By John Wysseier, President and Chief Executive Officer, The CEI Group, Inc.

Over the next two to three years, American businesses are expected to make a mad rush toward tapping the multi-trillion-dollar potential of artificial intelligence (AI), but they’re likely to stumble and misfire unless they take a strategic approach to its integration.

AI is the area of computer science that enables machines to work and react like humans, equipping them with the ability to communicate in common speech and even learn, plan, and analyze data to find creative solutions to problems. As such, AI initiatives are typically inspired and managed by companies’ Information Technology departments.

But AI has many potential applications that extend way beyond information technology management to all aspects of business. AI projects can also absorb major chunks of financial and human capital, draining them from other vital programs. That’s why CEOs need to take charge of the creation of the strategy that clearly defines the business purposes of AI projects, prioritizes them, sets reasonable goals and timetables, and assures that the company has the right foundation and resources to pursue those projects, use them effectively, and measure their results.

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As Yogi Berra once said, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future

By Andrew Boada, Editor at Large

Ever since the Dieselgate story broke in 2015, news reports about diesel technology have tended to be damning.

OEMs have been fined, CEOs have been jailed, sales of new diesel vehicles in Europe have been plummeting, and a growing list of major city governments in Europe and around the world, faced with worsening air pollution as a result of the rise in popularity of diesels, have announced their intention to ban them from their roads or to impose fees on those who drive them.

For many, the series of blows the technology has suffered in quick succession have created the impression that diesel is the technological equivalent of a dead man walking. But this is true only if you ignore a host of recent breakthroughs that make it look like, in the words of one Daimler Benz executive I spoke to, “the diesel problem is solved”.

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The Drive

Despite being the face of the “Dieselgate” scandal, reportedly Volkswagen foresees a diesel “renaissance” in the near future. First, automakers must convince the world that diesel cars and trucks aren’t as dirty as people once believed.

“Diesel will see a renaissance in the not-too-distant future because people who drove diesels will realize that it was a very comfortable drive concept,” said Matthias Mueller, Volkswagen’s newest CEO, “Once the knowledge that diesels are eco-friendly firms up in people’s minds, then for me there’s no reason not to buy one.”

The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise, especially given Volkswagen’s increasing investment in electrification and the looming promises of banning fossil-fuel powered vehicles in some European countries within the next two decades.

Read the article at The Drive.

September 10, 2018 (Washington, D.C.) Today, American automotive executives reaffirmed their commitment to Diesel technology, as new statistics about the future of the U.S. automotive Diesel market came to light.

At an event hosted by the Washington Automotive Press Association, executives from General Motors confirmed that Diesel engines continue to play an important role in the company’s lineup of propulsion options.

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The NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) today announced that the City of New York has achieved an average fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon for light duty fleet vehicles purchased during Fiscal Year 2018.

This achievement is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s NYC Clean Fleet Plan and nearly doubles the average fuel economy from vehicles purchased just three years ago. This milestone comes on the heels of the Trump Administration’s announcement that it plans to halt existing plans to increase federal fuel economy standards.

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Dallas News

Autonomous vehicle technology may prove to be an innovative way to do that, but who is in charge of driving decisions: the technology, drivers or regulators?

How will impaired-detection technology interact with AV capabilities? Answering this question raises others. If a driver knowingly uses an override function, does he or she incur more culpability in a crash, for knowingly — and not just possibly — driving drunk? Does the car or device manufacturer incur any liability if an innocent person in another car or on the street is injured or killed?

Read the article at Dallas News.

The Detroit Bureau

The BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant is a new proprietary in-car AI assistant that uses an always on-call technology platform.

It is an intelligent, digital character that responds to the prompt “Hey BMW” and has the ability to control vehicle settings, navigation and entertainment systems as well as explain vehicle functions and even conducting a conversation.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

The Detroit News

Trump believes Canada is ripping off the U.S. and if a deal can’t be reached, he’ll apply a 20 percent tariff on cars. “In some countries, including Canada, a tax on cars would be the ruination of the country. That’s how big it is. The ruination of the country,” he said. “NAFTA has been the worst trade deal ever.”

“We are engaged in an exercise to try to save the best of NAFTA and that’s kind of unfortunate, but everybody knows what we are facing in the White House these days,” said John Manley, president of the Business Council of Canada and a former federal cabinet minister.

Read the article at The Detroit News.

Car and Driver

The Volvo 360c commuter pod concept is described as “an autonomous driving, fully functional, connected, comfortable, mobile office space.”

A key benefit is that it will allow workers to commute farther, as they will be “less reliant on proximity to cities.”

The electric driverless pod is designed to explore the possibilities of Level 5 autonomy—the highest tier, which requires no input whatsoever from a driver other than entering a destination. Volvo proposes a means of communication via lights, sounds, and moving elements, which they hope all automakers can agree on in order to create a single industry standard.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

Forbes

Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, Waymo, is months from launching a paid robotaxi service.

Expanding a Waymo-branded ride service to multiple cities in the U.S. and abroad is its next evolution. Doing that in an efficient, safe way means scaling up everything.

“At a high level, there are maybe three things that have to come together. You have to build maps and maintain them, in order to scale and deploy this technology. You have to build and design self-driving hardware, lasers, radars, cameras, computers, and then you have to build and be able to deploy the full software stack,” Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov said. “In all of the three main pillars of our system, we’re at a point where we are industrializing the whole thing.”

Read the article at Forbes.