Transportation by MarketScale

LeddarTech President and COO Frantz Saintellemy joined host Daniel Litwin on this episode of MarketScale's Transportation podcast to explore the applications and trends surround LiDAR sensor technology and everything it touches, and how the industry is handling a transition from ADAS to autonomous technology.

Saintellemy has a lengthy career in the space, previously working for Integrated Device Technology as the company’s VP, Automotive and Industrial and as ZMDI AG’s Executive VP, Global Sales.

On this episode, Litwin and Saintellemy dove into the innovations in sensor technology, the transition from Automated Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to automation, the challenges facing global implementation of autonomy, and more.

“The most powerful innovation has been in the components side of the technologies,” Saintellemy said. “One of the challenges the industry has always faced was the availability of high-performance components at low cost that could be adopted by passenger cars. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen tremendous acceleration and advancements.”

In the quest for the global scaling autonomous vehicles, Saintellemy said, standardization will play a major role.

“For the industry to accelerate, you’re going to see more standardization,” he said. “There will be standard platforms where everyone can operate on the same platform with the same reference, the same definition, the same specs, the same common look and feel … Today, it’s too fragmented. Everyone’s trying to do something different.”

Aviation just got an upgrade with the Evolution E5 flight display system. Andy Smith, inside sales manager for Aspen Avionics, was on hand to give host Tyler Kern all the details about this affordable and configurable unit, which consolidates traditional attitude indicators and directional gyros into a single display.

“With the E5, you can take out your existing attitude and DG,” Smith said.

The E5 also includes vertical speed plus HIS into a single display with a backup battery. Some of the optional software upgrades include True Airspeed, Outside Air Temperature, Winds and GPS annunciations.

Kern asked Smith if the E5 allowed for the removal of the existing vacuum system, and Smith said yes, “as long as the vacuum system is not tied to an attitude generator that drives the autopilot, or if the attitude needs to be retained for flight director information.”

“As far as navigation goes,” Smith said, “the E5 will drive most autopilots on the market.” It will require an additional analog converter box to do so.

“The benefit of interfacing the E5 to any these legacy autopilot systems,” Smith said, “is the E5 does provide GPS roll steering information. That’s nice to have.”

The biggest tech show of the year, CES 2020, kicks off on January 7th, with the newest in everything from hobby toys to transformative AI. Daniel Aitken, Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications at LeddarTech, will be at the conference showcasing the latest technological advancements in LiDAR solutions for autonomous transportation. Aitken sat down with us on MarketScale's Transportation Podcast to give a sneak preview of LeddarTech’s vision for CES 2020.

“This year, we’re partnering with several different organizations, and we’ll be directly on their booth,” Aitkin said. “This will now allow people to be much more accessible to LeddarTech’s technology and be able to see it in some real-life situations, for example, in an automobile.”

The strategy this year is for LeddarTech to be able to blanket all of CES instead of one area.

The exciting product people will get to see at this year’s show is LeddarTech’s Leddar Pixell Cocoon LiDAR. The product provides up to 360° coverage of an autonomous vehicle, which eliminates blindspots, virtually, the surroundings of the vehicle. LeddarTech has more than 50 customers already engaged with the product, and they received an honorary CES 2020 award for it.

LeddarTech partnered with the government of Canada for this year’s CES 2020, and people can catch demonstrations of Leddar Pixel technology in their area in the Tech East part of the convention center.

“We’re also working with Karma Automotive, and they’ve designed a concept vehicle with our technology in it, and that will be at our booth as well,” Aitken said.

For more information about the upcoming CES2020 conference, go to ces.tech, and for more details about LeddarTech’s participation, go to leddartech.com/events.

The traditional image of a production job is one of repetitive monotony. On this episode of MarketScale’s Transportation Podcast, Tim Bynum, Production Manager for Mid Continent Controls, sat down with Sean Heath to discuss the way he approaches building the long-term skill set for their employees.

The first step in establishing a rewarding career is establishing a few basic skills, Bynum said.

“That skill set is like a stepping stone for them to start from the basics and move up to a broader experience level where they can use that in those roles as a supervisor or as a planner or something where their expertise is required," he said.

The opportunity to perform several different tasks throughout the production process has helped many of their current employees expand their roles with the company.

“We’ve had a couple of employees that have started out in a production area and, based on the experience and based on the knowledge they’ve gained while being a part of the production team, they’ve moved on to other positions in the company," Bynum said.

He also shared a few of the trends that are gaining traction in the aviation industry.

“The latest thing that’s coming out is the USB-C type product,” Bynum said. “The main thing that seems to be really steady for us are Bluetooth-type products.”

Although there is not one specific personality type that is singularly suited for a skill set that includes soldering, curiosity in childhood seems to be a good trait to have, according to Bynum.

“There are probably many times that I got in trouble for taking stuff apart and not being able to put it back together,” he said.

On this new JobCast brought to you by Marketscale, we sit down with Nate McCray, director of talent acquisition at LHP Engineering Solutions to discuss the open role of Embedded Software Engineer. Nate says the ideal candidate is an experienced software engineer with experience in the automotive industry or has a problem-solving, intellectually-curious mind for software that's critical to the overall function of an automobile.

"This position will help support the all-digital instrument clusters of an actual car," Nate said. "When you look at vehicle infotainment systems and controlling the multimedia functions of that vehicle, you want to have at your fingertips the capability to look up the speed, fuel, trip distance. Or, your phone's phonebook, active voice controls, or navigational systems... When you want to make a call, or do things at your fingertips while staying safe, that is what this position is all about. You're providing an easy to consume manner for the driver of the vehicle."

Since 2001, LHP Engineering Solutions has been providing engineering services and technology integration for embedded controls, telematics, data analytics, and model-based design. The Embedded Software Engineer will execute the design and develop new, advanced engineering products for vehicle access, helping put intuitive technology at the driver's fingertips.

Nate shared insight into the company's culture with a nod to Star Wars and answered one of our signature questions -- If LHP was a band, what band would it be.

Job basics:

If you'd like to apply for this position, head to https://lhpes.com/careers.

It's official. California's senate passed AB 5 on Tuesday, a bill that requires business to hire workers as employees rather than independent contractors. The controversial bill is setting new precedents for the gig economy after heated back-and-forths from lawmakers, union representatives, and gig companies like Uber and Lyft. Though the bill is still contingent on its amendments being passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature, the impact and precedent it's setting could change the fabric of the gig economy, from giving gig workers benefits and unionization protections, to restructuring how gig companies achieve profitability. 

On this segment from Business Casual, we spoke with Sergio Avedian, senior contributor for The Rideshare Guy, to get a look from the ground on how this bill is being received by the industry, and what it could mean for California's gig economy.

In a competitive marketplace, it’s hard for companies to maintain an edge over rivals, but one way to stand out is through exceptional people. On today’s podcast, Heather DeNamur, Talent Manager at Bauer Built Tire & Service, talks to us about the hardworking but friendly Midwestern people behind one of America’s largest commercial tire and retread manufacturers.

“The thing that differentiates us is our people,” Heather says, and goes on to explain that they’re the ones who day after day go out and fulfill the company’s business philosophy, which includes providing excellent customer service and pushing the status quo. In her view, Bauer Built employs a lot of hard workers who never back down from a challenge. Additionally, “What makes Bauer Built really strong is having a large, diverse population of employees.”

Heather gives a little company history, saying the first center was founded in 1944 in Durand, Wisconsin, and that’s where corporate headquarters remain to this day. Support services like IT, HR operations, finance, and marketing teams are also located in Durand, but Bauer Built has brick and mortar stores in ten states throughout the mid-west.

When asked about current job openings, Heather answers, “We’re looking for a lot of technicians out in our market,” including tire technicians and manufacturing technicians. The company is also hiring administrative support staff who she refers to as the heartbeat of Bauer Built.

What Heather likes most about the company is that she doesn’t feel like a number. Bauer Built is a family-owned establishment and that runs deep through the culture, along with a high degree of integrity and trust. Plus, the people make the environment a lot of fun. “I always say I’m not coming into work, I’m coming to hang out and get things accomplished with my friends.”

Uber recently announced plans to open a new office in Dallas, Tx that will create 3,000 jobs in the area. Sergio Avedian, Sr., contributor for The Rideshare Guy, retired Wall Street professional with 18 years of experience under his belt, and an expert on the business backends of the rideshare industry, joined Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern on Business Casual to discuss this move.

Does this set Uber on the road to profitability or are there other issues with the company's business model?  Listen to this excerpt from Business Casual and hear what Avedian has to say about this and more. 

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

This is the B2B Shortlist for Wednesday, August 21st, with Geoffrey Short.

UPS confirmed that it has been actively hauling cargo autonomously since May of this year on a 115 mile stretch in Arizona.

This news comes as UPS also announced a minority investment in the self-driving truck startup TuSimple. The United States Postal Service has also been testing the trucks to deliver mail between Dallas and Phoenix.

"Implementation tends to be a little bit easier because we're primarily doing highway driving. We're offering a hub-to-hub solution so that's delivering goods from a customer's distribution center to another distribution center and we think that we'll be able to have factory production-ready trucks by 2023, 2024 range," said TuSimple CFO Cheng Lu in an interview with CNBC this Summer.

For now these UPS trucks will still have an engineer and a driver on board in case of an emergency.

Tesla is also looking ahead with a new product offering. Elon Musk announced this weekend the re-launch of Tesla Solar. Homeowners in six states will soon be able to rent the company’s solar panels for just $50 per month.

"On Tesla's end, I think it kind of makes sense when you consider that Tesla is a company that's been trying to create an ecosystem of product use. It's not just the Tesla vehicle itself, they have the gigapacks that you can use in your garage to charge up your car, they want to try to integrate these other types of technology," said Brian Cheung, reporter for Yahoo Finance.

The eligible states include Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Mexico.

That’s what’s happening in the world of B2B today.

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

Imagine a sweltering Summer day in the Arizona desert. The kind where the heat rises off the black asphalt like a hologram. With the outside temperature reading 120 degrees Fahrenheit you get into your car, desperate to find relief, only to turn over the ignition to a dead battery.

These sort of extreme weather conditions, be they boiling hot or despairingly cold, wreak havoc on the chemical-based batteries in cars and trucks. When these batteries fail, they leave many people in dire, often dangerous, situations. But thankfully, inventor Bryce Gregory decided to remedy this problem.

Joining us on this Smart Power podcast by Ioxus, we welcomed Bryce Gregory, director of field application engineering and product management for Ioxus.

uSTART isn’t a battery, it is a technology, an idea—an ultra-capacitor. This technology stores energy independent of the battery store. Capable of starting a vehicle whilst supporting its full electrical load, the uSTART can perform in extreme temperatures. With sturdy construction, the uSTART is designed to perform for a lifetime. =

“We wanted to make this thing last as long as the trucks it goes in,” Gregory said.

No fancy installation necessary, the uSTART is simple to integrate with any vehicle battery. uSTART longevity and ease of install make it an environmentally-friendly and service-friendly invention.

“There are many places [where] batteries are used in the world that aren’t starting vehicles,” Gregory said.

With that knowledge in mind, he foresees uSTART technology making its way beyond just vehicles and trucks, and into heavyweight equipment and boats...anywhere “where reliability is very important.“