ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Toyota Motor Corp. TM 0.49 % and a clutch of other companies are backing a $10 million testing ground at the University of Michigan for self-driving vehicles, an investment that could boost Detroit’s ability to compete in the auto industry’s emerging tech war. The 32-acre facility, dubbed Mcity and opening Monday, will give the auto industry a hub that can be used by anyone researching autonomous vehicles.

Source: www.automotiveitnews.org

Great to hear Toyota is supporting this as their means to prove safety in US market. I imagine the vehicle prototypes used will be disguised in the usual way for protection of designs, although it mostly will be what’s inside that counts.

In a press conference today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced two performance upgrades and a new version of the Model S. Tesla amps up the P85D’s acceleration from Insane to Ludicrous mode, offers a battery pack upgrade from 85 kilowatt-hours to 90 kilowatt-hours, and makes a rear-wheel-drive Model S 70 available for $70,000.

Source: www.automotiveitnews.org

Taking OTA to the extreme, and competing with the typical aftermarket approach, you can now upgrade your Tesla at the cost of some whole cars. I guess its only 5-10% of the original price so many owners will opt-in. Of course the new hardware is not delivered over the air, you have to visit your Tesla dealer.

Chris Schreiner, Director, In-Vehicle UX, added, “However, autonomous driving features also showed the highest levels of consumer disinterest by far among all ADAS features. Willingness to pay is low for all autonomous driving features at all reasonable price points. These findings, along with our concerns about current semi-autonomous HMI, indicate that while interest in autonomous driving continues to rise, these features face a long uphill march toward wider market viability.”

Source: www.automotiveworld.com

Autonomous features are not price competitive for mass adoption, but the “self-driving car” continues to spur the industry to move forward with cost effective ADAS. Goodness for everyone.

Automakers and researchers say a new simulated city at the University of Michigan could help speed the development of driverless and connected cars.

Source: www.wirelessweek.com

Ann Arbor is a pretty good idea for testing real world conditions of autonomous cars. A prior project in that city called Connected Vehicle Proving Grounds was not able to gather much momentum or paying customers. With the catchy title of self-driving, marketing savvy may prove a site like this will be good for interoperability testing if the millions of funding can be captured from future customers.

Hoffmann-Krippner is working with Guttersberg Consulting to bring its SensoFoil sensing technology to the connected car market. This technology will allow the drivers touch on the steering wheel to be ‘sensed’ to ultimately alert the driver and/or the vehicle itself to take corrective action if an unwarranted change in pressure is identified. During the normal course of driving, the pressure on the steering wheel changes and the driver’s hands are constantly moving. SensoFoil allows the tracking

Source: www.automotiveitnews.org

I wonder what happens when you start steering with your knees so you can send text messages. Ok, admit it… 

Currently, two projects are in progress, the Mobility Transformation Centre and theConnected Vehicle (CV) Pilots Deployment project. Both are spin-offs of the recently completed Connected Vehicle Safety Pilot programme carried out in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which tested the readiness of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) in a connected vehicle for use in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and involved approximately 2,800 cars, trucks and transit vehicles equipped with V2V systems.

Stepper explained that the Mobility Transformation Centre, which is hosted by the University of Michigan, is a “significant expansion” of the Safety Pilot project, including using 9,000 vehicles with V2V and V2X technology, using a far greater testing area and, eventually 20,000 vehicles at 500 nodes, such as traffic lights and intersections, and to broaden the scope of testing to include, for the first time, automated vehicles.

The testing will be carried out in several counties in south-eastern Michigan and will include equipping non-vehicle road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, with DSRC devices. “They will be communicating with cars and the infrastructure by sending out signals that they are there,” Stepper said. “The target of this model is to avoid crashes or to mitigate the consequences of a collision, including those involving pedestrians and cyclists.”

“A similar model deployment for automated vehicles and this project will be carried out in and around Ann Arbor and involves 2,000 vehicles and some 27 square miles of densely instrumented infrastructure. We at Bosch are extremely excited by it.”

Source: www.automotiveitnews.org

V2X is HOT, finally!

Regardless of any critics concerns is being deployed in large scale tests. There is no other auto technology that can see around corners, so adds a lot of value to safety systems. A big opportunity for silicon suppliers, Renesas is already underway on a 2nd generation chipset that will appear in these tests. Now more OEMS and Tier1s are standing up to see the revenue coming.

“The transportation industry is ripe for disruption. Either we kind of drive that disruption and gain from the new business models that will emerge, or we let someone else do it.”
BMW, Volkswagen AG’s Audi and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz compete head-to-head on everything from new models to passenger comforts. But the threat of an Apple car has helped prod them to make a joint bid to acquire Nokia Oyj’s HERE digital map business, which may fetch as much as $4 billion, people familiar with the matter have said.

Source: www.bloomberg.com

Do you really think not owning HERE is preventing the car industry from establishing digital payments with Starbucks? They’ve have about 15 years to get it going and have yet to see any kind of apps in cars, let along competing ones from the German 5. HERE is critical to their supply chain and legacy vehicles while Google Android and Apple move in with maps customers like. Meanwhile the car industry can work on adding value to them, such as the open W3C defined vehicle interface API and new UX creation that really streamlines smartphone integration.

Now for automated vehicles you will need good maps, and if HERE is the source, not Google, this would be a good deal. Let Apple scoop the coffee while making sure cars give people what they want, less crashes.

Promoted as a “smarter, safer way to use your iPhone in the car,” CarPlay allows your iPhone to handle much of the digital controls.

There’s no argument that a phone offers numerous benefits in a car, fron navigation and real time traffic updates to information about a last minute change of plans. But I doubt many people think actually using a phone while driving is safe.

Source: www.cmswire.com

The WWDC apparently revealed that CarPlay will support wireless in the car, a great convenience although we all know how quickly the phone battery runs down when using navigation. Most will plug in anyway.

One of the future prospects for the automobile industry is the recent push for autonomous driving technology, which is obviously causing quite the buzz. But in the point of view and perspective of Jaguar-Land Rover’s R&D chief, Wolfgang Epple, J-LR doesn’t approve of autonomous driving technology because they don’t consider the occupants inside the car, “cargo.” “We don’t want to build a robot that delivers the cargo from A to B,” said Epple, who’s most likely referring to the connection between

Source: www.automotiveitnews.org

In this case the “connected car” is connected to the driver, and not the internet. Autonomous cars will face stiff competition from owners that enjoy driving, and cars that enable you to do that.

The pace of change is such that no forward looking visual can stay static for too long. I have therefore updated the anchor visual that looks at the digital platform, the innovation accelerators, a…

Source: frankdiana.wordpress.com

Connected cars are on the list of disruptive technologies. Cool.