Trade News

As the number of sensors in vehicles grow, so, too, is auto companies' understanding of how drivers interact with the vehicle.

Supplier Forvia, for example, has invested heavily into its IRYStec unit, which developed "perceptual image processing" technology that incorporates knowledge of the mechanics of the human eye to boost image quality in a vehicle display. As part of its push into that space, Forvia said this year it developed a MyDisplay platform that mimics how the human eye works to enhance the display's color and brightness based on a driver's age and needs, creating a "more personalized visual experience."

BMW has tapped Amazon's Alexa platform to smarten the automaker's next- generation vehicle voice assistant.

The German luxury marque currently offers voice connectivity on some vehicles using Amazon's Alexa home wireless service.

But the latest BMW-Amazon collaboration will create deeper integration and improve functionality.

The first vehicles with the new generation of BMW's voice assistant will launch within the next two years.

Stephan Durach, 51, is senior vice president of connected company development for BMW Group. He spoke with Staff Reporter Urvaksh Karkaria about how the Amazon partnership integration will bolster BMW's voice assistant offering. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: How does the Alexa platform help BMW improve its voice assistant technology?

A: The Alexa tech stack is the next step in improving the BMW [Intelligent] Personal Assistant. It enables an even more natural dialogue between driver and vehicle so that dri…

As drivers watch the road, their cars will be watching them.

While some automakers use sensors on the steering column to track the driver's attention, Magna's Driver Monitoring System is built into an auto-dimming rearview mirror. The system analyzes the driver's head, eyes and body to detect distracted or drowsy driving. The camera-based system also uses infrared sensors. It can predict when a driver might not be paying enough attention and send an alert using a vehicle's audio or visual notifications.

In October, Magna and Seeing Machines announced a deal to co-market the rearview mirror device.

Automakers are preparing for European regulations in 2026 that will require that all new vehicles have some driver-monitoring technology, among other advanced safety features. This fall, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a new rule in the U.S. that would use in-cabin monitoring to prevent drunken driving.

The art of future cockpits is not just a rethinking of one or two components, but a melding together of several technologies, seen here in COMFI — a cockpit concept that South Korean supplier Hyundai Mobis unveiled this year that stands for "convenient, comfortable, optimized, mobile, functional and illuminated."

In addition to supplying finished cockpits, Mobis makes a wide range of products that already interact with the cockpit, including airbags, headlights, brake systems, steering parts, multimedia systems, instrument panels and front-end modules. COMFI proposes an integration of the technologies, with such features as a pop-up steering wheel, a retractable table to give passengers a quick work surface, sliding side mirrors, a movable controller and display screen, and 3D pattern lighting to create a futuristic ambiance in the cabin.

"As autonomous car technologies are being deployed at a larger scale, the linchpin of automotive control is the shift from …

In the near future, getting there might really be half the fun.

Holoride, a Munich in-vehicle tech and entertainment startup, has pioneered a virtual reality-based platform that's designed to bring unique content to teenagers and other young-at-heart riders in the car.

No more utilitarian travel between point A and point B. Holoride intends to turn car rides into something resembling a theme park experience, and it is working with carmakers, gaming companies and movie studios to make it happen.

Holoride is launching its first product with Audi, from which it spun off, in certain 2023 vehicles in mid-November. It is expected to reach the U.S. next year.

Holoride melds real-time vehicle data on speed, motion and whereabouts into the virtual experience, forming a new type of content and differentiating the company from other efforts in the in-vehicle entertainment space.

Nils Wollny, CEO of Holoride, co-found…

As vehicles morph from machines into devices, companies such as Qualcomm Technologies are developing digital analogs that mirror the terms of older vehicle systems.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis is one example. It comprises multiple cloud-connected platforms that manage telematics and connectivity, digital driver and infotainment screens, driver assistance and autonomy features.

The Snapdragon Digital Chassis is designed to help connected and intelligent vehicles keep all the information they collect under control. Automakers can customize each component to meet the needs of each model that uses the system, and those components are also continually upgradable, Qualcomm said.

The Snapdragon Digital Chassis will appear in some upcoming high-end electric vehicles, including the Cadillac Lyriq and various Mercedes-Benz models. Mercedes will use Snapdragon components in future infotainment systems, including to control the telematics connections an…

Tesla pioneered the concept of large dashboard touch screens a decade ago, and the rest of the industry followed. Automotive electronics and tire supplier Continental plans to join the party, offering a pillar-to-pillar display in a production vehicle that will arrive in 2024.

Continental hasn't said what company placed the order, except to say it is "a well-known global vehicle manufacturer."

Technically, multiple screens are hiding under the shiny surface, but Continental said it made the transitions between them nearly invisible. Continental used its knowledge of supplying unusually shaped displays to make multiple screens work together in a single wide display surface. Continental also integrated in-cabin monitoring sensors in its wide screen.

In the cockpits of the future, information flows both ways.

A series of screens that stretch across the entire dashboard does not necessarily have to disturb the driver.

In April, Continental an…

The interiors of the future are likely to be made with more sustainable materials, as automakers and suppliers look to reduce their carbon footprints and impact on the environment.

Take a surface material developed by German supplier giant Continental, for example. Benova Eco Protect can be used on instrument panels, door panels, center consoles and other areas of the cockpit and is about 20 percent lighter than comparable materials. Benova Eco Protect is not made with any products with an animal origin or that contain plasticizers or solvents, reducing its overall carbon footprint.

The Federal Trade Commission followed its June proposal to regulate dealership advertising and add-on products with an Oct. 20 plan to curtail bait-and-switch pricing and charges for valueless items across multiple industries.

"The FTC's at it again," said Randy Henrick, a compliance attorney for Ignite Consulting Partners.

The FTC auto retail plan unveiled in June sought to combat bait-and-switch advertising with a requirement for dealerships to disclose an "offering price" — an out-the-door amount before government fees or taxes the retailer would honor for any consumer. Dealerships also would be banned from selling any accessories or finance and insurance products that "do not provide coverage for the vehicle, the consumer or the transaction, or are duplicative of warranty coverage for the vehicle."

The FTC on Oct. 20 followed up its dealership-specific bait-and-switch regulations by starting on rules to attack what it called "…

Pennsylvania's next U.S. senator lives in a century-old former Chevrolet dealership outside Pittsburgh.

John Fetterman, a Democrat who defeated TV doctor Mehmet Oz last week in the nation's most expensive Senate race, converted two floors of the Superior Motors building in Braddock into his family's home. Their main living quarters are where the service department operated, and ramps that employees used to drive cars between floors still provide access to a rooftop patio.

Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, bought the space in 2013 during his 13-year stint as the city's mayor. The couple, who have three children, had to have an abandoned Chevy taken out of the building by crane, according to a 2020 profile in Pittsburgh Magazine.

"I suspect I'm the only mayor in America that can say he lives directly across the street from a steel mill," Fetterman said in a 2017 video by PennLive.com. "I count Andrew Carnegie's steel mill as my neighbor.…

The estimated number of vehicles axed from automakers’ production plans this year because of the microchip shortage fell slightly last week.

In its latest estimate, AutoForecast Solutions said 3.9 million vehicles have been cut by automakers worldwide this year, a slight improvement from the 3.93 million units it reported a week earlier. 

The numbers are a welcome reprieve for the industry. Looking ahead, microchip availability could improve next year as demand in other sectors eases, said Sam Fiorani, AFS vice president of global vehicle forecasting.

“Moving some of the production capacity to automotive chips could ease the tight supply and might shorten the production bottlenecks, possibly by the middle or late in the new year,” Fiorani wrote in an email.

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com

GRAZ, Austria — As I often say: Starting a car company is really hard — that's why basically only one outside of China has been successfully launched and sustained in the last half-century.

One of those that tried and failed was Fisker Automotive, which offered a luxury plug-in hybrid but didn't last long, largely because of supply chain woes and a lack of cash.

Henrik Fisker's second shot at an eponymous automaker, Fisker Inc., is also coming out at a time of great economic turbulence. But it's also a very different company: electric vehicles, not PHEVs; aiming for mass-market, not luxury, appeal; defining the brand with ecological sustainability from the start.

And this time, he has his wife with him in the C-suite.

Geeta Gupta Fisker — who has a Ph.D. in biotech and organic chemistry — is a force in the young company, which is not a surprise given that she is the CFO and COO. But more important is how her talents complement her husband's. Whil…