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GM reveals Ultra Cruise, a more advanced semi-self-driving system

General Motors has shown off some aspects of its new upgraded semi-autonomous driving system called Ultra Cruise.

The system promises to be a huge leap over GM’s current hands-free driver assistance program Super Cruise. However, the automaker notes that this isn’t an upgrade on Super Cruise, but, rather, a more premium option reserved for more expensive vehicles.

However, that’s good news for upper-class Canadians since the new software can apparently work on 95 percent of roads in the country. With the goal of making it work on every street in both countries eventually.

Ultra Cruise needs more sensors than Super Cruise to create accurate 3D representations of the world around it. This allows it to work on over two million miles of roads now, potentially working on over three million in the future. However, it’s still considered a level-two autonomous system, so it won’t be full self-driving just yet.

However, the company didn’t mention when this feature comes or what vesicles under what GM sub-brand will have it.

On top of the Ultra Cruise announcement, GM also talked about its plans to retool its company with more of a software focus to help drive growth moving into the future.

Source: GM

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Samsung in talks with Tesla to develop next-gen self-driving chips

Report are circulating that Samsung and Tesla are looking to further their relationship by developing a new self-driving chipset for the automaker’s Full Self-Driving 4 chipset.

Samsung already makes chips for the Model 3 and other Tesla vehicles with the Full Self-Driving 3 hardware, so if the rumour is true, this will keep the Korean tech giant’s computer chips in every Tesla vehicle moving forward.

The automaker has said before that we’d see new self-driving hardware with the launch of the Cybertruck in 2022. If we’re going to hear about a new Samsung and Telsa partnership, that seems like the place to do it.

The previous self-driving chip that Samsung produced was built on the 14-nanometer technology, but the new chip is rumoured to feature 7-nanometer construction. This should increase both the speed and the power of the chip considerably. The Cybertruck self-driving tech is reportedly roughly four times as capable as the current chip, which also suggests it will include the new chip. You can learn more about the previous Tesla chip, here.

A Reuters report mentions that the leading chipmaker globally — TSMC in Taiwan — builds 52 percent of the world’s chips, and Samsung is in second place with 17 percent. with this in mind, a move more into EV and vehicle chip production might help the South Korean company gain some more market share.

Source: Electrek, WikiChip

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Ford increasing production for F-150 Lightning electric truck

Ford is investing an extra $250 million USD (roughly $318 million CAD) to boost production and add more electric vehicle-related (EV) jobs to its production facilities.

The automaker says that this investment will add a total of 450 jobs and bring Ford’s Lightning production capacity up to 80,000 per year. This seems like a nice amount of trucks, but since the company is sitting on over 130,000 pre-orders, it will be over a year before everyone who wants one gets one.

The first trucks should start rolling out to consumers and dealerships in the spring of 2022.

These numbers are nothing to scoff at and Ford getting into the electric truck game is a big deal, but these stats illustrate how small the EV market actually is for the automaker. For comparison, Ford sold 900,000 F-150 trucks on average every year before the pandemic.

Over the next few years, with  Tesla, Rivian, GM and Ford all releasing electric trucks, it will be interesting to see what company becomes the next major North American truck supplier.

Image credit: Ford 

Via: Engadget