New Volvo system spots pedestrians, cyclists

Paul A. Eisenstein, the Detroit Bureau - 2 days

Volvo launches a new security system, the spotting not only pedestrians and cyclists weaving through the traffic.

The latest update of the manufacturer prestigious city security systems, that system should a warning sound when it detects a potential collision. But it's also forces of sudden vehicle to the stand, if required, should the driver do not act in time or distracted.

Developed the first version of the city safety, for the first time in the year 2010, to find other cars, but Volvo has advantages of advances in vision, processing, data processing and software uses the system to update constantly, a camera hidden both on the windshield side of the rearview mirror and a radar sensor in the grille of the vehicle.

"By one more objects and situations, we strengthen our leading position within the vehicle safety." We keep our long-term vision to design cars to crash, move,"said Doug Speck, Volvo Senior Vice President of marketing, sales and customer service.

The manufacturer said that his next target is an update that can find the large animals, such as horses and deer. Finally, it would like to spot and react when smaller animals enter the road.

The system works with the relatively slow speeds, a motorist in an urban area would continue. The two-sensor system used to detect radar and to pursue possible obstacles, while the camera determines what they are. A central microprocessor then decides how to respond.

Volvo officials stress that they want motorists to use the technology, as a pretext, to shift their attention - do not say to SMS. She've deliberately designed the alarm system be too intrusive and if it is necessary, the brakes applied aggressively enough routine ride be uncomfortable.

Yet security system and more recent entries have generated the original city strongly positive reactions, insurance studies, suggesting that it is effective in reducing frontal collisions - enough so that some insurance companies now offer discounts for owners of Volvo products and other companies with similar technology.

Experts especially appreciate the potential to reduce the collision with those on foot or by bicycle. 4280 Pedestrians were killed overall vehicle-related incidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are available in 2010, the last year for the full reports. A further 70,000 were injured, 13% of all road deaths. That compared to 11% between 2002 and 2007. Crashes, as well as the decrease of the total motor vehicle fatalities this reflects the increase in pedestrian area.

In Europe, where the manufacturer still based Chinese-owned, research has shown that deaths include half of all cyclists a collision with a motor vehicle.

More than half of its current line up, including the V40, S60, V60, XC60, V70, XC70 and S80 models, from mid-May 2013 to begin plans offers brake Volvo what it now calls on pedestrian and cyclist protection with fully automatic.

Pricing varies by market, although the system is expected to be somewhere around $2,000 in the U.S. market. Motorists can possibly restore some of that, if they get a discount from their insurer.

Copyright © 2009-2013, the Detroit Bureau

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Ford to upgrade glitch-prone Touch system

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor Co., stung by falling quality ratings because of its glitch-prone MyFord Touch system, is planning a major upgrade that it hopes will fix the problems — and repair its own reputation.

Early next year, Ford is sending flash drives with a software upgrade to approximately 250,000 U.S. customers with MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, the equivalent system in Ford's luxury Lincoln brand. Owners can do the upgrade themselves in about 45 minutes, or dealers will do it for free. Ford is still deciding how it will offer the upgrade to 200,000 buyers outside of the U.S.

Ford knows of no other car company that has given owners the option of upgrading their own software on this scale. The unprecedented step underscores the urgency of the problem for Ford, which last month fell from 10th place to 20th place in Consumer Reports' annual reliability rankings largely because of MyFord Touch. Ford also plummeted in a J.D. Power quality survey earlier this year.

MyFord Touch, which debuted last year on the Ford Edge, replaces traditional dashboard knobs and buttons with a touch screen. Drivers control climate, navigation, entertainment, phone calls and other functions using touch or voice commands. It's a $750 option on lower trim levels, but comes standard on higher-end ones. Ford quickly rolled out the system on the Ford Explorer, Ford Focus and other models.

Dealer phone lines and Internet chat rooms were soon buzzing with complaints. The system shut down without warning and took too long to reboot. It didn't understand voice commands and didn't always respond to owners' touch. Some owners found the information-packed screens overwhelming.

Ford had dealers perform four software updates and paid dealers to hold owner clinics. But it soon realized it had to do more. The latest upgrade makes significant changes. Screens are now simpler and cleaner, with larger text and shading to outline buttons. Voice recognition is improved. Ford says the new system responds to touch commands more quickly and is less likely to shut down.

New models due out next year, including the redesigned Ford Escape and Ford Taurus, will automatically get the upgraded system.

Ford won't say how much it's spending on the upgrade.

Ford is unapologetic about the system, saying MyFord Touch is an advanced technology that's drawing new customers to the brand. Sales of the new Ford Explorer have more than doubled so far this year, for example. But the company also learned quickly that buyers aren't as forgiving with glitches in their cars as they are with their phones or computers.

"People's expectation of what's in the car is totally different than what they brought home from Best Buy," Gary Jablonski, Ford's manager of Sync platform development, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. Sync, a four-year-old voice command system that Ford designed with Microsoft Corp., serves as the platform for the more advanced MyFord Touch.

Forrest Brown, a Ford dealer in Dyersville, Iowa, got a barrage of complaints last winter when customers were unable to defrost their windshields or turn up the heat because their screens were going blank. But the problems have become less frequent as Ford updates the software. Brown has also started inviting customers back to the dealership so he can answer questions about the system.

"We've come to the realization that this type of technology is going to be in almost all vehicles in the future, so you might as well get used to it and understand it and make your customers aware of it," Brown said.

Jablonski insists MyFord Touch was thoroughly tested and not brought to the market too soon, as some critics contend. The problem, he said, is that not everything is testable. The system syncs up to more than 70 different kinds of mobile phones, for example, which are constantly getting updates of their own. Customers may blame the car for something that is really the fault of the phone.

But Ford realizes it may have gone further than its customers wanted to go. The company is planning to bring back volume and tuning knobs, for example, because it found people didn't like using a touch screen for those functions.

Jeremy Anwyl, the chief executive of auto information site Edmunds.com, once watched a MyFord Touch screen freeze up during a Ford demonstration. Still, he gives Ford credit for taking a chance on new technology, even at the expense of its quality scores. Vehicle quality is getting so good that customers are increasingly basing their buying decisions on high-tech options, he said.

"I'd rather have MyFord Touch and Sync and take the heat from than not have it at all," he said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Chrysler takes aim at two-tier wage system

 

Carlos Osorio / AP

The number of direct hours of labor in a typical Detroit product has been dropping steadily, to under 20 in some cases.

It took Detroit’s automakers decades to win a money-saving two-tier wage structure from the United Auto Workers Union. But that might be about to change at Chrysler.

The automaker’s CEO Sergio Marchionne now says he’d rather have all his workers on the same pay scale, hinting at big changes when the maker’s new contract expires in 2015.

That has plenty of folks in the auto industry scratching their heads and wondering what the executive — who also heads Chrysler’s Italian partner Fiat — has in mind.

What’s clear is that the UAW also wants to eliminate the two-tier structure, something that has divided the union and nearly led to the rejection of this year’s contracts with Chrysler, General Motors and Ford.

“This economic disparity between people on the (production) line is not something that can go on indefinitely,” Marchionne told reporters during a conference call to discuss the carmaker’s quarterly earnings.

Ironically, industry analysts say that reduced labor costs played a major factor in the $212 million profit Chrysler made as it clawed its way back into the black in the latest quarter.

Newly hired workers — about 13 percent of Chrysler's hourly work force — earn just $14 to $16 an hour in wages and about $25 when all their benefits and other costs are added in.  That’s roughly half what it costs to employ a veteran member of Chrysler’s 26,000-strong UAW work force.

But those costs will be going up. Going into this year’s contract talks with Detroit’s Big Three, the UAW was well aware that it was not going to win much in the way of new money, so it had to focus on a short list of gains that included so-called signing bonuses and cash to offset inflation during the course of the four-year contract.

But it was clear there was strong rank-and-file opposition to the two-tier wage system — which was approved by the UAW during 2007 contract talks to help the industry weather what was clearly going to be a tough recession.

Going into this year’s contract talks, UAW President Bob King asserted that workers in the second tier were not “making a living wage,” but in the end he had to settle for modest pay increases of about $3 an hour for those new hires.

The response was unavoidable, with workers approving their tentative contracts by some of the largest margins seen in decades. In fact, if not for aggressive lobbying by King and other senior leaders the Ford contract very likely would have been rejected. And UAW leaders had to use a procedural trick to ensure ratification of Chrysler’s contract.

That clearly wasn’t lost on Marchionne, who is counting on big growth at Chrysler — the smallest and most troubled of the Detroit automakers.

Facing even more serious problems with unions back in Italy, Marchionne has hinted he might make Chrysler the dominant partner in the trans-Atlantic alliance. To do that, it would help to have the UAW “on his side,” notes analyst Joe Phillippi of AutoTrends Consulting. And that might require giving up the two-tier wage structure, he added.

But it might not be as serious a loss as that might seem. There’s no question that Detroit needed a break, especially going into the 2007 contract talks, when UAW workers were taking home wages and benefits worth some $76 an hour.

Today labor costs for even veteran employees have been reduced by a third, even as non-union competitors, such as the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, have seen their own costs rise.

But there’s something that may be more significant than the wages and benefits workers earn: concessions the UAW has granted permitting Chrysler and its domestic competitors to steadily improve productivity.

Plants that once employed 5,000 workers now require less than half that staffing. The number of direct hours of labor in a typical Detroit product has been dropping steadily, meanwhile, to under 20 in some cases. 

Even at $50 an hour, notes Phillippi, assembly line labor accounts for barely $1,000 to $2,000 of the $30,000 cost of a typical U.S.-built car.

Keeping the UAW happy may be well worth giving up the second tier, which Marchionne said would approach 25 percent of the total Chrysler workforce by 2015, when the current contract expires.

Those who know the executive believe this change wouldn’t be a simple giveback. The Canadian-educated Marchionne would almost certainly demand a quid-pro-quo, possibly meaning further concessions by veteran workers. At the very least, eliminating the second tier would be offset by holding back cost increases elsewhere.

In his conversation with reporters, Marchionne suggested his goal would be to convince the UAW “to accept the downside while rewarding people on the upside.”

The new Detroit contracts include significant improvements in profit sharing bonuses. The next time around, Chrysler may very well seek to get even more of its labor costs linked to its performance, so workers would see major gains during good years while taking pay cuts in the bad times.

Whether the UAW and its members would accept that trade-off remains to be seen.

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Volvo system could comic: road kill limit.

DETROIT - Volvo City safety bring a car to a complete halt to avoid an accident. A variation might be to avoid animals on the road and collisions.

It an unpleasant reality on the highway, but the folks at Volvo think they have a way, is to return to the seemingly omnipresent accident with some of the same high-tech systems, which the manufacturer to reduce the unintentional pedestrian collisions on public roads cut.

The new animal-friendly system is a way to the now Chinese-owned Volvo is hoping its traditional reputation as a leader in vehicle safety.

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Volvo won Kudos already for his latest active safety technologies, such as city security attached to the windscreen of an infrared laser sensor is used to monitor traffic on a vehicle. At speeds of up to 2 19 mph typical crowded cities, and in rush hour traffic - the system will recognize a possible collision. If the driver with the time not the two cars 18 meters away from each other to respond, it will jam automatically on the brakes.

Another version of the system can detect pedestrians and to take action to avoid impact. Such collisions are a significant part of some 35,000 Americans killed in road accidents per year.

Volvo engineers began then, question me, of animals that are killed each year impact in much larger numbers than the result of the vehicle. And groups such as PETA, people for the ethical treatment of animals, are not the only ones that disrupted by the toll.

According to a study by State farm there were 1.09 million deer of motor vehicles in the United States be taken while 12 months caused these events $3.5 billion in damage until 30 June. And such collisions routinely numerous dead and wounded. Such incidents are more dangerous in a country such as Sweden, Volvo home page, if the collision includes a moose.

The manufacturer is looking to introduce a modified version of city security, that can use cameras or other systems to expand their skills, and the new approach could show up in a few years on the manufacturer-SUV models, such as the XC90 notes a Bloomberg report.

It remains to be seen how well it works. It is difficult to forecast animal behaviour, in particular, when they suddenly by hide in a stand of trees at the roadside arising. But a recent study of insurance claims by the highway loss data Institute Volvo city secure system, in particular the number of the vehicle for damages as a result of vehicle to vehicle collisions by 27%, while insurance claims relating to personal injury decreased by 51% in vehicles with reduced the technology.

"This is our first real look at an advanced crash avoidance technology, and the results are encouraging," said Adrian Lund, President of the Institute data loss highway.

Various forms of the camera, radar or laser of clashes that have made LOB systems market and such insurance industry could especially when paired with discounts - promote even more.

General Motors just announced, a new low-cost system with a single camera.

But Volvo's first manufacturer, seems especially with a view to using this technology, to be kind to animals.

Copyright 2011 the Detroit Office. All rights reserved.

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