2019 has started with something of a bang.

There has been a steady stream of announcements, from companies large and small, that show the pace of change in the auto industry continues to swell.

For example, it’s unlikely to have escaped your notice that Amazon, the technology and e-commerce behemoth, was recently part of an investment round that will pump $US700 million into electric pick-up truck maker Rivian.

Who are Rivian? Well, they’re a U.S. company making the pretty spectacular R1T pick-up and R1S SUV, both of which were revealed, to much acclaim, at the L.A. Auto Show in November last year.).

Other agreements (and rumours of agreements) that have surfaced in the past few weeks include Ford and Volkswagen partnering up in the light commercial vehicle sector. The two companies are also reportedly to collaborate in the autonomous sector too, with VW said to be moving towards working with and investing in Argo AI, the autonomous-vehicle unit of Ford.

The autonomous-vehicle sector continues to attract big-money investment – last year, Honda and Softbank collectively invested $US5billion in General Motor’s Cruise Automation unit.

Elsewhere in the past few weeks, big oil has continued its move to become a big player in ‘new’ energy. Shell announced in January that it is acquiring Greenlots, a U.S.-based provider of EV charging and energy management software and solutions, and followed up that announcement a few weeks later with news that it would also be acquiring European firm Sonnen, a leader in smart energy storage systems and energy services for households.

These developments follow the company signing up in 2017 to buy NewMotion, a charging station company with more than 30,000 installations across Europe.

Incidentally, Shell is not the only oil major investing in in this sector. Over in the UK, BP acquired Chargemaster, the country’s largest electric vehicle charging station company, in 2018. At the time, BP said its takeover (which included taking control of 6,500 charging stations) was part of its bid to “support the successful adoption of electric vehicles.”

Moving away from the oil giants, the traditional car manufacturers are also getting in on the act and carving out a piece of the power pie that will feed the electric vehicles they are building.
For example, Alliance Venture, the strategic capital arm of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, is to invest in PowerShare, an EV charging platform start-up based in China which provides an online platform that connects EV drivers, charge point operators and power suppliers. That news, announced in February, followed an announcement in January that Alliance Venture was investing in Tekion, a U.S. provider of dealership software systems.

Tekion, the company said, ‘brings connected digital experiences to automotive retail through the most advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities available’.

What all this activity seems to show is that the speed of change continues to accelerate. Consolidation, research, development, investment, expansion are all occurring at a startling pace across the world and there’s no stopping it – no matter which sector of the automotive industry you work, the amount of time you have before the disruption becomes a game-changer grows ever shorter.

And that was brought into even more stark relief at the end of February when members of the Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament approved a set of rules to make several advanced safety features standard equipment in different categories of vehicles sold in the European Union.

The mandatory advanced safety features include advanced emergency braking system and a lane departure warning system. Also included are intelligent speed assistance; alcohol interlock installation facilitation: driver drowsiness and attention warning; advanced driver distraction warning; emergency stop signal; reversing detection; and the inclusion of an accident data recorder.

The march towards autonomous vehicles is, it seems, being ensured by politics and the law.

In Australia, it can sometimes feel like we are a little divorced from all this action, and it is true that we have been, in some areas at least, slow in catching up with what is happening elsewhere. This is most obvious in the EV sector, where the uptake of battery-powered cars has been, well, less than enthusiastic – while 580,000 EV/PHEV vehicles were sold in China in 2017, and another 280,000 in the U.S., Australia could muster just 2400 sales.

However, while our sluggish response to EVs will certainly change as the choice of EVs grows – and according to research firm McKinsey, some 350 EV models are due to make their global debuts by 2025 – in other areas, Australia is already something of a leader.

Take battery fast-charge stations, for example. Australian company Tritium – based in Queensland, by the way – is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of EV fast-charging solutions, and its chargers have been installed in 26 countries across the world.

And if we move away from EVs and look at autonomous vehicles, then Australia is working hard to be part of the leading edge of that revolution too.

In February, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) announced that a team of its researchers, led by Professor Michael Milford, would be taking an EV fitted with Artificial Intelligence (AI) sensors and computers on a three month, 1200km Queensland road trip with the aim to ensure the autonomous cars of the future will be smart enough to handle tough Australian road conditions.

That research is part of the Queensland Government’s Cooperative and Highly Automated Driving (CHAD) Pilot, itself part of the Cooperative and Automated Vehicle Initiative. That initiative is also to see the Cooperative Intelligent Transport Sytems (C-ITS) Pilot take place in Ipswich – large-scale on-road testing trial of cooperative vehicles and infrastructure, with around 500 private and fleet vehicles retrofitted with C-ITS devices that enable vehicles to ‘talk’ to vehicles, infrastructure, road operations systems and cloud-based data sharing systems.

The pace of change and disruption continues to build and the next two to three months will likely be just as busy as the last.

Keeping up with these changes and technological advances, and understanding where it is all leading, is not easy. However, there are organisations and events that aim to bring the many strands of information and present them as a coherent whole, giving a broad sense of the direction in which the automotive industry is moving.

Amongst those is, of course, MTA Queensland and on March 21 the Association will be holding the third edition of its Carmageddon automotive innovation symposiums, bringing together leading figures from industry academia and the government sector to deliver presentations on developments within the industry.

This year’s event has the theme of ‘New World Mobility’ and subjects that will be covered range from blockchain technology to electric vehicles, robotics and artificial intelligence to battery charging and the digital environment.

Those experts include:

• Cat Matson, Brisbane’s Chief Digital Officer
• Dr Kellie Nuttall, Partner Deloitte
• Prof Michael Milford, QUT Science and Engineering Faculty, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics and Autonomous Systems
• Dr Sue Keay, Research Director Cyber Physical Systems, CSIRO’s Data 61
• Dr Brett Dale, CEO, MTA Queensland
• Dr Paul Sernia, Chief Product Officer | Founder, Tritium
• Eden Spencer, Founder | CEO, Block Two Pty Ltd
• Mark Dutton, Team Manager and Racing Engineer, Triple Eight Race Engineering
• Scott Nagar, Public Relations | Manager of Future Mobility & Government Relations, Hyundai
• Graeme Manietta, Chairman Queensland Branch, Australian Electric Vehicle Council

There will also be a showcase of the latest hydrogen fuel cell and battery electric cars from Hyundai, Jaguar and Renault.

PLEASE NOTE: This event is booked out. Please email events@mtaq.com.au to be added to the wait list.

Source: Motor Trade E-Magazine (March 2019 Edition)

11 Mar 2019