AutoPartsAsia | FEBRUARY 2018 | 39are still going to be maintained; the
question is how they are going to
be modified to adapt to things like
autonomous driving. Seats might
need to be much more luxurious if
people are going to be sleeping in
them or massaging when they don’t
have to drive. It is going in different
directions depending on how the new
technology comes in.”
As Magna is a de-centralised
company, each of the product groups
or companies plans where its future
is going to be. All the companies are
not going to invest in autonomous
driving. Each one of the product
groups is going to focus on how it
can be successful, regardless of what
the powertrain is and whether people
are driving personally or by robot.They will look at and concentrate on
how they can succeed through all the
changes.
“It may be difficult to say what
happened over the last year but
certainly on the non-bricks-and-
mortar side we have shown a Level-
IV vehicle; we certainly have the
capability to go to Level-IV when and
if the time comes. We might be a little
less optimistic of the day when we
have a fully autonomous vehicle, but
our policy is to be ready for it when
that day comes,” he said.
Max-4 is a good example of what
makes Magna different. It did not look
like a lab project having big LIDAR on
roof top; instead it was seamlessly
integrated into the front-end and
back-end modules and their exteriors
groups were able to do that. The
sensor integration of that is what
the OEMs were most impressed by.
“Our electronics group is working
on the autonomous side of things,
putting it together without impacting
the design, using our exteriors
grouping. This is something other
suppliers cannot do; they have to use
somebody on the outside to do that,”
O’Brien said.
Magna took a long time to come
from Level-III to Level-IV despite
possessing almost everything that
was needed for its development.
About this slow-down, O’Brien said
that there were many factors for that.
“We had divested from Radar; in
the meantime, different approaches
to Radar had become much more
advanced, with Lidar becoming
cost-prohibitive. After the four pillars,
the fifth one, which is the foundation
of all, is affordability. We were never
going to incorporate a Lidar which
costs six or ten
thousand dollars
as it is just not
affordable. If
something is
at that level, it
delays the market
introduction much
further. Now we
have the new-
technology Radar
and a partnership
for Lidar, with the
cameras having
developed many
generations. Our
own development
is to push cameras
as far as possible;
we have been the
leader in cameras
for many years.Frank O’Brien