In connected car news are Applied Information, OmniAir, Arbe, MapQuest, State Farm, MIT, Google, Apple, NXP, Mobileye, TÜV SÜD, Audi, Spotify, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai Mobis and Samsung.
Applied Information Glance C-V2X Roadside Unit Earns OmniAir Certification
Applied Information announced that its Glance AI-500-095 Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything roadside unit has achieved certification from the OmniAir Consortium. The designation verifies compliance with standardized connected vehicle specifications and confirms multi-vendor hardware interoperability and communications security across municipal intelligent transportation systems. It follows the unit’s July 2024 grant from the Federal Communications Commission.
Operating over the 5.9 GHz safety spectrum, the AI-500-095 connects roadside controller infrastructure directly with equipped connected fleets to support safety and transit priority functions, including Emergency Vehicle Preemption, Transit Signal Priority, red-light warnings and automated school zone advisories. Edge management, application monitoring and firmware updates run through the Glance platform, which provides unified control across native and third-party roadside units. Unlike conventional mast-mounted equipment, the unit uses a ground-accessible component layout intended to lower lifecycle operating costs by allowing field maintenance without bucket trucks or traffic lane closures.
Arbe Launches Gryphon 4D Imaging Radar for Unmanned Ground Vehicles
Arbe Robotics introduced the Gryphon Radar System, an ultra-high-resolution 4D imaging radar designed for unmanned ground vehicles operating in unstructured and off-road environments. Built on Arbe’s automotive-grade architecture with 48 transmitting and 48 receiving channels, the solid-state sensor produces dense 4D point clouds meant to overcome the degradation that dust, smoke, fog and variable lighting cause in optical cameras and lidar.
The platform is optimized for low size, weight, power and cost, and can resolve terrain anomalies, vegetation, positive obstacles and negative obstacles such as ditches or washouts. Beyond target detection, Gryphon handles radar odometry, free-space mapping, tracking and localization to sustain navigation where GNSS signals are denied. Its modular hardware accommodates different data link lengths across small robotic platforms, heavy-duty industrial units, leader-follower convoys and full autonomy deployments aimed at defense, mining, agriculture and logistics.
American Transportation Research Institute Report Puts Fuel Prices at the Top of Trucking Concerns
The American Transportation Research Institute released its 22nd annual Top Industry Issues report at the 2026 American Trucking Associations Management Conference and Exhibition. Fuel prices rose 17 positions to become the top overall concern as diesel surpassed $6.50 per gallon. The shift displaced macroeconomic performance, which fell to sixth place after holding the top ranking for three consecutive years. Motor carrier executives made up more than 48 percent of the nearly 3,100 stakeholders surveyed, with commercial drivers and ancillary freight industry partners each accounting for 26 percent.
Fleet operators prioritized lawsuit abuse reform, fuel expenses and driver shortages, while commercial drivers ranked fuel costs, truck parking infrastructure and driver compensation as their main challenges. Artificial intelligence integration and diesel emissions mandates kept top-ten placements for the second consecutive year. Law enforcement personnel who took part in the survey named electronic logging device fraud as their leading compliance issue.
MapQuest Adds an Opt-In Surveillance Layer for License Plate Readers
MapQuest has updated its mobile navigation platform with an opt-in Surveillance Layer that displays reported automated license plate readers and roadside surveillance infrastructure on the route map. The feature identifies hardware from Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Axon, Genetec, Axis Communications, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia and Verkada, drawing on public and crowdsourced location datasets alongside standard traffic and incident overlays.
The update follows recent additions of Android Auto integration and public transit routing. By marking camera placements and hardware providers across U.S. metro areas, the layer offers visibility into roadside monitoring for privacy-conscious drivers, at a time when public and regulatory scrutiny of municipal automated surveillance data retention continues to grow.
State Farm and MIT AgeLab Launch “Drivefulness” Research on Driver Attention
State Farm and the MIT AgeLab AWARE initiative have launched a joint research program on driver cognitive load, attention allocation and behavioral decision-making in connected vehicle environments. Built around a concept the partners call “drivefulness,” the multi-phase study examines human factors and secondary task engagement as they relate to crash risk. It cites U.S. Department of Transportation data attributing 29 percent of evaluated motor vehicle collisions, more than 10,000 fatalities and $98.2 billion in economic losses to driver distraction.
The project combines State Farm telematics deployment data and driver risk analytics, developed with partners including Cambridge Mobile Telematics, with MIT Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium research on sensing systems, behavioral analytics and human-machine interface design. Benchmark survey results show 68 percent of drivers report engaging in secondary tasks while driving, and 62 percent wrongly perceive off-road glances of two seconds or more as safe, even though the evidence indicates such glances double collision risk. Phase-one findings on attention management and behavioral perception are due in late October 2026, and a second phase beginning in January 2027 will examine contextual interventions, telematics feedback loops and interactions with advanced driver-assistance systems as vehicles become more automated.
Google Brings Gemini Personal Intelligence to Android Auto and Google Built-in
Google has launched the automotive expansion of Gemini Personal Intelligence, extending contextual account data into the vehicle cockpit across Android Auto and native Google built-in infotainment systems. The feature lets the conversational AI model draw on services including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Photos to handle hands-free navigation and scheduling requests without manual input.
The system is deploying immediately through Android Auto smartphone projection, with the native rollout to vehicles running Google built-in software planned over the coming months. The feature is opt-in through account permissions in Gemini Connected Apps, though active phone settings carry over automatically during projection sessions. To limit exposure of personal data to other passengers in native infotainment systems, Google built-in implementations require an authenticated Bluetooth handset link and provide separate in-vehicle toggle controls.
Google Deploys Conversational Gemini Navigation to Apple CarPlay
Google has begun deploying conversational Gemini navigation within Google Maps for Apple CarPlay, bringing a native in-app voice assistant to Apple’s in-vehicle projection platform. The release gives CarPlay parity with the navigation voice features already on Android Auto, letting drivers manage routing, report traffic incidents and ask about points of interest through an on-screen Gemini interface.
The system runs entirely inside the Google Maps runtime and handles conversational, multi-step requests, such as chained routing constraints and real-time waypoint additions, without switching apps on the iPhone. Foundational navigation and localized search are supported, but Google has not included its broader Personal Intelligence suite, which links Workspace, Calendar and personal account data, in the initial CarPlay deployment.
TASKING Unveils Unified ASIL D Toolchain for NXP S32K5 Microcontrollers
TASKING has introduced a single-vendor development toolchain built for NXP Semiconductors’ S32K5 automotive microcontroller family. Developed in partnership with NXP, the suite brings compilation, debugging and verification into one environment aimed at software-defined vehicle zonal controllers, domain modules and body-chassis electrification architectures. It offers native qualification for ISO 26262 ASIL D safety architectures and ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity compliance, addressing toolchain fragmentation and overhead across automaker and Tier 1 embedded software pipelines.
The toolchain works directly with the S32K5’s multi-core topology, with execution support for Arm Cortex-M7 cores, hypervisor-enabled Cortex-R52 processors, hardware isolation logic and integrated DSP acceleration. To streamline AUTOSAR integration, it includes certified Microcontroller Abstraction Layer validation using NXP’s AUTOSAR RealTime Drivers, and it maintains code migration parity between legacy S32K3 designs and the higher-throughput S32K5, with compiler-aware trace routines, memory flashing and automated verification loops for mixed-criticality real-time workloads.
Mobileye Receives TÜV SÜD ISO 21448 Inspection Certificate for AEB Development
Mobileye has been granted an inspection certificate by technical auditor TÜV SÜD confirming that its automatic emergency braking engineering workflow conforms to ISO 21448, the standard for the Safety of the Intended Functionality. The assessment examined Mobileye’s hazard identification, performance validation and risk mitigation methods, verifying that its safety baselines account for real-world environmental variables and optical perception limitations in the absence of explicit hardware or algorithmic faults.
The certification formalizes Mobileye’s validation framework for high-level driver-assistance platforms, supplementing standard ISO 26262 functional safety work with structured verification for complex operational design domains. The compliance documentation applies directly to production AEB algorithms deployed across the EyeQ system-on-chip series, supporting traceability as automakers integrate Level 2+ and mixed-criticality driver assistance across high-volume passenger vehicle lineups.
Audi Q9 Debuts Curved Digital OLED Lighting
Audi has unveiled its third-generation digital lighting architecture on the upcoming Q9 flagship SUV, introducing what it describes as the industry’s first production three-dimensionally curved digital OLED rear panels. The curved assemblies use ultra-thin 0.1 mm carrier glass with a bend radius down to 200 mm, allowing the panels to follow the vehicle’s body contours. Wrapping the light-emitting surface around the corners broadens lateral visibility for surrounding traffic and turns the rear cluster into a V2X optical signaling display able to show hazard and breakdown warning symbols.
The system spreads 512 individually addressable segments across six panels and offers up to eight selectable front and rear light signatures with three-dimensional semi-active effects. The rear assembly is paired with front Digital Matrix LED headlights driven by a 13 mm micro-LED module with 25,600 individual diodes. The front optics project orientation markers, lane-guidance trajectories and predictive turn signals onto the road to show pedestrians, cyclists and other road users the vehicle’s intentions before it maneuvers.
Audi Integrates a Standalone Spotify App Into Android Automotive Infotainment
Audi has built a native Spotify application into its Android Automotive OS infotainment stack, removing the need for smartphone tethering through Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Developed with Spotify and Cariad, the software is distributed through the Audi Application Store in 47 international markets for model-year 2026 vehicles on the Premium Platform Electric and Premium Platform Combustion architectures. Launch models include the electric A6 e-tron and Q6 e-tron and the combustion-powered A5, Q5 and A6, with the upcoming Q7 and flagship Q9 to follow at their commercial launches.
The integration departs from standardized automotive media templates by carrying Spotify’s own interface, including Spotify Jam collaborative queueing by QR code, algorithmic DJ curation, music videos and synchronized lyrics. Distraction-mitigation logic changes functionality with the vehicle’s transmission state: while the car is moving, the central MMI display restricts video, lyrics and deep menu settings but keeps audio playback and native “Hey Audi” voice commands. In cabins with a separate front passenger display, interactive and visual media remain available while driving.
Mercedes-Benz Commits €500 Million to PLM.AI to Shorten Vehicle Development
Mercedes-Benz is committing approximately €500 million ($560 million) to deploy PLM.AI, an AI-driven product lifecycle management architecture designed to cut new vehicle development timelines by up to 30 percent, or roughly 17 months. The system links engineering, procurement, manufacturing, sales and after-sales in a single digital thread and aims for efficiency gains of up to 50 percent across individual engineering disciplines. It moves isolated AI uses, such as automated homologation, parts costing and software debugging, into an interoperable ecosystem governed by standardized cross-functional data models that can weigh multiple design trade-offs at once.
The platform rests on an open core layer from CONTACT Software’s CONTACT Elements platform, combined with Siemens’ AI-assisted computer-aided design, digital twin modeling and multiphysics simulation tools. By favoring virtual validation over hardware prototypes, Mercedes-Benz plans to reduce physical vehicle testing by up to 50 percent over the long term. Under the operating agreement, the automaker keeps control of the underlying data models, software architecture and derivative AI training weights, which is intended to prevent intellectual property leakage while speeding series-production readiness for future passenger and commercial vehicles.
Hyundai Mobis Moves 13 In-House Automotive Chips Toward Commercial Development
Hyundai Mobis is advancing 13 domestically designed automotive semiconductors from research into commercial development following the second annual Auto Semicon Korea forum in Seongnam. The event convened 53 domestic fabless firms, foundries and institutional partners, and the Tier 1 supplier has placed nine of the chips directly into production development for upcoming vehicle platforms. Since absorbing Hyundai Autron’s semiconductor business unit in 2020, Hyundai Mobis has come to manufacture 16 proprietary system-on-chip designs through merchant foundries at an annual volume of 20 million units, spanning actuation, sensing, power management, gateway communication and edge computing.
The consortium reflects a government-backed drive to localize the supply chain, led by South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources together with Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Mobis and LG Electronics. To reduce the functional safety certification and capital hurdles of automotive silicon, the forum’s framework sets up a full-cycle collaborative pipeline covering silicon IP, packaging, OS-level software, fault-tolerant testing and ISO 26262 compliance. The initiative mirrors vertical-integration strategies elsewhere in Asian auto markets, limiting exposure to external foundries while securing dedicated fabless capacity for software-defined vehicles.
Samsung Foundry Introduces 8LPU+ Mature Node for Automotive and Robotics Silicon
Samsung Foundry has launched 8LPU+, a second-generation extension of its 8-nanometer process for automotive electronic control units, robotics controllers and edge AI accelerators. Produced on established deep ultraviolet lithography lines at its Giheung fab, the node lets chipmakers avoid the capital expenditure, mask complexity and wafer premiums of extreme ultraviolet manufacturing while meeting automotive-grade thermal and physical reliability baselines.
Compared with the earlier 8LPU platform, 8LPU+ delivers a 12 percent gain in compute performance, a 15 percent reduction in power consumption and an 8 percent reduction in logic area. The node targets software-defined vehicle architectures moving toward centralized zonal and regional domain controllers, and offers a validated manufacturing option for compute tasks where the transistor density of 2-nanometer or 3-nanometer processes is cost-prohibitive. Samsung is aiming to draw on the automotive field record of its 8-nanometer technology, previously used to produce NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip designs, to win automotive customers amid intense competition among leading-edge foundries.