Automotive News - October 30, 2023 - 21

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OctOber 30, 2023 * 21
Cruise video 'omission' leads to suspension
O
Pete Bigelow
pbigelow@crain.com
ne day after a Cruise robotaxi struck a
pedestrian in San Francisco this
month, company executives met with
officials from the California Department
of Motor Vehicles to review the incident.
Cruise officials played video footage captured
by the car's cameras at that meeting. It showed
the pedestrian fall from the hood of another car
and into the path of the Cruise vehicle, which
then stopped on top of her.
What Cruise omitted from its presentation,
DMV officials allege, was what happened next.
The vehicle then traveled 20 feet at a speed of
7 mph, dragging the pedestrian along with it
and potentially causing further injuries, according
to two orders of suspension that the
DMV issued last week. It was unclear how
much time elapsed between the car initially
stopping and then traveling the final 20 feet.
The DMV said Cruise, a General Motors subsidiary,
never disclosed that subsequent movement.
Select media outlets shown the same
video in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 2
collision also weren't given that information. It
became public Tuesday, Oct. 24, when the
DMV suspended Cruise's deployment and testing
permits in an unprecedented action.
DMV officials only learned of the vehicle's full
actions following discussions with another govPLANTS
Sluggish
EV demand
prompts consolidations
continued from previous page
percent in the second quarter, according to Cox
Automotive. EVs are becoming more widely
available and affordable, in part because of Tesla's
price cuts this year.
In some cases, EV supply is outpacing demand.
U.S. Mercedes-Benz dealers in September took
an average of 82 days to sell EQ line electric vehicles
- more than double BMW's overall turn rate
for EVs, according to Edmunds. And General
Motors delayed EV pickup production at a plant
near Detroit by a year to better manage its capital
and align with evolving EV demand.
EV startups could begin consolidating to better
use production capacity before demand swells. It
will take time for that demand to catch up, Rinna
said.
EV maker consolidation is beginning in China,
which is a decade ahead of the U.S. in electrification,
said John Zeng: In China, where EV production
is a decade ahead of the United States, EV
maker consolidation has begun, director of
GlobalData's China forecasts.
BYD and Tesla dominate nearly half of China's
EV market, making the space unappealing to
new entrants and even legacy automakers.
Those groups are cutting prices to compete, he
said.
But brands that have been selling vehicles in
China won't want to give up, he added. Volkswagen
signed an agreement with Xpeng to jointly
develop EVs, and Audi signed a similar agreement
with SAIC. a
California regulators say Cruise didn't initially
show that its vehicle dragged a pedestrian.
ernmental agency, they said. After the DMV
asked for it, Cruise provided the full video Oct.
13, the DMV said.
Vehicles 'not safe'
Both the vehicle's performance in the moment
and Cruise's " omission " and " misrepresentation "
of the incident form the basis of the
DMV's suspension of Cruise's driverless deployment
and testing permits.
" The subsequent maneuvering of the vehicle
indicates that Cruise's vehicles may lack the
ability to respond in a safe and appropriate
manner during incidents involving a pedestrian, "
Bernard Soriano, a DMV deputy director,
wrote in a letter to Cruise officials.
That led the DMV to determine Cruise vehicles
" are not safe for the public's operation. "
MOBILEYE
Partnerships pave way
for driver-assist leaders
continued from previous page
the moment simply has the advantage because
they have the most mileage on board. Everybody
trusts them, " said Joerg Grotendorst, senior
vice president, corporate R&D at Magna
International.
As a key Tier 1 supplier, Magna packages and
integrates chips and sensors for automakers.
Even Qualcomm, which is building its own in " perception
telligent
driver-assist software
stack, " acknowledges Mobileye's advantage.
" We all know all the Mobileye product competition.
So, we have a reference data point, "
Qualcomm Europe president Enrico Salvatori
said at IAA.
Mobileye shipped 34 million EyeQ chips with
a front-facing camera for use on new vehicles
globally last year.
But the Israeli company has its sights set on
the far more valuable driver-assist market with
its SuperVision package. The system raises Mobileye's
content per car to $1,500 from $45 to
$50, according to estimates from the investment
bank UBS.
SuperVision uses 11 cameras and a radar-based
sensing system to allow hands-free
operation under some conditions, starting with
highway driving. Porsche is a SuperVision customer,
as are Zeekr and Polestar, which are part
of Chinese automaker Geely Automobile Holdings.
But
rivals are challenging Mobileye's leadership.
Cruise
disputed the DMV's allegations Thursday,
Oct. 26. DMV officials were " shown the
complete video multiple times, " said Hannah
Lindow, a Cruise spokesperson. The DMV said
it stood by information contained in the suspension
orders.
It was the second time in a week that a key
regulator questioned the competence of the
company's vehicles around pedestrians, and
the latest in a string of incidents in which Cruise
vehicles have clustered at intersections and interfered
with emergency responders.
NHTSA said Oct. 17 that it had opened an investigation
into two pedestrian collisions involving
Cruise vehicles and two more incidents
in which the regulator wants to explore whether
Cruise robotaxis exercised " appropriate caution "
around pedestrians.
The two suspension orders issued last week
go further than vehicle performance alone,
with the DMV citing Cruise's " misrepresentation "
of safety-related information in making its
determination to suspend the company's permits.
" Cruise's
omission hinders the ability of the
department to effectively and timely evaluate
the safe operation of Cruise vehicles and puts
the safety of the public at risk, " Soriano wrote.
Cruise said it complied with the suspension
orders and paused its driverless operations in
San Francisco.
Rather than pitching themselves as a replacement
for Mobileye, Qualcomm and Nvidia
pitch themselves as partners that supply the
compute power and tools, while leaving the automaker
in control of the final product.
" There is a concern that automakers are losing
control of their product and becoming sheet
metal vendors, " Danny Shapiro, Nvidia's vice
president of automotive, said at IAA. " Our approach
is a collaboration. We provide a solid
foundation of the hardware and software for
others to build on. "
UBS calls this a " picks and shovels " approach.
" The onus is on automakers or others to create
the software on that hardware to develop a robust,
cost-effective ADAS solution, " UBS analyst
Joseph Spak wrote in a recent report for investors.
Shapiro highlights Nvidia's work with Mercedes-Benz.
The German automaker will base
its next generation of cars - highlighted by the
next CLA sedan - on Nvidia's Drive platform
for autonomous cars. The two will co-develop
the intellectual property and split the revenue
from the software features, Shapiro said.
Qualcomm wins
Qualcomm is also having success with this
approach.
It ousted Mobileye to develop driver-assist
features for BMW's Neue Klasse platform. Vehicles
based on the platform will use a combination
of Qualcomm's computer vision and
BMW's own work. Qualcomm and BMW plan to
jointly sell the resulting software to other
brands.
In another win over Mobileye, Qualcomm
said in January that Volkswagen Group would
use its Ride driver-assist platform for unnamed
future models.
before impact, and because it detected a collision,
it attempted to pull over to avoid further
safety issues, " she said. " When the AV tried to
pull over, it continued before coming to a final
stop, pulling the pedestrian forward. "
A path to reinstatement
There is no timetable for the company's permits
to be reinstated, according to the DMV.
The agency said it has outlined the necessary
steps that Cruise must complete before the
company can apply for reinstatement. The
DMV hasn't publicly elaborated on those steps.
The suspension marks a substantial setback
for a company that has sought to scale its robotaxi
operations across the globe, and a black eye
in its primary market and the city it calls home.
Some who opposed Cruise's expansion in August
cheered the DMV's decision last week but
lamented that, from their vantage point, it did
not go far enough.
The Teamsters are " disappointed to see that
the DMV is providing Cruise with a pathway to
apply for license reinstatement, " said Peter
Finn, a vice president with the organization.
" This company doesn't deserve a second
chance. " a
Qualcomm, best known for smartphone
chips, started out in automotive by providing
in-car modems. It has since carved out a significant
business providing its Snapdragon chip
and associated software framework to power
the increasingly power-hungry infotainment
systems in new cars.
Adding Ride to Qualcomm's Digital Chassis
offerings provides car companies a complete
platform on which to design their new software-defined
cars to compete with digital-first
companies such as Tesla.
Giving the car companies the freedom to define
that relationship has helped Qualcomm
quickly challenge Mobileye's domination.
" That openness I think creates a lot of opportunity
and we are seeing that expand significantly, "
said Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm's senior
vice president and general manager for automotive
and cloud computing.
UBS named Qualcomm as Mobileye's " closest
competitor " in its report, but the Jerusalem
company is supremely confident it can defend
its dominant driver-assist position.
" No one else can offer this, many have tried,
many have failed, " Mobileye's senior vice president
of autonomous vehicles, Johann Jungwirth,
said at IAA. " Competitors can offer [a system
on chip] but basically no content. "
Jungwirth, a former VW, Mercedes and Apple
executive, said steering systems represent an
analogous hardware component that automakers
brought in-house, but found it was easier to
outsource.
" They see how much value is created in software
so it's natural that they at least want to try, "
he said. " But in the last few years most of them
have scaled that back because they realize how
complex it is. " x
Lindow acknowledged the Cruise robotaxi
moved after coming to a stop atop the pedestrian.
" The
[automated vehicle] braked aggressively
53
% of 2022 R&D invested
in eProduct projects
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