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News Roundup: Waymo Gets Patent For Exterior Airbags On Self-Driving Cars, Ford to Test ‘Cellular-V2X’ Tech in San Diego and More

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Jennifer van der Kleut

 

Waymo granted patent for exterior airbags

Google’s self-driving car spinoff company, Waymo, has been granted a patent for an airbag system that would be located on the outside of a car. Since self-driving cars are outfitted with sensors, cameras, radar and lidar on the outside of the car, Waymo engineers argue that the car itself can predict an accident even sooner than a human driver can (or can’t, if he or she is distracted). The concept of exterior airbags could protect passengers in the vehicle from an impact, as well as “reduce the likelihood of severe injuries or damage to objects such as pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, other vehicles, or simply inanimate objects.” Read more from Silicon Beat.

 

Mcity autonomous vehicle testing ground gets big investment from automakers, corporations

Mcity, the University of Michigan’s testing ground for autonomous vehicles, has received a total of $11 million in funding from 11 different companies, both corporations and automakers. Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Honda all contributed about $1 million each, and other corporations like State Farm Insurance, Verizon, LG and others. Mcity is a 32-acre man-made “city” where companies can conduct research and test autonomous vehicles. The hub offers a number of varied conditions for vehicles to test in, such as different road conditions, four-lane highways, high-pedestrian streets featuring fake, mechanical pedestrians, and much more. Read more from HybridCars.com.

 

Ford partnering with AT&T, Qualcomm and Nokia to test ‘cellular-V2X’ technology

Ford Motor Co. announced this week that it has formed a partnership with Qualcomm, AT&T and Nokia to test cellular modems that can connect vehicles to each other and to roadside infrastructure to help better navigate in bad weather or construction zones. “Cellular-V2X” technology, as it is called, aims to connect vehicles with traffic lights, roadside beacons and other vehicles on the road to share real-time information about driving conditions. It’s meant to improve safety, as well as help speed up the deployment of self-driving vehicles. Testing is scheduled to take place in San Diego, California before the end of the year. For testing, Ford vehicles will be outfitted with Qualcomm hardware powered by AT&T’s 4G LTE cellular network and Nokia’s computing technology. Read more from Automotive News.

Image: Rendering of self-driving minivan with exterior airbags by Waymo

In Q1 2016, the Biggest U.S. Demographic Buying Mobile Data Service Was…Cars

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Jennifer van der Kleut

Can you name someone you know who does not own a smartphone? It might be tough. It’s no secret that the U.S. smartphone market is heavily saturated.

When it comes to cellular service and data plans, the biggest piece of the pie when it comes to sales continues to be existing customers-that is, people who are already devoted smart-device customers, but are looking to upgrade to fancier, more high-tech mobile devices with better features, or who are switching providers to get a better deal on their service.

But an interesting new market report indicates that the biggest growth these days is coming from new customers wanting new types of devices-and the most attractive new customer is actually your car, Recode reports.

“In the first quarter, for example, the major carriers actually added more connected cars as new accounts than they did phones,” Recode reported.

In fact, 32 percent of all net-add devices (new devices previously not hooked up to data service) were cars last quarter, indicates industry consultant Chetan Sharma in her U.S. Mobile Market Update report.

Sharma reports that AT&T has been adding the most new connected-car clients, though Verizon remains an undisputed, overall industry leader.

“Verizon’s IoT/Telematics accounted for $195M in Q1 and is likely to cross the $1-billion mark in 2016, making the U.S. the hotbed for ‘Connected Intelligence’ activities, growth, and continued experimentation,” Sharma said.

Sharma reported that Apple dominated the device market in Q1, with a 39-percent share, and Android business rose only slightly, mostly thanks to sales of Samsung devices, while Sony, HTC, LG and some other Android players suffered “deep losses.”

Looking ahead, Sharma predicts the U.S. mobile data traffic to grow by 65 percent in 2016.