Click to Enlarge.
SEMA, Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Assn, has released its “Future Trends – January 2022” report today. It says 2021 was a strong year for the industry amid high demand, with many companies reporting record growth. The specialty-equipment market should continue to grow in 2022, but at more muted levels, before returning to more normal (pre-pandemic) growth for 2023 and beyond, said the trade organization. According to the report, nearly three-quarters (74%) of industry companies expect sales growth in 2022. Key effects for the industry will be consumer demand, supply-chain disruption, rising costs and automotive sales.
SEMA report also reflects the ongoing Biden economic recovery as 2021 was a strong year for the U.S. economy amid record demand and consumer spending. Currently, the automotive industry has 2.91 million employees, only 4% below employment levels from before the pandemic in February 2020, making the automotive industry one of the best recoveries of any sector in the economy. Continue reading
Automated Driving – Mercedes to Work with Luminar on Lidar
By 2030, the subsidiary of Daimler – belatedly? – wants more than half the cars it sells to have electric drive systems – including all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, areas it has been slow to embrace.
Mercedes-Benz and Luminar Technologies today announced a partnership to accelerate development of future automated driving technologies for passenger cars through the use of Lidar. This is optical sensing used to determine the position, velocity, or other characteristics of distant objects by analysis of pulsed laser light reflected from their surfaces. It’s radar with light beams instead of radio waves. The goal is to industrialize and integrate Lidar into upcoming mass-production Mercedes-Benz vehicles. “By shortening development cycles and strengthening technology partnerships Mercedes-Benz seeks to ensure that its vehicles have the most up-to-date technologies,” the German automaker said. (Read AutoInformed on First Look: Mercedes EQS All-Electric Sedan)
With the so-called “DRIVE PILOT,” Mercedes-Benz will offer conditionally automated driving at SAE Level 3 where a driver does not need to monitor the driving situations constantly but must take back control when the system requests.) In December 2021 Mercedes-Benz was the first automotive manufacturer globally to secure an internationally valid system approval for conditionally automated driving (SAE Level 3) – marking a milestone in automotive development. The company’s DRIVE PILOT automated driving system will enter series production in the S-Class and EQS this year. (Read AutoInformed on Stellantis on SAE Level 3 Public Road Autonomous Driving; Dangerous Marketing Tower of Babble: The Actual Meaning and Real Performance of Driver Assist and Autonomous Vehicles) Continue reading →