Recent Announcements
Finished Vehicle Logistics
 One thing about this industry is it's big. I had never thought much about the issues of getting vehicles from the end of the production line into showrooms, but in March I will be speaking on how this part of the business will be affected by digital technologies.My main focus will be on connectivity and how the production line never ends, as well as opportunities for automation when moving vehicles, such as loading them onto ships. I hope to learn a lot at this conference and I see a lot of early opportunities for automation within the supply chain. |
Monetizing ADAS
 I'm participating in a panel on "Monetizing ADAS and the Evolution to a Driverless Era". While today ADAS is largely monetized by OEMs at the point of sale, I believe the future is in using the data both to support vehicle applications (safety in particular), transportation applications (traffic management and control), and third party applications such as insurance and business intelligence (as revenue generators). I have been working on this under the general concept of building the business models for connected vehicles- most of that is proving the value of the data.I see a lot of friends at this event. Let's catch up! |
Mapping for Automated Vehicles
 A Heart of Grid Lines: Moving Forward With Mapping at the Core Real-time mapping is making huge strides in auto and is well-positioned to take the industry forward to realize the visions of the driverless car. We look at what it’s doing for the industry right now.
As one of the leaders in the development of probe based mapping technology, I always appreciate the chance to bring this topic to the public. |
Automated Vehicles: Mind the Brakes
 This will be an overview emphasizing the sensor technologies and where they work and don't work. I'll talk about cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasound, but my primary interest is in the communications and mapping topics, so I'll spend most of my time on those. This is, after all, where all the other sensors work together. This should be fun and entertaining so please stop by! |
Insurance in the Era of Sharing
 We will address the implications of the new mobility services- ride sharing, car sharing, commercial vehicle platooning, and automation of both private and public vehicles. This fits well with my work at ATG developing insurance tools for commercial vehicles. |
Driverless Conference
 I'll be running a panel on mapping at the Driverless Conference, March 22-23 in San Francisco. This should be a great source for a lot of information, not so many powerpoints. |
CES 2016
 At CES this year I was struck by the number of companies moving into the mapping space. Many sensor providers see they are, long term, in a commodity business and are looking for ways to develop high margin data products based on their sensors. They think that mapping is easy, and all you need is a good sensor. They may be surprised. |
Florida Automated Vehicles Summit
 One of the most interesting talks at the summit was by Adam Jonas, an analyst from Morgan Stanley. He advocates looking at the automotive world in terms of miles delivered (0.5 parsec/year!, I haven't gotten to use that unit much since grad school). It puts a different perspective on the sharing economy and the future of cars. He was not very positive on the future of existing automotive companies. Here is a related video. |
Active Safety Update
 I attended this conference in October- catching up on the latest in Detroit. It's good to have an excuse to get to Detroit and visit colleagues there. I spent much of my time getting updates on V2X security, which seems to be under pretty good control; Mobileye technology, the good and the bad; and probe based mapping. |
Moderating Insurance Panel
 I'll be moderating a panel at the Telematics Update show in Detroit next week on "The Insurance Piece of the Mobility Puzzle". For this panel we are looking at "new mobility", both due to the sharing economy (Uber, Lyft, etc) and vehicle automation. Insurance is often cited as one of the big issues that needs to be solved with automated vehicles. My oldest son is about to start driving and particular conundrum for me is how to judge his skill. If he usually drives a highly automated vehicle (soon!), and has no accidents, should I trust him in my old manual shift vehicles? What's an insurer to do? On the panel we all agree that the solution to the mobility puzzle is data from the vehicle. (See the LinkedIn discussion here.) We have yet to agree on what that data needs to be, on what data needs to come from the vehicle and what data can be obtained from cell phones, or even Apple Play, Android Auto and the like. My experience is that OEMs are willing in theory to share basic data (location, emissions...), but are not even contemplating sharing the status of ADAS systems and the activation of automatic braking. On the other hand, some folks from the CAS automated vehicle group told me an interesting fact. If Mercedes were to introduce a high end (low volume) vehicle that NEVER had a crash- after 4 years the insurance rate would be only 14% less than the equivalent crashing vehicle. Seems like there should be a better deal here. |
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