According to United Nations forecasts, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. To offer personal mobility to people living in places where space is at a premium, Schaeffler is working on technology concepts such as the Schaeffler Mover for which the technology group has developed... Read more →

Audi plans to spend approximately €14 billion (US$15.9 billion) in electric mobility, digitalization and autonomous driving from 2019 until the end of 2023. This includes investments in property, plant and equipment as well as research and development expenditure. Overall, the company’s total projected expenditure for the planning period of the... Read more →

Rolls-Royce and Finnish state-owned ferry operator Finferries have demonstrated the world’s first fully autonomous ferry in the archipelago south of the city of Turku, Finland. The car ferry Falco used a combination of Rolls-Royce Ship Intelligence technologies successfully to navigate autonomously during its voyage between Parainen and Nauvo. The return... Read more →

The BMW Group unveiled the BMW Vision iNEXT concept at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The BMW Vision iNEXT represents a building block for the future of the BMW Group, encompassing technology, design and new ways of thinking that are set to filter through across the company and its brands.... Read more →

Audi, Airbus and Italdesign are presenting for the first time a flying and driving prototype of “Pop.Up Next”. This innovative concept for a flying taxi combines a self-driving electric car with a passenger drone. In the first public test flight, the flight module accurately placed a passenger capsule on the... Read more →

An IIHS study of General Motors vehicles with optional front crash prevention systems found that GM vehicles with autobrake and forward collision warning had 43% fewer police-reported front-to-rear crashes of all severities and 64% fewer front-to-rear crashes with injuries than the same vehicles without any front crash prevention technology. For... Read more →

Bosch and Daimler announced that San Jose, the third biggest city in California, is planned to be the pilot city for trials, targeted to begin during the second half of 2019, of the highly and fully automated driving (SAE Level 4/5) on-demand ride-hailing service recently announced by the two companies.... Read more →

Quectel Wireless Solutions (Quectel), a global supplier of IoT modules, announced the global launch of the automotive grade C-V2X module AG15, which features the Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset solution from Qualcomm Technologies, a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated. The module is now sampling to the automotive industry for the development of... Read more →

Hyundai CRADLE, Hyundai Motor Company’s corporate venturing and open innovation business, has made a strategic investment in allegro.ai, an Israeli technology company specializing in deep learning (DL)-based computer vision. Hyundai said that the partnership with allegro.ai will accelerate deployment of AI technology in many business areas, thereby improving the quality... Read more →

To study the potential benefits of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a simulation framework that analyzes the impact of partial market penetration of CAVs on fuel consumption, travel time and traffic flow in a merging on-ramp scenario under low, medium and heavy traffic... Read more →

Volvo Cars has reached an agreement with Baidu, the leading Chinese internet search provider, jointly to develop electric and fully autonomous drive-compatible cars with the aim of mass producing them for China, the largest car market in the world. The partnership will allow both companies to develop and to sell... Read more →

Ford Motor Company and Baidu, Inc. have begun a two-year joint autonomous vehicle test project, under which the two companies will further advance the development and on-road testing of autonomous vehicles in China. The Baidu-Ford L4 Autonomous Vehicle Test Project is a two-year initiative, with on-road testing slated to begin... Read more →

Through its motion sickness research, Jaguar Land Rover has created an algorithm that generates a wellness score for each passenger. This can be used to personalize a vehicle’s driving and cabin settings automatically to reduce the effects of feeling car sick by up to 60%. Jaguar Land Rover says that... Read more →

Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has become the lead strategic investor of WeRide.ai (formerly JingChi.ai), China’s leading autonomous driving company focused on Level 4 (L4) self-driving technology, following completion of the company’s Series A funding. The investment in WeRide.ai is Alliance Ventures’ first in China and... Read more →

Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD), and Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. will establish a business alliance to develop advanced automated driving technology. Specifically, Toyota and TRI-AD will recreate actual traffic accident conditions or dangerous conditions that contribute to accidents in their automated driving... Read more →

Volkswagen Group, Mobileye and Champion Motors plan to commercialize Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) with self-driving electric vehicles in Israel. Development will begin in early 2019 and roll out in phases reaching full commercialization in 2022. The partners will establish a joint venture, subject to approval by the responsible authorities and bodies. Operating... Read more →

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have launched two research projects to apply artificial intelligence to self-driving cars to smooth traffic, reduce fuel consumption, and improve air quality predictions. In collaboration with UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab scientists are using deep reinforcement learning, a computational... Read more →

Momenta, a China-based autonomous driving company, has secured a new round of funding from industry-leading strategic investors and government funds at a valuation north of $1 billion, making Momenta the first autonomous driving unicorn company in China. Existing investor NIO Capital and Pagoda Investment increased their investments. Strategic investors, including... Read more →

Volvo Cars and NVIDIA are partnering on the development of a highly advanced, AI-capable core computer for the next generation of Volvo cars. The core computer is based on NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX Xavier technology and will allow Volvo Cars to implement an advanced computing platform for its new cars on... Read more →

Toyota Motor Corporation and SoftBank Corp. agreed to form a strategic partnership to facilitate the creation of new mobility services. The two plan to establish a joint venture company, MONET Technologies Corporation, before the end of the 2018 fiscal year (April 2019). The objective of MONET is to help realize... Read more →

Cruise and General Motors have joined forces with Honda to pursue the shared goal of transforming mobility through the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicle technology. Honda will work jointly with Cruise and General Motors to fund and to develop a purpose-built autonomous vehicle for Cruise that can serve a wide... Read more →

At the Paris Motor Show, Groupe Renault unveiled EZ-ULTIMO, its robo-vehicle concept, an autonomous, electric, connected, and shared mobility service solution offering a premium travel experience. EZ-ULTIMO concludes a concept-car trilogy illustrating Renault’s vision of the future of urban shared mobility, following on EZ-GO, with its vision of shared mobility,... Read more →

Continental and Knorr-Bremse AG have entered into a partnership to develop a complete system solution for highly automated driving (HAD) in commercial vehicles, initially focused on automated convoy driving (platooning). Later development work will deal with automated driving on the freeway (“Highway Pilot”). The cooperation includes all functions for driver... Read more →

Daimler held an opening ceremony for its new €200-million Immendingen Test and Technology Center in the municipality northwest of Lake Constance. A particular focus is placed on the four strategic future areas of connectivity (connected), autonomous driving (autonomous), flexible use (shared) and electric drive (electric). Daimler has summarized these under... Read more →

Daimler and Bosch announced the successful premiere of their joint Automated Valet Parking pilot in Beijing. The infrastructure-supported driverless parking technology, which made its debut in the parking garage at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart in 2017 (earlier post), marks the first pilot of its kind in China. Automated Valet... Read more →

Germans would increasingly feel safer with fully automated, driverless trucks on the road, according to a survey conducted by Bosch and Innofact AG in the lead-up to the IAA Commercial Vehicles in Hannover. While almost 40% of respondents would rather that trucks have a human driver at the wheel, already... Read more →

At GTC Japan, NVIDIA introduced the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier Developer Kit, a platform for building autonomous driving systems. This open, scalable software and hardware solution enables companies to seamlessly develop and test customized autonomous driving technology, streamlining production. The devkit includes a DRIVE AGX Xavier car computer, along with... Read more →

Volvo Trucks unveiled Vera: an autonomous, electric vehicle that can operate with significantly less exhaust emissions and low noise levels. Vera is controlled and monitored via a cloud-based service, and has the potential to make transportation safer, cleaner and more efficient. The driveline and battery pack are of the same... Read more →

The US Department of Transportation has released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to assess various aspects of in-service truck platoons that are delivering commercial goods by a fleet operator on their common delivery routes over an extended time. The objectives of this BAA are to develop an innovative and synergistic... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz Vans unveiled its Vision URBANETIC mobility concept. Vision URBANETIC eliminates the separation between people moving and goods transport. It enables on-demand, sustainable and efficient movement of people and goods and applies an innovative approach to fulfil the needs of cities, businesses from diverse sectors as well as city dwellers... Read more →

Mercedes-Benz Trucks unveiled the new Actros truck, featuring Active Drive Assist, with which Mercedes-Benz Trucks puts partially automated driving into series production. The new Active Drive Assist can brake, accelerate and steer independently. The new Actros can be ordered as of the IAA 2018 Commercial Vehicles Show and the first... Read more →

With car2go, moovel, mytaxi/Intelligent Apps (mytaxi, beat, Clever Taxi and Chauffeur Privé), the mobility portfolio in the segment of Daimler Financial Services counted 24.4 million customers as of July 30, 2018. This represents an increase of 64% (compared to the previous year). The number of transactions reached 95.3 million in... Read more →

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber) have agreed to expand their collaboration with the aim of advancing and bringing to market autonomous ride-sharing as a mobility service at scale. To accomplish this, technology from each company will be integrated into purpose-built Toyota vehicles to be deployed on... Read more →

Aisin Seiki Co. and Denso Corporation have reached a basic agreement to establish a new joint venture company to develop and sell electrification driving modules. The company will be capitalized with the participation ratio of Aisin 50% and Denso 50%. The two companies also reached a basic agreement with JTEKT... Read more →

Hyundai Motor Company completed South Korea’s first domestic highway journey with an autonomously navigated semi-trailer truck. Hyundai’s Xcient truck drove approximately 40 km (25 miles) on the highway between Uiwang and Incheon, carrying a large semi-trailer simulating cargo transportation. This successful demonstration proves that innovative autonomous driving technology can be... Read more →

TomTom (TOM2) announced that, in a single month, it has made 1.5 billion changes to its digital maps which are delivered to TomTom customers on a weekly basis. The milestone is key to the company’s mission to shape the future of mobility in a world that increasingly relies on digital... Read more →

Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC), the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, has completed an investment in US-based startup DeepMap. DeepMap is a software company focused on solving the mapping and localization challenge for autonomous vehicles. (Earlier post.) Maps explicitly designed to be read by machines are... Read more →

The City of Candiac, Québec is hosting a long-term demonstration project for a 100% electric autonomous shuttle to be used on public roads for the first time in Canada. In addition to the municipality’s involvement, the project is made possible by transportation company Keolis Canada, manufacturer NAVYA, the financial support... Read more →

Kia Motors corporation unveiled its next-generation Separated Sound Zone (SSZ) technology that allows each passenger of a vehicle to experience an audio stream tailored to their individual needs, including music, hands-free phone calls, and vehicle alerts, while maintaining a headphone-free social space where passengers can converse freely. SSZ technology has... Read more →

A new report by ABI research forecasts that a proportionately higher uptake of EVs in car-sharing fleets, and the higher utilization rates of those EVs, will result in global electric mileage share to exceed 20% by 2030. While consumer adoption of EVs continues to disappoint with only 2% of all... Read more →

LeddarTech has delivered the first A-samples of its LeddarCore LCA2 system-on-chip (SoC) (earlier post) to select automotive partners which will be publicly disclosed at a later date this year. The LCA2 is the autonomous vehicle industry’s first 3D solid-state LiDAR (SSL) SoC and is available now to Tier-1 automotive manufacturers... Read more →

 An open ecosystem of best-in-class technologies working seamlessly together will be at the heart of the automated transportation systems of the future. That is the shared vision of Renovo, a mobility software technology company, and mapping and location services company HERE Technologies have entered into a partnership to deploy open... Read more →

Considering electrification, autonomy and sharing (the “Three Revolutions”), a team from Boston University and the University of California, Berkeley projects that electricity use from light duty vehicle (LDV) transport will likely be in the 570–1140 TWh range—13–26%—respectively, of total electricity demand in 2050. Their open-access study appears in the journal Energy... Read more →

Tier-1 supplier Hyundai Mobis has developed an electric power steering system which uses the redundant control mode that takes advantage of two electronic circuits during autonomous driving to maintain normal steering capabilities under any circumstances. The system is an advanced technology with no case of mass-production as of yet. The... Read more →

Ford Motor Company has created Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC, a new organization charged with accelerating Ford’s autonomous vehicles (AV) business to capitalize on market opportunities. Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC will include Ford’s self-driving systems integration, autonomous vehicle research and advanced engineering, AV transportation-as-a-service network development, user experience, business strategy and... Read more →

With collaboration between German and Chinese companies accelerating in the areas of automated driving and intelligent connected vehicles, Daimler and Baidu recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance their Sino-German cooperation in these strategic fields. The two companies have agreed to deepen their partnership through joint automated driving... Read more →

IHS Markit forecasts that global revenue for the automotive magnetic sensors market will expand to $2.3 billion in 2030, more than double the $1.1 billion collected by the industry last year. The magnetic sensors space will benefit from a discernible acceleration in market demand as the effects of car electrification... Read more →

By Haden Kirkpatrick. Over the last two decades, fully electric cars have had, let’s say, a slow start. In 1997, the Toyota Prius was released as the world’s first mass-produced hybrid. And while hybrid technology has taken off, drivers have been hesitant to accept fully battery-powered tech for a variety... Read more →

INRIX launched a new platform that provides the foundation for cities and road authorities to communicate with operators for safe and effective deployment of highly automated vehicles (HAVs) on public roads. INRIX AV Road Rules provides a platform for cities to digitize, validate and manage the traffic rules and restrictions... Read more →

ZF & Faurecia have developed an operating and display concept for fully automated vehicles (level 4 AVs) without a steering wheel and pedals. The Trendsetting Cockpit concept interactive display currently is a static demonstration unit. The concept allows drivers—even when driving manually—to decide between the left and right front seat... Read more →