Connected Car News: wejo, Continental, aft Technologies, Silicon Mitus, Freewire tech, Oracle & Nissan

In connected car news are wejo, Continental, aft Technologies, Silicon Mitus, Freewire tech, Oracle and Nissan.

wejo Gets $12 Million Funded

wejo, U.K. based early stage tech company announces $12 million fundraise to drive growth and innovation with new global automotive partners as the market leader of mobility intelligence. The business organizes billions of data points from over 15 million connected cars in the United States, partnering with global automotive manufacturers to stream data at scale and speed.

General Motors, the US car giant, acquired a 35 percent stake in the firm in 2019 and valued the firm at $275 million. Recent funds have come from a mix of new and current investors, with the round being led by DIP Capital LLP and the U.K. government’s Future Fund.

wejo is building the largest single source of connected car data, making it simple and secure for organizations to make decisions around road development, retail, app development and transportation. Their data set provides heightened location accuracy when compared to traditional forms of mobility data using mobile phones as their source.

wejo is in live discussions with various other auto manufacturers about future opportunities, working with its customers to take the complexity out of data processing, access, and implementation. wejo’s data identifies incident and congestion hotspots to make roads safer for drivers, riders, passengers and communities. wejo works with its partners to create a better personal transportation experience by helping drivers to find a parking spot more easily, making EV charging simpler by reducing commute times while also reducing traffic flow and emissions to make cities more livable.

Conti and aft Line Up for Successs

Technology company Continental and system supplier aft automotive are setting up a joint venture to manufacture couplings made of high-performance plastics for the for the future of mobility. The partners have signed a relevant agreement to create a 50/50 joint venture. The two companies have already been jointly developing special couplings that connect the cooling circuit or the turbocharger/charge-air cooler with units in the engine compartment since 2016. This successful development partnership is now being further expanded by setting up a joint venture. ​​​​​​​

“No lines, no hoses, no future mobility. Our lines and connectors remain vital lifelines in cars – both for hybrid and electric vehicles and for IC engines,” said Philip Nelles, head of the Mobile Fluid Systems business unit and therefore responsible for automotive lines and hoses at Continental. He adds: “The close collaborative partnership with aft automotive will enhance our skills as a system supplier and enable us to consistently expand our technological expertise in high-performance plastics for the future. The new company is planned to create more than 30 new jobs by 2025. Completion of the joint venture is subject to the approval of the relevant anti-trust authorities.

Future potential: Sophisticated thermal management extends range of e-vehicles

Unlike conventional vehicles, electric vehicles require multiple cooling circuits with sophisticated thermal management. Batteries in electric vehicles achieve optimum operating efficiency at temperatures between 20 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius. This temperature span enables long ranges, allows the batteries to work more efficiently and extends battery lifetimes. For that reason, in similar fashion to drive and power components, the batteries have to be either cooled or heated, depending on the outside temperature. That results in complex circuits that significantly increase the demands on the individual components. The weight of the new hose generation is also being further reduced. Smaller line cross-sections, for instance on the high-pressure side and in the battery cooling system, mean that less coolant is needed when compared with previous systems.

The right mixture of rubber, polyamide and aluminum materials and an ingenious line geometry ensure the system has adequate inherent stability. Special lines and couplings made of high-performance plastics are developed for this.

Future mobility: High-performance plastics reduce weight and CO2 emissions

Up till now, line systems have often been made of rubber or stainless steel. Especially in vehicles with hybrid drives or electric motors, though, there is a growing trend towards replacing rubber with premium technical plastics. This has allowed the developers to achieve further weight reductions while simultaneously improving performance: Plastic components reduce vehicle weight and thus help lower fuel consumption and cut CO2 emissions. At the same time, the downsizing of space in IC engines is changing the demands on connectors and lines because lighter, quieter and higher-power drives result in increased pressure and thermal loads. For example, auxiliary unit components in the latest generation of IC engines have to withstand continuous temperatures of 160 degrees Celsius for over 3,000 hours with temperature peaks of up to 210 degrees Celsius. High-performance plastics such as heat-stabilized polyamide are able to meet these demands in full.

Silicon Mitus’ OLED PMIC

Silicon Mitus, Inc. (Silicon Mitus), an advanced specialist in Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC), announced that it has completed the development of automotive OLED PMIC and starts supplying the new products in the global automotive market.

Silicon Mitus develops and supplies OLED PMIC with a Korean OLED display manufacturer, which are applied to OLED displays, smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers. Through the addition of the new automotive OLED PMIC, the company is expanding the scope of its business.

The automotive OLED PMIC, which Silicon Mitus has started mass-production, is certified with AEC Q100, a standard for automotive semiconductor reliability assessment. Silicon Mitus supplies the OLED PMIC for Virtual Mirror that consists of a camera and an OLED screen to German automakers through global module manufacturers. It also supplies the product for Center Information Display (CID), a screen showing vehicle information inside an automobile, to Japanese automakers.

– FreeWire Technologies, a pioneer in flexible and future-proof power solutions, has announced the deployment of Boost ChargerTM at an ampm fuel and convenience store in Lodi, California. Boost Charger is the first battery-integrated ultrafast electric vehicle (EV) charger deployed in the US. By using the integrated battery as a buffer, Boost Charger is able to “boost” the existing power at the site, thus delivering the highest power output in the region while enabling widespread deployment at any commercial location.

FreeWire Tech Boosts Charging Lodi

FreeWire Technologies, a pioneer in flexible and future-proof power solutions, has announced the deployment of Boost ChargerTM at an ampm fuel and convenience store in Lodi, California. Boost Charger is the first battery-integrated ultrafast electric vehicle (EV) charger deployed in the US. By using the integrated battery as a buffer, Boost Charger is able to “boost” the existing power at the site, thus delivering the highest power output in the region while enabling widespread deployment at any commercial location.Boost Charger easily connects with ampm‘s existing infrastructure, allowing the system to be installed in hours without requiring expensive new grid power supply. Boost Charger can be powered from a single-phase connection and installed in places that previously could not support higher power demand.

Oracel & Nissan HPC

Oracle announced today that Nissan Motor Co., Ltd is migrating its on-premises, high-performance computing (HPC) workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Nissan relies on a digital product design process to make quick and critical design decisions to improve the fuel efficiency, reliability and safety of its cars. By moving its performance and latency sensitive-engineering simulation workloads to Oracle Cloud, Nissan will be able to speed the design and testing of new cars.

Specifically, Nissan uses software-based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and structural simulation techniques to design and test cars for external aerodynamics and structural failures. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s compute, networking, and storage services optimized for HPC applications will allow Nissan to benefit from the industry’s first and only bare-metal HPC solution with RDMA networking as it innovates cars. Nissan anticipates higher performance and lowers costs with the ability to easily run their engineering simulation workloads in the cloud.