Venture capital firm Maniv Mobility announced today (July 9) that it has closed its second venture fund with US$100m in commitments, including strategic investment by 12 organizations from the automotive and transportation industry.

Investors in Maniv’s newest fund include Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi; Aptiv; BMW i Ventures; Hyundai Motor Group; Lear Corp; LG Electronics; Shell Ventures and Valeo. Additional investors include Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures – the venture arm of the German rail and logistics operator Deutsche Bahn – and the Israeli car importer Carasso Motors.

Maniv will continue to invest in the leading startups accelerating the digitization of transportation.

Continue reading Maniv Mobility secures US$100m in second venture fund for self-driving startups at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Jaguar Land Rover has unveiled it is testing connected car services that will enable drivers to earn cryptocurrency and make payments on the move.

Using Smart Wallet technology, owners earn credits by enabling their cars to automatically report useful road condition data such as traffic congestion or potholes to navigation providers or local authorities. Drivers could then redeem these for rewards such as coffee, or to automatically pay tolls, parking fees and for smart charging electric vehicles. Smart Wallet removes the need for drivers to hunt for loose change or sign up to multiple accounts to pay for a variety of everyday services.

Continue reading JLR’s connected car service lets owners earn cryptocurrency as they drive at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

In the effort to enhance autonomous vehicle safety, RideCell and Dataspeed have announced a strategic partnership to share each other’s resources, data, technologies and testing.

RideCell, a platform for shared and autonomous mobility, will take advantage of Dataspeed’s established drive-by-wire solutions to begin collecting data and metrics in real-world conditions and hope to leverage these to improve vehicle safety.

Aarjav Trivedi, CEO of RideCell, said, “With our new strategic partner, RideCell will begin comprehensive data collection of Dataspeed metrics from our Auro self-driving vehicles, which were licensed in 2018 by the state of California for on-road testing.

Continue reading Dataspeed and RideCell join forces to develop greater AV safety at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving vehicle unit is to build a plant in southeast Michigan dedicated to transforming vehicles into autonomous cars, the company has announced.

The new facility will be dedicated to mass production of level 4 autonomous vehicles, which can pilot themselves without a human driver under certain conditions, and will be the first such factory in the world, according to Waymo.

“In the US, the auto industry is synonymous with Michigan. Auto manufacturing has created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state and built an economic engine that helps fuel the entire country. Today, Waymo is excited to announce that we’ll grow our business in Michigan, as the Michigan Economic Development Corporation [MEDC] voted to approve our effort to establish our manufacturing presence to build our self-driving vehicles in the state, creating hundreds of jobs along the way,” Waymo announced in a Medium post.

Continue reading Waymo to build self-driving cars in Michigan at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Being able to communicate with pedestrians is one of the biggest challenges faced in the development of self-driving cars. Jaguar Land Rover has developed a system that projects images and lights onto the road ahead to indicate the vehicle’s direction of travel as well as when it’s about to pull away or stop.

As part of JLR’s commitment to autonomous vehicle technology development, the car manufacturer has been trialling the intelligent technology using driverless pods created by Aurrigo. A video of the technology in action shows the vehicle project a series of lines onto the road surface that adjust in spacing in relation to its speed.

Continue reading JLR trials light projection on its self-driving cars to gain pedestrian trust at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Technology giant Apple has cut around a fifth of the staff working on its secretive autonomous car project, Project Titan.

More than 200 members of the 1,000-strong team have left Apple or been moved to other divisions, despite autonomous transportation technologies being a key focus for the company.

Following reports of the layoffs, broadcast initially by CNBC, an Apple spokesperson responded with a statement, stressing that the company still sees opportunities in autonomous transportation: “We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple.”

The spokesperson said: “We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever.”

In the five years since its launch, Project Titan has seen several changes in leadership and direction.

Continue reading Apple cuts 200 staff from self-driving car project at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Michigan-based Mechanical Simulation has released the 2019.0 versions of vehicle simulation tools CarSim, TruckSim and BikeSim, and of the suspension simulation tool SuspensionSim.

The latest versions of the vehicle models have important new features. Version 2019.0 includes built-in support for hybrid powertrains, importing OpenDRIVE road networks, support for the Michelin TameTire model, a built-in electronic stability controller (ESC), an engineering quality plug-in for the Unreal Engine, and improvements in existing built-in controllers and programming options.

The company has extended its simulation in line with the automotive industry’s increasingly heavy investment in ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) and AV (autonomous vehicle) technologies.

Continue reading Mechanical Simulation releases 2019 software upgrades at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Self-driving vehicle startup Optimus Ride has announced it is using the Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier platform for its autonomous shuttles. The vehicles have Level 4 autonomy, to be used in geofenced deployments.

Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier is a computing platform designed for AVs and as such promises to combine a high level of processing power (30 trillion operations per second) with a low power consumption of 30W. It also uses six different processor types for redundancy and a diverse deep learning environment. Nvidia is an investor in the Optimus Ride program.

“Building on Nvidia Drive ensures our vehicles are equipped with the highest performance and most efficient processing power available,” said Optimus Ride CEO and co-founder Ryan Chin.

Continue reading Optimus Ride AV shuttles to use Nvidia Drive AGX at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

Renault has unveiled a brand-new mobility concept at the Paris Motor Show called the EZ-Ultimo, which presents an image of premium travel in the future with its on-demand autonomous luxury limo service.

The Renault EZ-Ultimo concept is a Level 4 robo-vehicle that has no driver, just a large lounge-like cabin accessed through a wide side opening that automatically slides open to reveal a rotating seat and opulent interior equipped with bench seating, connected services and entertainment.

“As consumer trends change and people are enjoying ridehailing services more and more, a new paradigm for mobility will emerge.

Continue reading Renault EZ-Ultimo: Self-driving luxury limo concept unveiled at Paris Motor Show at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.

German company ZF is working with commercial vehicle manufacturers to deliver the ability of multibrand truck platooning to European roads by 2021.

As part of the EU co-funded ENSEMBLE project, which involves multiple manufacturers, ZF is developing technology including sensor sets, its ProAI Supercomputer, ReAx electrohydraulic steering and TraXon transmission system, which are all in preproduction phase.

When combined, they help a commercial vehicle to see, think and act – essential for the act of platooning, where vehicles drive at a reduced distance between each other and steer and brake in synchronization with a lead vehicle.

Continue reading ZF preparing truck platooning technology at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle International.