Automotive News Canada - November 2019 - 9

* N O V E M B E R 2 019

about automotive joining the
APMA."
Currently, out of about 300
APMA members, 60 are hightech players "who are in or
interested in the automotive
space," Volpe said.
That number is expected to
grow along with the content
level of high-tech components
in vehicles, he said.
"Now with our expanded Stratford [autonomous-vehicle] demonstration zone
[and] our forays into things
like cybersecurity, we're getting players you would think
had nothing to do with vehicles but have everything to do
with mobility and smart cities." Stratford is 150 kilometres west of Toronto.
For instance, the leadership role of the TorontoWaterloo corridor, which
includes Kitchener, in artificial intelligence brought
ride-hailing company Uber
to Ontario to work with
the University of Toronto's
Raquel Urtasun on self-driving cars.

HIGH-TECH CLUSTER
Add a rich university and
research community as well
as the emergence of one of
the largest IT clusters outside California's Silicon
Valley, and
Canada
is able
to punch
above its
weight.
Another
factor is
technology itself, in
the form of
Industry
improved
analyst Dennis
commuDesRosiers
nications
says
that loosresearch and
ened the
development
head
are key to the
office/labauto industry's
oratory
survival.
bonds. For
FILE PHOTO
FCA, the
key was a fibre-optic cable
across the Detroit River.
"Through that use of
advanced technology," said
industry analyst Dennis
DesRosiers, "they can touch
and feel what's going on in
the Chrysler r&d centre in
Windsor and other spots
around the world."
In September, FCA showed
off the centre's new nine-direction driving simulator
that will play a central role
in developing advanced driver-assistance systems. The
$10-million lab is the most
highly developed system of its
kind in North America, officials said.
GM's 20,000-employee engineering centre in Warren,
Mich., dwarfs Markham and
its staff of hundreds, but
it's the automaker's largest research hub outside the
United States.
At Markham, engineers
and software writers finetune infotainment and safety
systems and controls for the
self-driving cars, the technology upon which GM and its
rivals stake their future.
Ford entrusted its Ottawa
office, a former BlackBerry

Ram owners prevail against
FCA over remote starter
By ERIC FREEDMAN

LEGAL CORRESPONDENT

The Detroit Three are adding jobs as they expand their
high-tech research and development, athough not at the
same pace as the manufacturing cuts are taking place.
Oshawa Assembly will convert to a parts-stamping plant that
will employ about 300 people, down from the current 2,600.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

r&d centre, with the automaker's first in-house update of
its Sync communications and
entertainment system.
Zoltan Racz, the chief engineer, said the national capital's "critical mass" in communications technology provides a deep pool of candidates for the centre.
Even if the tech shift is difficult to measure, DesRosiers
said the transition is crucial.
"We will not have an auto
industry if we don't continue to move up the intellectual
curve."

MANUFACTURING CRITICAL
But a February study published by the Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives warned
that proximity to traditional
manufacturing is key to the
growth of r&d.
GM's LeBlanc, however, said there are more steps
between lab and assembly line

as the industry becomes more
complex.
She pointed to the autonomous test circuit slated for
Oshawa where made-in-Canada software can be quickly
validated on pre-production
vehicles.
"In my mind that's a bigger enabler [than proximity to
plants] to development," she
said.
At Ford Canada, CEO Dean
Stoneley said the automaker is
looking to expand its r&d footprint while maintaining its
manufacturing centres.
"The two aren't related
in the sense one grows and
the other shrinks," he said.
"They're different, but equally important parts of our business.
"What they [r&d centres]
are doing is setting up this
connected-car ecosystem ...
and we're looking to grow
that." - ANC

Key Canadian research areas
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBERSECURITY
are key areas of automotive-related research at schools
and companies along the 100-kilometre corridor between
Toronto to Waterloo, Ont. Cybersecurity is a mainstay for
Ottawa-based BlackBerry QNX as well as the Canadian
Institute for Cybersecurity at the University of New
Brunswick.
But Canada's auto-technology innovations go beyond
AI and protection from hackers:
FUEL CELLS: With the opening of Canada's first public
hydrogen refueling station in Vancouver, and the arrival of the Toyota Mirai for fleet sales, progress for fuel cell
vehicles is slow but noteworthy. Decades of research by
Ballard Power Systems, supported by British Columbia
universities, have put Vancouver in the forefront of fuel
cell development. Mississauga, Ont.-based Hydrogenics,
recently acquired by Cummins Inc., is another industry
leader.
LIGHTWEIGHTING: The National Research Council and
McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., led what has
been called a significant Canadian contribution in the
search for new materials and manufacturing processes to
reduce weight in ever-more-complex vehicles.
BATTERIES: Many of today's lithium-ion batteries rely on
technology developed by Hydro-Quebec, which invests
licensing fees from its 800 patents into the development of
cheaper, more environmentally friendly batteries. Also
at work on safer, more efficient li-ion cells is a team at
Dalhousie University in Halifax headed by Jeff Dahn, a
world leader in battery research. In 2016, Tesla Motors
began a five-year partnership with Dahn that it hopes
will lead to longer-lasting batteries and an acceleration of
its goal of building cheaper, mass-market electric cars.
LIDAR: Light detection and ranging technology is a valuable adjunct to radar and cameras in self-driving cars.
Two Quebec City rivals, LeddarTech and Phantom
Intelligence, are high-profile players in an industry racing to supply automakers with affordable lidar sensors.

A NEW BRUNSWICK JUDGE
has upheld an arbitration
award against Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles, handing a victory to the owners of a Ram
pickup that kept stalling and
shutting off after a dealership installed an aftermarket
remote starter.
The ruling requires FCA to
repurchase the pickup.
Five days after the customers purchased the truck in
2017, they bought an aftermarket remote starter from the
same store. FCA
had not approved
or authorized the
remote starter,
according to the
July 25 decision.
Less than a year
later, the owners,
Natasha Roy and
Patrick O'Donnell,
reported shutdown
and stalling problems, Justice
George Rideout of the Court of
Queen's Bench wrote.
What followed was a "miscommunication" between the
dealership and FCA and FCA's
misimpression that the customers refused to let the store
remove the remote starter,
Rideout said. As a result, FCA
failed to properly investigate
whether the remote starter
caused the shutdowns.
"Something was clearly
wrong and dangerous to both
the owners and other users of
the highway," Rideout said.

HEARING-IMPAIRED CUSTOMER
CAN PURSUE CLAIM
THE BRITISH COLUMBIA
Human Rights Tribunal has
allowed a hearing-impaired
customer to pursue his discrimination claim against the
Maple Ridge store where he
bought a vehicle.
Spyros Verozinis claimed
to suffer from congenital deafness, epilepsy, PTSD and a
language deprivation disorder, the decision said. His
wife participated with him in
the September 2017 sales and
financing process at Maple
Ridge Hyundai, but he did
not bring with him a device
enabling him to hear better
when the couple took delivery
of a 2018 Elantra.
According to the Sept. 26
decision, the couple initially
complained to Hyundai Canada,
which contacted the store. The
couple claimed they ended up
"purchasing a vehicle that they
did not wish to purchase." The
store's general manager then
met with Verozinis to discuss
the complaint.
The store denied discrimination. Dealer lawyer Scott
Chambers, of Kelowna, B.C.,
told Automotive News Canada
that Verozinis is using the tribunal "to bring attention and
awareness to his particular
disability rather than assert
a bona fide complaint that his
needs were not accommodated

by the dealer."
The tribunal declined to
toss out the complaint, and
Chambers said the store is
willing to discuss resolution.

CUSTOMER'S SERVICE
CONTRACT SLIP-UP DENIED
THE BRITISH COLUMBIA
Civil Resolution Tribunal has
rejected a customer's claim
that a store in Terrace failed
to provide oil and filter services under an $3,150 service
contract purchased from a different dealership.
Duane Kurik accused
Terrace Chrysler Ltd. of
breaching the service contract
on his 2013 Dodge
Ram 1500 pickup.
According to
tribunal member
Micah Carmody,
Kurik had oil and
filter services left
on the contract
as his warranty
neared its expiration date. Kurik
"insisted that the services be
completed, even though they
were well beyond the recommended or required level of
service."
Terrace Chrysler performed the services after
obtaining confirmation that
the warranty administrator
would cover the cost, Carmody
said, so Kurik paid nothing.
On July 11, Carmody ruled
Kurik didn't present a written
contract. In addition, the decision said he didn't prove that
the store failed to change an
oil filter listed on the invoice.

EMPLOYEE ABSENCES RULED
NOT MEDICALLY JUSTIFIED
THE ONTARIO HUMAN
Rights Tribunal has rejected an employee's charge that
Toyota Motor Manufacturing
Canada Ontario improperly
treats absences due to work-related injuries differently than
absences for injuries unrelated to the job.
The case was filed by
Steven Wallwork, whose position involved placing chocks
behind the wheels of vehicles
on rail cars. In April 2017, he
reported severe foot pain but
initially didn't indicate the
injury and related absences
were work-related, the decision said. The company classified the time off as an emergency leave of service.
The Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board (WSIB) decided the injury was job-related but disallowed Wallwork's
lost earnings claim, saying
his absences weren't medically justified. Toyota Motor
Canada then determined he
exceeded the number of allowable emergency leave days and
warned of "corrective action"
if he took more.
The tribunal ruled Sept.
20 that Toyota Motor Canada
was justified in applying its
emergency leave policy after
the WSIB decided the absences weren't medically justified. - ANC

Automotive News Canada - November 2019

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