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The Need to ‘Green’ Electric Vehicles

Many people hold the perception that electric vehicles are greener and, in some respects, cheaper to run than their internal combustion engine diesel and gasoline counterparts.

However, the reality is far more complex than many would imagine. To gain a more accurate picture, it’s important to consider the complete lifecycle of each vehicle – from the sourcing of the materials to manufacture them and their batteries, fuels, or energy sources to their environmental and social governance impact from start to end of life. This includes how the materials used in them are recycled and reused.

Robert Camm, senior consultant, mobility at Frost and Sullivan, says: “The cost of electric vehicles has typically been higher than their internal combustion engine (ICE) equivalent. While this gap is closing there is still some way to go. As the cost is higher, drivers will expect additional functionality to support this investment, beyond just the powertrain and sustainability benefits.”

Read the complete article on TU Automotive. 

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive 4th October 2022.

Addressing Connectivity Uncertainty for the Connected Car

There are a range of factors that will be crucial for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).

Among them is 5G connectivity, automation and electrification. They are converging to transform the automotive industry – enabling and enhancing, for example, the connected car. An introduction to a TU-Automotive webinar, which was held in February 2022, and which was sponsored by Infovista went on to add: “From self-driving prototypes on private networks in mines and ports to connected mobility applications that enhance user experiences and enable new business models, the value potential is enormous. Wireless connectivity, however, has gaps and performance variability that, if not well managed, can impact application performance and reliability.”

So, what has changed over the last 2 years – beyond the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, which also caused disruption? To answer this question and others, we spoke to Jack Palmer, senior consultant in Frost and Sullivan’s mobility practice, and Magnus Gunnarsson, Ericsson’s head of connected vehicle portfolio. Key to the discussion were the challenges of delivering connected mobility applications in 2022, including how to avoid connectivity issues impacting customer experience and critical application performance.

Read the complete article on TU Automotive, or on Urgent Communications.

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive 16th September 2022; Also published by Urgent Communications on 20th September 2022.

 

Sustainability to Transform Cockpit of the Future

Sustainability covers many areas, including the materials used within a vehicle’s cabin to make the dashboard, the paneling and the electronics used in today’s instrumentation. Drew Winter, principal analyst, cockpit of the future, Wards Intelligence, finds that there is significant consumer demand for automotive manufacturers to use sustainable materials, including for those unseen such as materials used for sound insulation. He believes their use in the construction of automaker’s vehicles is driven by the growth of EVs and worldwide environmental concerns.

Winter writes in a paper on the topic, ‘Behold the Cockpit’s Brave New Materials’: “The push for sustainable interior materials is not new but Sage Automotive Interiors’ Julie Jacobs says consumer demand is fueling the growing scope and seriousness of the efforts, especially among the rising tide of younger, environmentally conscious consumers who care deeply about how the vehicles they buy are made.” Apart from the need to use or reduce the use of materials that may harm the planet, there is also a prerequisite to use smart materials that can limit distraction while creating new cockpit experiences.

Discover how sustainability with transform the automotive cockpit of the future, read the complete article. 

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive 15th June 2022.

Old Fashioned Trust Still Biggest Challenge to Connected Autonomous Vehicles

Thales says, globally, there will be 75 million vehicles with autonomous capabilities by 2035.

However, to reassure the users of the vehicles, as well as to increase uptake of connected and autonomous vehicles, along with efficient connectivity has to come stringent cyber-security. Trust is key to their development, including in how the data from the vehicles is processes, analyzed and used. The company also claims that a revolution is underway in the automotive market. It believes it’s an unprecedented one that involves technological, societal, and competitive change to the extent that the traditional car is becoming a truly connected object. With this connectivity the car or any other connected vehicle type is “gradually offering new functionalities such as the possibility to alert the driver to danger, detect drowsiness or connect a smartphone to the onboard computer”.

This connectivity and interconnectivity involve “the real-time exchange of data between the vehicle, the user and their environment opens up a whole new world of services”. The interconnectivity comes in the guise of the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) infrastructure, whereby the vehicles and infrastructure such as traffic lights communicate with each other as part of a system of advanced assisted driving solutions, shared mobility, autonomous driving, and the fast-growing electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem.

How to create trust in connected autonomous vehicles, read the complete article. 

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive 9th June 2022; also published by Urgent Communications on 10th June 2022.

Current Mobility Challenges Facing European Markets

In 2011 a partner of Arthur D. Little, Wilhelm Lerner, wrote a report on the Future of Urban Mobility – Towards networked, multimodal cities of 2050 to assess the maturity and performance of 66 cities worldwide and finds most not just falling well short of best practice but in a state of crisis.

He found that many cities’ mobility systems were standing on “a burning platform and if action is not taken in the very near future, they will play a major role in slowing the growth and development of their host nations”. It is subsequently suggested that European mobility was being held back.

Moving forward a decade, his colleague Joseph Salem, who’s also a partner at the firm, writes in the foreword of the company’s Autonomous Mobility Journal, Edition III for September 2021: “We live in unfortunate times where the transportation industry worldwide continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chains across the automotive industry have been disturbed… amid the challenges, one of the important lessons that we derive from the pandemic is this: innovation is now a must. COVID-19 has underscored the need for innovation in devising safer and faster mobility solutions and already the signs are encouraging. For example, progress is being made in the development of autonomous transport by air and sea to support the creation of an intermodal ecosystem.”

Find out how to overcome the current mobility challenges, read the complete article. 

Ignoring Green ICE Fuels Could be ‘Barking Mad’

With the march towards decarbonization, Automotive Tech Week Europe asked in September as part of a fireside chat, whether governments and industry are ‘Barking up the Wrong Tree’.

As part of its own drive to decarbonization, the UK has set a 2030 deadline for the ban of all new gasoline and diesel cars. Yet electric vehicles are still quite expensive and out of the price range of most consumers. Many of them won’t be able to afford to replace their vehicles.

This is raising questions about whether it is better to focus on providing greener fuels for all types of vehicles, including for electric and connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), rather than banning the internal combustion engine and hybrid vehicles outright. Andreas Follér, head of sustainability at Scania, who participated in the conference, says the premise of the debate is about focusing on technology with regard to combustion engines today and electric tomorrow. They could also focus on energy, which is what goes into the drivetrain and what out of the tailpipe.

Discover the benefits of green internal combustion engine fuels, read the complete article. 

Wild and Woolly Driverless Tech Testing in Norway

Oslo kicked off its plans to integrate autonomous vehicles into its network transport network in January 2021 with a year-long autonomous vehicle trial.

The city’s transport network is operated by Ruter, the public transport authority for Oslo and Akershus county in Norway. With its partners it is operating the pilot in Nordre Follo municipality, near Oslo. As part of the pilot two Toyota Proace Verso conventional and EV vehicles, which are being equipped with autonomous driving software from self-driving technology from Finland’s Sensible 4. The partners claim that it is the right model to support this automated transportation solution as it has room for up to six passengers, including a ramp for wheelchair users.

Drive in all conditions. Find out how by reading the complete article. 

 

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive on 29th June 2021. Author/journalist: Graham Jarvis.

EVs are First Step in Auto Insurance Transformation

Despite a slump in car sales during the pandemic, ING Group expects care sales to rebound by 8% in 2021.

However, EV insurance premiums are typically higher than those of other cars, demonstrating that they are riskier for insurers than being bound by a policy for a comparable ICE vehicle. This is because EVs are more expensive to repair – few workshops are qualified to fix them, parts are costly and unibody construction techniques lead to more cars being written off following low-speed crashes.

Nonetheless, David Williams, managing director, underwriting and technical services at AXA, finds that there has been an increase in the take-up of EVs. It’s slow but it’s progressing. He adds: “If you want to buy an EV, it’s more expensive than the internal combustion engine version. This will change – when you build more of something, the price comes down.”

Read the complete article to find out more about why electric vehicles are the first step in auto insurance transformation. 

Client: InformaTech, published by TU Automotive on 12 May 2021. Author/Journalist: Graham Jarvis.

From insurance to cryptocurrencies in healthcare

Beyond his work with TU Automotive and Trudy Darwin Communications, between 2020 and 2022, Graham Jarvis - freelance business and technology journalist, wrote and edited insurtech reports for Intelligent Insurer; wrote articles on cryptocurrencies in healthcare; wrote about education; edited and wrote fleet management reports for ABAX; wrote about digital accessibility; wrote about cloud computing; wrote about customer experiences and customer management; wrote about connected, autonomous vehicles and smart cities. Other topics were also covered. 

Data Management:The March Towards Connected, Autonomous and Electric vehicles

There are many predictions about connected and autonomous vehicles, some of them suggesting that fully autonomous, levels 4 and 5 vehicles will begin to become commonplace on public roads from 2025.

A STUDY by Vynz Research says the global connected and autonomous vehicle market size was 17.7 million units in 2019; and it predicts that this will reach 51.2 million units by 2025 – a compound
growth rate of 17.1% during the period of 2020 to 2025. At present, most vehicles aren’t fully autonomous, yet still increasingly rely upon data to operate.

Growing data volumes

With their emergence will be a growth in data. Rich Miller writes in his article for Data Center Frontier, ‘Rolling Zettabytes: Quantifying the Data Impact of Connected Cars’: “The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium (AECC) is working to help stakeholders understand the infrastructure requirements for connected cars. At Edge Computing World, AECC board member, Vish Nandlall, outlined the group’s findings on the volume of data created by autonomous cars and the challenges they will create.” Vish Nandlall, VP at Dell Technologies and board member of the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium, said in his talk, ‘Driving the Zettabyte Edge’ at Edge Computing World in December 2019: “Automotive data volume will drive the edge and we’re going to hit zettascale volumes.” before adding: “We’re really starting to challenge the limits of the cloud technologies we’ve been using. It’s a challenge to the infrastructure and cloud communities, and a challenge to the automotive community.”

Discover more about why data management is crucial to the march towards connected, autonomous and electric vehicles. 

Client: Trudy Darwin Communications for Bridgeworks Ltd. Published by TaaS Magazine in May 2021. Journalist/Author: Graham Jarvis.