These 41 news stories caught my
attention last week. These stories are across automotive, aerospace, rail, IoT,
drones, industrial equipment, VR, software, 3D printing, PLM, and telecom.
Automotive
·
EV momentum is continuing. Tata Motors bags
contract to provide 10,000 electric cars in India's first electric car tender.
Mahindra and Nissan also bid for this contract. Pricing is
very aggressive about $15 K with 5- year warranty. The price is 25%
lower than the electric car in Indian
market with a 3-year warranty. (Read here).
In another news, Tata Motors has decided to cut its platform from six to two
for the cost benefits. (Read here).
It looks the savings in traditional
business will be useful in EV business.
·
Vacuum Tycoon James Dyson to roll out an
electric car by 2020. He plans to spend
$2.7 billion in R&D. While most of other EV projects are using
lithium-ion batteries in their current models, Dyson said its car would use
solid-state batteries that are smaller, more efficient, easier to charge and
potentially easier to recycle. (Read here).
·
ABB is active in EV charging market. ABB will
deliver 117 electric vehicle charging stations to German utility
EnBW. Power utilities such as EnBW, tech start-ups and oil majors are
vying to become dominant players in the fast-growing business of charging
stations. (Read here). ABB
powers Volvo’s electric bus in the UK
with its OppCharge. (Read here).
ABB has joined Northvolt's project to
build Europe's largest lithium-ion
battery factory in Sweden to cater for an expected rise in demand for electric
cars. It will rival Tesla's Giga Factory in scale. (Read here).
·
Ford, Lyft will partner to deploy self-driving
cars. Lyft has 9% investment from GM. Lyft is developing an open platform where
self-driving cars from different
companies can be deployed. It already has
a similar partnership with Google's Waymo and Drive.ai. (Read here).
·
The second order
impact of EV will be the mineral
shortage. EV push could lead to a copper
shortage, says BHP. EV requires 4X copper than combustion engines. (Read here). VW
moves to secure cobalt supplies in the shift
to EVs. Cobalt is a vital component of rechargeable batteries. In Dec
2015 Cobalt was at $10 a pound and now it is $30 a pound. VW will need
about $2 billion of Cobalt purchases every year in its electric push. (Read here).
·
Google has accidentally disclosed in court proceedings that it
has invested $1.1 Billion in self-driving
technology up to now. There are over 35 self-driving projects going on, and then there is spend by tier-1s,
startups and other enterprises. We are easily
talking about $50 Billion already invested in self-driving tech, and it is
just getting started. (Read here).
·
VW boosts 2018 warranties to 6 years/72,000
miles from earlier three years/36,000
miles. This extended warranty to build its perception of quality in consumers.
(Read here).
·
Delphi Automotive is split into two companies Aptiv and Delphi Technologies. Aptive will focus on electronics and self-driving business ($12 billion), and Delphi Technologies will focus
on traditional powertrain business ($4.5 billion.) (Read here).
Last year another automotive tier-1 Johnson Controls
spinoff its automotive seating business
as Adient. This spinning off of Tier-1s
in automotive is in contrast to recent
mergers of tier-1s in aerospace (Rockwell Collins with UTC) and ( Safran with
Zodiac). I guess automotive tier-1s are more prone to the disruption than
aerospace tier-1s.
IoT
·
Smart metering firm Itron plans to acquire IoT networking company Silver Spring
Networks in an $830 million deal. (Read here).
·
TrenItalia
has invested €50m in an IoT project which it expects to cut maintenance costs
by up to €130m annually, to increase
train availability, and improve customer satisfaction ratings. SAP is the IoT,
platform partner. (Read here).
·
One manufacturer which has started becoming aggressive in IoT is
Hitachi. It has launched a new business entity Hitachi Vinatara to combine its IT and OT capabilities. (Read here).
Hitachi also launched its first commercial IoT platform offering Lumada. (Read here).I
see a few similarities with how GE started its digital journey by combining its
entities in GE digital and investing in IoT platform a few years back.
·
HCL opened
an IoT operations center for Philips in Bangalore to manage its smart lighting.
Philips manages 22 million connected
light points. (Read here).
·
Accenture, JSR,
and NTT begin work on a PoC for a smart industrial complex. The aim is to develop a connected worker platform
that collects and analyzes data and recreates experienced worker’s
capabilities. (Read here).
Aerospace
·
Elon Musk unveils plans to use SpaceX's
mega-rocket to travel anywhere on Earth in under an hour. (Read here). So this
guy will disrupt aerospace too. (Read here).
·
Boeing has set up a new airplane program office
to move one step closer to a decision on a “New Mid-market Airplane” — but
still short of launching the proposed jet, often referred to as the 797.
The concept is a twin-aisle airplane seating 220 to 270 passengers with a
medium range of 5,500 to 5,700 miles. Significantly bigger than the
single-aisle 737 and with much less range than a 787 Dreamliner, it would be
targeted to open up new international routes, such as connecting cities around
Southeast Asia or less-traveled transatlantic routes such as Washington, D.C.,
to Budapest. The aircraft will have a composite fuselage. Boeing earlier unveiled a timetable in which design work would happen in late 2018
through 2020. It would then build the aircraft
components in 2020-1, assemble the new plane in 2023, and fly it for the first
time in 2024, with the new aircraft ultimately entering service in 2025. The
company predicts a market for more than 4,000 of these planes. (Read here).
Its a good news for few aerospace engineering
service providers which are eagerly waiting for new airplane programs for
growth.
·
Rolls Royce chairman predicts that Chinese-made
jet engines are coming soon. (Read here).
In another news this week. China and Russia agree on initial wide-body engine
research. The engine, if it emerges, will be an alternative to a turbofan
from GE or Rolls-Royce for the aircraft. (Read here).
·
Boeing will
invest $33 million for a majority stake in a joint venture with COMAC that will
oversee the U.S. planemaker's new 737 completion plant in China. (Read here).
·
The U.S.has backed Boeing in its challenge to
Bombardier, recommending an enormous tariff (219.63%) on sales of the Canadian
firm's C Series jetliner. (Read here).
This is a huge blow to
Bombardier. The only consolation for Bombardier this week is the order for
50 of its high-density Q400 turboprop aircraft from Indian carrier, SpiceJet.
The deal is valued up to $1.7 billion.
(Read here).
·
Now electric aircrafts
are also in discussion. EasyJet is backing plans to develop commercial
passenger aircraft powered by electric batteries instead of conventional aero
engines in collaboration with a Wright Electric. These aircrafts are proposed to carry about 220
passengers on the short-haul route with the range of 335 miles. (Read
here).
Drone
·
Drone network takes on hospital-to-hospital
deliveries in Switzerland. (Read here).
Mercedes-Benz Vans teamed up with e-commerce startup Siroop, and drone logistics provider Matternet to kick off a pilot
in Zurich of its van-based drone delivery concept. (Read here).
Software Product Engineering/
Internet
· Google
Chrome now lets you browse the web in virtual reality (VR). This can accelerate the adoption of VR to
mainstream users. (Read here). Apple is betting on augmented
reality (AR) and looks Google is betting on VR more. Good news is that more
content will be required in both AR and VR and will create work in
engineering and content creation.
Railways
·
Alstom, Siemens to merge rail businesses to
counter China's CRRC. After the merger, the
combined sales of the entity will be $18 Billion. In contrast, the CRRC has annual sales of $35 billion. (Read here).
Telecom/ Semiconductor
·
Broadcom Avago GPS chip technology breakthrough
to deliver inch-level accuracy for smartphones. The new chip will have the accuracy to 30-centimeters compared to the accuracy to 5-meters GPS chips offer today.
Your Google maps will be more accurate. (Read here).
PLM/ Cad software
·
Dassault Systèmes and SIE Partner to Simplify
the Certified Aircraft Cabin Completion Process. Read here)
3D Printing
·
Airbus has achieved a 3D printing first with the
installation of a 3D printed titanium bracket on a series production commercial
aircraft. This marks a milestone for
additive manufacturing in aerospace. While airplane makers have been using 3D
printed parts for quite some time, largely for components inside the cabin,
equipping airframes with metal parts produced via additive manufacturing is
new. (Read here).
Industrial Equipment
·
ABB to acquire GE Industrial Solutions for $2.6
billion. This will strengthen ABB’s #2
global position in electrification and also result in cost synergies of $200
million. One of the interesting rationale
is that ABB will invest in R&D in modernizing GE's solution portfolio.
Mergers are good for engineering services when operational synergies are invested in R&D. (Read here).
