+++ Britain’s biggest carmaker JAGUAR LAND ROVER (JLR) is replacing its director for manufacturing as it prepares its plants for an electrified future, the firm said. JLR operates 3 factories in its home market but is building its first electric car, the I-Pace, in Austria. The Indian-owned automaker’s Chief Executive Ralf Speth told earlier this year he is waiting for more information on trading conditions after Brexit before he decides whether to make electric cars in Britain. This week, he said Executive Director for Manufacturing Wolfgang Stadler is retiring from the business, to be replaced by Director of Quality and Automotive Safety Grant McPherson from July 1. “He will oversee the ongoing investment into our United Kingdom and global manufacturing, transforming our plants to enable Jaguar Land Rover’s exciting electrified future”, Speth said in a statement. +++
+++ LOTUS boss Jean-Marc Gales has revealed that 2 new sports cars are in the pipeline as investment begins to materialise from the company’s new owner, Chinese automotive giant Geely. The 2 cars will include a new star model, due in 2020, that will sit above the Evora; essentially placing it as a modern-day version of the Esprit. It follows recent news that Lotus is currently finalising the design of its first crossover, which is expected to make use of Geely-owned Volvo’s SPA architecture. The Norfolk-based company currently employs 2 platform families: one underpins the flagship Evora, which is available as a 2+2 and a 2+0, and the other sits beneath the Elise, Exige and hardcore 3-Eleven 2-seaters. Both use an extruded, bonded and riveted aluminium chassis with either aluminium or composite front and steel rear subframes. The new star model will make use of the same chassis formula. Following a programme of weight reduction during Gales’s 4 years at the helm, the lightest Evora (the GT430 Sport) has shed almost 150 kg compared with the original supercharged Evora S, while power has risen from 280 hp for the early naturally aspirated car to a peak of 430 hp in today’s GT430 models. The non-Sport GT430 also generates up to 250 kg of downforce. But Gales has said the new model will be a significant development, sitting “in an upper segment, above the Evora”, and it will “take the Evora a step further” and will be lighter. He reiterated his commitment to Lotus’s key tenets of “lightweight, aerodynamic and handling” and insisted the new car will satisfy all 3. The GT430 already features carbonfibre front and rear bumpers, front access panel, roof panel, tailgate and rear wing. A more focused model could replace more of the remaining GRP bodywork with further carbonfibre or lightweight composites. The Evora GT430 is more a competitor to the Porsche 911 GT3 than to the GT3 RS, but a completely new model could go a step further. Gales would not be drawn on power outputs or with which cars the new Lotus is likely to compete, but he said he wants the new car to achieve class-leading status via “efficiency, aerodynamics, agility and braking working together in balance”. Although he predicted that Lotus will begin to embrace powertrains from other divisions within Geely, Gales said Lotus cars will continue to employ Toyota engines in the immediate future. The current line-up consists of 1.6- and 1.8-litre four-pots in the Elise and a 3.5-litre V6 in other models, all of which are of alloy construction and supercharged, ranging in power from 220 hp to 430 hp. Fewer details are available on the second new sports car, but it is likely to be a 2-seater. Whether it will directly succeed the Elise or evolve that model’s format is unclear, but Gales acknowledged that “the market is now moving a bit more upmarket”. The significant cost of developing a new model would be offset by pitching it at a higher price point than the current Elise. Should this upward progression materialise, such a model could bridge the power gap between the most potent Elise, the 260 hp Cup 260, and the entry-level Exige, the 350 hp Sport 350. Lotus’s modernisation under its new owner could also include the use of Geely-sourced ancillaries. Gales cited a modern electrical architecture and TFT instrument panels as examples of the synergies that could be achieved via Geely. +++
+++ OPEL is about to undergo a major range revamp under its new owner, PSA, with a fresh Corsa due within the next 18 months. And soon after the supermini’s arrival there will be another key debut: the second generation of the Mokka X. Due in 2020, the Mokka X will switch to the same PSA platform as the likes of the forthcoming new Peugeot 208 and the DS 3 Crossback, as well as the next version of Opel’s Corsa. The future of the Mokka X model had been called into question after the PSA takeover, particularly since Opel has recently launched another small SUV, the Crossland X, which already uses hardware from the French firm as part of an earlier agreement. However, Opel boss Michael Loscheller said that while development of the second-generation Mokka X had been frozen, it is only a temporary halt. “The Mokka X successor was going to be an SUV based on General Motors architecture, which is heavy and doesn’t offer electrification”, Loscheller said. “So I said ‘No, let’s stop this’. It’s a heavy platform, fuel efficiency is not good and the electrification is not there. “So have we changed something in our portfolio of future cars after the takeover? I would say the Mokka X is what we have changed, in terms of the architecture. We did not axe the Mokka X programme, but we halted it in its current state and moved it to a PSA platform. “I won’t say which platform Mokka X is going on to. But it’s a new platform for the vehicle. And we’re cutting 9 platforms down to 2, so it has to be CMP or EMP2 (PSA’s larger platform)”. It is understood it is the first of those 2 options. The Mokka X is likely to grow slightly and offer a much more spacious cabin for its second generation; that’s because there’s a clear slot for the car to sit in between the Crossland X and larger Grandland X. I expect the Mokka X to be about 30 mm longer, at just over 4.3 metres, but to feature a substantial increase in wheelbase (perhaps by as much as 60 mm) that’s likely to bring benefits in rear passenger legroom. These dimensions will, in turn, allow Opel to market the car above the Crossland X, as a rival for the production version of Skoda’s Vision X concept, for example. Recent spy pictures of an early Mokka X prototype undergoing winter testing prompted speculation that the car will be available with 4-wheel drive, but Autointernationaal.nl understands that there are no immediate plans for CMP to offer this feature. At most, then, the next variant of the Mokka X will be available with the same kind of Grip Control traction technology as the likes of the Peugeot 2008 and Citroen C3 Aircross. It will, however, have the option of an all-electric edition, based on the e-CMP version of the architecture and following a pure-electric Corsa that Opel has already confirmed for production in late 2019 or early 2020. Meanwhile, Loscheller revealed that while switching the Corsa on to the PSA CMP platform is “hugely ambitious”, given the planned launch in 2019, Opel and Vauxhall engineers were already exploring the possibility of such a switch before the PSA takeover was concluded. He said: “We always said we’d check possibilities for synergies. And the Corsa would have been the 4th alliance model, before the closing of the overall Opel / Vauxhall purchase”. +++
+++ ROLLS-ROYCE will reveal its all-new Cullinan SUV next week. The name for the new “high-sided vehicle” is taken from the Cullinan diamond; mined in 1905 in South Africa, its 3106 carat weight makes it the largest flawless diamond ever found. I previously spotted the Cullinan testing on the Nurburgring. While the demanding German racetrack, nicknamed the ‘Green Hell’, is frequently used by carmakers to test their latest vehicles, I didn’t expect to see the comfort-oriented Cullinan being pushed to its limits there. Despite the disguise on the prototype, the square-edged profile of the Bentayga-rivalling production car cold clearly be seen. Another test mule was previously caught being hitched up on a trailer, where the imposing front end was revealed in full. While the lights and Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet mascot were missing, the trademark large chrome grille was clear to see, while the front bumper features a number of air intakes to guide cooling air to the engine and brakes. The upright grille was flanked by rectangular headlight housings, and overall the Cullinan’s shape was instantly recogniseable. Also visible was the Rolls-Royce badge and side repeater that’s set into the front wing behind the wheelarch (a familiar modern Rolls styling cue) while a rubbing strip runs across the front and rear-hinged back door, although whether that is kept on the final production car remains to be seen. The Cullinan’s boxy proportions are reminiscent of a raised-up Phantom, which is a look that suits the traditional SUV template. The huge 7-spoke alloy wheels are similar to those found on the Ghost, although like that car buyers are likely to get a variety of wheel options in different styles and sizes. Rolls-Royce has already confirmed that the Cullinan will ride on the same aluminium architecture as the current Phantom. An all-new suspension system is being primed for the production Cullinan too, alongside the 4-wheel-drive system. In 2015, Rolls-Royce boss Torsten Müller-Ötvös revealed that the upcoming Rolls-Royce SUV would be launched in the first half of 2018. He was confident about the progress being made on developing the brand’s first high-riding SUV model, although he prefers to call it an all terrain vehicle. And in a direct dig at Bentley, which describes its Bentayga as the “best SUV in the world”, he added: “The Bentley SUV is clearly the number 2; Rolls-Royce is the best in the world and will be when our model arrives. We will bring a great new car, and an authentic Rolls-Royce into the market”. If the Bentayga’s initial success is anything to go by, there’s no doubt the Cullinan could be the strongest-selling Rolls-Royce in recent years. But don’t expect the brand to adopt a mass-market pricing strategy: this is still very much a bespoke, hand-made car and the price will definitely reflect that. +++
+++ In the race to start the world’s first SELF DRIVING carbusiness without human drivers, everyone is chasing Alphabet’s Waymo. The Google sibling has cleared the way to beat its nearest rivals, General Motors (GM) and a couple of other players, by at least a year to introduce driverless cars to the public. A deal reached in January to buy thousands of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which get kitted out with sensors that can see hundreds of yards in any direction, puts Waymo’s lead into stark relief. No other company is offering for-hire rides yet, let alone preparing to carry passengers in more than one city this year. GM plans to start a ride-hailing service with its Chevrolet Bolt (the one with no steering wheel or pedals, the ultimate goal in autonomous technology) late next year, assuming the U.S. government has protocols in place by then. Most of the others trying solve the last remaining self-driving puzzles are more cautious, targeting 2020 or later. The road to autonomy is long and exceedingly complicated. It can also be dangerous: 2 high-profile efforts, from Uber Technologies and Tesla, were involved in recent crashes that caused the death of a pedestrian (in the first known case of a person killed by a self-driving vehicle) and a driver using an assistance program touted as a precursor to autonomy. One of Waymo’s autonomous vans was involved in a collision just last week. But the perceived stakes are so enormous, with the promise of transport businesses needing little in labor costs, that many players are racing to master the technology and put it to work. In the next 3 years, almost all of these contenders will be able show off cars capable of navigating city streets at casual speeds along firmly fixed routes. Most of the companies now building autonomous vehicles can already handle basic driving at low speeds. This can give an impression of parity and sameness. Yet despite being in its infancy, autonomous driving has leaders starting to emerge. “Waymo has developed a phenomenal system and is ahead of the pack”, said Brian Collie, head of Boston Consulting Group’s U.S. automotive practice, who singled out the top 2. “But that’s very different from being able to manufacture an autonomous vehicle. You have to look at GM. In Europe, Daimler is leading the pack”. The finish line isn’t just reaching Level 4 on the 5-step scale of autonomous driving. That’s the threshold at which a car can drive on pre-mapped routes and handle anything on its planned course without the intervention of a driver. Only Waymo has tested Level 4 vehicles on passengers who aren’t its employees; and those people volunteered to be test subjects. No one has yet demonstrated at Level 5, where the car is so independent that there’s no steering wheel. The victors will also need to pioneer businesses around the technology. Delivery and taxi services capable of generating huge profits is the end game for all. Goldman Sachs Group predicts that robo-taxis will help the ride-hailing and -sharing business grow from $5 billion in revenue today to $285 billion by 2030. There are grand hopes for this business. Without drivers, operating margins could be in the 20 percent range, more than twice what carmakers generate right now. If that kind of growth and profit come to pass (very big ifs) it would be almost 3 times what GM makes in a year. And that doesn’t begin to count the money to be made in delivery. Why does it matter who gets there first? To make a driverless business work takes a big fleet to establish service in major markets, as well as a brand name that becomes as synonymous with getting a ride as Uber is today. Observers expect the field to narrow. “There won’t be a ton of companies doing this”, Collie said. “There will be a select few. Being there first establishes consumer trust. Brand value matters”. For now, investors are throwing money at possible winners. Tesla’s valuation soared in 2016 after an analyst from Morgan Stanley, also its lead underwriter, speculated that the company’s electric cars would spawn a self-driving fleet. GM shares are up 20 percent since a June 2017 announcement that a plant to build driverless vehicles was up and running. Zoox has already raised $360 million, a huge sum for a startup with no revenue. Of course, the era when most people ditch their driver’s licenses and rely on self-driving taxis remains far off. The technology costs more than the cars, and with few players actually testing the cars for the public, widespread adoption is years away. Even Waymo is still in the pilot stage. The most aggressive forecasts have the majority of people driving their own cars for at least the next decade. Chris Urmson, founder of Aurora Innovation and one of the pioneers of the field, counts as one of the optimists. “I can see these on the road in real numbers in 5 to 10 years”, he said. That means even today’s laggards have time to catch up. After interviewing executives and technology experts and reviewing announced plans, Bloomberg has taken a snapshot of the race to develop the self-driving car. Their estimated time of autonomy is based on Level 4, the prerequisite for launching businesses with self-driving tech. Waymo has run self-driving cars over 5 million road miles in 25 cities and done billions of miles in computer simulation, which it uses to update its self-driving software on a weekly basis. The Google-launched company has a fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans that can navigate city streets in San Francisco and reach full speed on highways. A pilot program of driverless vans will begin commercial service later this year, picking up paying passengers in Phoenix and branching out from there. Waymo Chief Executive John Krafcik recently announced a deal to add 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace cross-overs to the fleet and signaled that an in-the-works alliance with Honda could focus on delivery and logistics. The company also has by far the lowest rate of disengagement (times when an engineer needs to grab the wheel because the bot couldn’t handle it) among all companies testing cars in California, a hub of autonomous research that also requires detailed disclosures. It also reported fewer accidents while testing in California last year: Waymo had 3 collisions over more than 350,000 miles, while GM had 22 over 132,000 miles. GM’s Chevrolet Bolt (Opel Ampera-e) can navigate the busy streets of San Francisco at speeds up to 40 km/h. The Detroit automaker is so confident that it plans to run a ride-hailing pilot next year in a car with no steering wheel or pedals, something only Waymo has done in road testing. After Waymo, a handful of major players have demonstrated similar driving capabilities. It’s hard to say anyone has an edge. One advantage for GM: There’s a factory north of Detroit that can crank out self-driving Bolts. That will help GM get manufacturing right and lower costs without relying on partners. Right now, an autonomous version of the car costs around $200,000 to build, compared to a sticker price of $35,000 for an electric Bolt for human drivers. Where GM lags Waymo is speed. GM doesn’t test faster than 25 km/h, deeming that the safest top speed. Kyle Vogt, founder and chief executive of GM’s Cruise Automation unit, said his program will soon be using new Lidar developed by Strobe, which the automaker acquired last year. Lidar sends out laser beams to map the road ahead and guide the car, and Strobe’s version is smaller, cheaper and can see farther ahead than GM’s existing equipment. That will enable faster driving. The new equipment will also cut costs. Lidar alone on the current generation of autonomous Bolts costs about $30,000 a car, Vogt said in November. When GM starts using Strobe, Vogt said, the cost will drop to “hundreds of dollars”. GM plans to spend $1 billion of its $8 billion annual capital expenditure budget to develop self-driving cars and mobility services. That money will allow GM the option of developing its own ride-hailing business. GM has not decided whether to run its ride-share pilot, slated for late 2019, on its own or to join forces with an established player. It’s worth noting that the automaker already has a stake in Lyft. There’s a big caveat with GM: It leads all companies that test in California when it comes to fender benders. Last year, Cruise had 22 of the 27 accidents in the state involving driverless cars, and it experienced 5 of the 7 incidents reported this year. The accidents have mostly been minor and not the fault of GM’s car. In an interview, GM President Dan Ammann attributed the higher incident rate to the greater number of miles traveled in San Francisco’s busy streets. Mercedes-Benz started selling an adaptive cruise-control system in the late 1990s on its flagship S-class sedan. The system could sense when the car was bearing down too quickly on someone’s rear bumper up ahead. Today, Mercedes models with Intelligent Drive get closer to real self-driving because the system can help steer clear of pedestrians and avoid other accidents. It’s one reason why Navigant Research, which studies auto technology, ranked parent company Daimler third behind Waymo and GM. Those systems help today’s drivers. For the cars of tomorrow, Daimler works closely with Robert Bosch and will be using a system from Silicon Valley intelligent computing company Nvidia. The test cars can drive at Level 4 autonomy or even Level 5, which means the car doesn’t need a steering wheel or pedals to operate. The company has been testing V-Class vans around the roads of Böblingen, near Stuttgart, where Mercedes-Benz has a research center. The automated vans run through purposefully challenging situations such as morning traffic. The technology is already at Level 5, Daimler’s head of development, Ola Kaellenius, said in an interview, although a recent report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance put the target date for the company after 2020. Before those systems are on the road, Kaellenius said Mercedes will offer Level 3 autonomy as an option in the cars it sells by 2021. This means that the car can handle most driving while prompting the driver to take over in certain situations that the computer can’t handle. Fully self-driving cars will be on the road at the same time, he said, but would be used for ride sharing services, because they would be too expensive for retail customers to buy. “The logical business case there is a mobility service, a robo-taxi type of thing”, Kaellenius said. “You amortize the cost through the saving on the driver”. No one would have imagined a decade ago that a vestige of bankrupt GM parts unit Delphi would be a player in the self-driving revolution. But Aptiv, the former Delphi Automotive that split out its powertrain business, has emerged as a player to be watched, said Grayson Brulte, co-founder of Brulte & Co, a consulting firm that specializes in autonomous strategy. Aptiv has invested heavily in self-driving technology, buying software maker Ottomatika along with stakes in Lidar makers Innoviz, Leddertech and Quanergy Systems. Its biggest deal was buying NuTonomy, which has been running tests of driverless cars in Boston and Singapore at city speeds. The company also ran a robo-taxi demo in Las Vegas during CES. The company has been testing ride-hailing services in Singapore since 2016 and will have them operational in 2021, according to Navigant. Aptiv has been working with Audi and BMW to develop its technology. The same day in late November that GM showed off its self-driving Bolt in San Francisco, Zoox had its own car driving through the city’s winding streets and heavy traffic. Zoox has about 250 engineers working to develop it. Its self-driving Toyota Highlander SUVs run on the same busy streets that GM uses to test the Bolt. But Zoox’s car can also drive at highway speeds, said Bert Kaufman, head of corporate and regulatory affairs for Zoox. The company plans to have its car ready for passengers in 2020, Kaufman said, and then will work on getting passengers in the car shortly after. The challenge for Zoox is getting more funding to build its car. The company has raised more than $280 million but needs an additional cash to finish its car, Kaufman said. It can cost $1 billion for car companies to finish a new model. Established carmakers have their own vehicles, and Waymo has partnerships with manufacturers. Renault-Nissan Alliance chairman Carlos Ghosn brags that the company has sold more cars with adaptive safety than anyone. Nissan’s ProPilot system stops the car if a vehicle ahead stops quickly and it keeps the car in its lane. That system was developed on the way to a full autonomous system, Ghosn said in an interview earlier this year. Right now, Nissan is testing a fully-autonomous car in Palo Alto, California. Renault recently showed off a long, sleek, copper-colored concept car called the Symbioz that can go 130 km/h in full self-drive mode. The car still requires a driver to turn on autonomous mode, at which point the steering wheel retracts. With electric motors in front and back and measuring a lane-hogging 2 metres in width and 5 metres in length, Symbioz isn’t exactly the car that will go on sale. In March, Nissan tested an Leaf in a ride-hailing pilot in Yokohama, and Renault will do the same later this year in suburban Paris and Rouen with the Zoe. While the alliance’s technology is impressive, Ghosn sounds cautious. The French-Japanese conglomerate plans to test a self-driver on the road around 2020. That car will be on highways requiring only occasional driver intervention. By 2022, Renault-Nissan will have fully autonomous cars in the road, according to the Alliance 2022 plan. “We will all be coming to market with this by 2022”, Ghosn said. “You’ll see all of the carmakers with some level of autonomy”. Audi already has the most advanced autonomous car for sale: the A8. The car’s Traffic Jam Pilot uses Lidar to see the road and lets drivers go completely hands-free at speeds up to 60 km/h. The company’s future work promises to be much more advanced. Audi, which is working with Nvidia, is targeting a fully autonomous car in 2020; the report from BNEF put the date to reach Level 4 at 2021. The company hasn’t said whether it will be tested in a service or by its own engineers. Volkswagen also has an agreement with Aurora, the startup whose founders have serious cred in the world of self-driving software. Its technical leaders are Urmson, a founder of Google’s self-driving effort, Sterling Anderson, who ran Tesla’s Autopilot program, and Drew Bagnell, formerly a leader on Uber’s autonomy team. The company has kept mum as to how it will go to market. BMW has a fleet of about 40 cars that can drive at Level 4 autonomy. The cars are driving around Munich and in California. The maker of Ultimate Driving Machines doesn’t see selling the ultimate riding machine soon. The company is testing completely self-driving cars that they have developed with partner Intel, which acquired sensor maker Mobileye, and with German parts maker Continental. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) recently joined the partnership, which plans to have self-driving technology in production vehicles by 2021. The self-driving BMWs aren’t ready for the highways, BMW Chief Finance Officer Nicolas Peter said at a press event in Detroit. “This technology requires, from our perspective, some more time to have really fully automated cars on the road”, Peter said. There are currently about 1,000 people on the company’s research and development team. No one can count Toyota out. The company started developing self-parking technology in 1999 and installed it in the Prius in Japan in 2003, enabling the car to park with no input from the driver. Toyota kept mum about capabilities until CES in January, when the company showed off a boxy shuttle concept called e-Palette. The Japanese automaker can make the self-driving shuttle in three sizes and it will debut publicly at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 as a ride-hailing shuttle, said Gill Pratt, who runs Toyota Research Institute. Still, Toyota’s message was one of patience. When Toyota tests its self-driving car in 2020, it may not have a driver; or it may still have 2 people minding the front seats and the controls, Pratt said. He thinks a lot of carmakers and tech companies are hyping the true state of self-driving vehicles. “We will get there”, Pratt said, “but I can’t tell you when”. Ford has been considered a laggard, especially since former CEO Mark Fields was fired last year, in part for not having a cohesive vision for autonomy and future mobility. But it’s not fair to say Ford is flat-footed. The company gets its technology from Argo AI, the artificial intelligence company in Pittsburgh that Ford paid $1 billion to take a significant stake last year. That investment brought in very good capabilities, said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst with Navigant Research. The Argo team has a strong lineage. The startup is the brainchild of Bryan Salesky, who was director of hardware development of what is now Waymo, and Peter Rander, who was engineering lead at the Uber Advanced Technologies Group. Salesky’s experience dates back to the beginning of self-driving cars: He was senior software engineer on the winning team in the 2007 autonomous vehicle challenge funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). Ford is now testing its third-generation Fusion/Mondeo with Argo’s technology. Even with Argo, however, Ford got a late start. When Ford bought the startup in February 2017, the company had few employees and Salesky spent a year staffing up. The plan is to have self-driving cars with Level 4 capability in 2021, said Sherif Markaby, Ford’s vice president of autonomous vehicles and electrification. The car will be purpose-built for autonomy that has no steering wheel or pedals. While Ford is a couple of years behind GM and Waymo, the company is experimenting with Domino’s Pizza to deliver pies and with Postmates to deliver other cargo. Ford is also preparing a Michigan factory to make autonomous vehicles. Volvo has a goal of eliminating all injuries to passengers in its cars by 2020. That looks unlikely, but the company has 500 people developing its own self-driving technology. Right now, its Pilot Assist gives a driver 15 seconds with hands off the wheel, keeping the car in lane and managing the distance to a vehicle ahead. The company is testing its technology with a few families in Gothenburg, Sweden. The tests will start with driver assistance technology and move up to more advanced systems over time. The automaker, owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, is developing more autonomous technology but won’t be ready to go to market until 2021, according to a report from Navigant. Volvo is also working with Uber to develop autonomous systems for the XC90. If you’re coming from behind, might as well find a partner to usher things along. Korea’s Hyundai Motors will have an advanced safety system on the road this month that allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel for 15 seconds. The company isn’t ready to test truly self-driving cars, said Jinwoo Lee, vice president of Hyundai’s Intelligent Safety Technology Center in Korea. To get there, Hyundai decided to work with Aurora, the technology startup that is working with Volkswagen, as well as with prolific partner Nvidia, maker of artificial intelligence computing systems. Hyundai plans to test its autonomous system in a small city in 2021. “We take very conservative steps”, Lee said in an interview. “We want to really test it and validate it”. There are no current plans to test autonomous technology on public roads, and the company said it doesn’t think it will be ready for market until 2025. Most traditional carmakers rushed to get a self-driving vehicle program once Waymo and Uber started working on it. Automakers feared that low-priced self-driving taxi services would replace car ownership and that they would just supply the hardware, just as Foxconn Technology makes the phone for Apple, and Apple makes the real money selling content and services. Enter Fiat Chrysler. The automaker supplies the minivans to Waymo and helps integrate the technology, yet has little development of its own. The company has started working with Intel and BMW but will not try to establish leadership alone. Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies placed 2 huge bets on autonomous vehicles, first hiring top employees from Carnegie Robotics in 2015 and then acquiring the self-driving trucking startup Otto in 2016. But the program has been mired in controversy after a high-profile lawsuit and a then fatal collision. Throughout 2015, Uber recruited top robotics talent from Carnegie Mellon as it built its Advanced Technologies Group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That group, led today by former Carnegie Robotics co-founder Eric Meyhofer, has spearheaded Uber’s self-driving car program. In an effort to catapult Uber to the front of the autonomous-vehicle arms race, Uber acquired Otto Trucking in August 2016, buying a team filled with former employees of Alphabet’s self-driving car unit. Less than a year later, Alphabet retaliated, filing a trade secrets lawsuit against Uber. The lawsuit revealed that Anthony Levandowski, who co-founded Otto after working on Google’s self-driving car, then headed Uber’s driverless-car development effort, had downloaded copies of work emails and sensitive files at Google. Levandowski, along with Otto’s other 3 co-founders, have all since left Uber. The ride-hailing company settled the lawsuit this year for $245 million in Uber equity, but not before the lawsuit distracted its leaders and placed a black mark on its autonomous program. Then in March, bad turned to tragic when a self-driving Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. Uber quickly suspended all of its public autonomous-vehicle testing as it awaits the results of that investigation. If Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk can get the world’s most powerful rocket off the ground with his company SpaceX, maybe he can also get cars to drive themselves. Tesla’s Model S and X both have Autopilot, which can pass other cars and change lanes with no hands on the wheel. While it’s not a fully autonomous system, it has given Tesla a lot of data about how its cars perform when driver-assistance software is engaged. Tesla has been under fire lately, after another person died in an accident while using Autopilot. Where things get murky is that Musk eschews the Lidar systems that most carmakers and tech companies are using. He says he wants to develop more advanced imaging to give his cars a much better pair of eyes. Musk wants to use cameras and develop image-recognition capabilities so cars can read signs and truly see the road ahead. He has said Tesla is taking the more difficult path, but if he can come up with a better system, he will have mastered true autonomy without the bulky and expensive hardware that sits on top of rival self-driving cars. “They’re going to have a whole bunch of expensive equipment, most of which makes the car expensive, ugly and unnecessary”, Musk told analysts in February. “And I think they will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage”. Analysts from BNEF project that Tesla will be able to field Level 4 cars in 2020, although that timetable could be subject to change now that the company entered into a public spat with federal safety investigators over the fatal crash involving Autopilot. China’s largest search engine has been developing self-driving software for 5 years. Its Apollo software system for autonomous vehicles is open-source, and the company has invited all takers to work together to test cars and collect data. Baidu started testing the first version of the software in late 2017 on public roads and showed off version 2.0 at CES in Las Vegas in January. The Chinese government in March gave Baidu permission to test cars on 33 public roads in the suburbs of Beijing, making it first on the roads in China. The company’s goal is to test the system in buses made by Chinese manufacturer King Long later this year and, by 2020, to have autonomous vehicles capable of Level 3, meaning the car controls itself at highway speeds and tells the driver to take over in complex situations. Baidu’s initial self-driving cars will be developed with China’s Chery Automobile. Baidu also has a 2021 target to produce Level 4 autonomous cars in partnership with Chinese automaker BAIC Group. +++
+++ In the UNITED STATES , most major automakers posted lower vehicle sales for April as consumer demand continued to weaken and competition intensified following a lengthy boom for the industry. According to Autodata, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales for April hit 17.15 million units compared with 17.04 million a year ago. Auto sales have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride this year, with a weak performance in February followed by a jump in sales for some automakers in March. Ford reported a 4.7 % decline in sales compared to April 2017, with retail sales to consumers down 2.6 %. The No. 2 U.S. automaker said sales of its best-selling F-Series pickup trucks were up 3.5 %, but SUV and passenger car sales were down 4.6 % and 15 % respectively. For years, U.S. consumers have been shifting away from traditional passenger cars in favor of larger and more comfortable pickups, SUVs and crossovers. Ford last week outlined a plan to cut costs and boost profit margins that includes dropping traditional sedan models in North America. But the number of new models vying for a share of the SUV market is growing faster than demand, threatening the fat profits automakers have enjoyed. “That is a very competitive part of the market with so many new entries”, Ford’s U.S. sales chief Mark LaNeve said of the SUV segment on a conference call with analysts and reporters. Last year, U.S. auto sales fell 2 % after hitting a record high of 17.55 million units in 2016. Sales are expected to fall further in 2018 as higher interest rates push up monthly car payments. Also, millions of nearly new vehicles will return to the market this year after coming off lease, providing a lower-cost alternative for consumers. “With a plateauing market, you are going to get some bumpiness”, Ford’s LaNeve said. Nissan’s sales hit quite a bump, plunging 28 % in April. The Japanese automaker’s passenger car sales dropped nearly 35 % and SUV and pickup sales were down 23.1 %. Even sales of the company’s popular crossover model Rogue (Qashqai in Europe) were down almost 15 %. “April was an extremely challenging month with intense competition in the U.S. market”, Nissan said in a statement. The company said declining retail sales and a “pullback on fleet volume contributed to lower performance”. No. 1 U.S. automaker General Motors (GM) announced last month that it would no longer report monthly sales and instead will just post sales on a quarterly basis. Industry estimates showed GM posting sales anywhere from flat to down 8 % for April. Ford said it will continue to post monthly sales. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) was alone among the top sellers in the U.S. market, posting an overall sales increase of 5 % in April. But retail sales to consumers were down 1 % while lower-margin fleet sales to rental car companies and government agencies were up 5 %. FCA’s popular Jeep brand hit a record for April. But sales of the Ram pickups were down 9 %, though retail sales of the lucrative truck were up 3 %. FCA said last week when it reported first-quarter results that it had encountered problems ramping up production of the new Ram 1500 pickup at its U.S. Sterling Heights plant. Toyota posted a 4.7 % decline in sales for April, with a 1.5 % increase in SUV and pickup sales offset by a 12.7 % drop in passenger car sales. Sales of Toyota’s recently revamped flagship Camry sedan were down 5 %. Honda said its April sales declined 9.2 %, with a car sales off 14.4 % and pickups and SUVs down 3.9 %. Honda’s all-new version of its flagship Accord sedan plunged 19.3 %. Hyundai said its sales were down 11 % versus April 2017. +++
+++ CEO Jean-Marc Gales expects Lotus to still be using Toyota engines in the immediate future, but he is keen to embrace the powertrain options available from other Geely-owned brands. Such co-operation is most likely to make use of resources developed by VOLVO , whose technology is also being used by fellow Geely brands Polestar and Lynk & Co. Volvo’s petrol range now consists of a 152 hp 1.5-litre 3-cylinder turbo and several variations of a 2.0-litre turbo four-pot making between 190 hp and 306 hp, with the latter aided by supercharging. It is expected that Lotus would use in-house expertise to boost performance from any Geely-sourced engines, as it does with the current Toyota units, but it seems unlikely that an unassisted 2.0-litre 4 cylinder engine would provide the power required for Hethel’s top-performing sports cars. Opportunities to tackle this are provided by electrified versions of the same 3 and 4 cylinder petrol engines. Currently, that means Volvo’s 408 hp T8 hybrid. But other variants (such as the three-pot hybrid expected in the XC40 and Lynk & Co 01 SUVs and the 600 hp 4 cylinder hybrid of the Polestar 1 coupe) aren’t far away, with all-electric models also in the pipeline. Talking about powertrain options for the higher-riding Lotus that’s due within 4 years, Gales said: “Crossovers can be hybrid or full electric”. As for future propulsion choices in Lotus’s more familiar segments, Gales did not rule out electrification, saying: “There are some years left for combustion engines in sports cars, but maybe a mild hybrid would work”. Gales is also open to using full-electric systems in that sector as the technology evolves. “The pace of development in electric drive is incredible and batteries are also moving fast”, he said. +++