Nissan Formula E Team has unveiled its updated livery for the 2024/25 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, with the team being prepared for the first campaign under the new GEN3 Evo regulations.

For the upcoming season, Nissan Formula E Team states it has opted to continue with its cherry blossom livery, which has been a fan-favourite ever since it debuted at the start of Season 9.

The pattern is meaningful for the outfit, both as a hint to its Japanese DNA and new beginnings, as well as now being part of Nissan’s identity in Formula E. The Japanese team will be looking to build on a strong Season 10, which saw it finish fourth in the Teams’ and Drivers’ Championship, as well as third in the newly-established Manufacturers’ Championship.

Nissan Formula E Team has opted to refresh its driver line-up, with the experienced Norman Nato returning after a season away. Together with Oliver Rowland, who took two victories and five further podiums in an excellent Season 10, the squad now boasts two Formula E race winners. Both drivers possess the knowledge of how to get the most out of their machinery and have a proven track record of helping teams develop their cars. Nato will continue to sport the #17 on his Nissan e-4ORCE 05, while Rowland switches to Nissan’s traditional #23.

The new factory is also fully operational ahead of the 2024/25 campaign. The Nissan Formula E Team dedicated facility stretches over 2,600 square meters and features a workshop area, simulator, engineering and management offices, as well as display, meeting and multipurpose areas. Located south of Paris, the headquarters is based close to other Nissan sites and its Alliance partners, ensuring synergies and access to talent, equipment and facilities available within Nissan and the group.

Rowland and Nato will be on track for the first time in an official capacity as team mates at pre-season testing on 4-7 November in Valencia, while Season 11 kicks off on December 7 at the Sao Paulo E-Prix.

Tommaso Volpe, MD and team principal, Nissan Formula E Team said: “We’re excited for the new season and have been working hard, getting to grips with the GEN3 Evo car. Everything has been running smoothly so far and we’re looking forward to getting out on track in Valencia. Our new workshop is fully operational now, which is making a huge difference - we’ve been able to take full advantage of the facilities, allowing us to maximise the potential of the team. In terms of drivers, Norman has settled in very quickly, he knew most of the crew already so that made things easier than normal. Together with Oli, we’re confident that we have a strong line-up ready to fight for wins and podiums throughout the upcoming campaign. On top of that, we’ve got great companies supporting us, with Electromin extending and increasing its collaboration with the team to become our main partner, alongside existing relationships with Coral and Coral Eyewear, who we are delighted to be working with. We’re fully focused on improving at every step and continuing where we left off a few months ago, as we aim to challenge at the top in Season 11.”

Oliver Rowland: “It’s been good to re-charge after a busy year, but I’ve still been preparing for Season 11, making sure I’m in good shape both physically and mentally. It’s great to have the new workshop fully in action, I’ve been really impressed by the facilities. The location is ideal and it sets a high bar for ourselves, showing our ambition to continue improving and fighting at the front. There are a few areas to get on top of with the GEN3 Evo, including the all-wheel drive technology, but we’ll look to iron everything out and be ready to take up the fight from the first race.”

Norman Nato: “I’m delighted to be back with team and I already feel comfortable straight away with the car, simulator and staff. The biggest change has been the excellent new workshop, allowing us to prepare and debrief from races in amazing conditions, with the highest level equipment available to us. The updated livery is really cool, keeping our Japanese identity and the fans love it, making us so recognisable on- track. I can’t wait to start this GEN3 Evo era in Valencia testing, before heading out to Brazil for the season opener!”

The Japanese team acknowledged the role of its partners including, Electromin which increased its involvement with the team, becoming innovation partner. A leading mobility solutions provider in the Middle East, Electromin is a subsidiary of Petromin Corporation, one of Nissan’s official importers in Saudi Arabia. 

Kalyana Sivagnanam, Group CEO, Petromin Corporation said: “We are immensely proud to enter this strategic partnership with Nissan Formula E Team as its official global sponsor for the next four years, with Electromin leading the charge in the first year. As the pioneers of electric mobility in Saudi Arabia through Electromin, we see this partnership as a key step in accelerating the adoption of EV technology across the region.”

Coral remains on board as the squad’s sustainability partner, specialising in offsetting carbon emissions. Coral helps the team assess, monitor and reduce its carbon footprint. 

Daniele Sileri, Founder and Head of Strategy, Coral said: "Nissan Formula E Team has been the perfect launch partner for Coral. We are delighted to show the tangible results of our partnership in a matter of weeks, whereby we can help the team offset its carbon footprint."

Coral Eyewear also continues its relationship with the team for a second season. The sustainable fashion start-up supplies the outfit with its distinctive product range, which are crafted using recycled plastic and plant-based materials. 

George Bailey, Co- Founder, Coral Eyewear said: "We're immensely proud to be partnering with Nissan Formula E Team. It's exciting to see developments in electric technology moving from the track into road vehicles, and the team are clearly making efforts to choose sustainable options.”

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Pre-owned car marketplace Cars24 has announced the launch of AI Labs, a dedicated initiative designed to develop artificial intelligence-native products and support early-stage entrepreneurs.

As part of the program, the company has committed a USD 20 million investment fund targeted at startups and development teams building transformative AI technologies.

The move marks an expansion of Cars24’s internal technology strategy, where machine learning and artificial intelligence models have already been integrated into core business operations to manage decision-making workflows and customer experience interfaces. Through AI Labs, the company will extend its technical resources externally to independent software engineers and startup founders.

To establish the infrastructure for the program, Cars24 has partnered with technology providers including OpenAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and ElevenLabs. This ecosystem will provide participating developers with cloud infrastructure, technical expertise, distribution networks and advanced language and voice synthesis models to accelerate product deployment.

The operational focus of AI Labs is divided into three primary activities:

• Build: Developing proprietary AI-native applications and contributing to global open-source software innovation.
• Partner: Collaborating with established artificial intelligence firms to encourage industry experimentation and technology adoption.
• Invest: Supplying seed capital and strategic support to early-stage businesses building software categories.

Beyond direct equity investments, the initiative will fund community engagement programs, including regional hackathons, builder incubation programs and collaborative open-source projects designed to stimulate developer experimentation.

Vikram Chopra, Founder and CEO, Cars24, said, “Every major technology shift creates a handful of companies that go on to define the future. We believe AI is the biggest shift of our generation, and the opportunity ahead is far larger than anything we've seen before. Over the last few years, we've seen AI fundamentally change how we operate, build products, and serve customers AI Labs is our way of giving back to the ecosystem that is shaping this future. We want to back founders early, help them move faster and support the people building things that seem impossible today but inevitable tomorrow.”

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Automotive supplier Valeo and Electronic Design Automation software provider Zuken have announced a strategic partnership to develop an open, artificial intelligence-assisted electronic design platform. The collaboration will operate under a joint program named the ‘Zuken Valeo InnoLab’.

The initiative integrates Zuken's AI architecture with Valeo’s custom AI agents and industrial data to create a real-time collaborative ecosystem between software tools and engineers. The primary objective of the program is to reduce hardware design timelines while maintaining structural robustness across complex automotive electronic systems.

The technical development framework spans the entire electronic design flow and is organised into four main operational areas:

• Functional Generative Design: Valeo will deploy its generative AI models within Zuken’s System Planner software to instantly generate and evaluate multi-criteria system architectures based on predefined corporate standards.
• Digital Continuity: Zuken’s open architecture will interface with Valeo’s existing digital ecosystem to provide end-to-end data traceability. This integration is designed to comply with the Automotive SPICE 4.0 (ASPICE4.0) Hardware Engineering process group standard, allowing Valeo's AI to process data and execute automated actions directly within the platform.
• Assisted Detailed Design: Valeo will integrate virtual AI copilot agents to assist engineering teams in real time with hardware rule verification, solution searching, and constraint implementations. Concurrently, Zuken is developing native AI functions to accelerate schematic entries by drawing from Valeo’s standardised components database.
• Automated Placement and Routing: Physical circuit integration will utilise Zuken’s Design Force engine, which features automated placement and routing algorithms. Valeo will use Zuken's software development kit to train the AI engine against specific automotive environmental and physical constraints to achieve correct initial executions.

Christophe Le Ligne, Vice-President – Research and Development, Valeo, said, “For Valeo, Zuken is much more than a software provider; it is a true innovation partner. The power of Zuken’s AI roadmap, combined with the exceptional openness of its architecture, allows us to hybridise our own artificial intelligence tools with their engine. This win-win partnership is the best way to tackle the challenge of automotive complexity by slashing our design times while guaranteeing 100% robustness.”

Ryosuke Takagi, Executive Officer and General Manager – R&D Division, Zuken, added, “Our vision at Zuken has always been to provide intelligent tools that adapt to our customers’ most complex challenges. Collaborating with a technological leader like Valeo pushes our ‘Autonomous Brain’ roadmap to its highest level of performance. By opening our System Planner, Design Gateway, and Design Force solutions to Valeo’s AI agents, we demonstrate that the true power of AI in engineering lies in the alliance between a high-performance software engine and expert industrial know-how.”

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Artificial intelligence software developer Helm.ai has launched two foundation models, GenSim-3 and VidGen-3, establishing a native Full HD (1920x1080) resolution standard for generative simulation across a 6-camera, 360-degree surround-view suite.

The architecture delivers 5x the pixel density of industry benchmarks to assist automotive developers facing the limitation where physical collection of edge cases becomes logistically restrictive.

Traditional generative world models typically cap resolution at roughly 0.4 megapixels per camera. Helm.ai’s platform outputs a native 2 megapixels per camera, yielding a synchronised 12-megapixel synthetic canvas per timestep. This specification matches the hardware parameters of production-grade vehicle cameras to reduce the domain gap for SAE Level 2 through Level 4 autonomous vehicle development.

The platform functions as a virtual sensor twin by mathematically replicating physical constraints and hardware anomalies, including lens flares, sensor banding patterns, and exposure blinding. To accommodate different neural network training routines, the pipeline can be configured to a high-speed validation mode using a three-camera setup at 30 frames per second, or a spatial context mode generating a six-camera surround view at 5 frames per second.

Data generation is split into two operational pipelines. GenSim-3 focuses on data augmentation by modifying environmental parameters such as weather, lighting, and object surfaces across real-world video segments at native 2MP resolution. VidGen-3 focuses on data creation, synthesising driving sequences from scratch by simulating environments, agent behaviours, and traffic logic without baseline video to patch geographic data gaps.

Helm.ai achieved the 2MP standard using a cluster of a few hundred GPUs rather than the thousands typically required for sub-HD video generation. This framework reduces the GPU infrastructure footprint for vehicle manufacturers and provides a method for compressing autonomous driving software onto mass-market on-vehicle compute chips.

Vladislav Voroninski, CEO and Founder, Helm.ai, said, "We are moving the industry from standard 'AI video' to authentic, hardware-accurate sensor emulation. By leading with a Full HD (2MP) standard and a 12-megapixel total aggregate capability per timestep, we have solved the resolution bottleneck that has historically limited the utility of generative AI in safety-critical systems. By optimising our compute architecture, we are giving our partners a high-performance platform to validate their autonomous stacks using synthetic data that perfectly matches the fidelity of their actual production sensors."

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Global automotive technology supplier Marelli has marked the 30th anniversary of its flagship electronics manufacturing plant in Guangzhou. Established in 1996 as Marelli’s inaugural manufacturing investment in China, the facility has transformed from a baseline assembly outpost into a major smart manufacturing and hardware-software validation centre.

Over the past three decades, the facility has expanded from a single operational production line with approximately 100 technicians into a 30,000-square-meter automotive electronics campus.

Today, the facility employs nearly 1,000 people and runs 66 active production lines, manufacturing components for both localised Chinese vehicle programs and global vehicle architectures.

The campus houses an adjacent, fully integrated Engineering Center that holds more than 100 registered patents. The manufacturing framework integrates high-precision assembly lines, automated optical bonding modules and site-wide rooftop solar arrays designed to manage factory energy overheads and lower operational carbon density.

The Guangzhou plant functions as a strategic industrialisation hub focused on low-cost, scalable architectures suited for the industry transition toward connected, software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The facility specialises in several high-growth hardware and display segments like advanced display solutions based on Mini-LED and MicroLED technologies. Additional key platforms include electronic control units (ECUs) for body and seat systems, zone control units, as well as digital cockpits, digital instrument clusters, and 5G telematics systems.

Ravi Tallapragada, President of Marelli’s Electronics business unit, said, “Our Guangzhou plant is a cornerstone of Marelli’s Electronics business in China and a powerful example of how innovation and advanced manufacturing can drive sustainable growth. Over the past 30 years, the team has continuously evolved its capabilities, developing advanced technologies and scalable platforms that address the rapid transformation of the automotive industry, building on long-standing collaboration with customers and partners. I’m proud of our team in Guangzhou and confident that the plant will continue to play a key role in shaping Marelli’s future globally.”

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