Technology Companies And Auto Manufacturers Have Uneasy Relationship

Auto manufacturers are well aware that most of the innovations in the industry are coming from technology companies like Goole, Apple, Samsung, and others. Some top executives are quietly nervous that the tech crowd could overwhelm traditional car makers. Prior to the 2017 Technology in Motion conference in Detroit next week, Mike Ableson, vice president of strategy and global portfolio planning for General Motors, told Automotive News there is a need to look at “the innovations coming out of Silicon Valley from Apple and Google and Samsung and put boundaries around that, not just for the OEM but also for the consumer. How far into the car do you let them come?”

One of the buzzwords in the industry recently is “connected cars” — vehicles that allow drivers and passengers to access the internet while driving so they can check their e-mails, send out tweets, and share selfies with their thousands of Facebook followers. Someday, connected cars may even talk to each other. Technology is also a major component of driver assist features like lane keeping, blind spot monitors, emergency braking systems, and self driving programs like Tesla’s Autopilot. Enhanced navigation capability is also tech driven.

Frank Weith, director of connected services at Volkswagen Group of America, says automakers need to ensure their identity isn’t lost with the incorporation of a wide variety of new technologies. “We don’t want to be just a commodity, selling bulk vehicles to Google or Apple or Uber,” Weith said. “We want to be part of the consumer experience and keep our product up there.”

Nvidia is deeply involved with automotive technology. It has recently showcased its new “supercomputer in a box” which employs machine learning to teach itself how to drive. Nvidia is now the provider of the computer that makes Tesla’s new Autopilot 2 possible. Bill Veenhuis, senior solutions architect at Nvidia said it is possible to strike a balance between the car culture and tech culture. The best way of doing that is speeding up the pace of innovation in the automotive industry while making automotive technology more long lasting than conventional consumer technology. “It’s about forging Silicon in Detroit and creating technology that lasts,” he says.

So far, automakers feel they ultimately have the upper hand. “At the end of the day, you have to build cars at rate,” said Lear Corp. CEO Matthew Simoncini. “It’s one thing to make a concept and sell 10,000 of them out of a mall; it’s another thing to actually go out there and make 250,000 vehicles.”  That last part is aimed directly at Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. Of all the car companies in the world, Tesla has done the best job of merging auto manufacturing with technology.

To paraphrase an old adage, “Coding is easy, making cars is hard.”

Source: Automotive News

Court Documents Reveal More About The Potential Apple EV

Earlier this year it came out that Apple was being sued by battery maker A123 Systems for poaching one of its top electric vehicle battery engineers. While A123 has said it is getting out of the EV business, the lawsuit also alleges that Apple has lured away other big battery builders, lending credence to rumors that it is building its own electric car division.

VentureBeat reports that one of the employees in question was one Mujeeb Ijaz the CTO of A123 Systems, who was paid nearly $300,000 per month to develop batteries for Formula 1 race cars. That’s top-of-the-line battery tech, making him an ideal candidate for Apple’s own battery program. The lawsuit alleges that Ijaz and other A123 employees, as well as employees from the battery divisions of Toshiba, Samsung, Panasonic, and LG, were poached via an “aggressive campaign” by Apple to populate its own large battery division.

The suit says that Ijaz and Apple knowingly broke a contract, and Apple is reportedly settling with A123 out of court, most likely in order to put this little episode behind them and not let out any more information on the so-called “Project Titan” electric car. The mounting evidence of an Apple electric car is increasingly impossible to ignore though. Apple has been accused of targeting employees from Tesla with quarter-million dollar signing bonuses, and a suspicious facility near Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters seems to be dedicated to in-house car research. For a company that mostly makes phones and computers, adding an on-site garage is a strange move indeed. There are also rumors of a massive factory complex that Apple is building in Ireland, but who knows what that could be for? We probably won’t know until much closer to 2020.

The only thing I know for sure is that I should have taken engineering courses, instead of devoting whole semesters to parsing through Tolstoy and Milton.

Ford Works With Samsung To End Lead-Acid Batteries For Good

With all the talk of lithium-ion batteries powering electric cars, people tend to forget that there’s a big, heavy lead-acid battery under the hood of every car on the road. These batteries haven’t changed much since the administration of Harry Truman, though Ford and Samsung want to end the reign lead-acid batteries with a lightweight, lithium-ion replacement.

Debuting in the Ford Lightweight Concept Car, the battery is the result of Ford and Samsung SDI teaming up to develop a cost-effective replacement to cheap and reliable lead-acid batteries. A few years ago, the price of lithium-ion batteries was too high to even consider replacing standard lead-acid units, but the plummeting price of battery technology is making it more feasible.

So what are the advantages of a lithium-ion car starter? Well even though it delivers the same 12-volt output, the Ford/Samsung battery is about 12 pounds lighter than the lead-acid battery it replaces. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s one piece of a plan to systematically put every car in the Ford lineup on a serious diet.

So when will we see the last lead-acid batteries built? Alas, this archaic technology is likely to stick around for some time, though lithium-ion batteries could become commonplace as soon as 2020.

Source: Ford

Tesla's Talks With Samsung For Electric-Car Batteries Get More Serious

2014 Tesla Model X all-electric crossover with 'Falcon Doors' open

Tesla is looking for a new partner to produce electric-car batteries in addition to its current maker, Panasonic, and it may have found one. Or not.

Reuters reports that Tesla's talks with Samsung SDI--a division of Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.--are getting more serious.

Spokespeople from both companies said nothing concrete had come out of the talks, thus far, but two sources reportedly close to the deal told Reuters that Tesla and Samsung were nearing a final agreement.

One source said that negotiations were "90 percent complete," and that the main roadblock has been Samsung SDI's insistence that Tesla also buy components such as touch screens from its sister divisions.

Another source said Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] had already finished testing Samsung battery technology for future car applications. Samsung batteries would reportedly be used on the 2015 Tesla Model X crossover.

However, a third source contradicted the reports, saying the two companies were nowhere near a deal.

This individual, also reportedly close to the discussions, said Samsung's lithium-ion cells were not competitive with those of Panasonic--Tesla's current supplier (and also an investor in Tesla).

The source described the assertion that Tesla and Samsung are nearing an agreement as "not accurate."

2013 Tesla Model S

Why does Tesla need a second battery supplier?

The company is on pace to sell 21,000 or more Model S luxury sedans this year, and each uses a much larger battery pack than is typical for electric cars: either 60 kilowatt-hours or 85 kWh.

The Nissan Leaf, the best-selling electric car in history, uses a 24-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. The smallest Model S battery pack is 60 kWh, and less than 30 percent of buyers opt for that.

At the rate it's going, Tesla could double global demand for the small-format "18650" battery cells it uses in its cars.

Because of the nature of the battery cell industry, it's unclear how much Model S battery packs are currently costing Tesla.

Still, the company is widely accepted in the industry to have among the lowest cost-per-kWh of all electric-car makers.

Source: Green Car Reports