Presentation of pioneering solutions for autonomous driving

At this year’s IAA MOBILITY in Munich, Con­ti­nen­tal is pre­sent­ing solu­tions for the future of glob­al mobil­i­ty that are as inno­v­a­tive as they are sus­tain­able. Under the mot­to “Safe. Con­nect­ed. Con­ve­nient. Dri­ving the future of mobil­i­ty for 150 years”, the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny is focus­ing on the safe, sus­tain­able and con­nect­ed mobil­i­ty of peo­ple and their goods, both in Hall B1 (Stand C20) and vir­tu­al­ly. To this end, Con­ti­nen­tal will be show­cas­ing its lat­est solu­tions from the inno­va­tion fields of assist­ed and auto­mat­ed dri­ving, high-per­for­mance com­put­ing and soft­ware for serv­er-based archi­tec­tures, safe­ty tech­nolo­gies, user expe­ri­ence and sustainability.

“The results of our mobil­i­ty study prove how great the need for indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be world­wide — espe­cial­ly in times of pan­dem­ic. Peo­ple enjoy the free­doms of indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty while at the same time focus­ing on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and emis­sion-free dri­ving. We offer pio­neer­ing solu­tions for this.”

- Niko­lai Set­zer, Chair­man of the Board of Management

Consistently on the road to sustainability

At the IAA MOBILITY, the com­pa­ny is pre­sent­ing a study of a par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­tain­able tire as a world first: the Con­ti Green­Con­cept. Its inte­grat­ed sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­cept sets new stan­dards. Con­ti­nen­tal’s devel­op­ment engi­neers and mate­ri­als experts have worked on three lev­els of impact to achieve this: At more than 50 per­cent, the tire con­tains a par­tic­u­lar­ly high pro­por­tion of trace­able, renew­able and recy­cled mate­ri­als. The tire con­cept is based on inno­v­a­tive, resource-sav­ing light­weight con­struc­tion tech­nol­o­gy and pro­vides for an extend­ed ser­vice life thanks to a renew­able tread.

The pro­por­tion of renew­able raw mate­ri­als used in the Con­ti Green­Con­cept is 35 per­cent. The bio­ma­te­ri­als used include nat­ur­al rub­ber from dan­de­lions, sil­i­cate from the ash of rice husks, and var­i­ous veg­etable oils and resins, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the pro­por­tion of crude oil-based mate­ri­als. In addi­tion, 17 per­cent recy­cled mate­ri­als are used in the Con­ti Green­Con­cept. In addi­tion to recy­cled steel and car­bon black, Con­ti­nen­tal is using poly­ester from recy­cled PET bot­tles in the car­cass of a tire for the first time.

Through a con­sis­tent light­weight design, the devel­op­ers have sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced the weight and rolling resis­tance of the con­cept tire. All the indi­vid­ual improve­ments togeth­er result in sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er rolling resis­tance for the Con­ti Green­Con­cept. Accord­ing to inter­nal mea­sure­ments, it is around 25 per­cent below that of a tire with rolling resis­tance class A in the EU tire label, the best val­ue in this area. This means that the Con­ti Green­Con­cept has a mea­sur­ably pos­i­tive effect on the envi­ron­ment. Low­er rolling resis­tance means low­er ener­gy con­sump­tion by the vehi­cle. In elec­tric vehi­cles, the range is extend­ed accord­ing­ly by up to 6 percent.

Anoth­er plus point of the tire is its renew­able tread. The con­cept means that it can be replaced sev­er­al times at lit­tle cost in terms of time and mate­r­i­al. This makes a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­serv­ing resources, because renew­ing the tread three times would ensure that the amount of mate­r­i­al used for the car­cass is halved in rela­tion to its total mileage. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Con­ti Green­Con­cept con­cept tire is avail­able in a sep­a­rate press release.

Rolling into the green future on green tires

“The cars of the future will con­tin­ue to need tires. We are mak­ing them more sus­tain­able step by step, as our con­cept study proves. The Con­ti Green­Con­cept shows how Con­ti­nen­tal will com­plete­ly switch its glob­al tire pro­duc­tion to the use of sus­tain­able mate­ri­als by 2050 at the lat­est. This under­scores our goal of being the most pro­gres­sive tire com­pa­ny along the entire val­ue chain in terms of social need as well as eco and eco­nom­ic bal­ance by 2030,” said Set­zer, adding, “Step by step, we are putting sus­tain­abil­i­ty on the road and cli­mate pro­tec­tion on the road by the mil­lions with our solu­tions and technologies.”

Sus­tain­able and respon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices have been an inte­gral part of Con­ti­nen­tal’s cor­po­rate strat­e­gy for many years. It is pro­duc­ing tan­gi­ble results, as evi­denced by a num­ber of oth­er inno­va­tions for sus­tain­able and smart elec­tric vehi­cles. There­fore, Set­zer con­firmed, “As ear­ly as 2022, we will make busi­ness with zero-emis­sion vehi­cles com­plete­ly CO2-neu­tral — world­wide. For 2040, we are aim­ing for zero CO2 emis­sions at all our plants world­wide. And we have set our­selves the major goal’ of oper­at­ing in a com­plete­ly cli­mate-neu­tral man­ner along the entire val­ue chain’ by 2050 at the latest.”

Ahead of the autonomous driving megatrend

Anoth­er focus of Con­ti­nen­tal’s pres­ence at the trade show is ded­i­cat­ed to the mega­trend of autonomous dri­ving. Con­ti­nen­tal has already been dri­ving devel­op­ments for auto­mat­ed and autonomous mobil­i­ty for many years and offers solu­tions. These include radar sen­sors and cam­era tech­nolo­gies, LiDAR sen­sors, auto­mat­ed dri­ving high-per­for­mance com­put­ers and the com­plete soft­ware stack for assist­ed and auto­mat­ed dri­ving as well as in-cab­in mon­i­tor­ing. Increas­ing­ly, Con­ti­nen­tal is aug­ment­ing the func­tions of these tech­nolo­gies with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, such as deep learn­ing meth­ods, as well as know-how gained from han­dling large amounts of data.

“Glob­al tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship in assist­ed and auto­mat­ed dri­ving is and remains our goal. That is why we are not only pre­sent­ing ground­break­ing prod­ucts and solu­tions for the mobil­i­ty of tomor­row here at the IAA MOBILITY, but are also set­ting tar­get­ed indus­try stan­dards with them at the same time,” said Setzer.

At the show, the com­pa­ny will demon­strate to vis­i­tors how the inno­va­tions help them in their every­day dri­ving. They will expe­ri­ence greater safe­ty and com­fort when park­ing inde­pen­dent­ly and how the sys­tem per­forms auto­mat­ed ser­vice func­tions such as wash­ing the vehi­cles or even charg­ing the vehi­cle bat­ter­ies in the park­ing garage.

High-performance computers and software are at the heart of modern vehicles

The hearts of Con­ti­nen­tal’s devel­op­ers are beat­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly fast as they dri­ve the qui­et rev­o­lu­tion in elec­tron­ic vehi­cle archi­tec­ture. This is because mod­ern vehi­cles are increas­ing­ly becom­ing part of the Inter­net of Every­thing. To this end, they will always be net­worked, rolling com­put­ers, defined by soft­ware and wire­less data exchange. Instead of a com­plex net­work of numer­ous micro­con­trollers, a hand­ful of high-per­for­mance com­put­ers and zone con­trollers will take over cen­tral con­trol of all vehi­cle func­tions in such vehi­cles: in the cock­pit, for chas­sis sys­tems and auto­mat­ed driving.

“The soft­ware is what counts here. It is among the top exper­tise of our approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 soft­ware and IT spe­cial­ists with their many years of expe­ri­ence in the appli­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy in all areas of the vehi­cle,” explained Set­zer, refer­ring to the suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tion launch­es in this area. “In 2020, we became the first auto­mo­tive sup­pli­er in the world to put a high-per­for­mance com­put­er for the car into series pro­duc­tion. One such cen­ter­piece has grown into many more to date, which we are show­ing here at the trade fair,” he added.

AMBIENC3 effortlessly combines driving, working and relaxing in one interior space

Seam­less, bar­ri­er-free and intu­itive: what applies to mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion via the Inter­net also applies to the com­ing mobil­i­ty expe­ri­ence. “The vehi­cle inte­ri­or of the future will be trendi­er and mul­ti­func­tion­al. It will merge cock­pit, liv­ing and work­ing space. It will become a third liv­ing space that can be used in a vari­ety of ways. For this, users want the use of sus­tain­able mate­ri­als, bright designs and, of course, con­ve­nient, dig­i­tal solu­tions,” said Set­zer, sum­ma­riz­ing the key mobil­i­ty trends for the com­pa­ny, adding, “With our AMBIENC3 con­cept vehi­cle based on a T2 Bul­li, we are demon­strat­ing the strengths of our tech­nolo­gies and inno­va­tions, our sus­tain­abil­i­ty and our design in an emo­tion­al way here at the trade show. True to the mot­to: retro meets future.”

With the AMBIENC3 — the name is a com­bi­na­tion of the two Eng­lish words “Ambi­ence” and “3rd Space” — vis­i­tors to the trade fair will expe­ri­ence the future of the inte­ri­or designed by Con­ti­nen­tal. The con­cept of the so-called third space refers to a shared space that dif­fers from the home (first space) and the work­place (sec­ond space) or com­bines both. In this way, the AMBIENC3 com­bines worlds and con­veys the trend themes of design, func­tion­al­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion. Every­thing in and on the con­cept vehi­cle is new and inno­v­a­tive: the design lan­guage, the appear­ance, the han­dling, the light­ing concept.

Smart sur­face solu­tions play a cen­tral role here, for exam­ple when they are enhanced by func­tion­al print­ing or com­bine greater com­fort with pas­sive cli­mate con­trol through breatha­bil­i­ty. Added to this are Ac2ated Sound, a com­plete sound expe­ri­ence with­out loud­speak­ers, and the ProViu360 dri­ver assis­tance sys­tem, which gives the dri­ver sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness through a cam­era sur­round sys­tem. Anoth­er ele­ment is the intel­li­gent glaz­ing with con­trol­lable black­out and heat func­tions. It saves ener­gy and ensures a unique feel­ing of well-being.

The built-in solar archer uses pho­to­voltaics for envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ener­gy gen­er­a­tion. And the “eTravel.Companion” is a soft­ware-pro­grammed trav­el com­pan­ion that pro­vides inter­ac­tive and per­son­al­ized sup­port to the dri­ver dur­ing the jour­ney with tips and rec­om­men­da­tions on the route, refu­el­ing or the con­di­tion of the vehicle.

The spe­cial fea­ture of the inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy: The eTravel.Companion is linked to the smart­phone and thus to the user, not to a sin­gle auto­mo­bile. This means that all ser­vice ben­e­fits can also be used in dif­fer­ent vehi­cles — a major advan­tage when car shar­ing or book­ing a rental car, for exam­ple. Thanks to arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent algo­rithms, the sys­tem is con­stant­ly learn­ing and can offer indi­vid­u­al­ly tai­lored sup­port for many facets of trav­el, includ­ing net­worked and smart solu­tions for greater cli­mate and acci­dent protection.

More and more inno­va­tions relat­ing to mobil­i­ty are help­ing to pro­mote cli­mate pro­tec­tion. Net­work­ing and the Inter­net are essen­tial. In the future, almost every­thing that turns and moves will be net­worked and con­trolled via com­put­er pro­grams. This is the only way to ful­fill the EU’s Green Deal, achieve the nec­es­sary effi­cien­cy gains and sus­tain­ably reduce green­house gas­es. Smart solu­tions are there­fore an inte­gral part of the mobile future.

They pro­tect against acci­dents, avoid traf­fic con­ges­tion and reduce fuel con­sump­tion and pol­lu­tant emis­sions. The seam­less smart mobil­i­ty solu­tions show what is already pos­si­ble today: from smart tires to vehi­cle sen­sors and actu­a­tors to net­work­ing and cloud ser­vices. The sys­tems devel­oped by Con­ti­nen­tal cov­er the entire effec­tive chain, includ­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of dri­ver assis­tance, brak­ing and restraint sys­tems. In addi­tion to cli­mate pro­tec­tion, such tech­nolo­gies con­tribute to “Vision Zero”: a traf­fic world with­out acci­dents and vic­tims that is no longer a utopia.