INSIDE
By Stephen Metzger
Managing Director
Small Vehicle Resource, LLC
[email protected]
www.smallvehicleresource.com
THE GATED
COMMUNITY
R
ecent stories about problems at Tesla
have led analysts to describe wildly
different outcomes with regard to the
company’s stock price. Worst case scenarios
proliferate, some forecasting the stock price
to fall to range of $10-$12!
In addition to the specific projections con-
cerning Tesla, the current pessimism con-
cerning the company tends to cast a pall
on the future of electric-powered vehicles
in general. What is lost in this and other
stories of electric on-road, conventional ve-
hicles (and these would include the vaunted
Ford-VW alliance and Daimler-Benz’s 2017
announcement of $11 billion investment in
10 electric vehicle models by 2022) is the
much broader concept of electric mobility,
in which a wide range of technologies are
participating.
As these technologies come together on
mobile platforms, it is likely that the planned
or gated community is the sort of environ-
ment where early commercialization and
use will take place.
Technologies converging on the electric
mobility market
Some of the technologies and products
feeding into the electric mobility market are
discussed in the following. One key aspect
of these technologies is that all of them
serve multiple markets. None are solely de-
pendent on the market for personal trans-
port, thus making each a better prospect for
capital funding and sustained development.
20
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Why Will New Mobile-Related
Technologies Impact the
Gated Community
Artificial intelligence—This technology is being
developed for virtually limitless applications
from manufacturing to product distribution—
and, of course, automotive and mobility. AI
systems employ data acquisition, data storage,
and algorithms which give direction to external
components, without human intervention. AI
not only processes signals from sensory devices, but is
capable of learning in the process of doing.
LiDAR—One of the sensory device technologies is LiDAR,
and as a descriptive term is the combination of “light” and
“radar”. To detect objects at a distance LiDAR and measure
that distance, LiDAR systems send out near-infra-red light
pulses that reflect off objects and returned to the LiDAR
module. The process of sending out and receiving reflect-
ed light signals allows the system to measure distances, as
well as the shapes and conformations of the objects detect-
ed.
One of the important manufactur-
ers of LiDAR systems is Velodyne
LiDAR, based in San Jose, CA.
Initial LiDAR installations on the
roof of vehicles were large and
bulky. Velodyne’s Puck™ line of
LiDAR products has compressed
Velodyne Puck LiDAR
the device to a significantly small-
system
er size which allows more flexible
installation and preserves style features of a vehicle.
LiDAR systems have a wide range of applications besides
the self-driving developments in the automotive market.
Applications include topographic mapping, undersea of
bathymetric mapping, and warehouse sorting systems.
Sensory systems continue to develop in the form of sensor
fusions with Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR), Light
Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), and optical sensors (camer-