TROY — Delphi Automotive PLC (NYSE: DLPH) said Thursday that its autonomous Audi had completed the longest automated drive ever in North America, traveling from San Francisco to New York.
The company said nearly 3,400 miles were covered with 99 percent of the drive in fully automated mode.
The drive was used by Delphi engineers to research and collect information that will help further advance active safety technology — the most rapidly growing technology sector of the auto industry. The team collected nearly three terabytes (trillion bytes) of data, equivalent to about 30 percent of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress.
“Our vehicle performed remarkably well during this drive, exceeding our expectations,” said Jeff Owens, Delphi chief technology officer. “The knowledge obtained from this trip will help optimize our existing active safety products and accelerate our future product development, which will allow us to deliver unsurpassed automotive grade technologies to our customers.”
The nine-day trip crossed 15 states and the District of Columbia. Along the way, the vehicle encountered complex driving situations such as traffic circles, construction zones, bridges, tunnels, aggressive drivers and a variety of weather conditions.
Delphi’s automated driving vehicle is equipped with advanced technologies and features, many of which are already on the market today, including collision mitigation, integrated radar and camera systems, forward collision and lane departure warning.
Delphi, formerly headquartered in Troy as a spinout of General Motors, is now based in Gillingham, England. Only about 5,000 of its 161,000 employees are in the United States. More at www.delphi.com.