Last month, CEO Swamy Kotagiri kicked off a tech media preview day at Magna International‘s facility in Troy, MI, with an hour-long roundtable discussion on how the company is driving industry transformation by prioritizing innovation and sustainability in manufacturing and materials. The discussion was followed by a media exploration of its latest technologies with the engineering experts behind them.

Among the new technologies, some shown for the first time, were the mega-supplier’s electrification portfolio with “agile” ICE, hybrid, and BEV capabilities; sustainable materials innovations like the EcoSphere seating system and alternative materials; and distinctive designs highlighted by the FlecsForm lighting portfolio, reconfigurable seating, and SmartAccess technologies. On the more-electronics and safety end of things were next-gen V2X and collective perception; enhanced in-cabin experiences with infotainment and memory technologies; and advances in ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) including interior sensing systems, radar, and thermal sensing.

Above all else, Kotagiri says the company’s management has been focused on an investment-grade rating so it can weather current uncertain conditions. That is driving the company’s pragmatic capital strategy

“The biggest thing that we are looking for now is capital discipline,” he said, in developing foundational, platform technology so that “we are addressing the right customers, with the right products, in the right region.”

One key focus is on helping OEMs develop driver assistance systems that are user-friendly rather than intrusive and that help meet key government mandates. Kotagiri cited examples of systems that don’t work as well as intended.

He says that many systems are still “clunky” because they don’t function “in a similar way as a human would.” For lane centering in some models, “you feel like a ping-pong ball.” However, he is optimistic that ADAS fine-tuning will improve performance.

“We’ll all get there,” he said. “But I think the driver assist functions, in the long run, are going to make driving more pleasurable and safer.”

 

Pedestrian safety and systems

Pleasurable systems are nice to have, but safety is crucial, especially when mandated by government rules.

In April, the U.S. Department of Transportation‘s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 127 rule that will make automatic emergency braking (AEB) for pedestrians mandatory on all passenger cars and light trucks by September 2029. This safety standard is expected to significantly reduce rear-end and pedestrian crashes. In Europe, while pedestrian AEB is not mandated, Euro-NCAP requirements are getting more stringent, with one of the areas under investigation being inclement weather.

Across the automotive industry, the new rules will have a profound effect on ADAS development.

A supplier with a breadth of safety-system offerings and high-level experience would be helpful to any OEM needing developmental assistance. For ADAS and autonomous driving, Magna has a broad portfolio that includes remote and smart sensing, cameras and radars, central compute, software and integration, as well as full systems capability, said Frank Judge, Magna’s Director of Interior Sensing Systems, who now also oversees exterior sensing.

While full-system expertise is a claim of many of the industry’s top suppliers, Magna’s claims are unique in that it has been a supplier of the whole sensor system for the Fisker Ocean, and via its Magna Steyr facility in Austria has engineered, developed, and assembled under contract for OEMs like Mercedes-Benz and others for decades. At the tech preview, a Power of Magna chassis display reinforced its portfolio of offerings and emphasized the company’s ability to create full system and vehicle concepts.

According to Judge, his company’s full-system approach applies even more to future surround-view safety sensing systems. To the functionality of traditional systems having cameras and radars front and rear, his company is adding advanced technologies like imaging radar, lidar, and far infrared sensing for better performance in low light and degraded weather scenarios as regulators and customers start pushing for system availability approaching 100%.

He is especially enthusiastic about the potential for his company’s far infrared or thermal sensing for nighttime AEB. While it has rolled out to niche applications in high-end vehicles, Judge thinks its application to a broader vehicle set will be significant in solving nighttime safety challenges involving the detection of pedestrians and animals.

“Cameras alone and radars alone can’t do it,” said Judge. “You’ll have to use some other groups of technology, and I think thermal right now seems to be the most immediate proof of concept that works.”

While visible cameras and radars may work fine on a clear day, snow or rain can degrade the performance of visible and even radar systems. For instance, even a little thin layer of water or ice in winter on the fascia in front of a radar can affect performance.

Thermal cameras, which can pick up temperature differences to a tenth of a degree Celsius, are not affected by snow and ice as long as at least 50% of the aperture window is free of snow, ice, mud, and dead bugs, Richard Seoane, VP of Operations and Business Development for Magna’s Thermal Business Unit, told Futurride. However, a built-in heater in the front window, which prevents snow and ice from building up, is a feature designed in from the first-generation system.

 

Well placed for the thermal opportunities

A big boost to Magna’s AEB efforts was its 2023 acquisition of Veoneer, getting a history of infrared/thermal development dating back to the Autoliv days of 2003.

“Developers saw that airbags and seat belts protect you in a crash, but there’s no technology out there that prevented a crash,” said Seoane. “They picked thermal sensing for nighttime AEB because there was no system out there that could see past your headlights.”

Autoliv engineers started the development of a night-vision system that provided just an image for the drivers of the BMW 7 Series, 6 Series, and 5 Series. It followed Raytheon‘s world’s first application for the Cadillac Deville in 2000 and Honda’s Legend in Japan in 2004 which was an expensive stereo (two camera) option selling for greater than $6000 a vehicle, according to Seoane. “At that price, it was a niche product.”

Autoliv developers then took the next step with an algorithm team of about a hundred engineers who created pedestrian object-based classifiers for forward collision warnings. If a pedestrian in front was detected, the system would calculate the time to impact and give a warning in enough time for the driver to slow down or change lanes. In 2013, they added animal classifiers for forward-collision warning of deer and other large animals like elk, moose, deer, horses, and cows.

Reinforced by that experience, Magna is now well-placed to take advantage of the new thermal opportunities.

“We’re the most experienced,” said Seoane. “We’ve got over a million units on the road of the night-vision system. We’ve got a huge, broad customer base from Europe and North America.”

He rattled off some of the applications. In North America, Magna has night-vision systems on the latest-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee and Grand Wagoneer, and at General Motors on all Cadillac Escalades and just launching on the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL. In Europe, the company has many more applications on premium brand vehicles like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Rolls-Royce, and the VW Group’s Bentley, Porsche, and Audi—and even some mid-sized cars from DS, Citroen, Peugeot, and Opel.

“All systems that are on the marketplace with night vision today can prime the brake, but they don’t give a braking command,” said Seoane.

With the new Gen 5 system the company, developers have taken the technology to the next level, integrating it into an AEB system. Reinforcing this change was a demonstration in fog, for which Seoane says vision and radar systems are challenged even during the day.

“If you’re in Beijing, where the fog is so thick that you can only see about 50 feet in front of you, having this thermal sensor being able to see right through that allows you to navigate,” he said. “As we move more into the hands-free driving of Level 3 autonomy, having this sensor in there is going to add that extra benefit to your system.”

 

Taking it to the next level

The company’s original AEB for pedestrian classification was object-based, looking for the full body shape of a person. For the latest fifth-generation artificial intelligence (AI)-based CNN (convolutional neural network) shown at the tech media event, it doesn’t need to see a full body to be able to classify a pedestrian. It is trained based on scene objects and automatically learns with much better key performance indicators than the launch system, according to Seoane.

“If somebody’s walking in between two cars toward the street, you may only get the upper half of the body, but you can still classify that as a pedestrian using these new AI-based solutions,” he explained.

The company continues to advance the technology while reducing costs. The original thermal sensor was a 50-micron (50-µm) pixel pitch, and it had a quarter VGA resolution. The company has taken that down to a 12-micron pixel pitch, which allows more die per wafer and drives down cost. In addition, wafer sizes have increased from the original 4 in (10 cm), to today’s 8 in (20 cm), and soon, 12 in (30 cm). The bigger the wafer, the more dies per wafer and subsequent reduced costs.

Magna has already been sourced with its fifth-generation product on a Level 4 roboshuttle program, with production to follow. It represents a significant cost reduction and has a higher VGA resolution, with the thermal sensor filling in the gaps of the other visible and radar sensors. Seoane says that a lot of passenger car OEMs are looking at it to bring Level 3 hands-free highway driving into the city environment.

The first generation in 2005 had a bill of materials (BOM) of almost $1000 that, since then, has dropped a significant 70%, but “it’s still not low enough to be standard on a car,” according to Seoane.

However, Magna is now on the cusp of offering an AEB system at a cost that’s much more conducive to mass production. Seoane says the company’s sixth-generation system is going to be “our low-cost system” focused on the pedestrian AEB mandate for the U.S. FMVSS 127 that begins in September 2029.

The mandate means the sixth generation is going to be a high-volume product, will drop the BOM cost, and will no longer be just an option on luxury or midsize cars but also a sensor system that can be fitted on entry-level vehicles. It will allow “all cars to be able to classify a pedestrian, give a provisional warning alert first, and then if the person doesn’t react, do the automatic braking,” he concluded.