AD #1868 – Delphi to Test 3D Printed Components, Uber Jumps Into Autonomy, How the New CAFE Standards Work
May 20th, 2016 at 11:49am
Runtime: 8:32
To watch this episode on YouTube click here.
- AT&T Touts In-Car Wi-Fi in New Ad
- Toyota Surpasses 9 Million Hybrid Sales
- Delphi to Test 3D Printed Components
- Uber Jumps Into Autonomy
- Infiniti Launches Technician Training Program
- How the New CAFE Standards Work
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On today’s show… Delphi will soon test cars equipped with 3D printed components, Uber is preparing to test autonomous Ford Fusion’s and a look at the new CAFE footprint rules. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.
This is Autoline Daily for May 20th, 2016.
AT&T TOUTS WI-FI IN NEW AD
People increasingly want their cars connected to all the other things they do. So to get consumers aware of its services, AT&T just launched a digital campaign that focuses on wireless connectivity inside the car. The social media ads will share the benefits of turning a car into a wi-fi hotspot from a kid’s point of view. The company is also expanding connected car services for its Unlimited Plan customers. The telecommunications giant is heavily involved in connected cars. It now has partnerships with 19 car brands worldwide and in the U.S. 8 million vehicles are on AT&T’s network.
TOYOTA SURPASSES 9 MILLION HYBRID SALES
Toyota is by far and away the leader when it comes to hybrid vehicles. The company is celebrating that it just surpassed 9 million hybrid sales globally, since it launched its first one back in 1997. It now sells 34 models in more than 90 countries. The company estimates that compared to similar sized vehicles, its hybrids have saved over 6.5 billion gallons of fuel and reduced CO2 emissions by 67 million tons. By the end of the decade Toyota wants to sell 1.5 million hybrids globally on an annual basis.
DELPHI TO TEST 3D PRINTED COMPONENTS
The supplier company Delphi just teamed up with Carbon 3D. You may remember Carbon, they’re the 3D printing company that developed a system for “growing” objects out of a resin. On top of its increased speed, Carbon’s technology doesn’t print material layer by layer, which helps improve the manufacturing process and allows for greater design freedom. Here you see it making electrical connectors. In June, Delphi will test a fleet of 25 cars with parts made from the Carbon process to prove its durability.
Still to come… Uber plans to test Ford Fusions equipped with autonomous technology and Infiniti creates a training academy for technicians.
UBER JUMPS INTO AUTONOMY
Autonomy could be the most transformative technology to hit the automotive industry in 100 years. And it seems that everyone wants to get in on the action. Ride-sharing company Uber just announced it’s going to test a hybrid Ford Fusion around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s fitted with a number of radars, laser scanners, and high resolution cameras that will be used for collecting mapping data as well as testing its self-driving capabilities. Uber says it chose Pittsburgh because there’s a wide variety of road types, traffic patterns and weather conditions. But the fact that renowned technology institute Carnegie Mellon is right around the corner probably doesn’t hurt either.
INFINITI’S SEARCH FOR BETTER TECHNICIANS
It takes a hell of a lot of skill and training to be able to properly diagnose and repair today’s vehicles. And finding someone with those skills can be very difficult. That’s why Infiniti has teamed up with the Universal Technical Institute to launch the Infiniti Technical Training Academy. UTI is one of the leading providers of post-secondary education for transportation training. Students first must graduate UTI’s Automotive Technology program before applying to Infiniti’s 18-week program. But if chosen they’ll get a bumper-to-bumper education on Infiniti vehicles. Infiniti will even pay the tuition for its program in exchange for an employment commitment with an Infiniti dealer upon graduation. The Infiniti training program will debut at UTI’s newest campus in Long Beach, California, in 2017.
Coming up next, a look at why the CAFE regulations aren’t as daunting as first believed.
HOW THE NEW CAFE STANDARDS WORK
Back in 2012, the auto industry along with the EPA and CARB, agreed to boost the Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE, for passenger cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Previously automakers had to meet a fleet average but now it’s based on a vehicle footprint for each segment. Those rules will be reviewed this year and many analysts believe adjustments will be needed because of low fuel prices and consumers opting for trucks and utilities instead of green cars. On Autoline This Week, we’re joined by Margo Oge, the former EPA Director of Air Quality and Transportation. In the following clip, she explains how the new footprint works and why it’s not necessary for automakers to build more electrified vehicles.
(Clip from ATW #2017 can only be viewed in the video version of today’s show.)
For more of Margo’s insight you can watch that entire discussion right now on our website, Autoline.tv or you can look for it on our YouTube channel.
But that brings us to the end of today’s Autoline Daily. Thanks for watching and have a great weekend.
Thanks to our partner for embedding Autoline Daily on its website: WardsAuto.com
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Comments (26)
May 20th, 2016 at 12:22 pm
Why does Uber’s autonomous Ford Fusion remind me of Dr. Seuss?
May 20th, 2016 at 12:26 pm
I have a “connected” car with the wifi hot spot, and if I were to name the feature I value the least, that would be it. If I had a car full of kids, though, I guess it would be nice, until you have to pay for the 25G of data from that road trip a couple weeks ago.
May 20th, 2016 at 12:27 pm
2025 cafe standards.I can’t help but think that our oversized pickups will become even bigger.After all,the cafe standards is why they are so damn big now.
May 20th, 2016 at 12:39 pm
3 Yep, I find it rather disgusting that they seem to be actively encouraging the building of oversize vehicles.
May 20th, 2016 at 1:09 pm
To #3 and #4: No one is forcing anyone to buy what you call oversize vehicles. People want to buy them even if they don’t need to buy them. It’s the flip side of the EV coin (with the exception of the 9 million Priuses out there). By the lights of some people might “need” to buy them, but theu don want to buy them.
May 20th, 2016 at 1:17 pm
From what I’ve read at multiple sources, these CAFE rules DO encourage manufactures to make bigger vehicles. It they made Corvettes 4 inches wider, they could get worse mpg, and still do their part toward complying with CAFE. Am I missing something here, Sean?
May 20th, 2016 at 1:20 pm
Some nebulous explanations from the EPA; hard to hit a target when it keeps changing in size and location. I finding it hard to see the actual goal of the 2025 standard.
May 20th, 2016 at 1:26 pm
#5
Doing away with the S-10, Ranger, et all. rather forced people to buy oversized vehicles, no?
The same craven calculation that they could force loyal Ford owners to buy a more profitable full sized pickup truck if they got rid of the smaller truck they made, also found them reducing and/or eliminating the towing capacity rating on the Crown Victoria/Grand Marquis/Town Car to force buyers into more profitable Expeditions, Explorers, and full-sized pickups.
May 20th, 2016 at 1:34 pm
So we’ll all be driving humongous plastic church vans in the 2030s. 60mpg Honda Fit seems like a bigger challenge than 30mpg Silverado
May 20th, 2016 at 2:42 pm
Toyota saving 6.5B gallons of gas. Per year? Or since 1997? Sure seems like a lot until you realize the world consumes about 95 Billion barrels of oil a DAY (almost 4 trillion gallons per day). Its still a good thing but worldwide consumption continues to grow with development of countries in Asia etc.
Would be great if the developing countries build infrastructure to support electric cars as they grow and plan for the future.
May 20th, 2016 at 3:11 pm
10 An even bigger increase in energy consumption than cars, is electricity for air conditioning, as many more millions of people in developing countries can afford it.
May 20th, 2016 at 3:39 pm
With Uber and everyone else getting into autonomous cars, I just had a brainstorm that would really accelerate the development. Let’s go back to the heyday of NASCAR when automakers and sponsors developed all kinds of new technology for the racing programs that made their way into the everyday cars that we all drove. What if NASCAR had 2 or 3 races a year with autonomous cars? I’m not talking about some anemic EV or hybrid, I talking about a fire breathing 800 HP race ready car. You manage to win a race on say one of the road courses with the high speeds with no driver, now you have something. It would be a hoot to watch. It might take a few years before they get good enough before we stop laughing. It would never replace the unpredictability that we enjoy from real drivers, but you know for sure, someone would be trying to write code for an algorithm to get the car in front loose
May 20th, 2016 at 5:15 pm
I recall McLaren (or someone) had F1 vehicles go around race tracks without a driver a while back.
May 20th, 2016 at 7:53 pm
12 If they could do an autonomous NASCAR race, even at 90% of the usual average speed, with 90% of the cars running at the end, I would be very impressed. Will they use pneumatics, or servo motors to work the shifter and clutch?
An autonomous F1 race would be even more impressive, if 3/4 of the cars got through the first lap.
May 20th, 2016 at 9:09 pm
And, at the end of the race, we could have robots punch it out.
May 21st, 2016 at 4:23 pm
Here’s some food for thought in regards to autonomous vehicles.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/a_selfdriving_car_in_the_hands_of_terrorists.html#.V0Coxb3w2uI.gmail
May 21st, 2016 at 6:36 pm
#16
G.A., hadn’t thought of that aspect; thanks for sharing. Everyone else, read the link, it’s not that long and very germane to the discussion about the autonomous vehicle (and their future).
May 21st, 2016 at 9:07 pm
16, 17 The use of autonomous vehicles by terrorists is an obvious possibility, but might be easier to prevent than a regular vehicle driven be a suicidal maniac.
Americanthinker is a right wing site with contributors like Anne Coulter. Would that make them especially concerned about autonomous cars being used in bad ways?
May 22nd, 2016 at 11:38 am
No matter the source, I believe that the threat could be real (and will need to be considered). Is it a deal-breaker, no, but I’d like to see how ‘they’ may use some safeguards to counter the possibilities.
May 22nd, 2016 at 12:22 pm
Right wing/left wing….does it really matter? When autonomous vehicles are common place,the threat becomes real regardless of politics.Instead of being polarized one way or the other,just use common sense.
May 22nd, 2016 at 6:34 pm
When autonomous vehicles exist, they will be registered, as other cars. If the “authorities” know that people suspected of terrorist intent have them, they might be able to access trip programming. If, say, a suspected terrorist sends his van from his garage in Newark to Times Square on a Friday night, the “authorities” might be able to cancel the trip, like Onstar can stop a car. Just a thought, but that’s why I think actual drivers with ill intent might be more of a threat.
As far as right wing/left wing, I don’t know if it matters, but Rolling Stone, and to my knowledge, The Nation havn’t had articles about the threat of terrorists with autonomous cars.
May 23rd, 2016 at 8:06 am
I would consider autonomous cars to be a possible tool but not a threat. The terrorists are the threat and figuring out who they are and what they are doing is the challenge not stifling progress. We created planes and they were used to destroy the towers, We created cars and they have been used as car bombs. The technology is readily available for a remote controlled car no need to wait for autonomy. As the terrorists continue to pursue way to kill people they will use anything available to them. Finding them is the key not creating laws to regulate developing technology and slowly removing our freedoms.
May 23rd, 2016 at 8:19 am
By all means, let’s worry about autonomous vehicles in the hands of terrorists instead of examining what our policies are that might’ve created the terrorists in the first place.
May 23rd, 2016 at 10:54 am
The argument postulated in the article was, “It is not clear if the self-driving car designers are looking at the malevolent use of this technology”. It sounds like the authors have no automotive knowledge, so they should have done some research before writing an article on “what-ifs”. It has already been reported here that the manufacturers are aware of the entry points for “malevolent use” and have even been patching known issues and looking for other problems. I don’t think the “bomb-laden autonomous cars” will be nearly as potential a threat since they will be expensive. The terrorists could much easier find a young, dumb guy to convince to drive, or purchase many, many, more exploding drones and remote controlled bomb-carts for less cost.
The cheap, easier threat still exists though of terrorists just creating havoc by hacking in and controlling random person’s vehicles to cause crashes. That said, autonomy is supposed to save 30,000 lives each year and $450Billion/year. Running the risk of sounding callous, the lives and costs saved now would be worth the possible risk of maybe some terrorist figuring out and executing a few deaths somewhere.
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:48 am
You can click on my name to see an opposing article entitled, “Don’t Fear the Robot Car Bomb”.
As I have said on here before, I am all for autonomy. There are many people on the road that should not have licenses. People can’t even figure out how to operate our current V2V system for manually showing the vehicle’s intent (the humble turn signal). Even if computers aren’t perfect, they will be better. I enjoy driving, but I don’t see autonomy as a threat to me and I believe there will always be room for the driving enthusiast. I see the V2V interface and autonomous driving as something that will save lives, clear up traffic congestion, and make it easier for me to drive (and sit back and enjoy the scenery on long trips).
May 23rd, 2016 at 12:29 pm
I would have preferred to have autonomy a majority of the time, during the 1100 mile road trip I just took from Florida to Indiana. Also, I suspect it would be better to share the road with autonomous vehicles, than with many of today’s drivers.