Volkswagen of America, Inc., unveiled the new 2019 Jetta at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The Jetta is one of the world’s most successful sedans, with more than 17 million models sold worldwide since it was introduced in 1979; more than 3.2 million of those vehicles have... Read more →

Bee’ah, the UAE’s fastest growing environmental management company has ordered 50 Tesla Semis—the first and largest fleet of Tesla Semi trucks in the Middle East. The incoming Tesla Semi trucks, which enter production in 2019, will primarily be used for waste collection and transportation, including transportation of materials for recovery.... Read more →

In 2020, battery-electric vehicles will be a cheaper vehicle option than fuel cell electric vehicles for the majority of the light duty fleet (79-97%), according to a new study by a team at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO). However, the cost of the two... Read more →

Chevrolet and Ford each are entering the Detroit Auto Show this week on the heels of major truck introductions: for Chevrolet, the next-generation Silverado full-size pickup; for Ford, the return of the Ranger mid-size pickup. Silverado. The introduction of the next-generation Silverado comes 100 years after the brand delivered its... Read more →

At CES, Cisco and Hyundai Motor Company announced the coming production of a next-generation, hyperconnected car. Hyundai will feature this new in-vehicle network in their premium 2019 vehicles. In 2016, Cisco and Hyundai reported plans to develop a vehicle with a new approach to communication. (Earlier post.) The companies said... Read more →

Ceylon Electricity Board, the prime player in Sri Lanka’s electricity generation, distribution and transmission, has chosen ABB as its preferred supplier to develop the country’s fast charging infrastructure. The Sri Lankan area of Colombo City will benefit from a new fleet of connected, fast electric vehicle (EV) chargers from ABB.... Read more →

General Motors has filed a Safety Petition with the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) for GM’s fourth-generation self-driving Cruise AV—the first production-ready vehicle built from the start to operate safely on its own, with no driver, steering wheel, pedals or manual controls. In 2016, GM acquired then-three-year-old start-up Cruise Automation... Read more →

Sendyne Corp., a leading provider of sensing, modeling/simulation, and control products, has introduced CellMod, the first Li-Ion battery simulation tool that can predict cell and pack behavior with a percentage of error of less than 5% under a wide range of test conditions. Unlike empirical models often used today, CellMod... Read more →

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved 15 pilot projects aimed at helping to accelerate electric vehicle adoption, with a focus on disadvantaged communities. These investments are the first of their kind. These projects are aimed at maximizing benefits to disadvantaged communities by catalyzing electrification of buses, trucks, and other... Read more →

Nissan recently unveiled Easy Ride, a new robo-vehicle mobility service, as well as e-share mobi, a car-sharing service, in Japan. Nissan and its partner DeNA, a Japanese internet company, are jointly developing Easy Ride, a mobility service that uses autonomous driving technology. It’s envisioned as a service for anyone who... Read more →

Didi Chuxing, the world’s leading mobile transportation platform, will make aggregated, anonymized data from its vehicle network available to facilitate transportation AI research worldwide. Every day, DiDi receives more than 25 million orders, collects more than 70TB of new route data, processes more than 4500TB of data, and obtains more... Read more →

FCA will invest more than $1 billion to modernize the Warren Truck Assembly Plant (Michigan) to produce the next-generation Ram Heavy Duty truck, which will relocate from its current production location in Saltillo, Mexico, in 2020. This investment is in addition to the announcement made in January 2017, which committed... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will award $1.87 million to seven projects to advance innovation in US manufacturing through high performance computing. Part of DOE’s High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program (earlier post), the seven new public private partnerships will enable greater collaboration between DOE national labs and... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy (FE) announced $450,000 in funding for two projects that fall under the High Performance Computing for Materials Program. Vacuum Process Engineering, Inc.’s Compact Diffusion Bonded Heat Exchanger Fatigue Life Simulations will receive $300,000 in FE funding. The project will gain... Read more →

Continental, Ericsson, Nissan, NTT DOCOMO, Inc., OKI and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, plan to carry out their first Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) trials in Japan. The objective is to validate and demonstrate the benefits of C-V2X using direct communication technology defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project... Read more →

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (KEPCO) and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. have started testing tools to charge electric vehicles via remote control. Sixty electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles owned by customers and KEPCO will be outfitted with EV switches, which are control instruments for electric vehicle... Read more →

GS Yuasa Corporation will establish a manufacturing subsidiary company, GS Yuasa Hungary Ltd. in Hungary and build a new plant for lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries will be assembled in a new plant with lithium-ion cells made in Japan. These batteries will be used for SLI (Starting, Lighting, and Ignition) applications... Read more →

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Volvo Buses will begin testing autonomous electric passenger buses in Singapore in 2019. For Volvo, this will be its first autonomous application in public transportation anywhere in the world. Volvo has already demonstrated its autonomous technology in mining, quarry and refuse collection operations.... Read more →

Nissan North America announced an agreement with NASA Ames Research Center to collaborate on research and technology development for future autonomous mobility services, including a working demonstration in Silicon Valley. This update to the existing 5-year research collaboration between Nissan and NASA announced in 2015 (earlier post) builds on previous... Read more →

In addition to showcasing its new lineup of consumer products such as 4K OLED televisions, smartphones and wireless noise-cancelling stereo headsets, Sony used CES to introduce its “safety cocoon” concept, which signifies the creation of an area of enhanced safety around a vehicle where it can monitor and detect the... Read more →

The law firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Ford and Bosch of knowingly installing emissions-cheating software devices in 2011-2017 Ford 250 and 350 Super Duty diesel pickup trucks, allowing the affected pickups to pollute at levels up to 50 times legal limits. Ford... Read more →

In an effort further to strengthen its e-mobility activities, the Volkswagen brand is creating a separate Board of Management division for e-mobility. The newly created e-mobility division will be responsible for all Volkswagen electric vehicles and for the development of Europe’s largest competence center for electric vehicles in Zwickau. With... Read more →

Air pollution trapped along the Wasatch Front by winter inversions is estimated to send more than 200 people to the emergency room with pneumonia each year, according to a study by University of Utah Health and Intermountain Healthcare. Bad air quality especially erodes the health of adults over age 65,... Read more →

The New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), acting through the New York City Transit Authority (NYCT), will launch its electric bus test and evaluation program of five Xcelsior CHARGE battery-electric, forty-foot heavy-duty transit buses. The program will begin January 2018. The program introduces leased zero-emission buses and rapid chargers... Read more →

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, with colleagues at Purdue and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), have plated a one nanometer thick coating of platinum on a core of cobalt to create a cost-effective and highly efficient fuel cell catalyst. A paper on their work was published last year in the... Read more →

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) announced a $2.5-million settlement with SSA Containers, Inc. and its affiliates. The Seattle-based company received a notice of violation for failing to repower, retire or retrofit its cargo-handling equipment at the ports of Long Beach and Oakland, and for failing to certify large spark... Read more →

Air Products will acquire Royal Dutch Shell’s Coal Gasification Technology business as well as Shell’s patent portfolio for Liquids (Residue) Gasification. Financial terms are not being disclosed, and the acquisition is expected to close in the coming months. As a leading industrial gas company, Air Products has extended its onsite... Read more →

Mazda and Toyota have selected Huntsville, Alabama as the site of their new joint-venture manufacturing plant. The new plant will have the capacity to build 300,000 vehicles annually, with production split evenly between two lines for each company to produce Mazda’s crossover model that will be newly introduced to the... Read more →

At CES, NVIDIA outlined its functional safety architecture for NVIDIA DRIVE, its AI autonomous vehicle platform, which uses redundant and diverse functions to enable vehicles to operate safely, even in the event of faults related to the operator, environment or systems. The NVIDIA DRIVE architecture enables automakers to build and... Read more →

Continental is adding a further safety level to highly automated driving in the form of a specific electronics architecture. In addition to a central control unit for automated driving—the Assisted & Automated Driving Control Unit—the technology company uses a Safety Domain Control Unit (SDCU) as a fallback path in order... Read more →

In its latest edition of the Short-Term Energy Outlook, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that US crude oil production will average 10.3 million b/d in 2018—the highest annual average production in US history, surpassing the previous record of 9.6 million b/d set in 1970. EIA also forecasts that... Read more →

A zero-emission Kenworth Class 8 T680 day cab tractor equipped with a Ballard hydrogen fuel cell (earlier post) is on display at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The truck is part of the PACCAR Innovations booth exhibit—the first time PACCAR and Kenworth have exhibited at the show, which draws... Read more →

Tantulum Corporation has teamed up with data scientists from Imperial College London to build “Air.Car”—a OBD-connected device which will produce highly accurate, real-time NOx feedback as you drive. A 1,000-vehicle trial of the device was launched in the UK lasts month; units are being installed in diesel vehicles to estimate... Read more →

Visteon Corporation, a global leader in automotive cockpit electronics, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd. Automotive Engineering Institute (GAC Engineering), a leading China-based vehicle manufacturer, to develop and deploy autonomous driving and other cockpit electronics solutions. Under the agreement, both companies will collaborate on the... Read more →

Visteon Corporation unveiled its DriveCore autonomous driving platform at CES 2018. Designed to accelerate the development and commercialization of autonomous driving technology, DriveCore allows automakers to build autonomous driving solutions quickly and in an open collaboration model. Visteon designed DriveCore as a complete technology platform, consisting of the hardware, in-vehicle... Read more →

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi launched Alliance Ventures, a new corporate venture capital fund that plans to invest up to $1 billion to support open innovation over the next five years. In its first year, the fund expects to invest up to $200 million in start-ups and open innovation partnerships with technology entrepreneurs focused... Read more →

The Municipality of Anchorage’s (MOA) Public Transportation Department (PTD) will put a new 40-foot Proterra Catalyst E2 electric/battery powered bus on trial next week. The bus will begin serving routes for the general public for a four-month trial period. The four-month trial period will test how the bus performs in... Read more →

ElectraTherm, a leader in distributed, waste heat to power generation, is working with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Creare, and the US Naval Academy (USNA) to demonstrate gas turbine waste heat recovery as part of a Small Business Innovation Research project. The demonstration will take place at the USNA... Read more →

Molex and Aquantia are collaborating to leverage Aquantia Multi-Gig Automotive Ethernet technologies in a Molex 10 Gbps Automotive Ethernet Network designed to accelerate data bandwidth in connected and autonomous vehicles. The new Molex automotive solution was officially unveiled at CES. The industry-leading Molex 10 Gbps Automotive Ethernet Network (earlier post)... Read more →

AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals and Gasunie New Energy are partnering to investigate the possible large scale conversion of sustainable electricity into green hydrogen via the electrolysis of water. Intended for Delfzijl in the Netherlands, the installation would use a 20 megawatt water electrolysis unit, the largest in Europe, to convert sustainably... Read more →

ABB is signing on with Formula E as the title partner for the all-electric motorsport series, which which will be now known as the “ABB FIA Formula E Championship.” Formula E serves as a competitive platform to develop and test e-mobility-relevant electrification and digitalization technologies, helping refine the design and... Read more →

Eni’s proprietary Eni Slurry Technology (EST) is able to convert refining residues entirely into high-quality light products, eliminating both liquid and solid refining residues with significant environmental benefits. Eni has now sold the licence and basic engineering project to the Chinese company Sinopec for the construction of a refining plant... Read more →

At CES, Hyundai Motor provided more details on its next-generation dedicated Fuel Cell EV—which it has named “NEXO”. Hyundai also described Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that will expand NEXO’s autonomous driving potential. Hyundai regards NEXO as the technological flagship of its growing eco-vehicle portfolio; it will be available in... Read more →

Fisker unveiled the Emotion electric luxury sedan at CES 2018. Featuring automatic butterfly doors and five integrated Quanergy S3 LiDAR sensors (earlier post) for autonomous driving up to Level 4, the all-wheel drive EMotion has a projected range of 400 miles (644 km) and a top speed of 161 mph... Read more →

At CES, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. introduced the new Samsung DRVLINE platform—an open, modular, and scalable hardware- and software-based platform for building advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The platform is designed to accommodate a wide range of automated driving requirements, from ADAS and scaling upwards to support full autonomy. DRVLINE hardware... Read more →

Savari, Inc. is working with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, to deliver a comprehensive Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) solution. As part of the working relationship, Savari provides key software components for C-V2X modules featuring the Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset. This solution is designed to deliver C-V2X communication capabilities,... Read more →

Five US-based organizations are receiving $2.25 million in technical assistance from Department of Energy national laboratories to further develop lightweight materials technologies and more efficient vehicles. The awarded projects are part of a second round of industrial assistance opportunities (earlier post) supported by DOE’s LightMAT—the Lightweight Materials Consortium.(Earlier post.) The... Read more →

Solid-state LiDAR company Quanergy (earlier post), introduced Qortex, a core, proprietary perception software platform compatible with Quanergy’s full suite of LiDAR sensors. With the release of Qortex, Quanergy is now the only LiDAR manufacturer to produce a commercial integrated software and hardware platform solution, enabling a entirely new level of... Read more →

Kia Motors presented its new “Boundless for All” future mobility vision at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Kia is also demonstrating a range of new technologies as part of its new “ACE” strategy to make its cars more Autonomous, Connected and Eco/Electric.Kia’s ACE strategy is based... Read more →

BYD Company Ltd. has selected Qualcomm Technologies’ automotive solutions for its upcoming electric vehicles. Anticipated to begin in 2019, BYD electric vehicles are planned to feature integrated infotainment and digital cluster systems powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820A Automotive platform. The software architecture, hypervisor support and integration capability of the... Read more →