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 Newsletter presented by
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Renault-Nissan ahead of the race for clean cars
Renault and Nissan have concluded new partnerships to promote electric and zero emission vehicles. The Oregon State in the US, Yokohama region in Japan and Monaco are joining a list already composed of Israël, Denmark, Portugal and Tennessee state. In these areas, starting from 2010 or 2011, plug in infrastructure and EVs will be deployed at a large scale and with incentives.
Mini with an E
During last LA Auto show, Mini has revealed an electric version of the Mini. The Mini E is an electric powered model, with a 204 hp output and a range of 250 km, thanks to lithium-ion batteries. It’s a front wheel drive, with zero emissions. Produced at 500 units, this E version is offered for lease at selected customers in the US (California, New York and New Jersey).
Revolutionary diesel with Delphi
Resulting from several years of research conducted with Daimler engineers, the new direct acting common rail from Delphi is introduced on the Mercedes C250 CDI Blue Efficiency. It works with piezo injectors. For the first time, the the injector needle is directly activated by the piezo stack, removing the hydraulic circuit and its associated lag and energy consumption. This change enables vehicle manufacturers to comply with future emission legislations while providing more power and uncompromised fuel economy.
Porsche shifts to diesel
It’s not a joke : Porsche will offer a diesel version of the Cayenne starting from spring 2009. The engine (a V6 of 240 hp, developed by Audi) enables this model to get under the threshold of 250 g of CO2 per km. The fuel consumption of petrol is limited to 9,9 L/100km. After ethanol and hybrid technology, diesel is the next big change for Porsche.
Ice detectors at Continental
Usually, a glance at the outside temperature warns the driver if it’s cold enough to get ice on the roads. But Continental goes further and has developed ice detectors. These sophisticated sensors, no bigger than a matchstick, can be installed in the bumper, behind the radiator grill or in the outside mirror casing. Composed of two wires, connected to a head made of ceramic, magnesium, chromium, copper and iron oxides, the sensor can quickly communicate with the on-boad electronics of the car. So that the driver is warned on time if there is a risk of black ice.
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IAEC 2008: 300 Attendees from key companies
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The congress was taking up this year the challenge of sustainability. The topics of the first day covered the fields of energy, safety and mobility. These themes have been introduced by the opening keynote speaker, Dr Burkhard Göschel, CTO Vehicles & Powertrain at Magna International*. Afterwards, a round table, called “going green”, gathered experts from Renault, PSA, Bosch, Freescale and Magna to discuss about EV cars, hybrids, and solutions for conventional engines. As it had been said previously in a presentation made by Ian Ritches, from Stategy Analytics, electrified vehicles will only represent a market share of 6 % at the horizon 2020. Nevertheless, the car industry is at crossroads and the OEMs wonder how tomorrow vehicles will be used and with which energies
 More information
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SAVE THE DATE
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The 6th edition of the IAEC will take place on November 17-18, 2009.
Exhibitor or Sponsor in 2009!
Schedule right now IAEC in your 2009 budget and benefit from 10% discount if you book your space before end of December 2008.
Speaker in 2009!
The call for paper is coming in January.
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PARTNER OF THE MONTH
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About Silicon Laboratories
Silicon Laboratories, an ISO/TS 16949 registered company, offers the most optimized automotive microcontroller solutions for point of control and body electronic applications.
All devices are designed to operate across the full automotive temperature (–40 to 125 ºC) and voltage (1.8 to 5.25 V) range. The C8051F52xA family is the first to combine a ±0.5% integrated precision internal oscillator with 8 kB Flash, 25 MIPS, 12-bit ADC, dedicated LIN 2.0 controller, 16-bit timers/PWM, SPI, UART and six I/O lines in a small 3x3 mm, 10-pin DFN package. The C8051F53xA family has the same feature set, but adds ten additional I/O lines and is offered in 20-pin QFN and TSSOP packages. Both families integrate additional analog features such as a programmable comparator, voltage regulator and on-chip temperature sensor to further reduce design complexity. This highly integrated architecture enables automotive electronics designers to simplify the design process and reduce system cost.
More information
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THE EXPERT of the month
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Hermann Meyer, CEO ERTICO – ITS Europe
Driving assistance systems are being deployed today, but slower than expected. What's up with the eSafety initiative?
The eSafety partnership has made good progress in its early priorities, including eCall, ESC and RTTI. eCall standards will soon be finalised, which should remove uncertainty about the in-vehicle technology and encourage vehicle makers to offer these systems in new vehicles. ESC is already deployed in many cars and the "Choose ESC" campaign has created substantial public awareness. RTTI services are now widely deployed, and dynamic route guidance is available in most in-vehicle, after-market and portable navigation systems. The next generation of services is under preparation in TISA, following the vision elaborated in the eSafety Forum RTTI Working Group.
In addition, the decision of the European Commission earlier this year to reserve a dedicated radio band for intelligent vehicle communications across Europe was warmly welcomed by ERTICO, as it will enable vehicles to communicate and interact with each other and with the road infrastructure via one single radio frequency. This decision is a major policy milestone to boost faster deployment across Europe of these cooperative systems, using car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication.
Testing ITS systems in real-life conditions is the aim of so-called “Field Operational Tests” (FOTs), which are large-scale test programmes aimed at providing a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency, quality, robustness and acceptance of ITS solutions. Field Operational Tests will bridge the gap between research and development results and actual deployment, and will help verify that ITS does deliver smarter, safer, cleaner and more comfortable transport solutions. ERTICO is participating in several EU-funded projects to assess the impact of advanced driver assistance and preventive safety functions in real traffic conditions (such as Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Departure Warning or Blind Spot Monitoring) as well as functions provided by aftermarket and nomadic devices, to raise awareness of their potential for improving road safety and efficiency.
Autonomous systems and telematics are rolling out with oems. How to ensure a cooperation with infrastructure managers and shift to smartways?
ERTICO is strongly involved in both cooperative systems R&D and preparations for deployment. As well as leading the flagship CVIS project, we are promoting the formation of a community of "intelligent infrastructure" policy-makers, operators and suppliers to define a common deployment roadmap. As is happening for the "intelligent car", I expect the roadside system suppliers to come forward with
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innovative products for cooperative systems, constituting a sort of "policy & operational toolkit" that can offer practical solutions and real benefits for those who are charged to run the road networks in a safer, more efficient and more environment-friendly way. The key to making this happen is to create a multi-sector partnership that shares a common vision & comes from a policy background that is aware of cooperative systems; probably a small number of champions will need to come forward to lead this movement. In the US there is already a "VII Coalition" bringing together automotive industry, state highway departments and the Federal Department of Transportation. We believe that a similar coalition is needed in Europe.
What did you learn from NY ITS World Congress and how is Europe compared to other continents of the world?
The exchange of knowledge and experience among the ITS community significantly contributes to the development, implementation and deployment of ITS in Europe and across the world. The recent ITS World Congress in New York provided another unique opportunity for the world’s leading transport leaders, policy makers, and other industry professionals to promote intelligent transport systems and services that have the ability to save lives, time, money, and improve the environment today.
Cooperation with all stakeholders is the key to accelerating the deployment of ITS, and this was underlined at the Congress. ERTICO, ITS America and ITS Japan are committed to supporting the organisation of the annual ITS World Congress enabling a broader exchange of ITS information for the benefit of all stakeholders, and the general public as well as to promoting the benefits of ITS for road safety on a global basis.
Keeping people and goods moving is crucial to European competitiveness, integration and the creation of a single market. Europe leads the way in terms of technical innovation and deployment thanks to development and deployment initiatives that receive funding from the European Commission.
European know-how and expertise is also being promoted in emerging markets. Take the DYNASTY project for example which was the first project of its kind to showcase European dynamic traffic information services, TMC technologies and vehicle on-board navigation technologies in China. This led to the adoption of RDS-TMC as a national standard for China at the end of 2006.
Information is the key point for mobility. What is ERTICO’s vision on that topic?
Information is indeed the key to unlocking a wide range of services. The best expected information is likely that to be collected by "floating" probe vehicles. This means that a large proportion of the vehicles on the road should be equipped with a data collection, aggregation and delivery system. When cooperative systems deliver such data then the traffic management and information services will develop to use the much more accurate and complete data, and users will start to get truly personalised traffic & route information, while traffic managers will be able to manage their networks in real-time and in knowledge of the detailed traffic state & demand right across the network.
ERTICO’s vision is of a “smart” European transport system which – through the application of intelligent technologies – is safer, more efficient, more sustainable and more secure than today.
ERTICO is promoting this vision through its concept of Intelligent Mobility in Europe, or “i-Mobility”. By bringing “intelligence into mobility”, we can look forward to a future with:
? zero accidents
? zero delays
? reduced impact on the environment, and
? fully informed users.
Once i-Mobility is fully available in vehicles, in roadside systems and in users’ portable devices, ITS will truly be a part of everyone’s daily life.
To bring this vision closer to home, ERTICO and its Partners are currently working on the ‘Connected Traveller’ concept through the i-Travel project funded by DG Research (www.i-travelproject.com).
The concept combines a simple, intuitive user interface with a context-aware intelligent agent that can interpret and satisfy a traveller’s needs, together with a virtual marketplace where users’ requests and providers’ offers can meet.
Travelling will not only be more comfortable and convenient, but the impact on travel networks will be reduced, and, as a consequence, the trip will become much more environmentally friendly.
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