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Fiat Chrysler looks to achieve Alfa T he technology expert in charge of the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands believes the arrival of autonomous cars is imminent and will soon become a standard in the automobile industry even as he called the trend a collection of “gimmicks”, in an interview with Motor Trend. Alfa Romeo has just launched the Giulia in the US, after a 20-year break in production in America. The Giulia is aimed at competing against the BMW 3 series and Jaguar XE, and is said to be a result of the extensive restructuring programme that’s been happening at Alfa Romeo over the past two years. The company is also said to be planning to launch a larger SUV, aimed at competing with the BMW X3, Audi QS and the Mercedes GLC, among others. Alfa Romeo is one of the brands owned by the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group. Other marques in the company’s stables include Dodge, Jeep, Maserati and Ferrari. All these names are strongly associated with what could be described as a golden age of driving, each in its own way an apogee of mechanical“muscle car” achievement. Ferrari, for example, was initially built entirely for Formula 1 racing, only later going into production. Alfa Romeo also has a decorated history in motor racing, and was typical of the manual driving generation of cars, and it was among the carmakers which had a natural resistance to, or just simply ignored, innovations that had less to do with mechanics and more to do with electronics and computers. But in recent years, the trend has been towards automation, with increasing number of cars featuring driver assistance systems. For example, the vast majority of new cars sold in the US have automatic transmission, which was anathema for supercars until recently. Moreover, new cars are increasingly automated – from electric windows, to assisted parking, automatic collisionavoidance breaking, and so on. Not only that, technologies such as vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications are enabling companies such as NXP, the semiconductor maker, to play a bigger role in the auto market. And now, with Apple having employed several former Chrysler senior executives, the group is having an obvious rethink of its attitude towards autonomous driving. The generation that favoured the “driver’s car” is giving way to a new generation of safety-conscious tech fans. Harald Wester, CTO at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said the automobile group as a whole was spending more on autonomous driving technology, and it will roll out “more advanced systems” over time. “We will go with the Levante [another brand the auto giant owns owns] with the first rollout of more advanced systems,” he said. “Adaptive stop-and-go cruise control, the first step of autonomous driving, and so on. Because it's part of the safety strategy of the future, and it's becoming an indispensible attribute of any type of product. Usually people who are choosing our cars, they want to drive, they want to be involved, they don't want to be driven. Step by step: We will never be a full front-runner on these gimmicks. Autonomous driving is around the corner. It will be beneficial to all of us for safety reasons. A lot of questions remain, but from my point of view, it will become kind of a standard.” Wester also said the autonomous driving technology will find its way into the company’s other brands, including the Maserati, a car that could be said to be emblematic of the mechanical generation, but “not yet”.
editorial@roboticsandautomationnews.com
Autonomous cars With former Chrysler execs being hired by Apple, the company could be in line to win big when autonomous cars finally take to the road
Above: the Fiat 500e electric car, which the company claims to be selling at a loss
Wester said: “In the future, it will just become a standard. It's not a differentiator. It will become a kind of a knockout factor – you have to have it. Nobody will drive a Maserati because it has the best autonomous driving features. Maybe people will reject to buy one because they don't want to have something like this, but maybe they will want it in an absolutely annoying situation you are potentially in every morning and every evening. I still have difficulties to imagine myself sitting in my car behind my steering wheel and reading a newspaper. Can you imagine? It will be a generational change – our children, or the children of our children.” While sitting in what used to be the driving seat and reading a newspaper as the car drives itself would undoubtedly be difficult to imagine for generations of people who have been driving cars themselves, it’s not a concept that tech companies have had difficulties realising. Google was probably the first company to talk about and develop driverless cars, and the company’s odd-looking contraption was shown in news media being tested, amid much scepticism. But other companies have since entered the race to develop autonomous cars and have invested heavily in researching the technology. Apple is said to be developing its own autonomous car, even though the company has not yet publicly admitted it. As well as recently hiring former Chrysler executives, it has emerged that the tech giant has also been in talks with BMW. The talks took place about a year ago, and reportedly centred on BMW’s electric cars, in particular the i3. Both Apple and BMW have reputations for developing innovative technologies in their field. But both are highly secretive and their reluctance to share knowledge and production techniques with outsiders may make it difficult for them to develop a partnership. Moreover, BMW is said to be reluctant to become just a parts supplier, having enjoyed the status of being one of the world’s most prestigious car brands for many generations. However, with Apple having an install base of hundreds of millions of customers who have shown willingness to buy their electronic devices no matter how ridiculously expensive, doing business with the iPhone maker could be the biggest business BMW has ever conducted, if it were to happen. But it may well be Fiat Chrysler that makes a deal with Apple first, although not necessarily to the exclusion of others. Fiat Chrysler would seem to be in an ideal position to want a deal, with its change of attitude in embracing new technology, and with its restarting of production in the US. One choice that Apple may be faced with right now, if indeed it is having to make choices between who to make deals with, is this: the BMW models it was said to be interested in were electric cars, whereas the Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is said to hate electric cars and be firmly in favour of an alternative technology, the hydrogen fuel cell, a view shared by Wester. Having said that, Marchionne did oversee the launch of the Fiat 500e electric car, although he is reported to have begged people not to buy it because each unit is allegedly sold at a loss of thousands of dollars. But if the company is truly transforming itself and engaging with a new and fundamentally different generation of motorist, Fiat Chrysler is probably going to have to learn to love electric cars, and a less mechanical, more computerised, way of life on the roads. l
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