Chat-GPT x Mercedes Benz, EV Charging Depots, OEMs are buying mines, Tesla Steering Patent

Chat-GPT x Mercedes Benz

In a remarkable collaboration between Mercedes Benz and Microsoft is bringing ChatGPT in cars in the form of a voice assistant. This feature will complement the existing voice control feature triggered using the "Hey Mercedes" keyword.

Time to market: ChatGPT first came out in November 2022, and in January 2023 Microsoft extended its partnership with OpenAI and 6 months after that we have it as a feature in vehicles for beta testing. This kind of speed is unheard of in this industry. 2 parts of the infrastructure played a key role in enabling this.

1. Mercedes Benz Cloud: The existing cloud infra that Mercedes have in place enables 2 pre-requisites. Being able to identify every car in the rolling fleet and having a secure mechanism to update the vehicles with new software features.

2. Azure + ChatGPT Architecture: Microsoft made it super easy in a sense by integrating ChatGPT as an Azure App Service that runs through a browser interface. As Microsoft has said in their press release:

Apps vs Webapps: Car infotainments, although how feature deprived they are compared to a smartphone, they all have a browser interface. Making it quite straight forward for OEMs to integrate this feature. This questions the whole "app ecosystem" push that all OEMs are flocking towards. If the apps that cars require are fairly lightweight, they could run it all as a webapp instead of having a standalone app that needs to be maintained and updated. Then the key question becomes how well can you guarantee internet connection for vehicles on the ground and I believe that is a question becoming more and more irrelevant in the coming years.

Future: I strongly believe this is only the beginning. There are many use-cases both consumer facing and business facing that will be unlocked with the help of large LLMs. Subscribe to my newsletter to not miss my article about the future of LLMs in the automotive industry.

Mercedes-Benz tests ChatGPT in cars to answer ‘complex questions’ while on the road (Link)

EV Charging Depots

New infrastructure: There are 2 physical constraints in the whole heavy vehicle EV charging. One is the range of the vehicle on a single charge and the other is how long it takes for a full charge. As long as the combination of these two factors stays well below the constraints of a combustion vehicle EV charging depots are a necessity.

Recently I came across a charging depot concept by Forum Mobility where they proposed a depot where 96 trucks can be charged at once. And a similar concept from Einride, the Swedish freight technology company,

Intelligent Transport angle

As Einride cites, there are more variables to consider when it comes to electric transportation. One of the pain points that can only be solved by owning the charging space or getting into a partnership with an existing charging player is to be able to plan a complete logistics flow start to end. Owning such infrastructure gives a moat to the transport providers that will be very hard to compete with. As time goes my guess is that it will become harder to open such large scale charging depots.

Grid angle: One question I had when I saw both these solutions is whether this solution can scale. If we have more of these depots wouldn't that have an effect on the electrical grid

Cultural angle: Truck stops are a huge business in the US. See this video about the famous Buc-ee's truck stop

These truck stops are designed for truck drivers to stop here for a while. The most logical question is what is stopping truck stop companies like Buc-ee's to extend or retro fit their existing stops with electrical charger.

Einride proposes the EV version of this in the "Stations" concept. But more refined.

This EV charging depot can charge up to 96 electric semi-trucks at once (Link)The physical and digital infrastructure behind intelligent electric freight (Link)

OEMs are buying mines

Automotive companies are partnering with suppliers but buying up mines. Nickel is a primary component for EV battery cathodes and copper is more extensively used for electric motor components. Not to mention the already existing wiring harnesses in vehicles.

The OEM angle: Vertical Integration in the supply chain is a strong trend in the automotive industry. This I believe is a direct learning from the last era of the supply chain oriented setup in the industry. And OEM's would like to move away from that. Here are some ideas as to how OEMs can make use of mines in their business.

• OEMs can sell the nickel/copper to their own supplier to produce parts for them and to competitor suppliers.

• Not sure if this will happen, but OEMs can also set up the subsequent parts of the value chain themselves as well. SO they end up owning the chain all the way from the mine to the battery.

However, OEMs will also be subject to these commodity prices in the balance sheet

Geopolitics: In an earlier piece, I wrote about how China has bought up a large portion of rare earth metal mines in the African region. Both Stellantis and VW are europe-centered OEMs buying mines that are situated in Brazil.

VW's PowerCo, Stellantis, Glencore back $1B nickel, copper SPAC deal in Brazil (Link)

Tesla Steering Patent

Las week Tesla was awarded a patent with a new steer-by-wire system. The new design claims to provide redundant steering without having a mechanical backup.

Typically steer by wire systems are mandated to have a mechanical backup link, in the event of failure. In this patent Tesla proposes a completely redundant steer-by-wire system with separate power supplies, isolated communication systems. Both systems are also zonally separated in the vehicle to avoid common failure modes between the two.

Source: Patent

Based on my understanding the current US law needs a mechanical linkage as backup, so this system will take a bit of time until it reaches the market.

In other news...

Stellantis Ventures Seeds Innovation with 11 Key Investments into Sustainable Mobility (Link)

Lucid Air fastest charging report (Link)