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Recharge Wrap-up: Atieva making EV with former Tesla talent, Holland lowers PHEV incentives

A reduction of tax incentives on company cars in Holland is expected to put the brakes on plug-in hybrid sales. Cars are taxed at an average of 25 percent, with plug-in hybrids taxed at just seven or 14 percent, depending on emissions. Taxes on PHEV company cars will increase to 14 and 21 percent. With company car leases making up a third of vehicle sales in 2014, the uptake on PHEVs "will likely go back to regular volumes," according to Volvo's Christiaan Krouwel. It could be a boon for battery electric cars, as their tax rate will remain at four percent for company cars. Read more at Automotive News Europe. Ford is testing cylinder deactivation in its 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine. On-road prototype testing has shown improvements in fuel economy of as much as six percent. Ford engineers developed a system using a new dual mass flywheel, pendulum absorber, and tuned clutch disc to allow cylinder deactivation under a wider range of speed and engine loads with less NVH. "The highest priority in the development of new combustion engines for automotive applications is the ongoing reduction of fuel consumption," says Ford's Andreas Schamel, presenting Ford's findings to the Vienna Motor Symposium. Read more at Green Car Congress or in the press release from Ford. Atieva is building an EV with the help of numerous former Tesla employees. The Silicon Valley-based startup was founded in 2007 by a former Tesla vice president, and its roster includes 12 other former Tesla employees. Already well funded, Atieva is now looking to fill its ranks with more talent, with 32 engineering positions, two recruiter positions and other job openings posted at its website. As for the EV it is working on, Atieva says it is "redefining what a car can be, by building an iconic new vehicle from the ground up." Read more at Charged EVs. Testing shows that Joule ethanol, made from recycled CO2, meets standards for use in the US and Europe. In partnership with Audi, Joule has been working toward making its recycled CO2 fuels ready for commercialization. "We are pleased to achieve another critical step towards our planned near-term delivery of fuel-grade ethanol from recycled CO2," says Joule President and CEO Serge Tchuruk. "Using waste CO2 as a feedstock, our technology has the two-fold advantage of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and producing cost-competitive, drop-in fuels." Joule will use these test results to get government approval for the use of its ethanol in highway fuel.

Delphi plans automated-driving journey across the United States

Delphi is attempting to become the first company to pilot an automated car across the United States. The global automotive supplier will start a cross-country journey from a location near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco starting on Sunday, March 22, and cover approximately 3,500 miles on a trip to New York, where it will arrive sometime during the New York Auto Show. Along the way, Delphi engineers will gather data on how the car, an Audi SQ5, performs in a variety of road and weather conditions that the company says could only be tested in a real-world environment. "Delphi had great success testing its car in California and on the streets of Las Vegas," said Jeff Owens, the company's chief technology officer. "Now it's time to put our vehicle to the ultimate test by broadening the range of driving conditions." A formal announcement is expected tomorrow during the SXSW festival in Austin, TX. The company recently demonstrated many of its advanced-safety and automated driving technologies during CES, driving in Las Vegas. The cross-country trip will include tests on its radar, vision and advanced-drive assistance systems, certain vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, and intelligent software, which includes automated highway pilot with lane-change technology, automated urban pilot and automated parking functions. Though a driver will be behind the wheel throughout the journey, Delphi says its active safety technologies can make complex decisions, like stopping and proceeding at four-way stops, timing highway merges and calculating safe maneuvers around bicyclists. While California has certain motor-vehicle laws that help regulate autonomous vehicles, it was unclear whether Delphi needs special arrangements or permission from other states to conduct automated-vehicle testing elsewhere – or if those concerns might be negated by an active driver. Earlier this year, Audi turned heads at CES by driving an A7 from San Francisco to Las Vegas in a similar display of automated-driving technology. Related video: Image Credit: Delphi CES Audi Technology Emerging Technologies Autonomous Vehicles

Audi will have an autonomous car in 2020 using NVIDIA tech and AI

Audi and NVIDIA have been working together for a while, with most of the results being fancy infotainment systems like the current version of MMI and Audi's Virtual Cockpit display setup. Now the two are partnering to build autonomous vehicles that will leverage NVIDIA technology. Audi has a demonstrator now and promises a fully autonomous car for the year 2020. The tech underlying these new self-driving vehicles is NVIDIA's DRIVE computing platform. It uses the latest in artificial intelligence concepts, including neural networks, which are basically computer science's way of modeling decisionmaking after the way the human brain works. The network is able to learn and improve as it goes by making new connections. Machine learning tasks being handled by neural networks include computer vision, which can use a combination of sensors and cameras to help a computer, in this case the car, figure out what's going on in an environment to navigate through it. The companies are already demonstrating a version of DRIVE, the DRIVE PX 2, in the autonomous Audi Q7 shown above. The crossover is able to figure out its own path and can sense and drive on different types of surfaces, including pavement, grass, and dirt, plus it can navigate the cones of a simulated construction zone while reading dynamic detour signs. In 2018, Audi will expand testing of its autonomous vehicles on California public roads. The manufacturer has been permitted to test cars in the state since 2014. In announcing the expansion, Audi makes a point to mention it intends to follow applicable laws to the letter, which seems like more than a veiled reference to the trouble Uber found itself in recently when it didn't quite meet testing requirements in San Francisco. Audi has also promised Level 3 autonomy from the 2018 A8, which will feature a system called Traffic Jam Pilot to control the steering, throttle, and brakes at speeds below 35 mph. The company's previous autonomous work includes a self-driving RS7 track car named Bobby, which our own Jonathan Buckley got to race against in the Translogic episode below. Related Video: