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Political and social trends in the automotive industry production and consumption have changed in the last decade, driving a demand for more efficient, low-fuel consuming, clean vehicles in most markets nowadays. Recently the demand for such vehicles has been increasing and emerging markets are no exception; automakers all around the world have invested heavily in developing new electrification technologies that would comply with the newer and stricter regulations and environmental policies, being Start-Stop systems one of the preferred approaches due to their lower complexity and cost compared to full and mild hybrids. Mexico stands out as a challenge for the implementation of this technology due to its wide range of altitudes, temperatures, traffic jams, and some other contributing factors that can hinder this type of application – especially in its bigger and more populated cities.

Starting January 2015 the government of the United Kingdom will allow driverless cars on public roads. From a first glance this can and should be seen as a great step towards the adoption of autonomous vehicles. Yet as any new technology driverless vehicles carry with them many new risks and disadvantages that need to be understood and protected against in order for the introduction of said systems into the market place to be a long lasting and fruitful one. The present work will look at the possible safety and security risks posed by the use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems on the open road, motivated by the fact that many projected autonomous vehicle concept systems rely on them for object detection and avoidance.

Energy management system designs for road vehicle applications have for some time considered the use of road data geospatial attributes such as elevation, speed limits and GPS derived online information, like traffic and position, to forecast the amount of fuel that could be consumed by a given vehicle on a specific route. This approach is especially useful when dealing with electrified platforms as on-board energy storage devices (such as fuel cells or batteries) have a lower energy density ratio [kJ/g]. Unfortunately within the tactical mobility context such information might not be readily available, either by passive obstructions, like mountains, or active ones due to jamming, etc. This paper will elaborate on an energy management system meant to deal with the uncertainty created by navigating in terrain where only basic trip information is available, such as probable distance to be travelled.