CESA 2018

Vodafone has announced its intentions to acquire Cobra Automotive Technologies through a voluntary tender offer. The telecom carrier has entered into an agreement with the main shareholders. Cobra is a leading provider of security and telematics solutions to the automotive and insurance industries. Headquartered in Italy and listed on the Milan stock exchange. The Company has a global presence which includes operations in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. The group provides vehicle manufacturers, dealerships and after-market customers with a range of products and services, including telematics, usage-based insurance, and vehicle tracking. The acquisition of Cobra is in line with Vodafone’s strategy to expand its machine-to-machine (“M2M”) capability beyond connectivity. Cobra’s telematics products and expertise will enable Vodafone to provide a more comprehensive range of end-to-end services to automotive customers. T

Our congress is proud to welcome Carlos Moreno for a keynote. He's a Senior University Professor specialised in the intelligent control of complex systems. Smart cities of tomorrow is one of his favourite topics. Deeply committed to science, progress and creativity in all its forms, Mr Moreno strives to bring together scientific disciplines and professionals in the innovation ecosystem - from industry to start-ups - with a particular focus on a cross-disciplinary approach. After leading his start-up Sinovia to success, he is now Scientific Adviser to the Chief Executive Officer of COFELY INEO, which is part of the GDF SUEZ Group, and he provides on-going support to leaders of value-creating innovation.

Finland aims to become a model country for sustainable transport by 2020. To reach this goal, it will put on the road more and more clean vehicles. But, part of the solution is technology. For instance, a Smart Transport Corridor is under development between Helsinki and St. Petersburg to enhance the fluency of traffic across the border between Finland and Russia, while improving transport safety and the travel experience. First to be introduced will be real-time road weather and driving conditions information service, an automatic system issuing bulletins and warnings on traffic disruption, a real-time traffic and congestion information service and a public transport information service. By the way, the finnish research transport centre VTT is very active in European projet DRIVE C2X (services based on data transfer between vehicles), coordinated by Daimler. On the other hand, Finland is working on Smart transport solutions which can help the travellers to select several serv

The organisation committee is more than happy. It received more than 40 papers for the 2014 edition : almost twice as expected. The abstracts have been sent by OEMS (Daimler, PSA), OEM suppliers (Delphi, Faurecia, Valeo, SKF) and automotive electronics key players (Elektrobit, ESG, Etas, Freescale, Infineon, NXP, Vector). They cover all the fields required. Technical progress towards automation of driving – ADAS : 13 abstracts New usage of cars with more automation : 4 abstracts CO2 reduction, hybridization, regulation : 12 abstracts The connected car and acceptance of users : 8 abstracts Human factors in modern cars (psychology, physiology, HMI, …) : 3 abstracts Standards, tests and validation : 19 abstracts Electronic components and materials : 9 abstracts Now, the committee has to make a selection of these valuable papers. A hard task.

The two companies announced a collaborative partnership to create a new, data-driven model to more efficiently and accurately develop intelligent, interconnected automotive products. Built on open standards and IBM design tools, the continuous engineering software platform can quickly scale to thousands of partners, clients, engineers and technicians. By engaging all relevant stakeholders in the automotive supply chain and elevating the right data from them, the standards-based platform will cornerstone Bosch's long term vision for cross-industry collaboration to quickly deliver increasingly smarter and safer vehicles. Today's vehicles are more connected than ever – containing as many as 100 computerized controllers and 10 million lines of software code. As vehicle complexity continues to rise, automotive suppliers must address pressures to reduce costs and to innovate quickly, while also managing the intense challenge of ensuring vehicle quality. Bosch recognized this

Ludwigsburg has hosted the 18th congress on automotive electronics on June 3 and 4, 2014. This event traditionally addresses to top management in the domain bringing together every year some 500 participants. This year, top themes of the presentations were connected car, driving automation and international markets. Some very interesting contributions came from Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs such as Harman, Bosch, Brilliance or Opel, but also smaller companies like XSe, a management buy-out from Harman. Google explained its work on autonomous car and announced first products for the end of the decade. The public was very interested, but it seems that the traditional actors still don’t know how to deal with this “nouvelle vague” of actors coming from the consumer electronics to enter the automotive domain. Google has today a strong vertical integration allowing them to become a major actor in the autonomous mobility. For this, Google develops all components and acquires all needed tech

Held in Maastricht, Netherlands, the FISITA 2014 World Automotive Congress gathered international OEMS, suppliers, engineering services companies and the academic and research communities together to address the theme : "Intelligent transport to solve our future mobility, safety and environmental challenges". During this event, there was a world premiere with the presentation of DELIVER, an electric delivery vehicle. Backed by the Europan Commission, the project started in November 2011 with the goal to reduce the environmental impact in urban areas by 40 % and thus design and construct an electric light commercial vehicle which perfectly combines the needs of inner city traffic with the advantages of electric vehicles. The result is a light weight commercial vehicle of 2,200 kg GVW and a payload of 700 kg, with a host of innovative features for the delivery driver and 18% additional transport capacity when compared with today’s vans of a similar wheelbase. The conc

You may know GENIVI alliance for its In-Vehicle Infotainment development platform, based on open source. But, for sure, you didn't expect to see french companies working on Linux too, in the field of automotive electronics. FREENIVI is a research program, initiated by Open Wide and with the help of ESG Automotive France, SystemX, Ecole centrale de Nantes and the University of Paris Diderot. Backed by the french OEMS and financed by a state 5 M€ funding, the program aims to develop a software platform that will enable french automotive industry to get embedded systems based on open source. This project is an important step for the future of connected cars.

According to the ranking issued by France's National Intellectual Property Institute (INPI), PSA Peugeot Citroën is confirmed as the country's leading patent filer, with 1,378 patent applications published in France in 2013. Connectivity (multimedia equipment, networks, wiring, electronics and human-machine interface) and driving assistance systems are important areas for research and patent filings. Innovations such as the Driver Assistance Pack, Emergency Collision Alert System and Emergency Collision Braking System on the new Peugeot 308 point to the autonomous car of tomorrow.

It's not a Prius with a laser sensor on the roof, nor a Lexus... No, it's a new 2-seater vehicle, that looks like a cartoon car. Google just unveiled its new prototype, build from scratch. The technology remains more or less the same. But inside, that car has no steering wheel, no accelerator pedal, and no brake pedal… Google says you don’t need them, because the software and the sensors do all the work. The only comand is a button to start and stop the vehicle. On board, a screen shows the route. This video show the new Google car in action : Google is planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles and to test this summer the early versions. Then, the Internet giant will run a small pilot program in California in the next couple of years.