In connected car news are Toyoda, Ossia, Toyota, BluE Nexus, Workhors, GEO Semi, ZF and Elektrobit.
Toyoda Partners with Ossia
Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. has concluded a joint development agreement with Ossia Inc., a U.S. startup that leads the world in the field of wireless power solutions. The two companies will work to apply wireless power technology in vehicle cabins, smart cities, and more.
In recent years, Toyoda Gosei has focused increasingly on innovations that leverage its core technologies in order to achieve sustainable growth during a time of great upheaval in the automotive industry. With the aim of pioneering new businesses and adapting automotive products for CASE/MaaS technologies, the company is accelerating open innovation by partnering with startups and research institutes that promise synergy with its key strengths. In one such effort, it has been developing wireless power technology since 2014. That led in 2018 to the launch of the world’s first automotive interior equipped with LEDs that are wirelessly powered based on magnetic resonant coupling.
Ossia, founded in 2008 and headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is dedicated to improving and advancing daily living through the worldwide supply of Cota® Real Wireless Power™, the company’s patented technology designed to deliver power over air without cables. This world-first technology employs microwaves and simultaneously powers multiple devices at distances of several meters. The technology received a CES 2019 Innovation Award, and is recognized globally.
Toyoda Gosei began collaborating with Ossia through an initial corporate venture capital investment in September 2019. This joint development agreement will bring the companies into stronger partnership and accelerate wirelessly powered inventions for a safer and more comfortable society.
Features of Cota technology
(1) Efficient power transmission
- Selectively powers devices with directional microwaves.
- Microwaves follow the movement of receiving devices.
(2) Secure transmission
- Selectively powers authenticated devices.
(3) Safe for humans
- Microwaves follow the path of signals that go around the human body.
BluE Nexus and Toyota
BluE Nexus Corporation (BluE Nexus) and Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) announced today that they will collaborate to prepare for the accelerated adoption of electrified vehicles by working together to increase their competitiveness in products related to electrification as well as to fortify their sales structure, including their technical support and services, among others, rendered to their customers.
Since its establishment in April 2019, BluE Nexus has been engaged in the development and sales of electric drive modules essential for electrified vehicles and in control calibration services for such modules. Meanwhile, Toyota, applying its strengths as a manufacturer of completed vehicles, has been selling entire vehicle powertrain systems, such as the Toyota Hybrid System, to other companies.
As they look toward the accelerated adoption of electrified vehicles, BluE Nexus and Toyota aim to join forces and use their core competencies, namely Toyota’s control calibration technologies for engines, batteries, and other major peripheral components as well as BluE Nexus’s well-developed lineup of electric drive modules, to respond to requests from all types of customers around the world.
Additionally, Toyota will provide a new investment contribution, taking a 10 percent stake of BluE Nexus to achieve this goal. Going forward, BluE Nexus and Toyota will work together to establish a sales structure wherein they will be able to mutually apply their core competencies, with BluE Nexus serving as the primary sales contact for electrification systems* and Toyota providing technological support.
BluE Nexus and Toyota intend to strengthen their competitiveness in electrification systems and to contribute to the further adoption of electrified vehicles toward realizing a sustainable society.
Workorse Gets HVIP from CARB
Workhorse Group Inc. (Nasdaq: WKHS) (“Workhorse” or the “Company”), an American technology company focused on providing sustainable and cost-effective drone-integrated electric vehicles to the last-mile delivery sector, announced that its C-Series all-electric delivery trucks have been deemed eligible for the Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (“HVIP”) program by the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”)
GLM Sic Inverter
GLM Co., Ltd., a Kyoto, Japan-based developer and marketer of electric vehicles (EVs), has announced the next phase in its development of a “next-generation SiC inverter-compatible 800V system” equipped with a ROHM SiC power module, which GLM announced with ROHM at the start of its development in February 2020, aiming for mass production in the next 24 months.
GEO Semi’s New Designs
GEO Semiconductor Inc. (“GEO”), the market leader in camera video processors (CVP) for automotive cameras, announced new design wins for Autonomous and ADAS system applications using the GW53x0 product and supporting high resolution and HDR processing.
GEO’s application specific camera video processors include both the GW4 and GW5 product lines. These products feature world class high dynamic range image processing, geometric processing, featuring GEO’s eWARP™ technology, overlay graphics, and in the case of the GW54x0, a DSP processor for computer vision processing.
Leveraging a versatile design architecture with a small package footprint, low power design, and low cost, without requiring an external DRAM memory, the GW4 and GW5 products stand out as a solution to a number of camera and video applications in the fast developing automotive market.
GEO is engaged with multiple OEMs and industry processor partners for Advanced Driver Assistance (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) system solutions. For these applications GEO’s GW53x0 product supports high resolution (8 megapixel), high dynamic range automotive image sensors with unique Color Filter Array patterns such as RGGB, RCCB, and RYYCy. The GW53x0 enables customers to customize the image quality to support viewing outputs as well as optimizing the tuning to feed today’s Computer Vision processors for decision making in ADAS or AD applications.
– Features Mobileye’s EyeQ4 combining the most advanced object recognition technology with ZF’s longitudinal and lateral vehicle control expertise
ZF Intros S-Cam4.8 with Mobileye Tech
ZF, the world’s leading supplier of automotive cameras, announced it has launched its S-Cam4.8 with enhanced vision technology from Mobileye, an Intel Company, on the new Nissan Rogue in the U.S.
Among the first ever cameras to offer the capability of a 100-degree horizontal field of view, the S-Cam4.8 represents another important step forward in meeting future Euro NCAP 5-Star Safety Ratings and IIHS Top Safety Pick+ requirements as well as General Safety Regulations that require increasingly stringent test protocols for safety critical systems.
“The S-Cam 4.8 will offer ZF customers the opportunity to further refine systems like Automatic Emergency Braking for pedestrians and cyclists while offering best-in-class lane keeping system performance,” said Christophe Marnat, executive vice president and general manager of ZF’s Electronics and ADAS division. “It will also offer the prospect of more semi-automated driving convenience functions like Highway Driving and Traffic Jam Assist, and ZF can provide these technologies across the full spectrum of light vehicles.”
ZF and its long-time partner Mobileye, designs, develops and delivers advanced camera systems based on Mobileye’s EyeQ4 processor for advanced object recognition technology that can be particularly effective in helping protect vulnerable road users. ZF incorporates this technology in its innovative S-Cam camera family, which also includes an industry-first premium three lens Tri-Cam4 version to support advanced semi-automated driving functions, adding a telephoto lens for improved long-distance sensing capabilities and a fish-eye lens for improved short-range sensing with a wider field of view.
“Mobileye continues to lead the industry as it transitions towards wider FOV cameras which enhance the capacity of automatic emergency braking to address a wider range of scenarios where objects are crossing into the car’s path or where the car is turning,” said Mr. Tomer Baba, Mobileye Vice President for Sensing Algorithms. “The wider FOV also allows lane-keeping and lane-centering applications to better handle sharp curves.”
ZF supplies more than a dozen vehicle manufacturers globally with advanced ADAS sensor technologies including front-facing cameras, mid- and full-range radar and LiDAR. These technologies are designed and tested according to rigorous automotive and customer requirements. In this way, ZF is enabling vehicle manufacturers to help improve vehicle safety and to make advanced comfort functions available to their customers.
For light passenger vehicles in the near term, ZF is focusing on Level 2/2+ systems that utilize advanced camera technologies like the S-Cam4.8 and Tri-Cam4 for leading global automakers and will launch its coAssist Level2+ system, the most affordable Level2+ system available at well under $1,000, with a major Asian automaker later this year.
Spitsville for TRI
Toyota Research Institute – Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD) will expand and improve its operations by forming a holding company and two operating companies, with effect from January 2021.
The holding company will be Woven Planet Holdings, Inc. (Woven Planet Holdings), and the two operating companies will be Woven CORE, Inc. (Woven CORE), which will develop, implement and scale automated driving technologies, and Woven Alpha, Inc. (Woven Alpha), which will explore new business opportunities and incubate projects that go beyond today’s Toyota Motor Corporation, such as Woven City, Arene (*1), and Automated Mapping Platform (*2) (AMP)/
EB Guides GUIDE
Elektrobit (EB), a visionary global supplier of embedded and connected software products for the automotive industry, provides EB GUIDE, its all-in-one HMI development toolchain to global and leading car electronics manufacturer Pioneer Co., Ltd., for the development of its state-of-the-art, newly launched display audio systems DMH-SF700 and DMH-SZ700.
For the development of its latest display audio models, Pioneer relied on EB GUIDE, a unique set of products, that allows car makers and Tier 1s to build holistic user interfaces for the cutting-edge user experience that drivers and passengers expect in their cars. The model-based development approach of Elektrobit’s collaborative development toolchain enabled Pioneer HMI software developers to focus on efficient UI development, resulting in improved productivity, reduced development times, and faster time to series production.
“EB GUIDE is a toolchain that can realize graphical user interfaces with all the functions required for HMI development and that helped to reduce our development costs,” commented Mr. Yosuke Sato, MPC Technology Group, Pioneer Co., Ltd. “We were able to develop our HMI efficiently with the data-binding function that doesn’t require complicated design. As it supports multiple languages, it can be used to develop a wide variety of products to the global market. Its modular approach allows us to reuse the assets created with EB GUIDE for other platforms in the long term. Active support from Elektrobit (EB) also aided our development project smoothly in a short period of time.”
The innovative EB GUIDE toolchain incorporates a complete suite of products that enables car makers, automotive suppliers, and software developers to design, develop, test, and deploy advanced human-machine interfaces (HMIs) on any device including vehicle head units, head-up displays, and instrument clusters. With a unique feature set designed to optimize team collaboration, EB GUIDE facilitates the world’s most sophisticated automotive interfaces and has already been used to develop the HMI systems in more than 50 million cars on the road.
