In connected car news are TSPs, AVL, Spireon, Solera, Ansys and TSR.
Aftermarket TSPs for Now OEMs Later
Aftermarket Telematics Service Providers (TSPs) currently dominate the commercial fleet telematics market, but this is about to change, as PTOLEMUS Consulting Group has found in its new Commercial Fleet Telematics Global Study.
PTOLEMUS forecasts that 83% of all new on- and off-road vehicles will have embedded telematics by 2024. The number of active fleet telematics subscriptions for on- and off-road fleet vehicles is expected to multiply sixfold, surpassing 150 million in 2030.
By then OEMs will be near parity with TSPs in the fleet management services market, worth €24 billion globally. The fastest growth will come from Asia Pacific, which will expand twice as fast as Europe and North America.
A free abstract of the 635-page report is available here.
Dr Andrew Jackson, Research Director at PTOLEMUS, said: “The majority of OEMs have adopted the strategy of offering free, but often time-limited, telematics solutions with new vehicle or machinery purchases. Scania and John Deere are good examples in this regard.”
This shift from third-party to embedded connectivity will strengthen OEMs’ positioning and help them become a major source of vehicle data for both fleets and TSPs. Furthermore, OEMs’ integrations with TSPs are on the rise, as the examples of Navistar´s partnerships with Geotab, Samsara and Cloudera as well as Daimler’s fully “open” Virtual Vehicle™ illustrate.
The report analyses the strategies, challenges and opportunities for all key players and demonstrates how telematics can provide a 10% cost reduction in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of commercial vehicles. Spanning 18 key countries and regions across 5 continents, the research includes in-depth profiles of 39 TSPs and OEMs. Its market forecasts to 2030 cover Light Commercial Vehicles (LCVs); Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs); buses and coaches; construction equipment such as excavators and backhoe loaders; mining vehicles; forestry vehicles and agricultural equipment including tractors and combines.
New Daimler Name
Daimler AG became Mercedes-Benz Group AG on February 1, 2022. Following the successful stock market debut of Daimler Truck, the Group’s renewed focus on the automotive business is being underlined with a new name. The world-famous brand Mercedes-Benz was created in 1926 when the predecessor companies of Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler were merged with the aim of revolutionizing automobile production. The two pioneers had already presented their ground-breaking inventions independently of each other in 1886, heralding the beginning of the automotive age. In the course of the renaming of Daimler AG to Mercedes-Benz Group AG, the company’s stock exchange symbol also changes from »DAI« to »MBG«. There will be no further changes for the shareholders. The shares of the Mercedes-Benz Group AG will remain listed on Germany’s blue-chip DAX stock index.
MercuryGo in NJ
Mercury Insurance announced that the company has made its usage-based insurance app, MercuryGO, available to drivers in New Jersey to help improve driving skills and traffic safety. The app acts as a virtual driving coach, providing skill scores that give real-time feedback about driving behavior. Mercury auto insurance policyholders who enroll to use the app immediately receive a 5% participation discount and teen drivers will receive up to a 10% discount. Then, when MercuryGO customers renew their policies, they could receive a discount of up to 40% in addition to their participation discount, depending upon their driving score.
New AVL Name
AVL, the world’s largest independent company for development, simulation, and testing in the automotive industry and beyond, has reconfirmed its leadership in the mobility space with a division renaming. Going forward, the company’s North American Powertrain Engineering division will be known as “AVL Mobility Technologies, Inc.”
“As a company, we have moved well past traditional powertrains and now our name reflects our strength in new technologies,” said Stephan Tarnutzer, President of AVL Mobility Technologies, Inc. “At AVL, we create a better world by driving the trends of tomorrow through our technology leadership in sustainable mobility solutions.” The division renaming also kicks off an initiative for the company to bring further awareness to the shift in mobility trends.
As evidenced by its “Reimagining Motion” theme at CES earlier this year, AVL is highlighting the company’s pioneering spirit and commitment to technology leadership in the mobility space. Day in and day out, the company’s 11,000+ employees worldwide are forging new ideas, creating exciting breakthroughs, and providing solutions for e-mobility, fuel cell, battery, ADAS/AD, data intelligence, and embedded systems for all types of vehicles.
AVL continues to lead the way with ADAS/AD technologies including the AVL Ajunic® compute platform, AVL DRIVINGCUBE™ vehicle-in-the-loop system, and Big Data and Analytics Platform. Additional products like the AVL Flexible Energy Storage System, High Voltage Junction Box, and comprehensive scenario-based and virtual validation tools have helped redefine and elevate customers’ goals. These technologies serve as the backbone of many projects and partnerships AVL has formed with leading mobility companies. With its rich history of inventions and patents, AVL has truly been “Reimagining Motion” since 1948.
Solera Buys Spireon
Spireon currently serves over 13,000 customers in the automotive, fleet, trailer and asset sectors with nearly 4 million connected devices that generate over 900 billion discrete data points on its cloud native IoT platform each year. Spireon delivers powerful insights to help customers in these sectors track, manage and protect their most valuable assets.
“This acquisition is strategically aligned with our existing fleet and
Ansys 2022R1 & AWS
Ansys (NASDAQ: ANSS) software and services reduce obstacles to enable customers to solve today’s complex engineering challenges. Engineering simulation has expanded beyond highly specialized experts and into mainstream product design and development, enabling more companies to save time, reduce costs, and innovate. At the same time, engineering complexity has skyrocketed, requiring organizations to scale like never before, driving demand for advanced computing resources and cross-discipline engineering solutions. The new products, technologies, and tools that make up Ansys 2022 R1 enable experts to go deep with custom workflows for industry-specific applications while also extending broad ease-of-use features that turbocharge collaboration across teams.
“Schneider Electric leverages Ansys simulation to accelerate key business initiatives, improving the quality of our products while making them smarter. This is an enabler of our vision for a more sustainable, energy-efficient future,” said Jayaraman Raghuraman, senior vice president of Schneider Electric. “Ansys expertise and cutting-edge technology accelerate our digital transformation and help us simplify the application landscape across our engineering organization.”
New, industry-focused solutions are expanding the definition of what is possible. Ansys 2022 R1 includes a dedicated aerospace workspace in Ansys Fluent that tailors the user interface to external aerodynamics simulations, enabling aircraft designers to evaluate aircraft efficiency and study dynamics from subsonic to very high-speed flows. Similarly, the new Ansys Forming product enables engineers to digitally design and validate every step of the sheet metal forming process commonly found in automotive, appliances, aerospace, and packaged goods industries. Ansys RF Advisor On Demand is targeted specifically to help engineers solve the challenge of radio frequency interference for the next generation of high-tech devices.
With 2022 R1, Ansys continues to bring ground-breaking technologies to address printed circuit board (PCB) and 3D IC (integrated circuit) package design challenges as well as advancements in 5G, autonomous, and electrification simulation. Building on the success of HFSS Mesh Fusion, the introduction of the Phi Plus meshing technology brings extraordinary speed and robustness to complex system simulation including 3D IC packaging challenges. In semiconductors, 2022 R1 introduces RedHawk-SC SigmaDVD, a technology breakthrough that identifies the worst-case dynamic voltage-drop in hours instead of months. This novel, statistically realistic modeling technique makes it possible to achieve near 100% coverage of all relevant switching scenarios of neighboring cells, making chip designs more robust and giving chip designers greatly expanded confidence in RedHawk-SC’s golden signoff analysis. New workflows and integrations in Ansys 2022 R1 produce even greater insight into product performance. In this latest release, Ansys Sherlock features a new, semi-automated workflow that takes advantage of integrations with Ansys AEDT Icepak to deliver more predictively accurate thermal analysis simulations for PCBs.
Ansys (NASDAQ: ANSS) announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), identifying the CSP as the preferred and recommended partner for Ansys Gateway powered by AWS. The collaboration will enable deployment of Ansys products on AWS — making simulation workloads more user-friendly, while offering scalability and flexibility with easy access to software and storage solutions from anywhere with a web browser. By leveraging connected ecosystem applications in a cloud environment, Ansys customers will reduce time to market, reduce costs, and innovate faster.
Building on a longstanding relationship, the newly formed collaboration will provide a browser-based, location-independent solution for Ansys customers — particularly product developers, designers, and engineers that have traditionally utilized on-prem HPC resources. Customers will manage and advance their complete CAE, EDA, and Computer-aided design (CAD) product development in the cloud by leveraging scale, flexibility, elasticity, and global reach of AWS.
AWS offers an extensive framework, including products ranging from compute, storage, internet of things (IoT), Digital Twin, analytics and machine learning that Ansys can integrate.
With Ansys Gateway powered by AWS customers will be able to access Ansys applications, enabling faster, flexible, and highly-scalable engineering simulations. In addition to reducing time to market, customers will be able to reduce costs by paying for cloud resources only when they are being used. Ansys Gateway powered by AWS will be available in the AWS Marketplace, allowing customers to access their existing Ansys software applications and will be able to create, customize, and connect Ansys software with 3rd party applications using minimal technical skills via a user-friendly interface.
“This is an exciting opportunity to combine the forces of Ansys and AWS to help customers innovate faster. This work will make it easier for customers to use Ansys’s comprehensive portfolio of engineering simulation products leveraging a secure, reliable and agile cloud. It will remove barriers to scale globally for customers and they can perform more simulations and they can do so earlier in the design process,” said Bill Vass, Vice President of Engineering at AWS.
The benefits of cloud computing are far reaching with the ability to deploy globally in minutes to all target platforms. As an added benefit, customers maintain full control of their data throughout all projects, ensuring security.
“Cloud computing accelerates and expands simulation by removing hardware barriers and computer restrictions, streamlining all processes and workflows,” said Shane Emswiler, Senior Vice President of Products at Ansys. “By leveraging Ansys Gateway powered by AWS customers will have a stronger, three-layered approach to boost their innovation and efficiency by doing more simulations, faster, and with more flexibility on AWS.”
TSR Study Shows How to Improve Driver Experience
Together for Safer Roads (TSR), a global NGO working to prevent road fatalities, released a new study “Driver Attitudes Towards Vehicle Safety Technology.” The research digs into what makes drivers reluctant to adopt in-cab camera technology and what can be done to positively influence perceptions. TSR surveyed over 500 professional drivers to examine differences in attitudes toward technology, including driver-facing dash cameras.
TSR understands improving the driver experience is critically important, especially amid the current labor shortage and demand for delivery. Vehicle safety technology is proven to reduce risky driving and save lives. Implemented correctly, in-cab technology can not only improve the professional driver experience but their personal driving experience as well, making roads safer for all.
Key findings from TSR’s research include:
- In-Cab Technology Improves Driver Safety: How in-cab cameras help drivers become safer behind the wheel. Over a quarter of respondents recall avoiding a crash due to in-cab alerts, and more than 1 in 5 have been exonerated based on in-cab footage.
- Driver Trust in Technology Increases with Personal Experience: When drivers have the most concern about in-cab technology, and how that shifts based on usage. In fact, 7 in 10 drivers equipped with in-cab technology find all forms of technology acceptable.
- Managers Can Accelerate Adoption: Transparent communication from management prior to and during the installation of in-cab cameras is important, so the report offers advice on how to manage the adoption experience to create a stronger safety culture.
“Making technology work isn’t as simple as plugging a box into a truck; it takes clear communication, coaching and buy-in,” said Noah Budnick, executive director, Together for Safer Roads. “Fleet safety management is human resources management. To get the most out of technologies that can reduce risk on the road, senior fleet staff need to work closely with drivers. They need to explain how technology works, when and how it will be used and how it helps everyone get home safely at the end of the day. Though roads have been getting more dangerous in recent years, fleets and professional drivers can be leaders in changing this.”
TSR was able to complete this study through the cooperation of its partners, notably the Global Leadership Council for Fleet Safety, and research partners Qworky. The survey was conducted in conjunction with TSR’s FOCUS on Fleet Safety program, a workforce development program for small- to mid-sized fleets, utilizing the industry’s best practices. Through this program, TSR helps organizations adopt strong safety cultures based on fairness, openness, capability, unity and sustainability.
For more information on TSR and to download the full study, please visit https://www.togetherforsaferroads.org/driver-attitudes-in-cab-cameras/.