Automotive News - Traverse City - August 7, 2019 - 21

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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019

Agree on 1 set of
self-driving rules,
Velodyne's Gradu
urges automakers
Standardizing simplifies, reduces costs
Richard Truett
rtruett@crain.com

Adopting standardized safety regulations will help automakers reduce the cost and complexity of self-driving vehicles, not to mention enable consumers to understand how the
features work, Mircea Gradu, senior vice president of Velodyne Lidar, said at the seminars Tuesday.
He suggested the auto industry follow the example of aerospace companies and forgo the competitive approach to safety,
and instead work together on a single set of rules. The rules would
be shaped by collaboration between government regulators and
engineering organizations,
such as SAE International.
Gradu also is chairman of
SAE.
Having one global standard would allow suppliers
and automakers to cut development cost and product complexity. For example, some countries require
a driver's hands to always
be on the steering wheel in
a vehicle that can steer itself, while other countries
JOE WILSSENS
do not, he pointed out.
Gradu's company makes
Mircea Gradu says global rules
one of the key compowould help consumers better
nents of self-driving vehiunderstand self-driving features.
cles. Lidar uses light
waves from lasers to "see" around a vehicle and create 3D
models and maps of objects, which are then recognized by
computers that help the vehicle drive safely.
"We are trying to provide early and very deep insight into
that process, and that will benefit the entire industry," Gradu
said. He cited General Motors' Super Cruise driver assist system, available in the Cadillac CT6 sedan, as an example of a
suite of self-driving technologies that is well designed.
"GM's Super Cruise has done a good job. There is a lot of
safety embedded in that system and that is the right thing to
do," he said. But because there are few standards for the technology all automakers follow, Tesla's Auto Pilot system, for example, works differently.
Gradu said the industry runs the risk of confusing consumers with each automaker producing a different system with
different terms to describe and explain features.
"Safety cannot be compromised," he added. e

JOE WILSSENS

ZF's Farid Khairallah says Level 5 vehicles will need vastly more computer processing power than today's vehicles have.

The cost of full autonomy
could prove unrealistic

For most automakers, Level 2 is more achievable, ZF exec says

Richard Truett
rtruett@crain.com

utomakers are finding the pursuit of fully autonomous
Level 5 self-driving vehicles to be more expensive and
technically complex than expected, Farid Khairallah,
portfolio director of safety domain control units for
German supplier ZF, said Tuesday at the seminars.
Speaking of the industry's road ahead, Khairallah told an
audience, "The perception in the industry was, a couple of
years ago, that it is paved with gold. But now the industry is ...
looking at it from a more sober, practical point of view. It's
not that easy to go there.
"The whole industry is rethinking their strategies and what
they want to do with this," Khairallah said.
Level 5 vehicles are fully autonomous with no pedals or
steering wheel.
He said Level 2 self-driving technology, in which the vehicle
can steer and stop itself but requires a driver to be seated behind
the steering wheel, is more achievable for most automakers.

For a Level 5 vehicle to be 100 percent safe 100 percent of
the time, it will need 1 million times more computer processing power than today's vehicles, to be able to recognize and
react to every traffic situation. Installing that much computer
capability could make a vehicle prohibitively expensive and
technically unwieldy.
Khairallah said the associated electronics would need their
own cooling systems, for example.
"The challenge is how do you validate and assimilate the
system when you have 11 cameras and eight radars and five
lidars?" he asked the audience. "How do you collect and
manage that data?"
Even getting to Level 2 has incurred high development
costs and is forcing competing automakers to partner, he
said.
"A lot of players can't do it alone," he said. "Homologation is
very expensive. Collecting and storing data is very expensive.
They are joining forces to share the investment to launch
these technologies." m

Nissan pairs older, younger workers for factory innovation
mdmartinez@crain.com

The industry's biggest challenge in planning
the factory of the future is also its biggest opportunity, a Nissan manufacturing executive
said at the seminars Tuesday - its large cadre
of legacy workers.
It's no secret that some baby boomers, who
populate the assembly lines of North America's
plants, struggle with new digital technology.
But don't expect automakers to hire swarms of
millennial and Gen Z coders, and fire all the
baby boomers.
"That's where the DNA of the company lies,
our best practices, our know-how," said David
Johnson, vice president of production engi-

neering and new model quality at Nissan
North America. "We can't give that up."
Different generations of workers offer different strengths and challenges, Johnson told the
audience.
"You can't have just the legacy guys trying to
drive it, because every time they hit a wall
they'll just revert back to what they've always
done," Johnson said. "You can't have the '1s
and 0s' guys do it because they don't know
what they're doing in an automotive factory."
The key, he said, is meshing the generations
on the factory floor to help drive innovation.
Nissan is doing that through what it calls a
digital acceleration office to pair what Johnson
calls the "donkeys and pulleys" generation

with the "1s and 0s" generation. By collaborating early, each group can teach the other vital
tools that often result in efficiencies.
One such example, Johnson noted, was the increased adoption of predictive maintenance data on robots within manufacturing facilities. If
Nissan can predict when the machines will
break down, it can more efficiently deploy workers to fix them and keep production moving.
Using that data at Nissan's large assembly
plant in Smyrna, Tenn., has freed three maintenance technicians to focus on other tasks.
"The factory of the future is going to be built
on technology, yes," Johnson said. "But it's going to take people applying the technology in
new and novel ways to drive it ahead." n

Michael Martinez

ROGER HART

David Johnson said different generations of
workers offer varied strengths and challenges.

"We're going to need to drive regulation into the 21st
century, because we're stuck with the regulation of
the 20th century, and it no longer makes sense."

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