In connected car news this week were Torc Neuvition, NXP, Metomoto, OSRAM, Tritium, Toshiba, and ZF.
Automotive Chip Market Growing
The global automotive chip market size is expected to reach USD 56.24 billion by 2025, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc., exhibiting a CAGR of 10.7% during the forecast period. Rising awareness regarding energy-efficient lighting systems and burgeoning sales of luxury vehicles equipped with navigation and infotainment systems are creating an upswing in the demand for automotive chips.
Autonomous Cars Predictions
New findings from Juniper Research reveal that by the end of 2026 there will be over 50 million autonomous vehicles on the road, with over 10 million in the US and 15 million in the Far East and China. In comparison, the global market will account for 1.5 billion vehicles on the road during the same year.
Torc Torques by Doubling Workers
Following the rollout of its Asimov self-driving car system exactly one year ago today, and “human-like” public demos at CES in January, Torc is nearly doubling the size of its team and continues to expand the project.
Torc is hiring for a variety of positions, but most of the new recruits are software engineers who join the company’s deep bench of self-driving technologists—several of whom participated in the DARPA competitions. They will help Torc continue to improve its cross-industry end-to-end software stack.
New Neuvition LiDAR
Neuvition, Inc. announced the first version of its 480 lines HD video LiDAR, Titan M1. The semi solid state LiDAR has a resolution of 480 vertical lines and 1280 pixels max for each line (resolution of 1280 x 480). It is one of the highest resolution LiDARs on the commercial market. It has up to 1.5 million points/sec data rate with multiple returns and distance up to 200 meters. The Titan M1 uses a 1550nm wavelength laser which is eye safe and works better in certain weather conditions compared to the 905nm laser.
Neuvition LiDAR offers a dynamically adjustable system. It allows the LiDAR to be adjusted dynamically to use different resolution, power, scan density, distribution pattern, etc.
Neuvition LiDAR has video fusion. The Titan M1 comes with a video camera on board. It can generate the colorless point cloud, or the colored point cloud which is important for many applications. By combining distance data and color, we make it easy to generate the 3D color model with our LiDAR devices. Besides the autonomous driving, other applications such as 3D imaging or surveillance should benefit from the color point cloud and the point cloud fused video
NXP Partners with Smart City Columbus
NXP Semiconductors N.V., has announced the next phase in its Smart City collaboration with Columbus, Ohio. NXP will contribute key technologies for smart and safe mobility to the Smart Columbus Experience Center.
As part of the Smart Columbus Experience Center initiative, NXP and Cohda Wireless will deploy a connected vehicle environment through the center’s electric vehicle test drive area so drivers can experience this future technology in person. NXP has also donated an electric motorcycle with an accompanying drone that alerts the driver to dangers or delays ahead.
As part of its commitment to Columbus, NXP will continue to contribute key mobility technologies to the Smart Columbus Experience Center, including:
- NXP’s RoadLINK V2X technology allows cars to communicate with each other as well as with intelligent traffic infrastructures. The IEEE802.11p Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) standard allows cars to securely connect to each other as well as to infrastructure. DSRC technology is the only ADAS sensor that can look around the corner and offers lowest latency in the communication.
- Smart Card IC technology that enhances transportation for all citizens by supporting secure and convenient public transportation ticketing and payment systems, including contactless transit fare solutions.
- Highly secure NXP Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solutions designed to promote public safety and convenience. Smart City applications for this NXP technology include vehicle window stickers that enhance driver convenience and reduce municipal costs by eliminating the need for stop-and-pay stations in public parking spaces.
Metomoto at AUVSI
To see how this breakthrough AV simulation solution is a crucial technology that helps make self-driving cars a near-term reality, visit Metamoto at booth 300 at AUVSI’s Automated Vehicles Symposium in San Francisco, CA, taking place from July 9-12.
Metamoto’s offering will include three components:
- Director – A scalable, parameterized simulator allowing for tests to run across a spectrum of environmental and hardware parameters and unique edge cases.
- Designer – A first-of-its-kind tool to custom build parameterized scenarios via a visual editor. Scenarios define the training and testing behaviors of traffic, pedestrians, sensor configurations, etc. within a virtual scene.
- Analyzer – A comprehensive analysis tool to assess how a vehicle performed in specific simulations. This tool is often referenced as an autonomous systems debugger.
Key features of the offering include:
- Scalability – The ability to run millions of tests in a single cycle, ultimately driving billions of virtual test miles, to identify isolated outcomes, performance boundaries and system tolerances.
- Parameterization – Simulations are executable across a spectrum of environmental (weather, traffic, road conditions, pedestrians, etc.) and hardware (vehicle properties, sensor placement, latency, sensor settings, etc.) parameters.
- Continuous test and integration – On-demand simulation is inserted into the AV product lifecycle with tools like Jenkins and Jira, allowing for seamless regression testing, agile workflows, version control and more, every time vehicle software, sensors and/or infrastructure change.
- Accurate simulation – Precise, unified simulation of a variety of sensors is available including LiDAR, camera, radar, GPS, IMU and others.
- Interoperability – Metamoto’s offering is delivered as an add-on to other mobility solutions. For example, Metamoto and Renovo recently announced a partnership to make simulation solutions available to Renovo’s AWare ecosystem.
OSRAM Continental Joint Venture
The OSRAM Continental joint venture is now complete. The new company is actively doing business with a focus on intelligent lighting solutions in the automotive market, effective July 2, 2018. Following successful negotiations and merger control approvals, the joint venture launched as planned in the second half of this year. OSRAM Continental will initially employ around 1500 people at 16 locations worldwide. Continental and Osram each hold a 50 percent stake in the joint venture.
OSRAM Continental is planning growth rates of up to double digits annually for the next five years. This is based on strong growth in the market of LED, as well as laser based lighting modules, sensor solutions and associated electronics. The first products to be developed by the joint venture are expected to be ready for series production by 2021.
Future of Batteries
Arthur D. Little (ADL) today released a new study, “Future of batteries: Winner takes all?” Based on extensive market analysis, the report examines the current enormous level of activity in the sector, which has seen existing and new players invest over $13.7 billion over the last two years. It predicts future trends that will meet growing needs in areas such as electric vehicles (EVs), renewable power solutions and consumer electronics. It aims to help players across the ecosystem build effective strategies that unlock value and market position.
The report predicts the battery market will become a $90 billion-plus sector by 2025, and that new innovations, such as solid-state electrolyte lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, will replace existing battery technologies over the long-term. This is thanks to improved performance and innovation delivery combined with consumer pull and willingness to pay for better solutions.
Super High-Power Chargers from Tritium
The world’s first high-powered chargers (HPC) from Tritium have gone into operation for IONITY in Germany. The 12 HPC have been put into operation at the Tank & Rast rest stops at Brohltal Ost and West on either side of Germany’s famous Autobahn (highway A61).
While these 350 kW chargers have a small footprint, they can add up to 93 miles (150km) of range to an EV in five minutes, bringing EV charging time on par with that of traditional refueling stops. These charging stations are part of a planned pan-European network of around 400 HPC stations for IONITY.
New Toshiba Storage
Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation announced the launch of a new analog output IC photocoupler that enables high-speed communications in automotive applications – especially electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV).
The new TLX9309 consists of a high-output GaAlAs light emitting diode (LED) that is optically coupled to a high-speed detector. The detector consists of a photodiode and a transistor integrated onto a single chip. A Faraday shield has been integrated onto the photodetector chip to provide enhanced levels of common-mode transient immunity – typically up to 15kV/μs, an important parameter in electrically noisy automotive environments.
By separating the photodiode and amplification transistor, the collector capacitance is reduced, reducing propagation delays and making the open-collector TLX9309 faster than transistor output devices. In fact, propagation delay times are guaranteed to be between 0.1μs and 1.0μs, with the difference between high to low and low to high transition (|tpLH-tpHL|) being no more than 0.7μs, making the device suitable for high-speed communications such as inverter control or as an interface to intelligent power modules (IPM).
Electrically, the device offers 3750Vrms of isolation with 5.0mm of creepage and clearance for safety isolation. It operates from a supply in the range -0.5 to 30V DC and can drive up to 25mA at output voltages up to 20V. The current transfer ratio is in the range 15-300%.
The TLX9309 is packaged in a 3.7mm x 7.0mm x 2.2mm RoHS compliant 5-pin SO6 package and operates over the temperature range -40°C to +125°C. The device is AEC-Q101 qualified for use in automotive applications.
The TLX9309 is now in mass production.
Applications
Automotive equipment
- I/O signal communications in inverter control circuits
- Signal communications within equipment
Features
- Analog output (Open collector)
- Data communication rate: 1 Mbps (typ.) @NRZ
- Compared with a transistor output, propagation delay time is faster:
tPHL=0.8 μs (max), tPLH=1.0 μs (max) - AEC-Q101 qualified.
ZF eWallet
ZF has founded Car eWallet GmbH, a Berlin-based start-up, in which the company will outsource the current activities of the transaction service Car eWallet. The objective is to further develop and market the service following an initial six month collaboration with project partners IBM and UBS, which successfully concluded this spring. The service, for example, enables payments for refueling or re-charging electric cars. The electronic transaction wallet can also be used to pay for tolls, parking fees or car sharing. The first pilot projects of Car eWallet are expected to be launched as early as the second half of 2018.
Highly automated and fully autonomous driving in particular as well as electromobility will require vehicles to be connected to payment services. This is the only way in which driverless passenger cars can independently use chargeable services such as driving on toll routes, paying for parking fees or charging the battery without the presence of a driver. ZF first presented the Car eWallet service in January 2017. This provided an open automotive transaction platform for mobility-related services that will simplify technical services, digital trade and cashless payments between manufacturers, suppliers, service providers and customers. From day one, the resonance to this innovative technology has been positive.
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