Technology Highlights

In the future, Continental will offer Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) solutions based on the “CV3” artificial intelligence (AI) system-on-chip (SoC) family from semiconductor company Ambarella. The high-performance, power efficient and scalable SoC portfolio, which is built for ADAS applications, complements Continental’s solutions for assisted driving and further advances vehicle automation. The integrated system-on-chip in Continental’s ADAS systems has been showcased at CES 2023 in Las Vegas for the first time.

February 08, 2022 Continental has developed a head-up display (HUD) for trams. The display solution Continental is aimed at making intra-urban traffic safer by ensuring that tram drivers can focus their full attention on what is happening on the road. This also enables, for instance, a reduction in the number of emergency braking maneuvers. Trams mostly operate in heavy and frequently challenging inner-city traffic, an environment in which the number of unprotected road users is increasing: More people are cycling or riding e-scooters or compact electric mopeds. Moreover, many road users allow themselves to be distracted by their cell phones. According to information from the transport services, this has resulted in an increasing number of accidents, including those involving trams.

The new centralized vehicle E/E architecture paves the road for new system features: Modularization, centralization, scalability, standardized interfaces, portability, and hardware independence.

Brake systems are becoming increasingly intelligent so they can meet the future needs and requirements of automated driving and electrification; and this in newly conceived vehicles designed with modified architecture.

Whatever the architecture of the brake system of the future will look like –every car will continue to need wheel brakes. The need for deceleration, emergency stopping, stabilization, standstill management and fail-safe operation makes wheel brakes indispensable.

The drum brake is almost as old as the car itself. Many regard it as an old-fashioned product that is primarily associated with small cars of low performance engines. This may result in an oversight to the existing technical features.

At IAA TRANSPORTATION 2022 we presented our new close-to-production sustainable tire concept for city buses and commercial vehicles for urban delivery transport for the first time. The concept combines different recycled and renewable materials and technologies that are already available today.

April 05, 2022 Continental is the first tire manufacturer to immediately launch recycled polyester yarn which is obtained from PET plastic bottles in a new process into its volume production. The new high-performance material will first be used in selected sizes for Continental’s PremiumContact 6 and EcoContact 6 summer tires and the AllSeasonContact tire. This completely replaces the conventional polyester in the carcass of the selected tires. A set of standard passenger car tires uses the material from around 40 recycled PET bottles.

September 28, 2022 Ambition of Continental Tires: Cover all natural rubber demand exclusively from responsible sourcing from 2030 onwards

October 25, 2022 Continental has joined forces with the outdoor clothing specialist Urban Circus to develop a highly Detectable Jacket that offers cyclists and pedestrians a new dimension of safety on the road. As the daylight hours shrink, vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians become more difficult to spot by the human eye and vehicles alike. In comparison to conventional high-visibility jackets, the Detectable Jacket is much better recognizable to the human eye. It is also up to twice more visible to LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and camera sensors of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which constantly monitor the vehicles' surroundings.

June 22, 2022 Continental has made great progress in its work on technologies for human-machine interaction, intelligent intersections, special driving functions for inner-city intersections, and bottlenecks as part of the @CITY joint project for automated driving in cities. Mastering urban traffic is considered the key discipline of automated driving. The highly complex traffic situations common there can only be mastered with immense software expertise and high-performance sensor technology and processing capacity.

June 02, 2021 Continental and Deutsche Telekom are protecting cyclists: The two companies are developing a system that warns of accidents between connected vehicles and cyclists – or other vulnerable road users such as pedelec, scooter riders and pedestrians. The solution calculates the paths taken by cars and bicycles. If they are likely to cross at the same time, the system warns both road users via mobile communications in real-time. Initial road tests have been successful.