Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Saturday, March 4, 2017
The New Strategy in the Auto Industry Cars Nobody Will Buy
The New Strategy in the Auto Industry Cars Nobody Will Buy
Car companies are running out of stuff to make and struggling to stand out
The fancy-car selfie is a social media staple. And there will be a steady stream of them starting Saturday, when the masses pour into the annual North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But it will be difficult to picture people actually buying many of this year?s crop of fancy cars.
This is de rigueur at a vehicle convention where regular people with regular paychecks intersect with six-figure speed machines. But the disconnect between the cars and the commerce is more pronounced at this year?s show, because the newest vehicles aren?t really the kind of rides people are lusting after these days. They?re also quite expensive.
The Mercedes-Benz AMG S63 races into a crowded field
Of the 20 or so models unveiled in Detroit this week, four were large, luxury sedans?a class of vehicles whose U.S. sales dropped 15 percent in 2015. Also prominent were premium sports cars, a segment that saw almost one-third of its buyers disappear last year.
The growth in the auto industry of late hasn?t come from low-slung, pricey machines, but rather from pickup trucks, entry-level sports cars such as the Ford Mustang, and SUVs of all shapes and sizes.
So how does a self-respecting car executive explain the carbon-fiber cornucopia delivered to the auto show this week? Well, it?s not that they?re tone-deaf. They know the sales trends better than anyone. It?s just that they?re running out of stuff to make.
While car sales recovered after the recent recession, product planners went for the easy money. They started making and overhauling the vehicles that would move the needle fastest.
Lincoln greenlighted a midsize crossover, the MKC, which parked squarely in the hottest segment of the business. Hyundai made over its Sonata sedan, its second-best seller. Acura designed an all-new sedan for first-time luxury buyers, the TLX. Meanwhile, Volvo spent lavishly to design a Swedish knockout of an SUV, the XC90.
Now all those brands are rolling out swanky sedans. The Lincoln Continental, the Genesis G90, the Acura Precision, and the Volvo S90 are some of the most saccharine eye candy in Detroit.
The new Volvo S90 promises to be as cool and easy as its award-winning XC90 crossover.
There?s a similar shift going on in the world of sports cars. In recent years, Mercedes dialed its SUV production up to 11; Porsche crafted the Macan, a pint-size SUV that quickly became the brand?s top seller in many markets; and Lexus added a similar model in the all-new NX.
One can find all those vehicles on the stands in Detroit?s Cobo Center. But the prime real estate?the spotlit, spinning podiums?will be filled with sportier options: the all-new Mercedes SLC roadster, a souped-up version of Porsche?s 911, a sinuous Lexus that looks like an angry spaceship, and the Buick Avista, a slinky streak of blue.
Buick?s Avista concept drew rave reviews for its leaf-shaped window openings and lustrous paint job
A lot of these cars won?t sell enough to justify their creation. It takes somewhere around $1 billion to develop a vehicle from pencil to final product, so it?s helpful to amortize that cost over as many units as possible.
But car executives have a bigger problem than unit economics to worry about: With a crush of buyers, they just need to get noticed.
Xavier Mosquet, senior partner in Boston Consulting Group?s auto unit, raised his eyebrows as he walked up to the sporty red Lexus. He was surprised that the vehicle was going to find its way to an assembly line, rather than being just a concept car to excite the crowds. Would it make money?
?That depends on how you divide the costs,? Mosquet explained. ?I think this one is for the branding. It?s a halo car.? In short, if the vehicle gets on enough magazine covers and turns enough heads at dealerships, its return will be evident in sales of less flashy Lexuses (Lexi?).
What also helps make the business case (at least a little bit) is China, where drivers?and the driven?still love big, distinguished sedans and stupid-expensive sports cars. Product planners looking to get the OK on a billion-dollar sports-car project, keep one figure at the ready: 9 percent. That?s the average annual growth rate of the passenger-car market in China for the past five years.
Klaus Zellmer, Porsche?s chief executive officer for North America, said he expects the Chinese economy to continue growing at more than 5 percent a year, despite recent signals that the wheels might be coming off.
Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was also sanguine about China as he pitched a new sedan from Infiniti, his company?s luxury brand. ?When you look at the fundamentals, there is nothing wrong with the development of the Chinese economy,? he said in an interview.
If Ghosn is wrong about that, the car show crowds should be quick with their cameras, because the industry?s stateliest, sportiest stuff, will just idle in dealerships ? and then disappear fast.
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Thursday, October 6, 2016
Toyota launches new AI lab in US calls autonomous cars robots on wheels
Toyota launches new AI lab in US calls autonomous cars robots on wheels
The biggest car company on earth has created a research center devoted to studying artificial intelligence. Heres what you need to know.
Toyota announces partnership with MIT and Stanford University for AI
This January, inside a temporary lab near MIT, and another at Stanford, a team of researchers is assembled to help Toyota develop artificial intelligence. The creation of the Toyota Research Institute, announced in November 2015, is a 5-year, $1 billion investment devoted to AI?focusing on the development of autonomous car technology and personal-assistant robots.
Gill Pratt, director of the Toyota Research Institute, is based at the Cambridge location?a larger-scale, permanent facility is currently under construction. Pratt, a roboticist by training, previously worked as a program manager for DARPA.
Toyota has "aspirations to be a leader in the field," said Pratt. To that end, theyve assembled a team of about two dozen members?while most have experience in computer science and artificial intelligence, others have backgrounds in robotics, cars, or design.
TechRepublic spoke to Pratt about Toyotas plans for the new bi-coastal research lab.
Why MIT?
Since Toyota wants to be a leader in AI, they "wanted to be where the action is," said Pratt. Although the company is based in Japan, it is a global brand, and most of its cars are sold in the US. By putting roots down near MIT, Toyota positioned itself at the center of innovation. "It is, without a doubt, a hotbed of where the kind of work on artificial intelligence, particularly applied to transportation is going on," said Pratt.
Why robots?
Toyota is not the first car company to invest in robots. Many, like Honda, have factory robots. But they are one of the first to invest heavily in home-assistant robots. Its because theyre looking to predict what customers will want over the long-term. "What are the needs that human beings are going to have in the next few years?" asked Pratt. Since Toyota is a Japanese company, and demographics are quickly moving to a large percentage of the population being elderly, creating assistant robots will help the elderly "live a dignified life," said Pratt. "We want to focus on mobility for both people and for goods, indoors as well as outdoors."
Why now? Whats led us to this peak in interest in self-driving cars?
Several factors have come together to make the current environment ripe for developing self-driving cars. According to Pratt, "technology has opened the door to whats possible." Here are five innovations that have contributed:
Mobile phones: The explosive growth of mobile technology, the low-powered computer processors, the computer vision chips and the cameras, and all the things in the phones have become "incredibly inexpensive and ubiquitous."
Wireless internet: The rise of 4G networks and WiFi have made it easier than ever to connect.
Computer centers in cars: Most new cars right today have a back-up cameras, front and back sensors, and other tech that helps drivers detect objects in the environment. Not only do most cars have these, but the cameras themselves have become better as well.
Maps: If youre talking about either the navigation system you have in your car, said Pratt, or Google maps in your phone, maps have become really good.
Deep learning: Computers now have "perception at levels of competence close to what a human being can do," said Pratt. "The car can look out on the world and tell the difference between a bicycle and a person thats walking, and a tree and a parking meter?all of these things, and can classify them either almost as well as we can, or in some cases, even a little bit better."
Toyota is most concerned about keeping safety as a top priority. Pratt believes that this is the greatest challenge in developing the technology. "We need to be making things work at the level of reliability that is required for our cars to travel safely," said Pratt. He thinks that Toyota and other car manufacturers may have a leg up in this department, over tech companies like Apple and Google. Theyre used to designing very strictly for safety.
Although Toyota plans to release their own semi-autonomous car by 2020, considering the challenges to ensuring safety, a fully-autonomous vehicle, Pratt believes, is "actually still years off"?unlike Elon Musk, he doesnt see it happening by 2020.
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