Continental driving towards future mobility in ASEAN by expanding production, R&D

Peter Rankl

The Continental group of companies has been one of the biggest and most innovative leaders in automotive technology for 150 years. The company has contributed to the development and growth of the industry. In the past decade, Continental has seen a drastic change in the trend towards digitalisation and autonomous mobility, and has concentrated more and more on digital integration to optimise safety and driving experience.

With production sites in ASEAN since over 40 years, Continental has a long history in the region. With more than 9,000 employees in 10 locations, both for production and R&D, ASEAN is an integral part of Continental’s Asia region growth strategy. The company is producing products ranging from tyres to cockpit modules as well as the latest automotive electronics, including radar sensors, in the ASEAN region. With the creation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement (FTA), the largest free trade zone in the world, Continental sees ASEAN as the perfect location to participate in the growth of the most dynamic market in the world.

Radar sensors are one of Continental’s widely integrated innovations and have been a success story of the company for more than 20 years. The continuous development of new Sugar cane field burning in Thailand. technologies to improve the efficiency of its radar sensors to best serve the great demand in the industry. The sixth generation of long-range radar and surround radar sensors was recently introduced, and although production is scheduled to start in 2023 customer orders have already been received. Both types of radar sensors share a software and hardware platform, thereby reducing complexity and costs. The sensors can also be used to cover the requirements of the General Safety Regulation (GSR). Moreover, they also support a range of vehicle architecture and types through their availability as smart radar, with data processing in the sensor and as satellite radar in a central control unit. In addition to the development of long-range radar with a range of around 250 metres, design also focuses on 360-degree environmental detection. With a range of around 200 metres, the future surround radar sensors have significantly greater range than the previous short-range radar sensors, thereby laying the foundation for excellent results in future New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) assessments of assistance systems. Thanks to greater responsiveness, surround radars detect objects such as crossing vehicles, motorcycles and cyclists faster and more precisely, even when located in particularly difficult installation positions in the vehicle. Especially in the case of the sides of a vehicle, surround radar has features that make both advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving more powerful.

“For many years, Continental has been producing radar sensors at its Calamba site in the Philippines, and it already has plans in place to further extend its activities in ASEAN with the latest technologies to support future mobility. Furthermore, radar sensors will be vital to the ASEAN market, where motorcycles are among the most popular means of commuting, as they can further improve road safety and prevent accidents. Good examples are functions like blind-spot detection and emergency city braking,” President of ASEAN Continental Automotive, Mr. Peter Rankl explained.

Connectivity is the key to autonomous mobility. To support a seamless integration, Continental also explores and invests heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) software as the demand for high-performance processors is growing as a result of increasing requirements for networked, automated and autonomous driving.

The need for processors that are optimised for the specific requirements of AI is growing. Whereas just a few megabytes of sensor data per second had to be analysed a couple of years ago, that figure will increase to several gigabytes per second in the coming years. While a lane departure warning system used to require just a simple black-and-white camera, the autonomous vehicles of the future will, in some cases, use more than 20 high-resolution vehicle surroundings sensors such as radar, camera and lidar.

Continental is defining a new approach to developing vehicle architecture, expanding its leading role in the field of automotive software. It is working on a new chip architecture for object recognition in real time, based on AI. The processors of the future are intended for use in Continental’s high-performance vehicle computers, among other applications, where they will perform rapid processing of sensor data for automated and autonomous driving. Figuratively speaking, the new highly specialised processors serve as an ultra-economical data booster: With minimal energy consumption, they will enable vehicle computers to gain a rapid sense of the vehicle’s immediate surroundings, thus creating the basis for automated and autonomous driving.

Through the recent partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Continental is moving forwards within the scope of new development co-operation. The company is also able to gather the data via the radar sensors. The goal of the long-term collaboration with AWS serving as the preferred cloud provider is to develop Continental Automotive Edge (CAEdge) – a modular hardware and software platform that connects a vehicle to the Cloud and features a virtual workbench offering numerous options to develop, supply and maintain softwareintensive system functions. This will allow drivers to integrate the functions they want, going forwards during the entire service life of their vehicle by downloading quick and convenient software updates. As software is at the forefront of innovation in the vehicles, the collaboration will support Continental’s efforts to accomplish this task and will continue to expand Continental’s leading role in the field of automotive software.

To support a seamless integration, Continental also explores and invests heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) software as the demand for high-performance processors is growing as a result of increasing requirements for networked, automated and autonomous driving.“

Fact: Continental is driving autonomous mobility

Today Continental has around 20,000 software engineers and already employs more than 900 AI experts. By 2022, the number of employees will be about 1,900.

The engineers are distributed around the world, including Singapore where Continental is one of the largest engineering companies with more than 1,400 employees. With highlyskilled specialists’ teams, Continental is working together with the global organisations and local partners to develop the next level of

Collaboration with AWS for Cloud connectivity autonomous vehicles. One excellent example is the establishment of a joint corporate laboratory with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, the leading technical university in Asia, to jointly work on the latest technology and innovations.

Value creation with software is recording double-digit percentage growth every year. Continental is the first automotive supplier to supply a central high-performance computer for Volkswagen’s ID series, and orders for which have already been received from several automakers worth more than 4 billion euros.

Peter Rankl, President of ASEAN Continental Automotive

Contact details: Napat Khomsir, Communications M&E Manager Automotive ASEAN, Continental Automotive Bangkok Co., Ltd,. Tel:+66 86 414 6691, napat.khomsiri@continental-corporation. com