In connected car news are Honda, IBM, Daimler Truck, Volvo, Dassult, JLR, CarIQ, Applied Information, Currux Vision, LG Innotek, MHP and NVIDIA.
Honda & IBM SDV Future
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda) announced that Honda and IBM have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) outlining their intent to collaborate on the long-term joint research and development of next-generation computing technologies*1 needed to overcome challenges related to processing capability, power consumption, and design complexity for the realization of the software-defined vehicles (SDV) of the future.
The application of intelligence/AI technologies is expected to accelerate widely in 2030 and beyond, creating new opportunities for the development of SDVs. Honda and IBM anticipate that SDVs will dramatically increase the design complexity, processing performance, and corresponding power consumption of semiconductors compared to conventional mobility products. In order to solve anticipated challenges and realize highly-competitive SDVs, it is critical to develop capabilities in the independent research and development of next-generation computing technologies. Based on this understanding, the two companies began considering long-term joint research and development opportunities.
In particular, the MOU outlines areas of potential joint research of specialized semiconductor technologies such as brain-inspired computing*2 and chiplet technologies, with the aim to dramatically improve processing performance while, simultaneously, decreasing power consumption. Hardware and software co-optimization is important to ensure high performance and fast time to market. To achieve such benefits and manage design complexity for future SDVs, the two companies also plan to explore open and flexible software solutions.
Through this collaboration, the two companies would strive to realize SDVs that feature the world’s top-level computing and power saving performance.
*1 Computing technology being developed with an aim to achieve both high processing performance and low power consumption in the 2030s and beyond.
*2 Computer architecture and algorithms that mimic the brain’s structure and function while optimizing for silicon.
As two leading companies in the commercial vehicle industry, Daimler Truck and Volvo Group share the ambition to lead the digital transformation to software-defined heavy-duty commercial vehicles. To amplify their efforts, both companies have reached a preliminary agreement to establish a joint venture to develop a common software-defined vehicle platform and dedicated truck operating system, providing the basis for future software-defined commercial vehicles. The intention is to make the new joint venture a leading developer of standardized hardware and software. This technical basis will then enable Daimler Truck and Volvo Group and potentially other partners to provide differentiating digital vehicle features for its products ultimately enhancing customer efficiency and experience.
Daimler Truck & Volvo SDV 50/50
Daimler Truck and Volvo Group intend to be 50/50 partners in the joint venture, which will operate as an independent entity, with Daimler Truck and Volvo Group continuing to be competitors in all other areas of business. In the context of the already heavy-investments into the transformation towards CO2-neutral drive technologies, cooperation on digital technology development has become even more vital to best meet development objectives and customer expectations within a feasible timeframe.
Martin Daum, CEO of Daimler Truck comments: “Just as important as the transformation towards CO2-neutral drive technologies is the digitalization in the vehicle. Developing a common software-defined vehicle platform with Volvo Group will enable us to turn our vehicles into a programmable device. It will allow us to build differentiating digital vehicle features with significantly greater speed and efficiency for our truck and bus customers around the globe. Together with the Volvo Group we can develop a benchmark truck operating system and set an industry standard.”
Martin Lundstedt, Volvo Group President and CEO adds: “Volvo Group and Daimler Truck are two individually great companies. Now we are combining our forces to accelerate the customer benefits that a software-defined truck platform will bring. Given the rapid transformation of our industry, it makes sense to collaborate to accelerate development, increase volumes and share cost. Software-defined heavy-duty trucks represent a paradigm shift in the transformation of our industry. Making the truck a programmable device with standardized hardware and operating system for fast product updates will give both companies the opportunity to create value for our customers and their customers though differentiating digital services and solutions. Partnership is truly the new leadership.”
The joint venture is set to be headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, incorporating existing assets and resources of both companies into the new organization. The goal of both shareholders is to set the industry standard for a truck operating system and offer its products to other OEMs as well. To that end the joint venture will provide a common developer platform as a service, on top of which its customers can build differentiating software layers.
Daimler Truck and Volvo Group therefore will remain fierce competitors and continue to differentiate their complete product and services offerings, including their respective digital solutions. Both companies will provide their own end-user applications on top of the platform to offer differentiating digital vehicle features to their respective customers.
The now signed preliminary agreement is non-binding. A final agreement is expected within this year, with the goal to close the final transaction in Q1 2025, subject to necessary examination and approvals by the respective authorities.
Dassault Systèmes & JLR
Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: FR0014003TT8, DSY.PA) today announced that it has extended its long-term strategic partnership with JLR for five years, heralding a new era of digital transformation at the automaker that will drive improved efficiency, collaborative innovation and sustainability throughout the enterprise.
JLR continues to deploy Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform globally, to support the end-to-end development of all its modern luxury vehicles. More than 18,000 users across all JLR business areas and suppliers will make use of virtual twins to increase efficiency, improve production management, save time, and reduce waste and costs.
JLR’s decision to deploy the 3DEXPERIENCE platform at this scale further confirms the role that Dassault Systèmes plays in JLR’s commitment for a good and responsible business in an industry that demands high levels of excellence and personalization.
JLR can leverage Dassault Systèmes’ entire portfolio of transportation and mobility industry solution experiences based on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, both on premise and on the cloud. Its teams in ideation, requirements, model-based systems engineering, computer-aided design and manufacturing, as well as its value chain, will be connected in one collaborative virtual environment, leveraging knowledge and know-how. This creates value, to enable JLR’s employees to focus on high-quality tasks as well as empower them to evolve in more advanced roles.
“JLR is utilizing the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to enhance its virtual twin experience, creating software-defined vehicles that seamlessly integrate both hardware and software development. This systems engineering approach connects and integrates various disciplines, driving the development of its vehicles and ensuring excellence as demanded by luxury brands,” said Laurence Montanari, Vice President, Transportation & Mobility Industry, Dassault Systèmes. “Our software as a service solution provides JLR teams with increased agility and the ability to access the latest technology on demand. After five years of partnership, we are opening a new era of collaboration beyond engineering and manufacturing through a trusted partnership, where teams from JLR and Dassault Systèmes work closely in short iterations to address JLR and its ecosystem’s challenges.”
RLL CarIQ
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) announced today that Car IQ Inc., a leading innovator in vehicle payment solutions, will be the “Official Autonomous Payment Platform” of the team and an associate sponsor on the team’s No. 15 Honda-powered entry for Graham Rahal during the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.
San Francisco-based, Car IQ Inc., enables commercial fleet vehicles to connect directly to merchants and banks and pay without a credit card. The cutting-edge platform utilizes vehicle and payment data to create a one-touch payment experience directly from a driver’s phone.
“We’re thrilled Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has chosen Car IQ as their official payment partner,” said Sterling Pratz, CEO and Founder of Car IQ Inc. “Using Car IQ, RLL will now be able to connect their race transporters to fuel stations across the country as they travel from race to race. The team wanted to get rid of their previous card program and move towards a more innovative payment solution that eliminated plastic fuel cards and saved them money.”
Eliminating the card was only half the problem. RLL also wanted to take advantage of Car IQ’s payment technology to eliminate the manual collection of receipts and invoices and instead capture all of their vehicle transactions digitally. Additionally, Car IQ uses vehicle data to measure the fuel tank before and after the transaction ensures there is zero risk misuse at any point in the payment process.
“Knowing how much fuel is in your vehicle is one of the most important things a driver needs to know during a race,” said Graham Rahal. “Car IQ Inc. has developed an integral technology that will allow our team to take a similar approach in business operations. As someone who has always been interested in how various businesses and industries operate, it’s easy to see the value and importance of technology like this. We are looking forward to working together to grow both of our businesses.”
The 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season resumes with the Sonsio Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, May 10-11. North America’s premier open-wheel series will crisscross the United States, including a stop for the 108th Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 26, before culminating in Nashville for the championship finale Sunday, Sept. 15. All on-track action can be seen on NBC or NBC’s Peacock Premium streaming service or USA Network. For more information about the series or team, visit www.indycar.com and www.rahal.com.
Applied Info & Currux Vision
Applied Information, Inc. and Currux Vision LLC announced a partnership to offer new, broader traffic insight and proactive safety solutions for increasingly challenged traffic management systems. The partnership will combine their technical advantages by integrating Currux Vision’s Smart City ITS intersection AI technology with the Applied Information® Glance Smart City Supervisory Platform.
Glance, a cloud-based software solution, streamlines management of traffic infrastructure and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) assets by enabling remote monitoring and real-time control. Deployed in approximately 1,200 communities across the U.S. and Canada, Glance offers seamless access via smartphones, tablets, or desktops, ensuring convenient and efficient management from anywhere, at any time.
Currux Vision Smart City ITS is a fully integrated AI hardware and software solution that delivers real time, autonomous control systems for traffic management including vehicle, incident, and ped/bicycle detection, actuation, big data analytics and alerts, real-time signal timing optimization and connected vehicle infrastructure. The platform accurately and reliably provides advanced safety analytics that identify, document, and warn of near misses, speeding, red/yellow light running, etc., as well as proactive management of physical signs, traffic lights, RSUs etc.
“We are excited to partner with Applied Information to use industrial grade AI for ITS, focused on reliability and safety. The collaboration will achieve a breakthrough in communications between transportation infrastructure, road users and managers, opening vast new opportunities with connected and autonomous vehicles, traffic safety and data driven and efficient city planning,” said Alexander Colosivschi, Founder and CEO of Currux Vision.
“The integration of Currux AI technology with Glance equips traffic managers with advanced predictive capabilities, enabling them to pinpoint and address safety issues at problem locations before they escalate into incidents resulting in injury or fatality,” said Bryan Mulligan, President of Applied Information. “This is the promise of artificial intelligence coming to fruition to make the world a better, safer place.”
LG Innotek Lighting
On the 16th, LG Innotek (CEO Moon, Hyuksoo) announced that it will accelerate its targeting of the global automotive lighting module market with ‘Nexlide (Next Lighting Device)’ to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of its commercialization this year.
For a long period of time, automotive lighting remained a simple lighting device that assists drivers in safely operating a vehicle by providing clear visibility and delivering signals.
Automotive lighting has begun to receive renewed attention, with premium car manufacturers focusing on brand differentiation through the design of elegant automotive exteriors.
LG Innotek’s automotive flexible 3D lighting module, ‘Nexlide’ is rated as a next-generation vehicle lighting solution in line with aforementioned trend of future mobility, receiving interest from global car makers.
‘Nexlide’ can be freely applied to various areas of a vehicle such as daytime running lights, RCL (Rear Combination Lamp, including tail lights, stoplights, and turning lights), etc.
LG Innotek unveiled a total of 9 line-ups, starting with the mass production of ‘Nexlide-A’ in 2014 and concluding with ‘Nexlide-M’, which was successfully developed last year and recently commenced mass production. ‘Nexlide’ is installed on 88 car models of 9 car manufacturer brands around the world, including North America, Europe, Japan, China, and Korea, and can be seen on roads in all corners of the globe.
‘Nexlide’ showed a sharp growth in annual average sales of 47% for the past decade, and was reborn as the major product of LG Innotek’s electronic components business. The cumulative orders ‘Nexlide’ won last month was a staggering 146 orders.
‘Nexlide’ is produced by attaching multiple light source packages, optical resin, which is a material that bands flexibly, and high-performance & highly reliable optical films applied with LG Innotek’s proprietary optical micro pattern technology on a thin substrate. LG Innotek has secured exclusive technologies related to ‘Nexlide’ by acquiring over 200 technology patents.
Before ‘Nexlide’ was developed, to realize a surface light source (light source in which the surface lights up evenly and has no thickness), parts such as ‘Inner Lense,’ which enables light to spread evenly on a point light source, had to be used.
However, with LG Innotek’s patented technology, more than 20% of the number of parts that needed to be added were reduced. The secret behind slimming the module was these technologies. The slimmer the module, the more efficient the spatial utilization was, and the greater the degree of design freedom in car design.
In the case of ‘Nexlide-M,’ the latest model, LG Innotek introduced a new engineering method that completely eliminated air gaps and successfully slimmed the module by 30% compared to existing products.
Another strength and advantage of ‘Nexlide’ is the improved brightness of the vehicle lights while the thickness is minimized. ‘Nexlide-M’ increased the brightness by 4 times compared to existing products, and can emit lights up to 500cd(candela, a unit representing the brightness of a light source), which meets the global legal standard for DRLs (Daytime Running Lights).
While achieving the highest level of brightness in the industry, customers can now customize the color and brightness according to the purpose and installation location of the lighting by utilizing the diverse line-up of ‘Nexlide.’
Another advantage of using ‘Nexlide’ is that it can help reduce electric consumption. Nexlide can produce sufficient brightness with low electric power even as the module brightness increases. Especially in the case of EVs (Electric Vehicles), since it can reduce the electricity mileage (fuel efficiency of EVs), the added value of ‘Nexlide’ is enhanced in the future mobility era.
- ‘Pixel Lighting’ supporting V2V & V2P Communication…”aiming to complete development by next year”
In the recent automobile market, there is a trend to expand the role of vehicle lights compared to the past. For example, lights are now being used to facilitate communication between drivers (V2V) and drivers and pedestrians (V2P) by installing lights on the vehicle grill, or indicating the driving condition of an autonomous vehicle with specific colors.
In line with such trends, LG Innotek aims to complete the development of pixel lighting (lighting design that repeatedly arranges small 3D lights) that can display various phrases and animation effects by 2025.
In addition to this, the company is planning to expand its customer base to middle and low-priced EV OEMs by developing the ‘Next-Generation Nexlide’ which has enhanced energy efficiency.
Byaeng kuk Yoo, the head of the electronic component business division and executive director of LG Innotek said ‘LG Innotek has proven its capabilities in the vehicle lighting module business through the ‘Nexlide’ product for the past decade.” He added, “We will introduce new products to provide differentiated customer values and foster the vehicle lighting module into a business worth billions of Dollars.
Meanwhile, according to Reports Insights, a global market survey agency, the size of the global automotive lighting market is 21.9 billion USD as of 2022, and is forecasted to grow to 32.1 billion USD by 2030.
MHP Joins NVIDIA Partner Network
The management and IT consultancy MHP has announced it has joined the NVIDIA Partner Network, as part of the Solution Advisor Consultant Program. This will now enable the company to expand its technology portfolio to include implementing customer solutions based on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform, high-performance computing approaches and solutions for autonomous driving, deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital avatars, as well as providing the necessary consulting service on these topics.
Through MHP’s additions to its technology stack, customers can draw on the expertise available in key drivers of growth and profitability, such as AI and industrial metaverse applications (use of virtual and augmented reality in industrial production and maintenance) or infotainment and mobility services.
MHP deploys NVIDIA technologies extensively for a wide range of solutions in various areas for customers in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. This includes car configurators and infotainment applications, solutions for autonomous driving, generative AI applications or cutting-edge multilingual chatbots and lip-synchronous digital avatars. Customers are of course also provided with advice on the use of these technologies.