On today’s show…is the vacuum cleaner company Dyson developing an electric vehicle?… how autonomy is transforming traditional automotive suppliers… and we’ll tell you why the U.S. car market is actually stronger than what’s being reported. All that and more coming right up on Autoline Daily.

This is Autoline Daily the show for enthusiasts of the automotive industry.

DYSON EV SPECULATION HEATS UP
For the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of speculation that the vacuum cleaner company Dyson, is developing an electric car. And for good reason. In 2015 it bought battery maker Sakti3 to gain access to its solid state batteries. And last year Dyson hired Aston Martin’s head of product development, Ian Minards. And now Bloomberg reports, the company has lured another executive from the British automaker. David Wyer, the Director of Purchasing at Aston, is now the head of Procurement for Dyson. Earlier this year Dyson announced it’s building a new R&D center to develop batteries, robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s also been hiring researchers who specialize in autonomy. Dyson hasn’t confirmed if it’s working on an EV but all this activity suggests it’s got something up its sleeve.

U.S CAR MARKET STRONGER THAN REPORTED
The U.S. car market is slowing down, but here’s the real story behind the numbers. The drop is mainly on the fleet side rather than on the retail side. Fleet sales account for about 20% of the market, or roughly 3.5 million vehicles. The fleet market is made up of three different segments: commercial, which includes sales to businesses, sales to governments, and sales to daily rental companies. So far this year commercial fleet sales are down 7%, sales to governments are down 10%, and sales to the daily rentals are down 8%. All together the total fleet segment is down 7.5%. Meanwhile, the retail side of the business is only down 2%. And that suggests that the U.S. new car market is actually stronger than what’s been reported.

And we’ll be back with more right after this.

NEW HYDROFORMING TECHNIQUE
We love to keep you up to speed with what’s going on at suppliers and here’s the latest from Vari-Form, the industry leader in hydroforming. The company is best known for pressure-sequence hydroforming, which is where a tube is partially formed in a die, then filled with fluid and finally clamped down the rest of the way. This forms a part without wall thinning or deformation, which results in greater structural integrity and engineering accuracy. But when Audi went looking for someone to make it rear cradle arms, which support most of the suspension components on the new Q5 crossover, it wanted something that was both strong and lightweight. What it needed was high-pressure hydroforming. In this process a tube is first clamped down in a die and then forced to fill out the die with a high-pressure fluid. Materials like aluminum and carbon fiber are being considered more, but processes like hydroforming are keeping steel competitive with lighter weight options.

CHERY TEASES FIRST EURO MODEL
China’s state-owned car maker Chery announced a little while back that it would enter the European market and now it’s teasing its first model. It’s a crossover with a stylish front end and an interior that features a floating infotainment screen and three large control knobs with lit displays inside. Several elements are similar to the Tiggo Sport Sedan Concept SUV Chery revealed just a few months back. Chery is now working to set up a distribution network in Europe and is also looking into a new R&D facility in the region. And while this concept wears Chery’s badge on its nose, the company announced it will sell vehicles under an all-new nameplate. That name was not revealed.

TOYOTA TESTS NEW CAR SHARE APP
Since January Toyota has been running a car-sharing pilot program in San Francisco to test the convenience and usability of using a smartphone to lock and unlock cars. Now the automaker is expanding its car-sharing test program to Hawaii. It will launch a new set of software and services that will allow dealers and distributors to kick off car sharing programs in local markets. When the pilot program ends, the distributor of Toyota vehicle in Hawaii, a company named Servco, will launch a new Honolulu-based car share business by the end of 2017.

Coming up next, a look at how autonomy is having an impact on traditional automotive suppliers.

ZF’s VISION ZERO
As we’ve been saying, autonomy could be one of the most transformative technologies to ever hit the auto industry and it’s already having an impact. Take for example the supplier ZF. It was best known for making transmissions and driveline components, but in just the last few years we’ve seen it purchase TRW for $15 billion to fill voids in active and passive safety, start a new startup-like company to invest in innovative technologies and most recently partner with lighting supplier Hella for its knowledge of surround view sensors and short-range radar.

Now ZF has set out on a path toward zero emissions and zero accidents, what it calls Vision Zero. Part of that journey starts with advanced driver assist systems. To meet 2018+ safety standards for things like headlight control, Automatic Emergency Braking and Lane Keep Assist ZF has cameras that can “see” up to 52-degrees and a 77 GHz radar sensor that can look out over 650-feet with a 100-degree field of view. But cameras will have to improve to meet future standards. 2020 and beyond will see cameras that are 1.7 mega pixels and have nearly double the field of view. And like airplanes, future vehicles will require redundancy.

To that end, ZF develop its TriCam. It features one of those previously mentioned cameras with 52-degrees field of view, but also a fisheye lens for short-range object detection and a telephoto lens for long-range detection, up to 1,000-ft. Due to the multiple fields of view, a single failure does not completely blind the system, meaning an automated vehicle could keep driving.

And as future vehicles become more autonomous they’ll need to “think” for themselves. ZF’s solution is ProAI. It’s a supercomputer that uses NVIDIA processors to take in and interpret data from all these sensors and cameras to allow a vehicle to “understand” its surroundings. It’s also linked to the Cloud, so it can be easily updated and have additional functions added throughout the lifetime of the vehicle.

ZF now has a new motto: See, Think, Act. We highlighted some of that here and in the days, weeks and months to come we’ll look at more of what ZF is working on as it progresses toward Vision Zero.

And be sure to join us for Autoline After Hours this afternoon. Joining John and Gary are their journalist colleagues, Dave Sullivan from AutoPacific and Joann Muller from Forbes. So head on over to Autoline.tv at 3PM eastern time for some of the best insider discussions in the automotive industry.

But that wraps up today’s show, thanks for watching and please join us again tomorrow.