Connected Car News Tips: Tesla, HARMAN, Lytx, Samsung, Cypress Semi, May Mobility, LG & SF Motors

In connected car news this week were Tesla, VW, Savari, DeepScale, May Mobility, ZF, Samsung, Cypress Semiconductor, Autoliv, HARMAN, Lytx, CCC, SF Motors, LG and MIPI Alliance.

Best a’ Tesla

A British driver had his driver’s license revoked for 18 months for driving in the passenger seat of a Tesla S 60 with Autopilot on.  Bhavesh Patel was caught on video by another drivers. Patel must pay court costs of  £1,800. and do 100 hours of community service work, reported the BBC.

More EV Chargers in America’s Target Stores.

Electrify America, part of the settlement due it’s diesel “problems” announced that it will be installing ultra-fast electric vehicle chargers at more than 100 retail, convenience and refueling locations across the U.S., including Target stores increasing the convenience for consumers who drive or are considering purchasing an electric vehicle. Each location will offer multiple chargers. This is  a week after the company announced that it will install electric vehicle DC Fast Chargers at more than 100 Walmart locations across 34 states by June 2019

V2I Company Savari Raised $12M

Savari, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based auto tech company, announced today it has raised $12 million in Series B funding, led by Aviva Ventures,the corporate venture capital arm of international insurer Aviva plc. Existing investors SAIC Capital, Flex, and an undisclosed strategic investor also participated in the round. Aviva Ventures, the lead investor in the round, plans to develop autonomous vehicle insurance propositions by integrating Savari’s V2X analytics with its advanced data platform.

Savari will use the funds to scale its global presence and integrate its industry leading software solutions with cellular platforms. The company’s pioneering cellular V2X solutions enable communication between vehicles, infrastructure and pedestrians with mobile devices to deliver enhanced safety for next-generation transportation initiatives, such as ADAS systems for autonomous and semi-autonomous driving vehicles. Savari solutions capture and analyze data on vehicle performance and control in real-time, giving a more complete and accurate picture of driving conditions to ADAS systems. By delivering superior awareness of driving conditions and vehicle and pedestrian traffic, Savari’s cutting-edge V2X solutions enable advanced safety for self-driving vehicles, helping them avoid preventable accidents. Savari is engaged with 18 OEM and Tier-1 customers around the world.

DeepScale Scales Up with $15M

DeepScale, a leader in efficient deep learning perception software for use in mass-produced automated vehicles, announced a $15 million Series A funding investment led by Point72 and next47.

DeepScale is using efficient deep neural networks (DNNs) on small, low-cost, automotive-grade sensors and processors to transform the accuracy of perception systems, which interpret and classify sensor data in real-time, for automated vehicles. In doing this, DeepScale is bringing driver-assistance and autonomous driving to mass-produced vehicles at all price-points.

May Mobility Shows Autonomous Shuttles

May Mobility, the first autonomous vehicle company to provide commercial transportation services with fleets of self-driving shuttles, will be providing a firsthand look at the future of mobility with tours of their autonomous vehicles and discussions on the future of cities at the Urban Land Institute’s Spring Meeting. Over 4,000 attendees will be at the Urban Land Institute’s Spring Meeting. Attendees include global professionals from leading developers and investors to architects, attorneys consultants and planners. Every sector is represented, including residential, retail, office, industrial, and hotel/resort development.

AF Joins eSync Alliance

The eSync Alliance announces that ZF has joined as its latest member. The eSync Alliance is an industry initiative for driving multi-company Over-the-Air (OTA) update and diagnostic data solutions in the automotive electronics space, potentially saving the industry billions of dollars each year. ZF joins existing Alliance members that include Alpine, Excelfore, Molex and Wipro.

The Alliance is based around the eSync system, a platform of cloud and embedded components originally developed by Excelfore for providing secure transactions with electronic end devices installed in vehicles. It can deliver and update software and firmware over-the-air and can collect diagnostics and telematics data from end devices in the vehicle.

Samsung

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun mass producing 10-nanometer (nm)-class* 16-gigabit (Gb) LPDDR4X DRAM for automobiles. The latest LPDDR4X features high performance and energy efficiency while significantly raising the thermal endurance level for automotive applications that often need to operate in extreme environments. The 10nm-class DRAM will also enable the industry’s fastest automotive DRAM-based LPDDR4X interface with the highest density.

Moving a step beyond its 20nm-class ‘Automotive Grade 2’ DRAM, which can withstand temperatures from -40°C to 105°C, Samsung’s 16Gb LPDDR4X is Automotive Grade 1-compliant, raising the high-end threshold to 125°C. By more than satisfying the rigorous on-system thermal cycling tests of global auto manufacturers, the 16Gb LPDDR4X has enhanced its reliability for a wide variety of automotive applications in many of the world’s most challenging environments.

Adding to the degree of reliability under high temperatures, production at an advanced 10nm-class node is key to enabling the 16Gb LPDDR4X to deliver its leading-edge performance and power efficiency. Even in environments with extremely high temperatures of up to 125°C, its data processing speed comes in at 4,266 megabits per second (Mbps), a 14 percent increase from the 8Gb LPDDR4 DRAM that is based on 20nm process technology, and the new memory also registers a 30 percent increase in power efficiency.

Along with a 256 gigabyte (GB) embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) drive announced in February, Samsung has expanded its advanced memory solution lineup for future automotive applications with the 10nm-class 16Gb LPDDR4X DRAM, commercially available in 12Gb, 16Gb, 24Gb and 32Gb capacities. While extending its 10nm-class DRAM offerings, the company also plans on bolstering technology partnerships for automotive solutions that include vision ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), autonomous driving, infotainment systems and gateways.

Cypress Semi Debuts PSoC 4700 MCUs

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. unveiled the PSoC 4700 series of microcontrollers (MCUs) that uses inductive sensing to detect touch inputs for products using metal surfaces. Consumer, industrial, and automotive products are using metallic materials to differentiate with their customers through improved aesthetics. The new series frees developers to incorporate these metals by making inductive sensing as easy to use as Cypress’ industry-leading CapSense® solutions for capacitive-sensing. By empowering developers to solve their capacitive and inductive sensing problems, the PSoC 4700 series is the ideal choice for modern, state-of-the-art industrial design.

The PSoC 4700 inductive sensing solution is supported in Cypress’ PSoC Creator Integrated Design Environment (IDE), which allows users to drag and drop production-ready hardware blocks, including the new inductive sensing capability, into a design and easily configure them via a simple graphical user interface. More information on the PSoC 4700 series, the inductive sensing solution and registration for the early access program for kits and collateral is available at www.cypress.com/PSoC4700.

The PSoC 4700 MCUs are based on a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M0+ core and integrate programmable analog and digital blocks. The devices can support up to 16 sensors to implement digital functions or custom algorithms for interfaces in various form-factors, including buttons, linear and rotary encoders, proximity sensing or free-form. The PSoC 4700 inductive-sensing solution provides superior noise immunity for reliable operation, even in extreme environmental conditions. The highly integrated solution enables cost-efficient system designs by reducing bill-of-material costs.

Cypress’ free PSoC Creator IDE simplifies system design by enabling concurrent hardware and firmware development using PSoC Components—embedded ICs represented by an icon in the IDE. Engineers can easily configure the programmable analog and digital blocks in PSoC by dragging and dropping components on the PSoC Creator schematic and customizing them with graphical component configuration tools. The tool features auto-calibration that automatically compensates for manufacturing variations.

Autoliv Spins Off Electronics

Autoliv, Inc. the worldwide leader in automotive safety systems, announced important steps in the process to spin-off its Electronics business.

The process of spinning off the Electronics business under the name Veoneer is progressing well. Operational separation of the Electronics business was completed on schedule April 1 and critical items, including transfer of people, set-up of systems and the establishment of leadership teams, are tracking according to plan. The establishment of new boards of directors for the separate entities is also progressing well and the new boards will be announced ahead of the spin-off. The Company now anticipates trading in Veoneer to begin in the early part of the third quarter of 2018 with listings on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stockholm.

HARMAN Chosen by Great Wall

HARMAN I announced that Great Wall Motors has chosen HARMAN to deliver its Remote Vehicle Updating Service (OTA) in the company’s vehicle launching in 2019. This announcement was made at the Auto China 2018 show that is taking place in Beijing, between April 25 – May 4, 2018.

HARMAN’s Remote Vehicle Updating Service is an end-to-end solution capable for remotely updating the full vehicle, from head units to the smallest ECUs, providing OEMs the capability to fully monitor and control any update, campaigns with full traceability. HARMAN’s solution is also capable of updating any software on any operating system, including firmware, software, application, maps, content, configuration and more. It leverages the company’s key cornerstone Smart Delta technology, which reduces the file update package by up to 99 percent. This contributes greatly to the security of the process, network efficiency as well as cost savings, minimizing the time it takes for the update to complete and ultimately resulting in a positive customer experience.

Lytx Drive Cam for Mack Trukcs

Lytx, the global leader in video telematics, announced that Mack Trucks will roll out vehicles pre-wired for the Lytx DriveCam safety program and Lytx Video Services enhancement.

The announcement, made today at WasteExpo 2018 in Las Vegas, builds on a Memorandum of Understanding signed last October between Mack Trucks and Lytx that promised higher levels of integration and collaboration between the two companies to support their mutual customers.

As of fall 2018, customers will have the opportunity to order the Mack LR and TerraPro refuse models wired and ready for faster program deployment of Lytx solutions. The option will be available when clients configure or order new Mack LR and TerraPro trucks through Mack dealers. Customers can choose wiring for either the SV2 or one of the SF Series event recorders for rapid, plug-and-play deployment.

CCC AI-Powered to Detect Auto Damage

CCC Information Services Inc. (CCC) announced the availability of AI-powered capabilities that use computer vision technology to automatically detect vehicle damage and visually depict that damage using CCC’s unique heat maps. The CCC heat map technology is an auto claims industry first, transforming vehicle photos into heat maps which provide an insightful and more visually literate, color-coded view of the damage for every major vehicle brand and body type in the U.S., including sedans, SUVs, coupes, convertibles, vans, light trucks, hatchbacks, and wagons. CCC is a leading Software as a Service provider to the automotive, insurance, and collision repair industries.

Research shows that 9 out of 10 consumers prefer estimates when delivered with heat maps that clearly highlight the damage versus estimates delivered without heat maps.

SF Motors Opens R&D Office in Milpitas

SF Motors, a global intelligent electric vehicle company that aims to accelerate the growth of the EV industry at large, announced today that it will open a new R&D facility at the McCarthy Creekside Industrial Center in Milpitas, California. SF Motors has chosen this latest facility location to push forward its innovative electric powertrain technology, tapping into Silicon Valley’s proximity to top-tier vendors and Silicon Valley talent. It currently has R&D facilities in Santa Clara, California, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Stuttgart, Germany.
R&D and low-volume manufacturing efforts at the 130,000 square foot facility will be led by Chief Technology Officer Yifan Tang, and will center on SF Motors’ proprietary battery, e-powertrain, and autonomous driving technologies. Anticipated activities include testing verification of its technologies, development of manufacturing processes, trial production and low-volume manufacturing. This Silicon Valley facility will additionally focus on intelligent connectivity and user experience feature development.
SF Motors will be the first tenant at McCarthy Creekside, McCarthy Ranch’s new Silicon Valley industrial manufacturing development. Engineering and manufacturing jobs will be added for this new facility when it becomes operational in Q4 of 2018.

LG Electronics Buys ZKW Lighting Group

The Board of Directors of LG Electronics (LG) approved the acquisition of leading automotive lighting and headlight systems provider ZKW Group, capping a deal worth more than EUR 1.1 billion, LG’s largest acquisition to date. Under the terms of the transaction, LG Electronics will acquire a 70 percent stake in ZKW Group with parent company LG Corp. purchasing the remaining 30 percent.

The strategic merger is expected to result in synergies that allow the combined companies to lead the global lighting sector in autonomous vehicle components. Headquartered in the Lower Austrian town of Wieselburg, ZKW Group is a high-tech leader in automotive lighting systems with a presence in markets throughout Europe in addition to China, Mexico and the United States.

MIPI Releases Debugger

The MIPI Alliance, an international organization that develops interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries, today released MIPI System Software Trace (MIPI SyS-T), a common data format for transmitting software trace and debug information between a test system and a device, such as a system-on-chip (SoC) or platform. The specification is publicly available to developers, and an accompanying example implementation library is accessible via GitHub.

Until now, available methods have been vendor-specific or based on major operating systems and there has been no independent format for exchanging debug information across software, firmware or hardware implementations. This fragmentation has been challenging for developers because devices typically incorporate software and components from different vendors, which increases debugging complexity and drives up development costs.

“MIPI SyS-T addresses a very real need in the debug and test industry for a universal data format that alleviates fragmentation and provides a convenient, vendor- and OS-agnostic solution for developers across the embedded software ecosystem,” said Joel Huloux, chairman of MIPI Alliance.

The specification also complements and strengthens the MIPI Alliance debug and test portfolio because it can be used with any MIPI Alliance debugging tool or transport protocol.

“By providing the MIPI SyS-T example implementation as open source through GitHub, our goal is to spur adoption of the specification in the developer community and, ultimately, broaden the reach of MIPI Alliance,” Huloux said.

The specification includes the trace formatting method as well as an optional MIPI SyS-T Instrumentation Library, which includes APIs and documentation that developers can use to jumpstart their use of the specification rather than starting from scratch.

Developers can access MIPI SyS-T by visiting http://bit.ly/2HtAwG1, which provides a link to the specification and the GitHub resources. MIPI Alliance encourages developers to use, modify and share the example SyS-T library, provide feedback and interact with others in the user community.

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