In connected car news this week were Tesla, Hyundai Mobis, DENSO,VW, MAX IP, TomTom, TAPCO, Murata, Infosys and Vector.
Tesla Stock Still Public
Elon Musk in a blog post stated ” I met with Tesla’s Board of Directors yesterday and let them know that I believe the better path is for Tesla to remain public. The Board indicated that they agree.”
Hyundai Mobis Invests in StradVision
-To reinforce its competitiveness in core technologies of future vehicles, Hyundai Mobis has decided to invest in a promising startup in this field.
The performance of the deep learning-based image detection technology developed by StradVision is regarded as top-notch in the field of front detection camera. The deep learning-based object detection technology is excellent at accurately recognizing not only distant objects but also overlapped ones; it can distinguish one object from another—for instance, between vehicles and pedestrians or between pedestrians and bicycles—and utilizes that information as data for safe driving.
StradVision possesses 14 patents, including a method for rapidly reading texts embedded in images, fast parallel data processing and detection accuracy enhancement technology, with 10 of them having been registered in the U.S.
DENSO Invests in JOLED
DENSO Corporation today announced it has invested 30 billion yen ($270 million) in JOLED Inc., a developer of printed organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays. The investment accelerates JOLED’s development and mass production of in-vehicle OLED displays, which are used for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) in car cockpits to deliver key driving information to the driver quickly and accurately. Compared to conventional HMIs, which use thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs), JOLED’s OLED displays offer higher-definition images, more vivid colors, and are designed to be thinner, lighter, and bendable– making them easier to install and produce more optimized light output for improved HMI functionality.
VW Shares Electric Cars
The Volkswagen brand is to launch an extensive all-electric car sharing offering in selected major cities under its “We Share” sub-brand. The first fleet of vehicles will be rolled out in the German capital Berlin, and will comprise 1,500 e-Golf(1) when the service begins operating in the second quarter of 2019, with an additional 500 e-up!(2) following later. These vehicles will gradually be replaced by the first models from the new Volkswagen I.D. family from 2020.
Big Screens for Infotainment
Automotive infotainment designers can now upgrade to bigger, higher resolution displays with greater ease, reduced cost and smaller solution size with the MAX20069 from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. The MAX20069 provides the industry’s first solution integrating four I2C-controlled, 150mA LED backlight drivers and a four-output thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD) bias in a single chip. The IC can reduce design footprint up to one-third compared to the closest competitor’s parts.
MAX20069 supports larger screen sizes and higher resolution by providing positive analog supply voltage (PAVVD) and negative analog supply voltage (NAVDD), both of which are required for low-temperature polysilicon panels (LTPS) that deliver higher resolution and lower cost than amorphous silicon panels now currently in use. The IC also supports the high currents that next-generation displays require, with 150mA per channel in the four-channel LED driver for 8-inch or larger displays and higher resolutions. MAX20069 operates over the minus 40-degree Celsius to 105-degree Celsius ambient temperature range and is available in a 6mm x 6mm TQFN package.
Key Advantages
- High Integration: Reduces design footprint, providing TFT-LCD bias with four rails plus four 150mA LED backlight drivers.
- Single board supports panels from multiple manufacturers through a resistor or I2C programmable sequencing to further reduce solution size
- Utilizes 25 percent of the microcontroller (MCU) register bits versus closest competitor’s solution, eliminating the need for a more powerful and costlier MCU in display designs
- Performance: Delivers twice the dimming ratio compared to the closest competitor’s offering, maintaining panel readability during transition to different light conditions; MAX20069 supports increased resolution through a 10,000:1 pulse-width modulation (PWM) dimming ratio at 200Hz
- Safety and Built-in Diagnostics: An easy-to-use I2C interface quickly pinpoints problems, directing the microcontroller to adjust to conditions or alert the driver of a failure
- Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Mitigation: 2.2MHz switching frequency, spread spectrum and phase-shift capabilities help mitigate interference and emissions
TomTom Updates Maps
TomTom 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 maps as an accurate representation of reality.
On average, TomTom’s map is updated more than 570 times a second. The changes are a mixture of geometry and road features and may include new POIs, altered road junctions or new addresses.
TAPCO’s New CVT
Traffic & Parking Control Company, Inc. (TAPCO) – manufacturer, distributor and service provider of traffic and parking control products – introduced its new Connected Vehicle Interface.
This innovative enhancement option will upgrade new and existing AC and solar-powered TAPCO Intelligent Warning Systems to integrate with connected vehicle ready infrastructure. The Connected Vehicle Interface communicates with Smart City Road Side Units (RSUs) to relay Intelligent Warning System activation data to connected vehicles via Dedicated Short-Range Communication, 4G or 5G networks, providing drivers with instant in-vehicle alerts.
More MEMS Made by Murata In Vantaa
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd expands its MEMS sensor manufacturing by building a new factory in Vantaa, Finland to increase the sensor production capacity. Total value of the investment is five billion yen. With the expansion, the company estimates to create 150–200 new jobs in 2018–2019. The MEMS sensors manufactured by Murata in Finland are used in applications such as car safety systems and pacemakers.
Infosys’s New Hub in Ralieigh
Infosys a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services inaugurated its Technology and Innovation Hub in Raleigh. In addition, Infosys announced that it has hired more than 4,700 Americans since Spring 2017, including nearly 500 in North Carolina, as part of the company’s campaign to hire 10,000 American and accelerate the pace of innovation for American industry.
Vector CAN Canoe Disturbances
Vector offers the hardware VH6501 for the precise and reproducible disturbance of CAN (FD) networks. The compact device is additionally a network interface for CANoe. This combination of disturbance functionality and interface enables test setups for conformance testing with very little effort.
The VH6501 hardware allows test engineers and developers to produce a wide variety of digital and analogue disturbances precisely and reproducibly in CAN (FD) networks. It is thus ideally suited to automatically test the error handling of ECUs. Such tests are an essential part of indispensable conformity tests in the automotive industry.
On the one hand, VH6501 serves the test tool CANoe as a normal network interface. On the other hand, the fault functionality is controlled via the programming language CAPL (Communication Access Programming Language) integrated in CANoe. Due to this tight CANoe connection, test setups with residual bus simulation can be realized very easily and without additional hardware.
The well-documented CAPL API allows users to configure short circuits in the CAN signal lines, interchanging cables, and modifying R/C network parameters for analog interference. In the case of digital disturbances, almost any digital interference sequences and extensive triggering conditions can be defined. Thus, the VH6501 covers much more than just typical use cases, such as checking the controller behavior during a bus-off or measuring the sampling time.
The exact visual representation of the disturbances generated by VH6501 and that of the reactions in the CAN (FD) network can optionally be done with the software CANoe Option. Scope and the necessary hardware. This allows a very accurate analysis of the events and helps VH6501 users to create their own tests.
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