The New BMW and Daimler Mega-Group of “Now” Vehicle Services

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BMW and Daimler have joined forces to create a multimodal travel company mega-group. The new venture will invest a combined 1 billon GBP to create electric charging stations, ride hailing, ticket free parking and car sharing. The new mega-group will take the lead overtop of BMW’s short-term rental services Car2Go and DriveNow.

ChargeNow will become the biggest world-wide provider of electric charging stations with 100K access points in twenty-five countries. ParkNow includes a 30 million driver costumer base in eleven hundred cities on two continents. FreeNow has a fleet of a quarter million drivers and twenty-one million customers in Europe and South America.

The mega-group of five companies claims a massive total 60 million customers. The “Now” mega-group will stack its headquarters in Berlin among other German tech start-ups and will create, worldwide, another 1,000 jobs.

When Will I Be Able to Buy Real Autonomous Vehicle?

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While autonomous vehicles account for much of the automotive news’ headlines, you won’t see a “true” self-driving car in anyone’s driveway in the next couple of years (at the least).

SAE international standards rate the cars on a five-point scale in which a 0 rating means a vehicle is 100% human controlled and a 5 rating means the vehicle would never need intervention on the part of human driver.

Lots of people are driving cars with a rating of 1—these cars feature things like cruise control and backup cameras. Cars with ratings of 2 and 3 do exist, like many Tesla models, or Benz E-Class, a Volvo S90 and a Cadi CT6. Vehicles that fall under these ratings have features that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel, the cars may even change lanes or park themselves.

Cars rated at a 4 or 5 aren’t on the consumer market yet. Vehicles rated at a 4 are good at navigating familiar places and probably wouldn’t ever leave their city or state. They are being developed for ride sharing and delivery purposes and are currently being tested in the real world. Cars rated at a 5 would mimic a human’s ability to drive—though hopefully they would be much safer drivers than many human drivers are! These cars, in theory, would be able to make quick decisions and navigate anywhere on their own.

UK’s Government to Increase Driverless Vehicle Testing Standards

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The legislature has reinforced rules on driverless vehicle preliminaries in the UK as a major aspect of a crusade to pull in interest in driverless vehicle improvement.
Government authorities have effectively set out their intention of turning into a hotbed of driverless innovation advancement – an industry expected to be worth £52 billion by 2035 – and the new measures are proposed to insure this position.

In light of that point, the Department for Transport (DfT) has reported that a procedure will be created to help fast track driverless vehicles as they also create “thorough” security evaluations.

The DfT additionally says input from the business has incited it to refresh its code for driverless vehicle testing, setting what it calls “clearer desires for protected and mindful preliminaries”.

The code recently said that preliminaries could be directed insofar as there was a driver in the driver’s seat, ready to assume control at any minute. In any case, the updates are intended to suit further developed preliminaries, as long as the testing may be “protected and mindful”.

Any organization directing new preliminaries will be relied upon to distribute wellbeing data and preliminary execution reports, just as doing hazard evaluations and advising the important specialists and crisis administrations.

The administration asserts the new guidelines will convey the nation closer to its objective of having completely self-ruling vehicles on the streets by 2021.

After Almost 100 years, Ward’s Automotive Report Ends

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The 96 year old weekly newsletter, lovingly reffered to by its devotees as WAR, released its last issue on 28 January 2019. The newsletter was a singular publication that was essential to the development of modern auto journalism. In 1924 it began releasing production figures in the auto boom of 1920’s Detroit.

It was first named for its create—Cram’s Reports. The fledgling broadsheet filled investors’ eyes with dreams of cash to be earned from the like-wise infant auto industry. Initially the president of the paper, Al Ward, had to pay his writers to simply hang around the factory entrance to ask the workers how many cars they had built that day. It wasn’t until the industry realized it was a boon to release their production figures that WAR became the so-called bible of the car industry it is known as today.

Some additional facts of note about WAR: it used colored paper (first yellow, then brown) when it was difficult to copy on colored paper; extensive data reporting on anything from body styles and transmission technology; packing information into dense blocks of texts; its writers always wrote in present tense, to increase the intensity of the paper’s coverage.

Spy’s Get Details on New Porsche Cayenne Coupe’

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Porche is ramping up to unveil a coupe model of the Cayenne SUV in the next few months and a prototype has been sighted on winter testing grounds.

Spied previously at Nurburging and presenting a retracting spoiler, the Cayenne coupe is aiming its sights at the BMW X6 and Mercedes GLE Coupe’. Expanding the palette of the Cayenne offerings it is expected to share most of its features with its more traditional brothers and sisters.

The pictures capture by a “spy” demonstrate that coupe’ maintains its siblings front-end design, but a different bumper. In a decision reflecting its target-rivals. Yet, it has a different, liftback gate, new rear side windows and tail-lights. All of this to provide a more “sporty” design.

The retractable rear spoiler, which spies had only seen before in its down position, looks like it raises and lowers as one piece, unlike the split design on the 2nd gen. Panamera.
All in all an interesting offering from Porsche

Ford to Introduce New Crossover in Europe

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Another Fiesta-based little hybrid and a swap for the Kuga smaller hybrid are set to be disclosed in the following a year as a component of Ford’s arrangement to focus more assets on hybrids in Europe.

Ford has said higher-riding vehicles will be vital to its rebuilding designs in Europe as it endeavors to accomplish steady benefit in the area, something it has not overseen in two decades.

The little crossover will be worked at Ford’s plant in Craiova, Romania, and could be called Puma, French examiner firm Inovev said. The model presentation at the Frankfurt car exhibition in September, Inovev anticipates. It would supplant the EcoSport.

Ford’s second-age Kuga, badged as the Escape in the U.S., has been spotted trying close Detroit in front of its disclosing in the not so distant future. The vehicle is required to go deal in the U.S. in the second half.

Ford has not said when the new Kuga will go marked down. The crossover was propelled in 2008. Passage fabricates the Kuga in Valencia, Spain.

New Cadillac Will Become GM’s EV Flagship

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Cadillac is posed to become the flagship electric vehicle brand for GM—the company is getting ready to create a new model EV Cadi in response to other luxury brands going electric.

In an investor update GM said that the new Cadillac will be the first under the new “BEV3” platform. This “platform” will include things like the battery system as well as structure and mechanics.

GM on Friday did not disclose additional details, including precisely when the Cadillac EV will be built, whether it will be a crossover or sedan, or where it will be assembled.
In the past GM has directed their EV attention towards its Chevy brand—which has a wider appeal. The Volt (plug-in) and the Bolt (electric), the Volt being put out to pasture last year as well the poor-selling Cadi CT6.

GM had said in November of last year that their plan was to double their resources spent on EV.

What About the 2020 Morgan “Wide Body” Sports Car?

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Morgan is releasing a new “wide-body” sports car next year. As one might suspect, the new car’s design will continue on with the pattern of 1930’s styled designs that Morgan sports vehicles have had forever. This trend is set to progress in the new 2020 model. Under the new styling, however, there will be new developments.

The new design, apparently know as the “Wide Body” to its design team, will take advantage of a new, lighter aluminum base. The company claims the powertrain will be one that has never been used in a Morgan before.

This will make it the 50th and final year in which Morgan uses V8 engines in its cars. The Aero 8 and Plus 8, the final examples, are fitted with BMW N62 V8 engines and will be kept for the so-called heritage fleet. Rumors say that a forced-induction six-cylinder engine will be used for the 2019 flagship and very well could be the engine imagined for the 2020 “Wide Body” as well.

Morgan claims the “Wide Body” will outdo the Roadster, Plus 4 and 4/4 as far as performance goes and the new chassis will be twice the stiffness as the aluminum chassis previously used for flagship Morgans.

ID Lounge, VW’s New Luxury SUV

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At the Shanghai motor show in April, Volkswagen will introduce the tentatively titled ID Lounge as their new seven-seat SUV. Similar in dimension to the 3rd gen Toareg, the ID will be sold as a top range luxury model.

As used by the ID Buzz MPV, the ID Lounge will be based around Volkswagen’s largest, new version of the MEB platform. It will likely arrive in 2021 and could rival Tesla Model X and Nio ES8.

Again like the ID Buzz, expect the ID Lounge to come with a four-wheel driveline. It will employ two electric motors, one per set of rear and front wheels. Output is expected to be around 369bhp.

 

 

BMW Introduces Self Driving Features with “iNext”

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BMW is utilizing 7 Series-based models at its Silicon Valley office as the test series for the company’s iNext electric hybrid, due in 2021. The vehicle creator has said the iNext will offer dimension three auto-drive, which takes into account “hands off and eyes off” motorway driving.
One BMW building source depicted dimension three as possibly offering the capacity for the iNext to drive starting with one motorway intersection then onto the next without requirement for the driver’s consideration.
BMW additionally declared that improvement work is well under route on level four and level five self-rule, something considered far off by the majority of the business. BMW calls level four self-rule “hands off and mind off” – where the driver isn’t asked for to assume control of the vehicle in any conditions. Level five is “full mechanization”, where no driver is required.
To represent the multifaceted nature and registering power required for the main three levels of self-rule, BMW demonstrated models of the electronic control units (ECUs) for levels three, four and five driving, which all utilization Intel chip innovation.
The 25W dimension three unit is very little yet has multiple times the processing intensity of the ECUs utilized for the dimension two, incomplete computerization frameworks that BMW has offered since a year ago.
The 200W dimension four ECU is commonly bigger, utilizes six chip, needs fluid cooling and has multiple times the registering intensity of the dimension two framework.

The completely robotized 600W dimension five ECU model has multiple times the registering intensity of level two.
Not at all like with some current ‘self-driving’ frameworks, the 7 Series test vehicle has a colossal exhibit of outside sensors. It has five lidar scanners – one on each corner and one on the focal point of the vehicle’s nose. It is additionally outfitted with radar – long range at the back – and eight cameras, provided via independence pioneer Mobileye. The boot is stuffed with figuring gear and “two vehicles of wiring”.
The independence engineering not just uses the mass of data got by the sensors however it is additionally working inside a live-refreshed 3D guide of street and environment. This guide based ‘natural model’ is utilized to make a ‘driving model’ that, BMW engineers state, depends at first on man-made consciousness, at that point machine learning and, at last, ‘reward and discipline’ learning, like that utilized by kids. The data hoovered by the 7 Series donkey is a gigantic two terabytes for each hour per vehicle.
Numerous investigators have figured the expenses and multifaceted nature of creating independent driving innovation would moderate the development towards veritable self-driving vehicles.