Mercedes introduced the new S-Class at the Airbus A380 delivery center in Hamburg (Photo: Daimler)

Daimler introduced the new Mercedes S-Class to the world this week, unveiling a model it hopes will be the benchmark for tomorrow’s premium driving experience.

The German luxury car maker’s top-of-the-line model traditionally features cutting-edge technologies that will make their way into other Mercedes models later on. The 2013 S-Class is no exception.

From the start, the car will be available with a hybrid powertrain, underlining Daimler’s efforts to make even its biggest models as fuel-efficient as possible. In the area of driver assistance, the S-Class has so many new technologies it is technically capable of driving itself. A new HMI consists of two monitors that control a range of functions. And on the outside – as well as the inside – Daimler says it has built the first car that relies completely on LEDs for its lighting.

Like other premium carmakers, Daimler is keen to demonstrate that high-end models can also be fuel-efficient. R&d boss Thomas Weber said in a press statement that the carmaker will continue to strive for “Green Leadership” and will soon introduce a plugin hybrid version of the S-Class. It will be “the first S-class with a fuel consumption lower than 4 liters per 100 km,” Weber said.

The S-Class, which will go on sale this autumn, has a wide range of safety and driver assistance systems. They include:

• Pre-safe brake, which can detect pedestrians and slow down the car automatically 
• Pre-safe plus, which can recognize imminent rear-end collisions
• Pre-safe impulse, which instructs seat belts to pull driver and front-seat passenger away from the direction of impact
• Distronic plus, which provides automatic lane guidance and lets the car automatically follow another vehicle in a traffic jam
• A new braking assist function that can detect crossing traffic and pedestrians
• Adaptive highbeam assist plus, which adjusts high beams to avoid dazzling oncoming traffic
• An improved night view function that uses a thermal imaging camera

The new safety functions employ a sensor system that consists of a stereo camera coupled with multi-stage radar sensors. Said Weber: “The new S-Class doesn’t just have eyes at the front, it has 360-degree all-round vision.”

The two high-resolution 12.3 inch TFT color displays available to the driver provide access to all information. The left-hand display performs the functions of the traditional instrument cluster. The other display, which is part of an entirely new Comand HMI, controls infotainment and comfort functions.

The S-Class has a touch-sensitive telephone keypad and a rotary pushbutton with direct access keys in the center console for key functions.

In Germany, S-Class prices start at 79,789.50 euros.

-By Arjen Bongard

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Kroes will propose legislation for a common EU telecoms market (Photo: EU)

Europe needs an integrated telecommunications market as machine-to-machine connectivity takes on growing importance, EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Thursday.

Kroes, who is in charge of Europe’s digital agenda, said in a speech to the 11th European Business Summit in Brussels that the absence of a Europe-wide telecoms market is a major obstacle in the way of new IT and communications services.

“The European telecoms market is actually just 27 distinct national markets,” Kroes said, adding that this makes it hard for telecommunications operators to achieve the size and scale needed “to invest, innovate and compete globally.” It also denies people and industry access to a growing range of IT products and services that are essential in a connected world.

“Today many businesses find roaming charges a costly irritant,” Kroes said, referring to the higher rates charged by mobile operators for calls made and received in another EU member country. “That will be yet worse in a world of machine to machine communications, where everything is connected, from your car to your wallet.”

The EU commissioner said she will soon present proposals for a single telecoms market, which, she added, is a priority for the rest of her mandate. The reason: “Because we need companies to smash barriers, think European, and compete globally: even against the American giants.”

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The V60 Plugin Hybrid can cover 50km on full electric power (Photo: Volvo)

Volvo Cars is boosting production of its V60 Plug-in hybrid amid strong demand for its first diesel-hybrid model.

The Swedish automaker said it will almost double production of the model at its Torslanda plant to 282 cars a week from 150. It cited particularly strong demand in Holland, Belgium and Italy.

The V60 plugin hybrid  has official CO2 emissions of just 48 grams/km. It can be operated in three modes: pure, hybrid or power.

In electric mode, the car can travel up to 50 km, while the power option, which lets a driver combine the electric and diesel aggregates, provides 285 horsepower for a sporty drive.

Peter Mertens, head of Volvo’s r&d, said the different options should appeal to a customer “who wants minimum carbon dioxide emissions combined with maximum driving pleasure.”

Volvo is owned by Geely, a Chinese carmaker. The two companies’s product ranges are currently far apart, with Volvo building much more upmarket models than Geely. But the two companies recently started work on a common C-segment architecture, which would allow greater cooperation between the brands a few years down the road.

Volvo will shortly open its first car plant in China as it starts an ambitious drive to double annual sales from about 400,000 to more than 800,000 by 2020. The Chinese market will play a major role in realizing those ambitions.

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GM will manage global data from Warren, Michigan (Photo: GM)

General Motors opened a new 130 million-dlr data center this week, as the automaker continues its company-wide IT transformation.

The center – in Warren, Michigan, outside Detroit – will serve as the backbone for all of the company’s global computing operations. It is one of just two that will replace 23 global IT centers over the next two years. Construction on a second data center in Milford, Michigan, will begin this summer and will be completed in 2014. The data consolidation is at the heart of GM’s plan to make its IT operations more efficient.

“Having a single nerve center for our global operations will get newer vehicle designs and technologies into our customers’ hands quicker and improve the bottom line,” GM CEO Dan Akerson said at the opening of the new facility. He added that the consolidation removes “unnecessary complexity” and will boost operational efficiency.

The automaker provided several examples of the benefits data consolidation would bring. It said centralizing data in Warren would make it easier to simulate crash tests, which saves 350,000 dlrs for each physical crash test avoided. Engineering expenses will also be cut as a new application lets product developers make tooling payments to suppliers throughout the development cycle. This will help suppliers better prioritize the timing of critical parts. And GM said the consolidated data center will make it easier to track and analyze car sales data, which would help the company better plan for future sales.

GM will use the two data centers to create a secure, private cloud that allows super-computer applications, servers and data storage to be efficiently and quickly accessed among multiple users.

Randy Mott, GM’s CIO said the data center consolidation is just one part of the transformation of the company’s IT he has been spearheading over the past year. “It’s part of an overarching strategy to transform not only information technology but also allow GM’s business operations to be more responsive to our customers, quicker to market and deliver on our objectives to shareholders,” Mott said in a press release.

Mott’s IT revamp also means he is bringing in-house the bulk of all IT services. In the process, he is terminating a broad range of IT service contracts and is hiring IT staff globally. In an interview with automotiveIT last year, Mott explained that one of the major benefits of an in-house IT operation is that knowledge is retained within the company. And he said that working with inhouse IT staff would provide a big boost to innovation within the company.

GM’s new 5,040-square-foot IT Operations and Command Center in Warren is equipped with 48 work stations and a 955-square-foot video wall. The wall consists of 28 configurable screens that monitor data use across operations around the clock.

With only two data centers running global IT, GM had to choose the locations of the facilities carefully. It opted for Milford, where its Milford Proving Ground is located, because that puts the two locations more than 25 miles but less than 50 miles apart. This allows data to be mirrored so that each facility will have all data available in case of a problem.

“It’s all about reducing risk and making sure no one event would affect both centers at the same time,” said Curt Loehr, GM IT project manager.

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Daimler’s r&d center in Bangalore is the biggest of its kind outside Germany (Photo: Daimler)

BANGALORE – Companies in mature markets are increasingly transferring r&d abroad and premium car maker Daimler is no exception.

The company recently inaugurated a new r&d center here, underscoring the importance it attaches to the fast-growing Indian market.

“India is one of the core markets of our Mercedes-Benz 2020 growth strategy, and it has enormous growth potential,” said Thomas Weber, Daimler’s head of r&d. “With our new research center, we are further expanding our presence in the market so our research and development can be closer to our customers as well.”

Daimler employs about 21,000 researchers and development engineers in eight countries. The company’s Bangalore facility is its largest r&d location outside of Germany and the largest of any automaker on the sub-continent.

The reasons for the investment are obvious: “We need international locations so we can know what is happening in the world,” Weber said in an interview with automotiveIT.

It is not just Daimler that sees major opportunities to score points with a globally dispersed development network. A full-fledged automotive cluster with supplier partners such as Robert Bosch, Continental and Behr has grown up in Bangalore and Pune, 150 km southeast of Mumbai. The suppliers give development jobs wholly or in part to operations in India.

For the full story, please subscribe to the automotiveIT Executive Report by going to: www.automotiveIT.com/executive-report.

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Ulrich Lenz (left) and Hartmut Wagner pay particular attention to the user experience on BMW Web sites (Photo: Claus Dick)

Ulrich Lenz, head of the premium car maker’s interactive marketing, and Hartmut Wagner, IT manager process IT, sat down with automotiveIT to discuss the benefits of the integrated approach, how they defined the requirements of the new site and what their next steps are likely to be.

In preparing for the relaunch of BMW’s Web site, the two executives found that customers today limit their visits to the showroom and conduct most research online.

“Often they also already make a decision in principle then,” said Lenz.

Those findings played a key role in building the new Web site, said Wagner. “Especially with the central car configurator application we attached a great deal of importance to making the pictures as realistic as possible,” he said.

In the interview, the two executives also explain how the new Web site is a key part of BMW’s “Future Retail” strategy, how they manage customer relations and how a BMW portal is the likely solution for the future.

Read the full interview in the April issue of the automotiveIT Executive Report. To subscribe, please go to: www.automotiveIT.com/executive-report.

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BYD unveiled the Si Rui at the Shanghai auto show (Photo: BYD)

BYD will use Nuance speech technology to operate a range of functions in its new models.

The Chinese car and battery systems maker will use the software to operate functions such as radio, TV and DVD player as well as the navigation system in its new Si-Rui models.

BYD, which showed the new models and their infotainment systems at the Shanghai auto show in April, said voice technology is part of its strategy to bring new and innovative infotainment systems to the Chinese market.

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Companies want BPM software to be simple (Photo: Metasonic)

German managers see big savings potential from the use of business process management software, according to a recent poll.

The Software Initiative Germany (SID), an industry association, and software group Metasonic interviewed 100 German business managers and found that 58 pc of them see an industry-wide savings potential of around 5 billion euros. Another 35 pc estimates costs can be reduced by 10 billion euros or more across the country’s economy.

Managers were most interested in long-term investment protection and process automation. They also said employees should be able to use BPM systems without any programming or IT knowledge. Simplicity was a key requirement for almost all executives polled.

“The corporate demand for simple and user-friendly BPM solutions continues to grow,” said Metasonic CEO Herbert Kindermann. Kindermann also is head of the SID’s Quo Vadis BPM forum, a subcommittee that looks in particular at BPM-related issues.

“The various company departments are increasingly supported by IT and it is important that the two sides work together harmoniously to be commercially successful,” Kindermann said in a press statement. “That takes some pressure off of IT departments and boosts innovation.”

Executives’s top 10 BPM wishlist looks like this:

1. Departments can do their own process optimization
2. Simple process modeling
3. Simple and user-friendly operation
4. Simple management, monitoring and optimization of business processes
5. Long-term investment protection
6. Cost reduction through process automation
7. Enhancement of flexibility
8. Lowering of error rate
9. Short implementation timeframe
10. System- and platform-independent solution.

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The electric BMW i3 city vehicle will be launched later this year (Photo: BMW)

BMW has teamed up with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to conduct research on future transportation technologies. The collaboration will focus on advanced battery materials for electric vehicles, human machine interfaces and mobility patterns and concepts.

BMW and NTU said in a press release that their joint research, which will be conducted in a new Future Mobility Research Lab in Singapore, will target the Asian market in particular.

BMW has established several research labs with universities, including with the Technical University of Munich, Georgia Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Singapore is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

Joint research projects in Singapore will take place as planners project that more than 70 pc of the world population will live in megacities by 2070. That makes a compact island city such as Singapore an ideal testing ground for new mobility concepts. “Singapore offers the setting of a highly-dense, urbanized megacity,” said BMW senior vice president Kay Segler.

NTU President Bertil Andersson said he was confident the collaboration with BMW “will result in important discoveries in sustainable mobility and future motoring.”

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The US Administration wants drivers to keep their eyes on the road (Photo: NHTS)

The US administration released guidelines Monday that include concrete measures to reduce driver distraction.

The recommendations, issued by the Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), call on automakers to disable manual text entry for messaging and internet browsing while a car is in motion; not include video-based entertainment and communications in infotainment systems; and not display text messages and some other types of text on in-car monitors while the car is being driven.

The proposals are part of the US government’s continuing efforts to limit driver distraction resulting from the sharp increase in entertainment, communication and navigation functions available in today’s cars.

“Distracted driving is a deadly epidemic that has devastating consequences on our nation’s roadways,” said US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The guidelines aim to provide automakers with “a way to balance the innovation consumers want with the safety we all need.”

NHTSA also recommends to instal systems that limit the time a driver must take his eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time and twelve seconds total.

The agency cited a new study that shows that so-called visual-manual tasks conducted with mobile phones while driving increase the risk of getting into a crash by three times. The study also found that text messaging while driving increased the risk of a crash or near-crash by two times and resulted in the driver’s eyes off the road for an average of 23.3 seconds total. Using a cellphone to place or receive a call increases the risk by three times.

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