Connected Car News: BASF, Toyota, Lion Electric, AllOver Media, ATLIS , Volvo, Analog Devices, Hyundai Mobis, Netradyne & Renesas

In connected car news are BASF, Toyota Mobility, May Mobility and Udelv, Lion Electric, Toyota, AllOver Media, ATLIS Motor Motor Vehicles, Volvo, Analog Devices, Hyundai Mobis, Netradyne, Renesas and EPC.

BASF PPA Ultramid

BASF is now expanding its polyphthalamide (PPA) portfolio of Ultramid® Advanced with carbon-fiber reinforced grades with fillings of 20, 30 and 40 percent. The benefits of these new materials: They make for extremely lightweight parts, can safely replace aluminum and magnesium without loss in stiffness and strength and are electrically conductive. The new grades combine these properties with the advantages of Ultramid® Advanced N (PA9T) which makes them unique among carbon-fiber reinforced PPAs already available in the market: high dimensional stability due to low water uptake, excellent chemical and hydrolysis resistance, high strength and modulus. The new carbon-fiber (CF) reinforced grades can be used to manufacture automotive structural parts for body, chassis and powertrain, for pumps, fans, gears and compressors in industrial applications as well as for stable and ultra-lightweight components in consumer electronics. With this offering, BASF complements its PPA portfolio of more than 50 grades already available on the market.

The mechanical performance of the new carbon-fiber reinforced PPA grades can be tuned by the choice and the content of the carbon fiber as well as by the additive technology. Ultramid® Advanced N3HC8 with 40% carbon fiber filling shows a better strength and modulus at 80°C (conditioned) than magnesium or aluminum. “Our new PPA compounds with carbon fibers are the ideal metal replacement”, says Michael Pilarski from PPA business management at BASF. “And this not only from a material property point of view. Lately, we have seen safety issues at magnesium producers in different countries, which makes the supply rather unpredictable. Producing parts out of magnesium or aluminum also requires additional post-processing and tooling which increases system costs. Given the opportunities for 25 to 30% weight reduction with our new PPA grades, we can offer a safe, cost-efficient and high-performance alternative for parts traditionally manufactured from metal.”

Toyota Mobility Foundation & Energy Systems Network Works with May Mobility & Udelv

The Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) and Energy Systems Network (ESN) designates May  Mobility and Udelv as the first two deployments of the Future Mobility District initiative. The Future Mobility District initiative, established in collaboration with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), aims to foster innovation through industry partnerships and propel research and development in advanced mobility technologies in Indiana. TMF has established the Future Mobility District initiative in support of Toyota’s mission of Mobility for All and commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in this case to the Goal # 11 of Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Phillips 66 and Faradion, one of the U.K.-based companies behind the first demonstration of a sodium-ion powered vehicle, have launched a technical collaboration to develop lower-cost and higher-performing anode materials for sodium-ion batteries.

Sodium-ion battery technology has an inherent advantage over other power-storage technologies because it uses low-cost materials that are sustainable and widely available. Carbon is the preferred anode material for the batteries, and the collaboration is expected to leverage Phillips 66’s experience developing specialty carbon materials and Faradion’s work as a leader in sodium-ion battery technology.

The Secure Technology Alliance today released a white paper outlining a path to an open payment infrastructure for paying for electric vehicle (EV) charging. Today, drivers must set up an account or membership with each charge point operator (CPO) to charge at their station. With at least 10 EV CPOs and over 20,000 charging stations in North America, an open payment infrastructure can greatly improve the user experience from one station to the next.

The white paper, “Electric Vehicle Charging Open Payment Framework with ISO 15118,” is available for download at https://www.securetechalliance.org/publications-electric-vehicle-charging-open-payment-framework-with-iso-15118/.

LAUSD Orders Lion Electric Electric Buses

Lion Electric (Lion), a leading manufacturer of all-electric medium and heavy-duty urban vehicles, today announced that it has secured an order for its all-electric school buses from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). This initial order of 10 LionC school buses, which follows Lion’s recent delivery of all-electric school buses to the Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento, further solidifies Lion’s leadership in zero-emission school buses in California and North America

TMNA Pledges $1 Million in Aid  to Texas

With Winter Storm Uri leaving millions of Texans without power or water last week, North Texas-based Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) has pledged $1 million in relief for storm victims.  The aid will serve both customers and a variety of Texas-based non-profit organizations.

The $1 million relief effort includes:

North Texas/DFW Metroplex

  • United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, in support of North Texas Cares and West Dallas nonprofits to quickly distribute funds to grassroots organizations: $450,000
  • North Texas Food Bank: $100,000
  • The Family Place and Genesis Women’s Shelter to fund hotel rooms, food, and transportation for their clients: $30,000
  • Toyota employees will be able to support the needs of four North Texas community partners significantly impacted by the storms by purchasing items from their Amazon Wish Lists.

San Antonio

  • SAWS Community Pipe Repair Fund, through the San Antonio Area Foundation to assist individuals and families stay in their homes safely with funds for plumbing repairs: $100,000
  • Let’s Help SA Fund to provide food, water and shelter: $200,000

Houston

  • United Way of Greater Houston to support the Greater Houston 2021 Winter Storm Relief Fund that supports local home repairs: $50,000
  • Houston Food Bank: $50,000
  • CrowdSource Rescue to provide food, water and fuel: $20,000

Toyota offers support to all U.S.-based employees with their personal recovery efforts from unexpected catastrophic events.  Additionally, Toyota will match up to $10,000 in individual employee contributions to nonprofit organizations recovering from the storm.

Toyota Financial Services (TFS) announced it is offering payment relief options to customers affected by the storms. This broad outreach includes any TFS or Lexus Financial Services customer in the designated disaster areas.  Impacted lease and finance customers residing in affected areas may be eligible to take advantage of several payment relief options, some of which include:

  • extensions and lease deferred payments
  • redirecting billing statements
  • arranging phone or online payments.

AllOver Media Sells OBE Power Sponsorships

AllOver Media, LLC, the nation’s largest alternative Out-Of-Home advertising company, announced a long-term partnership with OBE Power to sell sponsorships on their fast-growing network of Electric Vehicle charging stations.

GreenPower Motor Company Inc.  a leading manufacturer and distributor of zero-emission, electric-powered medium and heavy-duty vehicles, today announced that it has received an order from Zeem Solutions for 30 GreenPower EV Stars.

Zeem Solutions provides e-mobility logistics solutions for small, medium and large fleet operators across the United States, offering a comprehensive solution that includes the vehicle, maintenance, charging and infrastructure for one monthly cost. Zeem’s order will consist of five different seating layouts, including wheelchair accessible units and also cargo configurations.  The EV Stars sold to Zeem were previously on lease to Green Commuter.

ATLIS Motor Vehicles & Clemson University Partner for Better EV Charging

ATLIS Motor Vehicles, Inc. and Clemson University have partnered to advance development of electric-vehicle batteries that charge faster, last longer and can be scaled to fit a variety of vehicle classes.

ATLIS, a startup company based in Arizona, is developing battery cells and packs to power the Atlis XP Platform and XT pickup truck. The associated battery research is being jointly executed at the Clemson Nanomaterials Institute (CNI). To further advance the technology, ATLIS and Clemson executed a three-year master research agreement led by CNI founder and director Apparao Rao, an expert in nanomaterials, the R. A. Bowen professor of physics, and a Fellow of four prestigious societies – the American Physical Society, American Association for Advancement of Science, National Academy of Inventors and the Materials Research Society. Rao’s research is focused on understanding and exploiting the properties of nanomaterials for energy harvesting and energy storage.

At CNI, Professor Rao along with his research associates and students will assist ATLIS with further development of their battery technology. Unlike existing cell designs, the ATLIS battery will utilize custom coatings to strike a balance between energy and power. These coatings, coupled with a special mechanical construction, will lead to optimized energy capacity and reduced charging time.

Volvo XC40 Recharge with ADI’s ICs

Analog Devices, Inc.  and Volvo Cars today announced that Volvo Cars’ first pure electric SUV—the Volvo XC40 Recharge—will feature ADI’s integrated circuits (ICs) that support the battery management system (BMS) and Automotive Audio Bus® (A2B). By saving vehicle weight and maximizing range, these advanced technologies deliver an attractive total cost of ownership for electric vehicles while also supporting a sustainable future.

The Volvo XC40 P8 Recharge was a 2021 semi-finalist in the North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year™ Awards (NACTOY) utility vehicle category. The NACTOY Awards honor excellence in innovation, design, safety, handling, driver satisfaction and value. The awards are intended to recognize the most outstanding new vehicles of the year.

Hyundai Mobis Developes Bendable HLED

Hyundai Mobis announced that the company became the first in the world to develop an HLED that can be bent flexibly like a thin film. Now, a single LED can serve as both the stop lamp and the tail lamp at the same time with only 5.5mm thickness of the LED surface.

Hyundai Mobis named this new rear lamp system HLED, which signifies high performance, high definition and homogeneity.

Most vehicles today have the tail lamp and stop lamp separately under the safety laws. According to the laws, the stop lamp must be much brighter than the tail lamp.

However, the HLED, developed by Hyundai Mobis, allows the tail lamp and the stop lamp to be implemented with a single LED by just controlling the light with electrical signals.

Moreover, the HLED can generate bright and uniform stop light even when it is bent by emitting light in five different directions. As a result, the rear lamp will be more visible to the drivers of the vehicles approaching from the rear and side.

Compared to the existing ream lamp, HLED can create various lamp design since it can be bent or curved. It is also possible to secure more space and offer lower weight, as it removes all the internal components used for existing rear lamp by controlling light with the new LED alone.

Hyundai Mobis has passed the reliability tests of Europe (ECE) and the US (SAE) related to tail lamps and stop lamps. It has already received orders from European automakers and is currently conducting mass-production development of HLED.

Netradyne  Intros DriveriHub

Netradyne, a leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Edge Computing focusing on driver and fleet safety, announced the expansion of the Driveri product portfolio with the availability of DriveriHub®. Designed for expandability, DriveriHub is bundled as an accessory to Driveri® and enables customers to add up to four additional cameras to their existing installation for a complete 360-degree exterior view around the entire vehicle. With additional cameras connected to DriveriHub, drivers and fleets can now safely and securely view the entire vehicle for the full driving day.

While Netradyne’s Driveri D-410 and D-210 help fleets of all sizes improve their overall safe driving experience through positive driving recognition, automated coaching and the industry’s most advanced patented AI and object detection, the views covered by the core Driveri devices see forward, in-cab and to both sides of the vehicle, enough to ensure safe driving in all road conditions. The additional cameras connected to the DriveriHub expand those views depending on the needs of the fleet. From interior views for school buses to down the side of a trailer or rear of the vehicle, DriveriHub uses standard Wifi to ensure every scenario a fleet could consider is covered. This includes trucks that have freight loading in the back, waste management on both sides or back, and oil and gas vehicles to view sensitive areas like valve connections. All camera views are available to the driver while in the cab, ensuring the driver has full control and can safely operate the fleet vehicle at all times.

DriveriHub is typically installed inside a vehicle while the cameras are wired outside of the vehicle. With WIFI connectivity to the Driveri device, DriveriHub uses the same high-quality HD video for added visibility. Customers can seamlessly request videos over the fleet manager portal for coaching or event analysis. DriveriHub includes support for an in-cab monitor designed for the driver, for a complete view of all camera angles.

Powered by Edge Computing and AI, Driveri is a vision-based safety platform that leverages a camera system looking both within and outside the vehicle to continuously analyze driving scenes and road data while monitoring a drivers behavior using AI embedded directly into the edge computing device. It captures diverse roads and traffic scenarios such as commercial driveways, temporary road closures, frontage roads, school zones and more. To date, Driveri has captured over 1.2M positive driving events leading to better driver recognition and improved retention. In addition, the system has recorded over three billion minutes “seeing” events that legacy “trigger-based” camera systems would not.

Renesas & LUPA Intro EagleCAM

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and LUPA-Electronics GmbH, an automotive safety solution provider, today announced the EagleCAM module, an open front camera solution, featuring Renesas’ R-Car V3H and R-Car V3M system-on-chip (SoC) devices. The all-in-one scalable camera platform targets the latest Euro NCAP and C-NCAP requirements, such as automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping assist, and traffic sign recognition. The jointly-developed solutions enables OEMs and Tier 1s to differentiate and extend their offering by integrating their proprietary or third-party software that adds additional driving features.

Most smart camera turnkey solutions on the market today take a black box solution approach, making it challenging for OEMs and Tier 1s to address changing market demands and slowing down development. With EagleCAM featuring R-Car SoCs, Renesas and LUPA introduce an open turnkey solution that delivers flexible, high-performance perception while shortening time to market and reducing the bill of materials (BOM) costs.

Voltaiq Adds Advisory Board Advisors

Voltaiq, the leader in Enterprise Battery Intelligence™ (EBI) software, announced additions to their Advisory Board representing industry trailblazers among automotive, consumer electronics and battery cell manufacturers. This group of thought leaders from around the world brings together expertise to solve global challenges in understanding and optimizing battery behavior in real-world application settings. The new board members include: Carl-Peter Forster, Former CEO and President of General Motors Europe; Robert Galyen, Chairman of Galyen Energy LLC; Peter Haeussermann, General Manager of Mitsubishi Electric; Chris Perry, Chief Innovation Officer at Weber Shandwick; Richard Spitzer, Founder and Managing Partner at Escavel Capital; Dr. V. Sumantran, Chairman at Celeris Technologies; Ralph Szygenda, Chairman & CEO, RJS Solutions; Martin Thall, President of Auto Tech Partners; Rick Wagoner, Director at ChargePoint Inc.; Kevin Whalen, President of Rohrich Automotive Group.

EPC New Laser Driver

EPC announces the introduction of a laser driver that integrates a 40 V, 10 A FET with integrated gate driver and 3.3 logic level input in a single chip for time-of-flight lidar systems used in robotics, surveillance systems, drones, autonomous cars, and vacuum cleaners.

EPC21601 is a laser driver that is controlled using 3.3 V logic and is capable of very high frequencies exceeding 100 MHz and super short pulses < 2 ns to modulate laser driving currents up to 10 A. Turn-on and turn-off times are 410 ps and 320 ps respectively. The EPC21601 is a single-chip driver plus eGaN® FET using EPC’s proprietary GaN IC technology in a chip-scale BGA form factor that measures only 1.5 mm x 1.0 mm. With this small form factor and the integration of several functions, the overall solution that is 36% smaller on the printed circuit board (PCB) compared to an equivalent multi-chip discrete implementation.

The EPC21601 is the first offering in what will be a wide-range family of integrated laser drive ICs available in chip-scale package (CSP). Integrated devices in a single chip are easier to design, easier to layout, easier to assemble, save space on the PCB, increase efficiency, and reduce cost.