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GM accelerates electric initiative
General Motors Co. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra revealed that the company will offer 30 all-electric models globally by mid-decade, with 40% of the company’s U.S. entries being battery electric vehicles. Barra also announced an increase in GM’s financial commitment to EVs and AVs to $27 billion through 2025, up from $20 billion planned before the COVID-19 pandemic. “Climate change is real, and we want to be part of the solution by putting everyone in an electric vehicle,” said Barra. “We can accelerate our EV plans because we are rapidly building a competitive advantage in batteries, software, vehicle integration, manufacturing and customer experience.” More than two-thirds of the 30 EVs will be available in North America. Engineering advances have increased the estimated maximum range of Ultium-based vehicles from 400 to as much as 450 mi on a full charge. More than half of GM’s capital spending and product development team will be devoted to electric and electric-autonomous vehicle programs. The second-generation Ultium chemistry by mid-decade is projected to deliver twice the energy density at less than half the cost. The development schedules for 12 vehicle programs have been moved up, including the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq (see ), along with three other GMC Ultium variants including a pickup, four Chevrolet EVs including a pickup and compact crossover, and three other Cadillacs. Buick’s EV lineup will include two Ultium-based EVs. GM is hiring 3,000 electrical system, infotainment software and controls engineers, plus developers for Java, Android, iOS and other platforms.
Panasonic and Phiar team on AI-driven navigation
Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America will partner with Redwood City, CA-based Phiar, developer of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technology, to expand driver safety and navigation support in its automotive solutions. Phiar’s deep-learning AI technology runs on automotive infotainment systems, detects and analyzes the driver’s surroundings in real-time, and combines it with 3D localization of the vehicle to provide augmented guidance and safety information. Phiar uses map and navigation data from leading map platforms to offer live visual navigation with traffic and other contextual data. “We liked that Phiar can work with any map or routing solution,” said Andrew Poliak, Chief Technology Officer for Panasonic Automotive. The company aims to deliver a superior solution with object and pedestrian detection, scene understanding, and AI-driven AR navigation. For more info on Panasonic solutions, visit https://bit.ly/3nD6owm.
Robert Bosch Venture Capital invests in Aclima for hyperlocal air-quality analytics
Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) has completed an investment San Francisco-based startup Aclima Inc., a leader in hyperlocal air quality and greenhouse gas measurement and analysis. The startup’s platform helps governments, communities, and enterprise customers accelerate action to reduce emissions and protect public health. “Together, we can accelerate Aclima’s ability to support customers in taking decisive and data-driven climate action, supporting Bosch’s guiding principle ‘Invented for Life.’” said Dr. Ingo Ramesohl, Managing Director of RBVC. Aclima has pioneered a new class of measurement and analysis tools that make air pollution and climate-changing emissions visible at the street-level and at the scale of entire cities and states. To deploy its mobile sensing network, Aclima upfits vehicles with their sensing devices, streaming the measurements results to the cloud. “Air pollution takes millions of lives and costs billions of dollars every year, and is now linked with higher COVID-19 death rates,” said Davida Herzl, Cofounder and CEO of Aclima. The $40 million Series B round was led by Clearvision Ventures, with other new investors including Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, GingerBread Capital, KTB Network, ACVC Partners, and Splunk Inc. Existing shareholders participating in the round include Plum Alley, Kapor Capital, Rethink Impact, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and Social Capital.
Drivers let their focus slip as they get used to partial automation
Drivers fidget with electronics and take both hands off the wheel more often as they develop trust in automated driving systems, new research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab shows. The researchers studied the driving behavior of 20 Massachusetts-based volunteers over a month’s time as they gained familiarity with advanced driver assistance features. When the drivers first received the vehicles, there was little or no difference in how frequently they showed signs of disengagement, whether they were driving manually or not. After a month, however, they were substantially more likely to let their focus slip or take their hands off the wheel when using automation, said IIHS Senior Research Scientist Ian Reagan, the lead author of the study. Earlier this year, IIHS issued a series of recommendations for improving how such systems monitor whether the driver is paying attention and how the systems react when that focus falters. The European New Car Assessment Program recently launched ratings for driver assistance systems that assess those capabilities in addition to how well the systems control the vehicle’s speed and steering. However, U.S. regulators have yet to develop similar ratings or standards for evaluating partial automation systems. “Crash investigators have identified driver disengagement as a major factor in every probe of fatal crashes involving partial automation we’ve seen,” said Reagan. For more information, go to https://www.iihs.org/.
IDTechEx forecasts drone market at over $22 billion by 2041
A recent IDTechEx market research report on drones and associated technologies predicts the market to be over $22 billion by 2041. “Drone Market and Industries 2021-2041” covers the key areas of the drone environment such as the hardware, software, and sensors that are critical to drone use cases and adoption. Researchers explained at bit about the drones used for a variety of applications. Rotary types that are typically more efficient at smaller sizes. With four fixed-pitch props, there are few moving parts and this reduces the cost of the drone. However, the design does not scale up well, because the larger the propeller, the more energy it takes to change its speed. So, each motor would have to be drastically oversized, which would increase weight, or slow dynamic response, which would impact handling. So fixed-wing drones are typically used for longer distances, where less dynamic handling is required. Use cases include surveying or mapping, where the drone can follow a fixed path and map a large area while remaining in the VLOS visual line of sight of the drone pilot. One key area of importance is regulations for different use cases. Restrictions limit applications such as drone delivery, and privacy restrictions do not permit recordings over private property in some countries. This limits the use cases in delivery or infrastructure management for a domestic setting. This report into the many applications for drone technologies, for the use cases of agricultural, search and rescue, mapping and localization, delivery, and consumer—with forecasts for 2021-2031 and 2031-2041 timeframes.
