These 48 news stories caught my attention last week. These
stories are across automotive, aerospace, drones, software, telecom, medical devices,
AR/VR, IoT, and PLM.
Automotive
New business models are evolving in the car industry. Porsche
will start a “subscription service” for customers that could give them access
to a number of their sports cars and SUVs, from $2,000 per month. (Read here).
Volkswagen plans to reduce the size of its European dealer network and
introduce online sales as it adjusts to changing buying habits. (Read here).
Vehicle recalls continuing
to make the news. Fiat Chrysler recalls
470,000 vehicles for restraint defect.
(Read here).
Mercedes will recall over 350,000 vehicles
in China with Takata airbags. (Read here).
Even Tesla is not spared
of vehicle recall problem. Tesla recalls
about 11,000 Model X sport utility vehicles due to possible issues with their
second-row fold-flat seats. (Read here).
Tesla’s trouble doesn’t end there. Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past
week. (Read here).
There is a race to build EV charging infrastructure. Shell
has agreed to buy NewMotion, a Netherlands-based provider of more than 30,000
private home electric charging points for EVs as well as 50,000 public sites. The
move is the biggest yet by “big oil” into the electric
vehicle refueling market, which is forecast to grow dramatically in the coming
years. Earlier this year France’s Total bought Dutch company PitPoint, which provides natural gas refueling
for vehicles as well as operating a number of
EV charging points in Europe. (Read here).
ABB has submitted a bid to provide 4,500 charging points as part of the Indian
Government’s tender to procure electric vehicles. (Read here).
Fortum partners NBCC to set up EV charging infra in projects in India. (Read here).
Groupe Renault has acquired a 25 percent
share in smart charging company Jedlix, a Dutch start-up launched by the Eneco
Group that specializes in sustainable charging of electric vehicles. (Read here).
Beijing's green car push helps Chinese battery makers reign.
Technologically strong Japanese, South Korean rivals fight to stay relevant. Team
China had a share of just over 60% of the global market by volume followed by
Japan 20% and Korea 10%. The top five vendors are all Chinese. (Read here).
How to develop a business
case of EVs in the country where fuels costs are as cheap as they could be. Well, give consumers free charging. Dubai to give free charging,
Salik for electric cars. Incentives hoped to boost electric car ownership in
the emirate. (Read here).
More EV rollout announcements. VW to roll out electric trucks,
buses in $1.7 Billion projects. Electric trucks for local deliveries will probably
exceed a 5% market share by 2025, according to the head of the VW Truck &
Bus division. That compares to a forecast
of about 25% for battery-powered cars. (Read here).
BMW is looking to form a joint venture with Great Wall Motor in China, which
could focus on electric vehicles. (Read here).
Volkswagen Group's plan to cut costs by creating a new parts
business could unlock funds for its move to electric vehicles and herald an
eventual spin-off that could transform its profitability. (Read here).
More cities and countries come up with their ban on
combustion engine cars. Paris plans ban
on combustion-engine cars by 2030. (Read here).
The Dutch government confirms plan to ban new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
(Read here).
Even Uber is doing its bit. Uber drivers will be banned from using vehicles that are not a
hybrid or fully electric in London from 2020, as part of a plan to help tackle
illegal levels of air pollution in the capital. Uber’s 40,000 licensed drivers
in London will be offered grants of up to
£5,000 towards a hybrid or fully electric car. (Read here).
A bunch of announcement by GM. General Motors is working on
a self-driving truck platform called the Silent Utility Rover Universal
Superstructure (SURUS). The modular platform will have self-driving
capabilities and will be able to run on unpredictable, off-road terrain. It
could be used in many different ways from
acting as logistical support to emergency, backup power generation and as plain
utility trucks. (Read here).
General Motors boosts self-driving car credentials with the acquisition of lidar startup Strobe. ( Read here).
Baidu plans to mass produce Level 4 self-driving cars with
BAIC by 2021. This shows how new-age technology companies will partner with
OEMs and not necessarily rivals. (Read here).
End users are also developing plans for autonomous vehicles. US Postal Services plans to work
autonomy into its 228,000-vehicle fleet. Those plans
are already in motion: The post office has partnered with the University of
Michigan to build what it’s calling an Autonomous Rural Delivery Vehicle, which
it wants to launch on 28,000 rural routes nationwide as early as 2025.
(Read here).
U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, German supplier ZF and logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL
have partnered to deploy a test fleet of autonomous electric delivery trucks
starting in 2018. (Read here).
Tier-1s are also developing their autonomous platforms. Panasonic aims to launch autonomous driving system in 2022. (Read here). Magna
has struck a deal with BMW, Intel, and
Mobileye to bring a new self-driving platform to the automotive market by 2021.
(Read here).
While the world is doubling
down on autonomous driving investments, one person betting against it is Warren Buffet. Warren Buffett had invested in
the largest truck-stop chain in North
America, Pilot Flying J. The company has 750 locations across the U.S. and
Canada and more than $20 billion in revenues. This
would not be a good investment if Buffett believed that autonomous trucks were
close to becoming a reality. This is
because at every stop, truck drivers buy not just fuel, but food and other
goods. No truck drivers mean no ancillary sales. (Read here).
Aerospace
Seven more companies have joined the list of customers for
data analytics services from Boeing AnalytX, bringing the total of contracts
signed this year to 223. Boeing AnalytX is part of the aircraft manufacturer’s
drive to capitalize on the growing demand for after-market services ranging
from maintenance to cost-saving efficiencies. When Boeing Global Services was
reorganized as a separate business unit last year, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg
said he was aiming to triple the company’s revenue from aviation services to
$50 billion annually. 800 people in Boeing work for AnalytX. (Read here).
Dassault Aviation, the French maker of Rafale fighter jets,
may build its business aircraft in India, in a boost to Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's push to encourage local manufacturing. Building
the Falcon 2000 planes in India would cut costs while ensuring quality and
execution that meets standards. It bid for a defense contract worth $11 billion
to supply 126 Rafale aircraft and eventually won an order for only 36 planes
last year. India had initially agreed to buy all the 126 jets under a
long-delayed deal, even mandating Dassault to build some of them locally. (Read
here).
Honeywell spins off units worth $7.5 billion in sales, keeps
aerospace. Honeywell might make
acquisitions in aerospace now it has
money from the sale of other businesses. (Read here).
Safran and Emirates sign Airbus A380 component maintenance
contract, further strengthening their long partnership. (Read here).
British weapons maker BAE Systems said it would eliminate
almost 2,000 jobs as its new chief executive comes to grips with a dearth of
military plane orders and the need to lower costs. (Read here).
It looks a jinx week for UK manufacturing. PSA will cut 400 Vauxhall jobs in the
UK; says production not competitive
compared with France. (Read here).
Australian defense firm was
hacked and F-35 data stolen, DOD confirms. Aerospace engineering service
providers should bump up their cybersecurity practice. (Read here).
Drones
Amazon files a patent
for deploying exclusive drones in India. The firm
says the proposed drones can also be used to identify other such objects, along
with aircraft, plying within Indian skies. (Read here).
Drone with Event Camera takes first autonomous flight. Event
cameras work differently than conventional ones. Instead of recording what a
scene looks like, event cameras record how a
scene changes. Point them at a scene
that isn’t moving, and they won’t show
you anything. But as soon as there’s motion, event cameras show you just that motion on a per-pixel basis and at a very high
refresh rate. (Read here).
Software/ High-Tech
Alibaba is launching a $15 billion drive to build overseas
research hubs as the deep-pocketed firm looks to compete with global leaders in
e-commerce, logistics and cloud technology. (Read here).
Telecom
Airtel is buying struggling Tata Tele In India and is getting
a billion-dollar business for free. It’s a win for Chandra (Tata Sons Chairman)
who wanted to non- performing businesses. Speculation is rife whether it will involve
more media and telecom businesses of Tatas such as Tata Sky, Tata
Communications. Even TCS could benefit from more telecom business from Airtel. (Read here).
Qualcomm confirms filing of a lawsuit against Apple in China to halt the manufacture and sale of
iPhones. (Read here).
Medical Devices
An electronic bandage
may heal chronic wounds. (Read here).
Tech Mahindra to set up dedicated center for Terumo BCT. As Terumo's global Innovation and
Development (I&D) partner, Tech Mahindra will provide medical device
engineering services. (Read here).
AR/VR
Neurosurgery is one of the most complex and difficult specializations that surgeons can
take. With this particular area, having accurate information on what needs to be operated on.
A new augmented reality (AR) system called GLOW allows surgeons to get a better
view. (Read here).
IoT
Salesforce takes another shot at IoT. Salesforce announced a
new IoT initiative called IoT Explorer Edition designed to help customers make
sense of IoT data and put it to work. Salesforce is calling a “low code” way of
generating IoT business workflows. Non-technical personnel can supposedly pick
and choose processes and connect to different devices and sensors to create
some type of automated workflow. (Read here).
Dell Technologies launched a new IoT division to integrate
products and services across the company, as well as new tools to speed up
implementations, and it plans to invest $1 billion in R&D over the next
three years. Dell is betting that edge analytics will be more important
than cloud analytics in IoT. (Read here).
Intel Launches new IoT solution to help companies quickly and
securely onboard connected devices. (Read here).
Remember a decade back every major country and state (at
least Indian state) was formulating its IT policy and consulting firms minted
millions in developing their IT policies (Some still do). It now looks IoT is the new IT, and many countries and states will formulate their IoT
policies. Indian state Telangana has formulated
its IoT policy which aims to attract investment and create jobs. The state wants
to do that by becoming a buyer of IoT
product/services, an enabler of the ecosystem with labs/ clusters and trainer by encouraging IoT ready workforce. (Read
here).
PLM
Terumo BCT has selected the PTC Windchill Quality Management
solution to support the company’s continuous improvement initiatives for
quality systems and processes around the world. (Read here).
Apple acknowledges swelling of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus
and says that they are looking into the problem. Why am I putting this in PLM? Because, it highlights the business problem of
traceability which PLM ISVs and service providers are trying to solve.
(Read here).
Kobe Steel said that about 4 percent of the aluminum and
copper products that it shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labeled as meeting the
specifications requested by customers. Products with falsified data were shipped to about 200 companies including Toyota, Mitsubishi, and
Mazda. Automakers have been seeking more advanced products to cut weight while
retaining strength and versatility. This is
a harsh reality for Japanese steel companies: the need to provide higher
quality metals to compete. This is another use case of product and
supplier traceability which PLM can solve. (Read here).
