Hyundai Getting Aptiv in AVs
Hyundai is diving deeper into AV tech with a $4 billion joint venture alongside autonomous system design company Aptiv.
Hyundai and Aptiv will each contribute $2 billion to the new development, splitting the new company’s ownership 50-50. It aims to produce a production-ready autonomous driving platform available for robotaxi drivers, fleet operators and automotive manufacturers by 2022.
Hyundai predicts it will begin testing its autonomous vehicles by next year, with the new company’s official agreement expected to officially close in the second quarter of 2020.
The announcement of the automaker’s joint venture comes just a few months after a June announcement revealed that it and Kia would be investing more money into the autonomy partner Aurora.
Hyundai and Kia had been working with Aurora since 2018 on self-driving hydrogen fuel-cell NEXOs, and in June, Hyundai repeated its 2018 prediction that its joint efforts with Kia would yield autonomous vehicles by 2021.
With two large-scale AV projects on the go, Hyundai has said its current deadline for the production of its Aptiv-powered driving platforms is 2022, while its timeline for full-scale mass production of autonomous vehicles will reach its finish 2024.
Auto Manufacturing Airbnb
The age-old concept of lodging-for-hire has made its way to the automotive manufacturing industry in an innovative way that may benefit small businesses.
Techniplas Prime, a subsidiary of Techniplas LLC, is an e-manufacturing platform that caters to the automotive industry. The platform uses a concept similar to that of popular lodging rental site Airbnb by leveraging the idle 3-D printing abilities of small manufacturers to automotive manufacturers. It allows customers to order parts electronically according to their specifications and have them built by local factories with the unused capacity.
George Votis founded Techniplas in 2010. However, after acquiring several moulding companies, Techniplas was in search of solutions for more production space. Its dozen wholly-owned manufacturing sites were already operating at full capacity, which is when the idea for Techniplas Prime was born.
The platform appears to have generated much interest; in 2018, Techniplas Prime shipped 1,000 truckloads of parts from its Prime sites, which it says is the equivalent of one plant’s worth of auto parts.
Cut-Rate on Car-Net
With Volkswagen offering five free years of Car-Net on most of its 2020 models, facilities could be facing additional scrutiny on future collision repairs.
On Wednesday, Volkswagen announced that the majority of its 2020 model year vehicles would come equipped with its Car-Net connectivity feature — and it will be free for the first five years of ownership.
Car-Net allows a driver to check their fuel levels remotely and provides “easy access” to diagnostic information, should they wish. Although the diagnostic feature comes absent of specific diagnostic codes — hence the device’s ability to refer customers to dealerships for service — the information received by the customer is certainly more detailed than what they would learn with an ignited dash light.
If Volkswagen drivers take advantage of this free feature, repairers might encounter situations where the vehicle’s Car-Net connectivity alerts the consumer to activity during the repair. The system could trigger alerts related to a vehicle’s motion during the repair if it is not disabled, which unintentionally keeps a close eye on a body shop’s behaviour.
