all-electric luxury SUV due for launch in 2022,” announced Fisker Inc. in an email and news release.
Karma Automotive raised $100 million from and undisclosed source.
Porsche Clubbers Can Share Their Porsches
Hagerty DriveShare and Porsche Club of America (PCA) today announced a partnership that will allow PCA members to rent their cherished rides exclusively to fellow Club members if they so choose.
Aftermarket Child Reminder
ATWEC Technologies, Inc. a US-based technology company specializing in child safety announced the successful completion of its two recent pilot programs, validating the Company’s new KV-4™ child reminder systems for use in all school transport vehicles.
The Company was able to implement its unique child safety pilots at Arrow Christian Academy in College Park, GA and Kids Child Care Center, in West Memphis, AR, where the new units were tested by day care drivers and other key personnel.
Karma Partners with PATEO
Karma Automotive, the Southern California-based luxury electric vehicle manufacturer and the developer of advanced technologies in automotive industry, and PATEO, an IoV (input/output virtualization) enterprise combining the best of internet/consumer electronics and automotive, have partnered to integrate the PATEO Qing Mobile solution as a Proof of Concept (“POC”) , as a whole or in parts, to use in Karma Revero® GT vehicles.
Amperex & Honda Partner For New Battery Tech
– Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) (SZ: 300750) and Honda (TYO: 7267) have signed an agreement to form a comprehensive strategic alliance on new energy vehicle batteries to strengthen their strategic partnership and promote the popularization of e-mobility. This agreement will enable the two companies to begin discussions on a broad range of areas including joint development, stable supply, and the recycling and reuse of batteries.
Working Together to Speed up the Realization of Respective Strategies for Electrified Vehicles
By bringing together the two companies’ individual technology advantages, CATL and Honda will conduct joint development on NEVs batteries and joint R&D into fundamental technologies, aiming for their future application. CATL will provide stable supply of NEV batteries to Honda, mainly for battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The first model equipped with a CATL battery is scheduled to be launched in the Chinese market in 2022. This alliance will be further expanded to the global level in the future. Moreover, battery recycling and reuse also will be a topic in further discussions between CATL and Honda.
Volvo Invests in Blockchain Cirulor
Volvo Cars has made an investment in blockchain technology firm Circulor through the Volvo Cars Tech Fund, the company’s venture capital investment arm.
Circulor and Volvo Cars have been working together in recent years on the implementation of blockchain technology to boost the traceability of cobalt used in the batteries of its electric cars.
Circulor’s blockchain technology is today used throughout Volvo Cars’ battery supply chain, which will achieve 100 per cent traceability of cobalt used in the XC40 Recharge P8, its first fully electric car. Production of the XC40 Recharge P8 will start later this year in Ghent, Belgium.
The investment in Circulor by Volvo Cars allows both companies to expand their focus beyond cobalt, for example by looking at increasing traceability of mica, a mineral used as isolation material in the battery pack of electric Volvos.
Volvo Cars and Circulor are also investigating the possibility to expand their blockchain technology cooperation to other areas, for example tracking and reducing CO2 footprints, helping Circulor to potentially set standards for ethical sourcing in automotive and other industries.
The investment by the Volvo Cars Tech Fund is part of a funding round by Circulor, which also involves three other investors: SYSTEMIQ, Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures and Plug & Play Tech.
Mistubishi & Lexis Nexis Awarded
Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. (MMNA) announced it has received the 2020 Future Digital Awards Technology Award, Technology & Innovation Category, for its Road Assist+ smartphone app, which leverages LexisNexis telematics.
Mitsubishi Road Assist+, built in association with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, is the first hardware-free, smartphone-based application developed by an automaker that allows consumers the benefits of usage-based insurance even if their vehicle does not feature the required advanced connectivity and telematics hardware solutions. The app utilizes a smartphone’s GPS hardware and data-recording features to monitor driving behaviors and offer drivers personalized discounts and other exclusive Mitsubishi offers.
Jinoid Chooses Newsight CMOS
Jinoid Co., a leading sensor solution maker from South Korea announced that it has selected Newsight’s CMOS image sensors for its advanced smart vision and inspection sensors. Newsight’s NSI3000 line sensor, and NSI1000 area sensor have already successfully passed Jinoid’s evaluation, and the first batch of a thousand chips has been provided and assembled. The two companies intend to expand the collaboration to additional use cases.
Newsight’s sensor chips are being integrated into Jinoid’s four main industry 4.0 smart sensor families: The ZSC Series, a standalone sensing system for part inspection, The ZORP Series, which fits high speed pinhole inspection systems and can utilize Newsight’s ultra-high frame rate (up to 100,000 fps for one line of pixels in the NSI1000), The ZPE Series, which is a smart sensor for android based applications utilizing Newsight’s sensors’ flexible configuration features.
Newsight’s recently released the NSI1000 chip, with 32 lines of 1024 global shutter pixels, is a multi-mode sensor capable of supporting Newsight’s enhanced Time-Of-Flight, eTOF™. It works in multi-triangulation mode, which provides 32 ultra-accurate depth points concurrently, in-pixel accumulation and multi-set configuration, which can change the chip’s functionality from a regular camera to a depth camera, frame-by-frame.
MOL Chooses Driivz
MOL Group, an international oil and gas company headquartered in Budapest, has chosen Driivz technology to manage its electric vehicle (EV) charging network. Driivz provides a robust and scalable operating system for global EV charging with its end-to-end EV charging and energy management software platform.
MOL currently operates chargers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, and Romania, and by the end of 2020, EV drivers will be able to charge on the MOL network from the Czech border to the Adriatic and Black seas. The expanded charging infrastructure and services position MOL as a dominant player in the EV market in central and southeast Europe.
– As the coronavirus spread across the world and US, car theft saw a dramatic rise as well. TakeOver, a startup that developed a system that alerts car owners when their vehicle is being tampered with and disables any attempt to start the car, has expanded its advisory board with the addition of Brett Riggs.
The system is built in a way that makes it impossible to find its littlest chips in the car and even if one is found, it is almost impossible to complete the theft.
Renesas Intros Automotive Pressure Sensor
Renesas Electronics Corporation a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the ZSSC4132 – an automotive pressure sensor solution featuring an integrated certified LIN v2.2a interface. The single-package sensor signal conditioner (SSC) delivers best-in-class performance, increased design flexibility, and cost efficiency in a compact form factor for HVAC applications used in plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), and Fuel-cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) climate control systems.
The ZSSC4132 can be configured for nearly all resistive bridge sensors. This flexibility, combined with leading performance levels, an integrated LIN PHY, small package footprint, and AEC-Q100 Grade 0 qualifications, makes the SSC ideally suited for small automotive sensor modules with limited space, tight budget and end-of-line (EOL) calibration requirements.
The ZSSC4132 combines best-in-class analog front end (AFE) technology for enhanced sensor signal conditioning as well as digital calibration to significantly reduce the noise sensitivity and deliver high accuracy for pressure and temperature readings. The SSC’s integration reduces overall bill of material (BOM) requirements by minimizing the need for external components. In addition, the ZSSC4132’s unique digital calibration feature that allows customers to minimize calibration efforts, further reducing overall system costs.
Additional features include:
- LIN v2.2a certification with backwards compatibility to LIN v1.3, v2.0, and v2.1
- Differential bridge sensor input that enables accuracy at ±0.5% full scale output for temperatures ranging from -40°C to 150°C
- 12- to 14-bit ADC resolution
- Slave node position detection feature at the LIN bus, allowing the SSC to assign a unique ID to the device
- Overvoltage and reverse-polarity protection circuitry
- Electromagnetic compatibility
- Multiple diagnostic features