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As Chinese passenger vehicle manufacturers look to bolster adoption of telematics system in 2015, a key finding from the latest report by ResearchinChina is that smartphone integration and 4G LTE technologies have increased their footprint while the user experience has been boosted by IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) and networking functions. Chinese new passenger vehicles equipped with telematics products grew 32.1% year-on-year to 1.8 million units in January-September 2015.

OnStar led...

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Google plans to bring the complete Android Auto experience to smartphones, removing the need to plug the phone into a compatible car.

The feature, as reported by The Verge and as explained by Google at its I/O conference, will come via an update to the Android Auto phone app towards the end of 2016. As a result, drivers can mount the phone on the dash and use the Android Auto app for...

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Semiconductor provider NXP has showcased a complete autonomous vehicle platform which makes use of its new BlueBox engine.

The company, which has just become the foremost provider of silicon to the global automotive market, has a system demonstration which also makes use of radar, lidar, and vision sensing, as well as an onboard secure V2X system – all running on NXP silicon currently in volume production or sampling to customers now.

The BlueBox engine is with customers at four of...

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Google is hiring test drivers for its self-driving cars project in Arizona to monitor software systems and provide feedback to the firm’s engineering teams.

The job ad, which can be found here, promises work on “cutting edge technology” and requires successful candidates to “develop a unique set of operational skills using vehicles running proprietary software and hardware.” The drivers will work in teams with one of them in the passenger seat taking notes...

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Rumours claim South Korean giant Samsung has set up a dedicated team to make chips for self-driving cars.

According to recent speculation, technology giant Samsung has created an in-house, dedicated team to manufacture processor chips to power self-driving cars. The company has long been manufacturing their own processors and the devices that they power, but...

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Michigan law firms are carving teams out of their automotive practices, dedicated to autonomous and connected vehicles. The pioneering laws firms include Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone (Detroit) and Butzel Long (Ann Arbor), both of whom have been representing automotive clients for several years.

According to Jennifer Dukarski, a part of this team of attorneys at Butzel Long,...

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An auto industry group has called on President Barack Obama to not change the plan for dedicated short range communication (DSRC) aimed at safer roads that requires setting apart the 5.9 GHz spectrum band towards this end. More than 50 entities signed the letter, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Carnegie Mellon University – University Transportation Center, and the...

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A developer working on the NissanConnect EV app has been caught using code from StackOverflow instead of writing it himself. 

StackOverflow is the world's largest Q&A resource for developers, and this programmer certainly isn't...

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The introduction of autonomous cars is expected to cause motor insurers to go through a substantial restructuring, as warned this week by automotive giant Volvo. 

Everyone dreads their motor insurance renewal, even the smallest vehicles end up costing most people...

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As automakers across the globe work on developing driverless car technology for use at the end of the decade, SMRT Services and 2getthere have formed a joint venture to commercialise 2getthere’s Automated Vehicle systems in the Asia-Pacific region.

The new Singapore-based JV, called 2getthere Asia, will market, install, operate and maintain the Automated Vehicle systems for customers in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific. The entity will put on display 2getthere’s third-generation...

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Automotive diagnostics provider TEXA has renewed its agreement with cloud services provider Interoute, with the latter continuing to serve as ICT provider.

TEXA’s product range comprises remote diagnostic tools for trucks, cars, motorcycles, agricultural vehicles and marine engines. TEXA’s TEXA MOBILE Diagnostic (TMD), a small box enabled with GPS and GSM/GPRS, is utilised to locate vehicles, exchange real time information with drivers, as well as monitor components and...

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A report from SNS Research estimates that connected car services will bring in nearly $40 billion (£27.3bn) in annual revenue by 2020, including infotainment, navigation and fleet management among others.

The connected car segment is the fastest growing vertical in the Internet of Things (IoT) market due to the growth in use of embedded in-vehicle connectivity and smartphone integration platforms, the researchers argue. All major automotive OEMs are investing in connected car...

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What a difference a wire can make – or, a single, twisted wire pair. This is the case with the new IEEE 802.3bw™-2015 100BASE-T1 standard that supports 100 megabit per second (Mb/s) Ethernet operation over a single, balanced, twisted pair cable in the connected car.

My jest is appropriate, because this standard has immediate, practical implications for the connected car, as well as supporting a unified platform for the connected car’s future in the Internet of Things...

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Toyota has announced it is partnering with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) to transform Ann Arbor's streets into a real-world connected car deployment.

The Ann Arbor Connected Vehicle Test Environment (AACVTE) will serve as a real-world test environment for implementing connected vehicle safety technology that allows wireless communication of vehicles with other similar vehicles and portions of infrastructure such as traffic lights. These...

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Connected car technology manufacturer HARMAN International has announced the development of a system to remove blind spots in cars to avoid collisions with pedestrians.

Accidents involving pedestrians cause around 200 deaths and injure 15,000 people every year in the US. HARMAN's Reverse Pedestrian Detection safety system uses data from other HARMAN technologies, including a rear sensor and camera, to detect pedestrians behind a vehicle. Most importantly, it can detect smaller children...

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MWC 2016 was  something of a watershed for the connected car. While the connected car arrived a few years ago, this year we saw that it is raring to go mainstream. Ford and Nissan had their own stands at the show and Jaguar was showing off the new F-Pace, its ‘most connected car to date’.

This is not a new trend, but notable was the fact that more and more firms who are not directly part of the automotive industry also featured vehicles on their stands. AT&T and...

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We have all seen humorous videos of what a world fully consisting of driverless cars will look like. It’s fascinating as well as somewhat hair-raising seeing cars manoeuvring through swarm intelligence systems and missing each other by inches at high speed.

The latest patent from Google aims to take this a step further, by aiming to help its fleet of driverless cars better understand other cars’ turning signals.

The patent, which can be seen in full

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Israel-based startup Karamba Security has announced it has come out of stealth with a $2.5 million finance round in its attempts to provide a “unique approach to in-car security.”

Karamba Security's purpose-built ECU endpoint solution protects the externally connected components of a car, identifying attempts to attack and block exploits from infiltrating the network of the car.

The new solution will enable automakers to embed security enforcement and detection...

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Highways England, the arbiter for road network infrastructure in England, has unveiled a wide-ranging plan including opportunities for driverless cars and Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

Among the initial projects to be funded, according to the report, includes motorway to motorway traffic management schemes, as well as a ‘collaborative traffic management’ programme on the M25, as part of wider plans to make the road network and vehicles safer.

“We will pursue a...

Picture credit: (c) Hyundai Motor UK Ltd

Hyundai has become the latest automotive manufacturer to launch its connected car blueprint, collaborating with major networking and IT firms to develop a ‘hyper-connected and intelligent car’ concept.

The roadmap will see Hyundai focus its efforts on the 'Car to Life' initiative, aimed at taking forward the connected car era. The initiative will offer a knowledge hub to users and also enable them to analyse and use that information to improve owners'...