The recent announcement on Reuters outlining the new partnership between GM and Honda, to bring two EV vehicles to market for a safer world exemplifies the pressures automotive manufacturers are under today. Honda and GM Partner for EV – Reuters, April 2, 2020  This announcement is not surprising as it is drafting behind GM and Honda’s current collaboration on autonomous vehicles and fuel cell vehicle technology. The companies worked together on the design of an autonomous vehicle called Cruise Origin for GM’s majority-owned Cruise Automation unit.

Other big industry announcements on EV and ADAS initiatives further support that, COVID-19 aside, the fierce march for fully autonomous and EV vehicles continues. EV truck maker, Rivian, backed by Ford and Amazon, raised a whopping $1.3 Billion and plans to deliver 100,000 EV vans to Amazon by 2025. Lucid Automotive plans to bring luxury EV to the market competing with the Tesla Model S. Lucid just released a fun video of a real-world range test (it includes a beautiful shot of the Bixby Canyon Bridge).

EV and ADAS technologies bring solution to macro societal problems, protecting the environment and protecting health and safety of humans. These trends will not go away for the foreseeable future. The micro-economic effect on automotive companies is shifting efforts and process to solve for these technologies. And, “More for less” will always be the corporate mantra driving budgets and timelines for engineers in the automotive industry as well as others.

The only way to shorten development timelines, while building more advanced (and complex) technologies, is through transferring more development process from the physical world to a virtual world. Engineers agree that building virtual worlds modeling the real-world, with precision, is how to get there. Industries highly regulated for health and safety, such as automotive, have a very high bar indeed when building virtual worlds capable of replacing physical real-world design, development and test. Yet, automotive companies are now introducing simulation throughout the development process.

Creating the virtual environments automotive companies need is not a simple process. Of course, it is not single engineering data source that is needed. It is not even all the engineering data sources within the organization that solves this virtual world problem.

“Sensor Fusion” is required. The ability to synchronize all sources of corporate engineering sensor data with external sources which model the environment, (think weather and topography) along with visual reference. And this is what automotive engineers are doing.

Viviota’s webinar next week “How ADAS and EV are Game Changers in Safety Testing” will show how simulation is being used in active and passive safety tests to accelerate product development in cost-effective ways. You will see:

• How virtual test-driving and simulation is expediting active and passive safety testing
• How automotive manufacturers are employing in-car ADAS Tests and Driving Dynamics
• How fully integrated and automated analysis management, engineering data management and test scheduling is speeding product time-to-market

Stay safe and healthy and hope to see you there! Register here.