Vehicle Electronics Vehicle Electronics13, February 2020 February 2020, 14

Steve Rogerson reports from last month’sAutomotive World in Tokyo

AT THE CROSSROADSAT THE CROSSROADSThe automotive industryis going through a periodof change the likes ofwhich it has never seenbefore with technologydevelopments goinghand-in-hand with societyshifts and increasing con-cern over environmentalfactors. It was thereforeno surprise to see thesetopics dominating lastmonth’s AutomotiveWorld show in Tokyo.

In fact, the tone was setright from the openingkeynote speech by KunioNakaguro, executive vicepresident at NissanMotor.

“Social trends arechanging,” he said, citingan ageing population andincrease in urbanisationand worries over globalwarming, before pointingto the increasing CO2emissions. At the sametime, technologies suchas IoT, big data and artifi-cial intelligence (AI)were influencing the au-tomotive industry asnever before.

“CO2 emissions targetsin major cities have be-come more stringent andautomotive manufactur-ers have been challengedto meet them,” he said.“Electrification has be-come mandatory.”

He said that with theratio of elderly people in-creasing over the past tenyears, more secure mobil-ity was needed.

“The number of fatalaccidents caused by age-

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ing drivers is becoming aproblem,” he said. “Thisis especially true for thoseaged 85 and above. Saferand more secure mobilityis therefore necessary.”

In Tokyo, he said theproblem of increased ur-banisation was becomingintense.

“People are moving toTokyo every day,” hesaid.

This was creating prob-lems in rural areas too aspeople moved away lead-ing to a downsizing ofpublic transport and rail-ways being closed.

He looked back overthe past 30 years to showhow technology wasevolving.

“Over many years, in-telligent cars have beenadvancing,” he said.“Electric vehicles are get-ting better with increasedrange. Charging is im-proving too, with thecharging time becomingshorter. Adas technology

is advancing. There istechnology that can pre-vent collisions and detectfor 360˚ around a vehicle.On top of that, we areseeing 3D and HD mapdata.”

But he said there weremany issues that stillneeded resolving by tech-nology and existing tech-nology needed to appearin more vehicles so itwould be meaningful formore areas in society.And the public needed tobe brought along the jour-ney.

“We need sympathyfrom the public about en-riching society thoughtechnology,” he said.“Without that, they willnot purchase the technol-ogy. We need to get themto understand fully thevalue of the technology.We need to convey that tothe users. The technologyneeds to be used by soci-ety and enrich society. Iwant advanced technol-

Tokyo’s increasing population is putting strain on public transport

Kunio Nakaguro: “I want advanced technologyto enrich society.”

Yoshiharu Itai: “The motivation for ownershipof cars will decline.”

ogy to enrich society.”Specifically on electric

vehicles, he said therewas more to them thanjust a way to protect theenvironment.

“They can be attractivefor the comfort, safetyand security for drivers,”he said. “It will help themrealise comfortable driv-ing. Advanced technol-ogy makes driving easier.With electric powertrains,even with a slippery sur-face, drivers of all abili-ties can drive confidently.Driver assistance can re-duce driver fatigue.”

He said mobility techwas getting smarter everyyear and this would im-prove the comfort andsafety of road users. TheHMI would evolve tohelp people interact withthe vehicle and enjoydriving more.

One problem, of course,with EVs was their cost,and Nakaguro said a lotof effort had been put into reducing this cost.

“The most importantthing here is the batterycost,” he said, “and that isevolving year on year. Weneed batteries withoutnickel, manganese andcobalt to reduce the cost.We want a cost equivalentto the internal combustionengine.”

He also said there was aneed to expand the reusevalue of batteries.

EVs also provided theopportunity for vehicle-to-grid connectivity,where the grid can makeuse of energy stored inparked EVs during peaktimes.

“Cars are parked for95% of the time and thatenergy can be connected

to the grid,” he said. “Theelectricity in the vehiclecan be used when there isa high demand and thenreturned to the vehicle.”

Some of these themeswere picked up by Yoshi-haru Itai, managing direc-tor of Honda R&D’s LifeCreation Centre, in thesecond keynote.

“The world is comingto a new era,” he said.

“Ageing population andenvironmental conditionsare becoming major is-sues. Technologies suchas AI and IoT are chang-ing the industrial struc-ture. Traffic congestionhas become a major soci-etal issue. We are movingtowards zero accidentswith AI and autonomousdriving.”

However, he said the in-

dustry could not stop theprice of cars increasing.

“In Japan, we are seeinga slowdown of the econ-omy and disposable in-come is flat,” he said.“The automobile sellingprice will exceed the dis-posable income. That hasalready happened in Ger-many and will happen inthe next decade in theUSA.”

However, the occu-pancy rate of cars wasonly around ten per centeven in cities where usersdepend on cars.

“Most of the time, evenin the USA, cars areparked,” he said. “That iswhy ride sharing and ridehailing services are ex-panding. The motivationfor ownership of cars willdecline.”

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The Japanese market is super exciting right now, according to Willard Tu(pictured), a senior director at Xilinx, with one of the big trends beingdriver monitoring.

“People are being too relaxed in the car, reading the newspaper and soon,” he said. “People are abusing the system in adaptive cruise controland what have you. Some are drinking champagne. Governments aregetting concerned and thus driver-monitoring systems are taking off. InJapan, the major tier-ones are really interested in this.”

He said overall, Japan held back a bit during the adas take-off to seewhere the market was going.

“They tend to like reliable, robust, mature technologies,” said Tu.“They are getting back in the game and they are using neural networks todo it. And that is where Xilinx comes in. We are seeing design wins inJapan using the neural network approach.”

On driver monitoring, this works by providing a companion chip to goin the infotainment system.

“We use the sidecar approach because most infotainment systems donot have to be Asil D,” he said. “All the safety elements can be in theXilinx chip at the side. This is better than the designer trying to get thesafety and infotainment on one chip.”

For driver monitoring, the neural network will be used to interpret theimages of the driver.

“China has been a leader in neural networks,” said Tu, “but theJapanese guys are starting to move in. We have seen this with automaticparking assist. The Japanese are getting on their feet and pushing back.”

Japan takes neural network approach

Within the next year, halfof all new cars will havesome form of telemetryhardware, predictedRobert Gee, global inno-vation manager withContinental Automotivein Japan.

“This give a strong mar-ket demand,” he said. “By2023, one in every threecars worldwide will haveembedded telematics. Butmost do not have the abil-ity for software updates.”

This was changing, hesaid, as more OEMs werelaunching cars with soft-ware update capability.

“This means cars can besafer in the future withon-going cyber security,”he said.

However, he was quickto stress that a humanbeing is still the most im-portant thing in a car andwould be for some time.

“They are the most im-portant factor in whether

a car drives safely,” hesaid. “Technology thoughadvances quicker than hu-mans. The technology isalready much faster thanhumans. Cars can react intens of milliseconds;human reactions are 100times slower. But wehave to manage these twotogether.”

A very good driver canreact to something in lessthan a second, and 1.5s isconsidered normal. How-

Do not forget the human in the carever, if the car is in someautomated mode, thehuman may be distractedor doing something else.In that case, the reactiontime can be up to 30s. Inairplanes, a trained pilotwill react in less than tenseconds, but they traindaily for this.

“In a level three car,these people do not havetraining every day like apilot does,” said Gee.

In a level zero car withno automation, the driveris engaged, but as the lev-els go up, the driver be-comes less engaged.

“What this means is it ismore difficult for them tore-engage because theyare not thinking aboutdriving,” he said.

The answer, he said,was to make the interfacebetween the human andthe car more engaging sothere is still some interac-tion between the vehicleand the driver. There isalso an increased need tomake sure the person un-derstands all the safetysystems when they buy acar. And they need topractice.

“There is a lot of tech-nology we are promis-ing,” he said, “but how dowe make these usable forthe average driver?”

He said the industrywas moving more to-wards a server design

with redundant computersystems each controllingdifferent function with afallback if somethingwent wrong.

“We already have thatin planes, so why nothave that in the car of thefuture?” he said.

High precision position-ing will also be importantso cars only receive infor-mation from the infra-structure that isimmediately relevant tothem, otherwise driverswill start to bypass thetechnology.

“If you get too manyfalse positives, you willnot use the system or finda way to turn it off,” hesaid. “You want the posi-tioning so if the car givesyou a warning you knowit applies to you and notsomething happening fur-ther up the road. If the cargives you informationwhen you need it andonly when you need it,this trains you to listen.”

He said the technologythat was being developedwas life saving but it hadto be usable.

“Putting technology incars that is hard to usedoes not make sense,” hesaid. “We need to get allthe pieces in place so it isusable and deployable.Different companiesshould look at what theycan contribute.”Robert Gee: “Technology advances quicker than humans.”

Vehicle Electronics19, February 2020 Vehicle Electronics February 2020, 20

Traffic jams are causingbillions of lost hoursevery year, which is whythe trend to find newways to achieve mobilityis gaining traction world-wide. But what form willthe new mobility take?

“Mobility in the futurewill be more than whatwe expect,” according toYoshifumi Kato, seniorexecutive officer atDenso’s R&D centre.

However, he said therewere still many issues toresolve.

As well as increased ur-banisation, the ageingpopulation is also addingto the problem with morepeople driving for longer.

“We can see this notjust in Japan but aroundthe world,” he said.

He said Denso had along-term plan to “bringsmiles to everyone” by

2030. This includes eventhose who don’t drive.

Among the trendsDenso is working on isreducing CO2 emissionsnot just from vehicles butfrom the company’s fac-tories.

On safety, it is lookingat sensor technology, in-cluding lidar, to be goodenough for level-four au-tonomous vehicles.

“This not just about

Yoshifumi Kato: “We want to bring smiles to everyone.”

Coming to terms with new mobility

Bert Wolfram: “We are faced with significant challenges.”Klaus Meder: “Step by step, electric vehicleswill take over.”

adas, but the creation of amore sophisticated envi-ronment is needed,” hesaid. “Collaboration withthe infrastructure is im-portant. Autonomousdriving needs lots ofknow-how. You can’t dothis by yourselves. We arepromoting alliances.”

Data management, hesaid, was important sothat people could get thedata when they neededthem.

“The data format mustbe unified and usable bydifferent players,” hesaid.

Bosch sees the future ofmobility in what it calls

pace, an acronym for per-sonalised, automated,connected and electrified,according to KlausMeder, the company’spresident and representa-tive director.

Taking the first of those,he said: “Everyone has tocome from A to B in thebest way possible. Thepersonal profile is impor-tant.”

Today, he said, half ofthe world’s populationlived in cities and thatwas expected to grow to70% by 2030.

On automation, Boschis working with Mer-cedes-Benz to reach lev-

els four and five auton-omous driving.

“We can do this now ina limited way but wewant to make this a day-to-day experience,” hesaid.

However, he said therewere two approaches –automating private cars orhaving automated urbantaxis.

“The first is evolution-ary, the second is revolu-tionary,” he said. “Thefirst needs 20 sensors.The second needs about80 sensors, but the busi-ness model will pay forthat. For the first, the carowner has to decide if it isworth it.”

On connected, he saidthat physical keys werenot needed any more,with the key being an appin a smartphone.

“With such a digitalkey, you can do muchmore,” he said. “For ex-ample, you can send thekey to a family memberor to someone else. Youcan also send the key forjust the boot so packagescan be delivered to thecar.”

Finally, electrificationhe said was a generaltrend that needed to be af-fordable and attractive.

“Step by step, electricvehicles will take over,”he said. “But e-mobility

will see it get a push fromlaw makers who, say, baninternal combustion en-gines (ICEs) from certainareas of cities.”

However, he said ICEswould still play an impor-tant role even in a pure e-mobility scenario, so itwas important to makethem more economic andenvironmentally friendly.

Bert Wolfram, CEO at

Continental Automotive,concluded the session bysaying: “We are facedwith significant chal-lenges. There is a strongdemand for sustainabilityand there is a trend to-wards urbanisation; 80%of greenhouse gases areproduced by cities. Myvision is to make mobilitysafer, cleaner and con-nected.”

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Honda and Nissan an-nounced some of thepractical ways the twocompanies were applyingautonomous driving tech-nology, or at least theadas technology that waspaving the way to full au-tonomy.

For Nissan, TakashiSunda, deputy generalmanager of Nissan’s adasengineering department,said there were three pil-lars to the car maker’stechnology development– intelligent driving, in-telligent power and intel-ligent integration. “Driverassistant technology,” hesaid, “should make every-one more confident.”

He said the company’ssafety shield conceptmeant the car was cov-ered through all 360˚from intelligent forwardcollision warning,through blind spot detec-tion and intervention toback-up intervention, andeverything covered in asmart surround-viewmonitor.

“We can prevent allkinds of accidents withthese technologies,” hesaid. “We want to preventreal-world accidents byfocussing on driver-assisttechnologies.”

In 2016, Nissan intro-duced its ProPilot tech-nology. This measured

the distance to the car infront and the position ofthe car in the lane so itcould make appropriateadjustments to steering,throttle and braking.

“ProPilot aimed to re-duce the load on thedriver in long-distancedriving,” said Sunda.

The second generationof ProPilot came out inautumn last year with en-hanced functionality.

“If the car stays in thesame lane, the driver can

take their hands off thesteering wheel,” saidSunda. It also helps withovertaking and leavingthe highway.

And it incorporateshigh-definition 3D mapdata. These include road-structure information atthe centimetre level suchas road curvature, slope,lane markings, speed lim-its and signage.

“In a real highway, thelane markings may beblurred or doubled up,”

said Sunda, “but this sys-tem knows which is thereal line.”

Nissan has been testingthe technology in real-world situations aroundthe world, field tests thatare still in progress.

“We have been doingfield tests on regularroads for the past twoyears,” he said.

Honda R&D chief engi-neer Yuji Yasui said thecar maker’s vision was to“enrich the lives of peo-

Takashi Sunda: “We can prevent all kinds of accidents with these technologies.”

How technology works in the real world

Yuji Yasui: “There are many issues for AI.”

ple in their day-to-daywork. We want to elimi-nate traffic accidents.”

But he said people hadto make the distinctionbetween driver supporttechnologies and au-tonomous driving. Onewas a path to the otherand as technology movedup the levels there wouldbe fewer operations per-formed by the driver andmore by the system.

“In level three, if the ve-hicle is unable to continueautomated driving, thedriver must take over andtime must be allowed forthis,” he said. “However,in level three not justhands off but eyes off ispossible. With levels fourto five, there is door-to-door autonomous driving.If autonomous driving ispossible in any condi-tions, such as fog andsnow, we are at levelfive.”

There are though twoapproaches – vehicles forpersonal use that candrive anywhere and auto-mated cars that can onlyoperate in certain areas.These provide differentmapping challenges. Forthe first, a map is neededof basically everywhere,however it will performhuman like functions andrecognise road signs andlane markings, and the

human driver can decidewhat level of autonomythe car has at any particu-lar time. With the second,a high-density map isneeded of the area that itwill cover as the drivingwill be fully automated.

Honda, he said, wasplanning on launchingnext year to allow level-three automated drivingbut only for use in con-gested traffic.

For more common leveltwo, the driver needs tomonitor the environmentso the system monitorsthe driver to make surethey are paying attention.

Honda is focussing a lotof its work on artificialintelligence (AI) to tacklethese problems, notablyinterpreting the imagesproduced by the varioussensors and camerasaround the car. But thereare difficulties.

“If you add noise to apicture,AI can turn it intosomething else,” saidYasui. “There are manyissues to resolve for AIbefore it is as good ashuman beings.”

And that is because thetask is not easy. The sen-sors will detect objectsbut theAI has to put thoseobjects into context andunderstand the relation-ship between them tobuild up a picture that lets

it understand the wholesituation. From there ithas to predict risks, de-cide what actions to takeand generate a trajectorythat reduces the risks. Thesystem must also predictthe speed of other vehi-cles and understand theroad structure. It also hasto operate at differenttimes of day. And, just asimportant, it has to trackthe gestures of people andtheir faces to see wherethey are looking and pre-dicting how they arelikely to behave.

“We are doing work topredict pedestrian behav-iour using deep learningand neural networks,”said Yasui. “Traffic merg-ing is another challengebecause it involves pre-dicting the intentions ofother drivers. We areworking withAI start-upsand universities to de-velop this. In Japan, weare having discussionswith government aboutwhat conditions we cantest for level three. Thegovernment is very sup-portive.”

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Autonomous vehicleswill revolutionise thetransportation industry,believes Ryan McGee,director of connectedvehicle platforms forFord Motor in China.

He said Ford was al-ready testing such cars infive cities in the USAwith the goal of commer-cial self-driving servicesnext year. However, hesaid to achieve true mo-bility as a service, compa-nies had to think beyondjust the vehicles.

“We can design a carthat can deliver a pizza tosomeone’s house,” hesaid. “But how do you getfrom the car to the frontdoor? We are looking atrobots to do that.”

Mobility, he said, wasmore than just the vehi-cle. It extends to thecloud, to users’ own de-vices and to partners.

“We are working withlocal governments to helpthem visualise their trans-portation systems,” hesaid. “It is not just cars,but trains, buses,bicycles. We are lookingat shuttles in China.”

Ford is also investing$11.5bn in electric vehi-cles from 2017 to 2022.

“To have an electric ve-hicle, you participate notjust in driving but incharging,” he said. “Wewant to make that simplefor customers.”

He said he was verypositive about the area ofconnectivity, particularlycellular V2X (C-V2X),where the car will con-nect to the likes of trafficlights, other vehicles,even people walkingdown the street.

“It is about improvingtraffic flow,” he said. “Wewill install this in all newvehicles from 2022.”

He also said most newvehicles in the USAwould use over-the-airupdates to improve thevehicle as it aged, whichwould change how the in-dustry operated.

“What do customers re-ally want from their vehi-cles?” he asked. “It isabout artificial intelli-gence. It is about person-alisation. It is aboutalways-on connectivity. Itis about automation. It isabout services. This is notwhat customers want, it iswhat they expect. Theywant the same integrationas they get on their smart-phone.”

Mobility isabout morethan vehicles

And he said all thisneeded to be delivered ina safe way with defencesagainst cyber-securityrisks.

The last three years, hesaid, had been very excit-ing with lots of changes,mostly because of 4G cel-lular services, and thesewere starting to enablelevels one and two adasfeatures. But lookingahead, 5G is coming, withhigh-speed data rates.

“We don’t know all thethings that will be bornfrom having that ability,”he said. “It will be key forsmart cities. There aresensors around the car, sothe vehicle is lookingaround and that makesthem safer and lets themoperate in a more com-plex environment. This

data pipe can bring real-time information abouttraffic flow. It let vehiclesadjust their speed to im-prove flow by driving atthe optimum speed to hitgreen traffic signals andso on.”

There will be increasedsituational awareness.

“If the vehicle can sensesomeone about to crossthe road, it can react ac-cordingly,” he said.

While the ultimate goalis full autonomy, he saidcollaboration was neededto achieve smarter vehi-cles and a smarter world.

“One company in onecity cannot do it alone,”he said. “We need to workwith governments andregulatory bodies to dothis in a collaborativeway.”

Ryan McGee: “One company in one citycannot do it alone.”

Delegates were given anupdate on the progress ofvarious trials of cellularV2X (C-V2X) by YujiAburakawa, a boardmember of the 5G Auto-motive Association(5GAA) and director ofNTT Docomo’s 5G labo-ratories.

The 5GAA operatesworldwide but is not astandardisation body. Itdoes, however, work withregional standardisationbodies. The current ver-sion of C-V2X is calledLTE-V2X and is part ofthe 3GPP releases 14 and15. The next stage – NR-V2X – is part of release16 due out in March andis expected to increasesupport for automateddriving. Work on itstarted back in June 2018.

C-V2X itself comes intwo complementaryforms – direct (sidelink)and network (up anddownlink). The directversion is for V2V, V2Iand V2P applications op-erating in ITS bands inde-pendent of the cellularnetwork. It is for shortrange – less than 1km –use.

The network part is forapplications above 1kmand links the vehicle tothe mobile network(V2N). Applications in-clude providing warningsof an accident up ahead.

Basically, V2V and V2Iare for providing immedi-ate warnings to the vehi-cle whereas V2Nprovides information.

“The boundaries be-tween these are beingblurred,” said Abu-rakawa. “We need tothink of them together.”

One car company work-ing on this is Daimlerwith its 2016 E Class. Ituses a backend server towhich the cars are con-nected and is used forbroadcasting informationwhen something happenson the roads.

“If a car is brokendown, that information isprovided along withthings like the weather,”he said. “If a car aheadhas a problem, the car be-hind is forewarned.”

BMW has created anemergency corridor withthe Bavarian emergencyservices to broadcast in-formation to vehiclessuch as when police carsor ambulances are ap-proaching so that vehiclescan move over to makeroom. A key part here isthat the information isonly sent to cars that needto take action so driverswill not lose confidencein the system by havingtoo many alerts that donot concern them.

Audi has a system thatgives time information

Progress update on C-V2Xbefore the next greenlight to improve trafficflow. This has been de-ployed in more than 20cities in the USA and Eu-rope as well as pre-de-ployment in Wuxi inChina.

In Wuxi, the govern-ment has deployed anLTE-V2X network. Thiswas first demonstrated inlimited areas in 2017 butis now being tested inlarger areas and covers

400 intersections in a6km2 area.

In Japan, some of thetechnology has alreadybeen launched but workon integrating this withtraffic systems is still on-going.

Aburakawa said: “Howcan we integrate the tech-nologies to improvesafety? That is the majordiscussion, but it is diffi-cult to say when that willbe implemented.”

Yuji Aburakawa: “It is difficultto say when that will be implemented.”

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Israeli semiconductorcompany Valens believesthat PCI Express (PCIe),known mostly as an em-bedded system connectiv-ity standard, could be thesolution to future automo-tive connectivity prob-lems.

“PCIe was originallydesigned to work within achassis,” said Ilan Shaari,Valens vice president forbusiness development.“We have taken that andextended it to work overthe automotive channel.This opens up a range ofapplications that were notpossible before.”

The reasons are the16Gbit/s bandwidth andits configurable physicallayer. This means it canhandle all types of com-munications within thevehicle.

Shaari sees three mainapplications. First is re-mote shared storage.

“You can have the stor-age centralised,” he said.“This can be a sharedmemory box that all theECUs can connect withover PCIe. This meansthe memory can be in ablack box that is pro-

tected and accessible.”Secondly, it lets the ve-

hicle have a zonal archi-tecture without thedrawbacks of Ethernet.

“Look at the car net-work,” he said. “Mostsystems use Ethernet butit has limited bandwidthand there is a latencyproblem.”

Third is multi-modeconnectivity for telemat-ics.

“You only need amodem chip and our chipand that is it,” he said.“We can put it closer tothe antenna. We are nolonger limited by Ether-net speeds.

It makes things simplerand it can support thehigher range of 5G net-works. We can transfereverything on a singlechannel.”

The other big plug fromValens at the show con-cerned the Mipi AllianceA-Phy standard, a physi-cal layer specification forup to 15m in autonomousdriving and other automo-tive applications.

Valens was involved inthe development of thestandard and the final

Electric vehicles areharder to design thanmost people realise, saidDavid Twohig, CTO ofChinese EV makerByton.

“Electric vehicles arevery hard to do,” he said.

For example, on thestructural side the vehiclenot only has to protect thehuman but also the bat-tery.

“The battery is easier todamage than a humanbeing,” he said. “Engi-neers have to know howto design the body struc-ture to protect the bat-tery.”

They are also harder to

Whereas Linux can havelots of benefits for vehi-cles in that it provides afull software stack and isopen source, it does havea problem with a slowboot time. Three-year oldSouth Korean companyPerseus believes it canhelp here with itsTachyon fast boot system.

“Linux is just cominginto vehicles but it has along boot time of 20 to 30seconds,” said DongyunShin, the company’s prin-cipal engineer. “We opti-mise each stage so it runswithin two seconds. Thismeans things like your

rear-view camera andlidar can be ready withintwo seconds. This willbe important for au-tonomous cars in the fu-ture.”

About a third of vehi-cles already carry at leastone Linux-powered rear-facing safety camera andthat number is increasing.Autonomous cars couldlead to the demand in-creasing tenfold.

Tachyon works by elim-inating all non-essentialboot processes.

Perseus was also show-ing its Pegasus hypervisorand Aegis hypervisor-

Perseus speeds up Linux

based security system.“The complexity of a

car will increase and the

development costs willalso increase,” said Shin.“Traditionally, one chipcan run one operatingsystem, this means as thecomplexity increasesthere are lots of chips inthe car. But our hypervi-sor allows many operat-ing systems on one chip,so the complexity reducesand the development costreduces.”

No real car has this yetbut the company is work-ing in a project with Re-nesas and is looking forfurther partners. At theshow, Perseus was show-ing it running on a Rene-sas R-Car M3N board.

“Our hypervisor hastwo main benefits,” saidShin. “It has very lowoverhead, about 3%, anda memory footprint of1Mbyte, so it can run onany system.”

Dongyun Shin with the Renesas demonstration

EVs are harder to design than people thinkheat and to cool.

“You need a larger air-flow and bigger air in-takes,” he said. “Thereare lots more componentsthat need cooling, includ-ing the battery. Not onlydo you need to cool thebattery in summer butyou need to heat it in win-ter, so it is more com-plex.”

He said the air condi-tioning system had 30 to40 per cent more compo-nents than with an inter-nal combustion enginevehicle.

“Engineers have solvedthese problems,” he said,“which is why you can

buy very well engineeredelectric vehicles. The badthing is they have spentso long solving these fun-damental problems, theyhave not looked at bring-ing a better experience tothe customer. This is whatwe are doing at Byton.”

A good example of thisis the giant 122cm screenthat dominates the dash-board. Humans can alsointeract with the vehiclein five different ways. Aswell as more normal but-ton and touch control, thevehicle will also recog-nise gestures and facesand respond to voicecommands.

“It is a very complexway of interacting withthe vehicle and one thatwe have not experiencedbefore,” he said. “We aremoving to a world wherethe data power of your caris more important thanhorse power.”

David Twohig

Is PCI Expressthe answer forautomotiveconnectivity?

standard is based onValens’ proposal ratherthan an alternative usingEthernet.

“Mipi decided to useValens’ proposal becausewe were best for the tar-get applications,” saidShaari.

The standard is due outthis quarter.

“This is about takingsensor video data over theautomotive channel,” hesaid. “We don’t have achip out yet but we areworking on one and itwill be available soonenough.”

Valens has an office inJapan and is discussing itstechnology with theOEMs and major tier-ones. It is collaboratingwith Denso on an areacontrol unit using aValens chip.

“We are seeing growing

interest in our PCIe andA-Phy over here,” hesaid.

Ilan Shaari: “We were best for thetarget applications.”