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Dodge Tomahawk concept motorcycle. Photo: Elambeth (posted to Wikimedia Commons). Yesterday, a technology company called Comtech Telecommunications Corp issued a press release boasting about a new $1.9 million contract with a leading U.S. automotive manufacturer to develop a new navigation product. What was odd about the press release is that the U.S. automaker involved was not named. But the press release did tease one tidbit: it said that the manufacturer will use Comtech’s navigation product “for two of its top vehicle programs, including motorcycles.”

Photo: Hyundai media center. In April we ran a story on Autotalks , an Israel-based semiconductor company focused on the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications technology space, after they announced a collaboration with the Connected Motorcycle Consortium to enhance safety-related communication between motorcycles and other vehicles with which they share the roads. Yesterday, Autotalks revealed that they have embarked on a major new collaboration—this time with a major global automaker. Through a direct investment in Autotalks, Hyundai Motor Company seeks to drive chipset technology for connected cars into its next generation.

Photo: BMW Group media website. When it comes to factors that affect crashworthiness as well as lighting and driver assist technologies, size might not matter so much. The 2019 MINI Hardtop 2-Door, which weighs in at 2,690 pounds with automatic transmission and sports a wheelbase of 98.2 inches, just brought home a 2018 Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Photo: GM media website. Soon, when your baby drives off in a brand new Cadillac, he or she might not even have hands on the wheel. Cadillac announced plans yesterday to roll out Super Cruise, a hands-free driver assistance feature designed for use in highway driving, throughout their entire lineup beginning in 2020.

Photo: Ford Media Center. Although Ford announced in April that that they will discontinue U.S. sales of all of the Focus lineup except the Focus Active crossover, the situation is different across the pond in Europe, where Ford began pitching an "all-new" lineup of four flavors of Focus this spring.  Photo: Ford Media Center. Now, imagine the conversation around the conference room table as the marketing campaign to support the European launch of the lineup, which includes the Focus ST, the Focus Vignale, the Focus Titanium, and the Focus Active, was under discussion. Did some marketing guru actually say, "Hey, let's have people talk to a sign outdoors?" Yeah.  Of course. That sounds like a great way to sell a car. 

Self-driving Chevy Bolt. Photo: GM Corporate Newsroom. Not long after we published our post yesterday on what the “money trails” of the automotive and financial industries are telling us about the future of autonomous vehicles, an ad for a curious book showed up in my feed: The Big Data Opportunity in Our Driverless Future , by Evangelos Simoudis, PhD, a former IBM executive known for expertise in big-data strategies and corporate innovation.

Photo: BMW Group PressClub Global. The BMW Group announced today that a touchless charging station is now available as a lease option in Germany for the BMW 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid. According to BMW, the launch in Germany will be followed by offerings in the UK, the US, Japan and China.

Photo: Toyota media website. Toyota revealed Thursday that one of the automaker's research and development divisions, the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), is building a new, closed-course testing site to support the development of automated vehicle technology. The facility, to be built on an approximately 60-acre tract at the Michigan Technical Resource Park in Ottawa Lake, will have the purpose of testing driving scenarios that are "too dangerous to perform on public roads," according to Toyota.

Especially after a wave of tragic incidents, opinions of self-driving cars and other automated transportation technologies are, to say the least, ambivalent. This holds true not only at the U.S. level, but also globally. According to survey findings from BCG and the World Economic Forum, as summarized by Statista ,  half of survey participants from ten countries say they would not feel safe in a self-driving car. Forty-five percent said, further, that they want to be in control at all times when driving. The ambivalence at the individual and societal level is affecting creative works as well. And Civil Terror: Gridlock (Jaytech Publishing, March 2018), the first installment in a new series of novels by civil engineer turned fiction author J. Luke Bennecke, is one of the latest examples. What if traffic jams were not only a nuisance but also an actual source of danger? With self-driving cars being tested across the world and computer systems at the helm, this possibility is not as far-...

Kia Optima Hybrid. Photo: Kia media website. If you've been waiting anxiously to be able to control your Kia from an Alexa-powered Amazon device, your moment has arrived. Kia Motors America announced on Monday that they have added the ability to remotely control a number of functions, such as starting and stopping the engine or heating and cooling car interiors, using simple voice commands. The new features are enhancements of Kia's UVO Skill system, UVO being an acronym for "Your Voice." UVO Skill also allows owners to lock doors, sound the horn and flash the lights, and start and stop charging a Kia plug-in or electric vehicle.

From our perspective, there are two key ways that Mazda is strongly distinguishing itself within the automotive today's automotive industry The first is car model design aesthetics. In a world where you increasingly need to play "find the badge" to identify the manufacturer of that latest boring crossover or lookalike Sonata- or Fusion-shaped fastback sedan, Mazda takes the intractable reality of the aerodynamic and safety-driven basic shapes that the industry feels obligated to produce today and manages to produce standout designs that are stunning enough to make a car enthusiast drool. Mazda is also pushing the edges outward on the technology and research-and-development side. To name just a few examples, Mazda has made automotive technology news recently with a partnership with Denso and Toyota for electric vehicle R&D, an effort to obsolete the lead-acid starter battery with a lithium-ion replacement, and their latest public triumph: a Gold Edison Award for the SK...

Photo: Towel401 (Wikimedia commons). Mazda Motor Corporation, ELIIY Power Co., Ltd. and Ube Industries, Ltd. have agreed to jointly develop lithium-ion batteries for use in automobiles. The three companies will work together to develop durable, heat- and impact-resistant 12-Volt lithium-ion batteries as a viable replacement for lead-acid starter batteries in motor vehicles by 2021. Lithium-ion batteries offer a promising alternative to conventional lead-acid car batteries, as environmental regulations in some regions restrict the use of lead and engineers aim to reduce vehicle weight for improved fuel economy. But their application in motor vehicles so far has been limited due to the need for car batteries to withstand the high temperatures of the engine room and the potential impact forces of a collision. With this new project, Mazda, ELIIY Power and Ube Industries will combine their technical strengths to overcome such issues.