Ottawa lays groundwork to establish autonomous vehicles cluster in western suburb

Blackberry pivots to AV with $100-million investment

Ottawa’s high-tech cluster hopes to regain some of its former luster by leveraging the region’s deep technological expertise and surging interest from global players to carve out a niche in the rapidly evolving field of autonomous vehicles (AV). The emerging AV cluster in the Ottawa west suburb of Kanata received a major boost last month with an announcement by Blackberry Ltd – at an event attended by prime minister Justin Trudeau - that it was investing $100 million to refocus its Kanata-based QNX division towards AV and establish a Blackberry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre with an emphasis on industry and academic partnerships.

A working group has also been created to promote AV and prepare a bid for Ontario government funding. Last September, the province announced in the Minister of Transport’s mandate letter that it plans to establish a “Centre of Excellence for autonomous vehicles by 2018”.

“That was a pivotal point for us. We’d love to be that location. There are 70 to 100 companies in Ottawa that have a technology suitable for AV,” says Jenna Sudds, executive director of the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA). “It’s amazing how much is happening in Ottawa in the AV space and the amount of government support. Commercialization is a big focus from the talent, training and research aspects.”

According to a recent report by Doyletech Corp, in 2015 Kanata North was home to more than 500 tech companies employing 20,300 workers who were shown to be three times more productive than the national average. Those firms and employees generated nearly $2.5 billion in tax revenue for all three levels of government.

[rs_quote credit="Blackberry QNX press release"]The BlackBerry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre serves as a catalyst and funnel for the private, public, and academic sectors, to collaborate on hands-on projects that provide proof-of-concept and production-ready solutions for connected, automated, and autonomous vehicles.[/rs_quote]

Last March, the KNBA hosted an AV ecosystem breakfast that attracted more than 100 people from nearly 70 companies. This week, a more ambitious Autonomous Vehicles Summit will be held in Kanata to further explore opportunities offered by AV and Connected Cars.

If successful, an AV cluster would go a long way towards replacing the transformative presence Nortel Networks had on the region’s tech sector before it sank into bankruptcy in 2009. In 2015, there were nearly 49,000 employed in the Ottawa sector, up from 40,000 from 2014 as the global search for talent taps into existing companies and the region’s universities and colleges.

The push for an AV cluster isn’t limited to suburban Kanata. The City of Ottawa’s innovation and economic development arm – Invest Ottawa – is leading the region’s bid for the provincial AV Centre of Excellence. It also plans to participate in the federal government’s upcoming Smart Cities Challenge, modelled on a successful US initiative.

“Ottawa is super well placed. QNX is a world software leader for AV and the region has great networking with many companies large and small. It’s a perfect opportunity for us,” says Kelly Daize, Invest Ottawa’s marketing director for the Americas. “I can feel a real energy in the sector … Industry has been addressing AV for a long time and governments are now stepping up to put their stake in the sand.”

Moving driverless cars from the lab to the streets will require refining several key technologies, including global positioning and inertial navigation systems, software and odometry (motion sensors), cybersecurity and the merger of telecommunications and informatics, among others. The global rush to develop AVs and associated technologies has been embraced by dozens of car makers and technology heavy weights, from Ford and Tesla to Microsoft and Google.

While QNX is the highest profile Ottawa company in the AV space, competition is heating up. Last year, Apple Inc established an office across the street from QNX and poached as many as two dozen QNX executives and engineering experts including the its co-founder and former CEO Dan Dodge.

Dodge “retired” from QNX less than six months before joining Apple to work on an automotive initiative reportedly called Project Titan. The Cupertino CA-based tech giant has placed a cone of silence over its Ottawa operations and has been coy about its widely rumoured intentions to develop an electric car with self-driving capability. It also has no comment about its shift away from building a complete car to focus on an autonomous driving system under the direction of Bob Mansfield, formerly senior VP Technologies.

Ottawa’s AV strength is also resident in the operations of several multinational telecom firms that have established facilities in the region focusing on the Internet of Everything and 5G, the next generation in mobile wireless technology expected to be rolled out by 2020. These include large firms such as Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei as well as smaller companies like Neptec (drones), Romaeris (unmanned aerial vehicles), Skywave Mobile (satellite, acquired by ORBCOMM), and Quanergy (LIDAR systems), Lixar (web, mobile, cloud and big data) and Crank Software (mobile graphical display).

“Invest Ottawa has put together a list of AV companies in the area and the networking side is huge but there are also other companies with relevant technologies,” says Daize. “We need to raise their profile.”

While governments are now coming forward to express their support for AV, remarkably little funding has been devoted to supporting the field. That suggests Canada would be best served if companies worked on niche technology applications in collaboration with players in other countries.

“Canada is dead last in preparation for AV and the money being invested in it … The provinces and federal government need to provide seed funding because we’re certainly behind,” says Barrie Kirk co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE), a Kanata-based consulting and advocacy group. “I’m optimistic because even though we’re overly conservative we do have an excellent tech sector. QNX is a good role model for what can be achieved.”

Kirk notes that QNX’s recent deal to supply products to Ford marks the beginning of a transition for the company from a Tier II to a Tier I supplier — a trend that could accelerate as the firm hires another 650 employees to flesh out its AV innovation centre.

At the same time, the electronic architecture of vehicles is changing from more than 100 disparate electronic controls spread throughout a vehicle to a dozen domain controllers. QNX says it will meet the challenge by developing a flexible foundational technology platform for vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-cloud communications.

Kirk has produced white papers on the AV sector for the provincial and federal governments (www.cavcoe.com). The latter contains 30 recommendations that include the appointment of a Cabinet-level AV champion, a working group to coordinate AV activities across all relevant federal departments and agencies and significant investments in AV development, testing, and related activities in the auto and technology industries, universities and the National Research Council.

Another white paper set for release recommends that four industry-led AV centres be established in Kanata, London, Waterloo and Toronto.

“There’s been an increase in momentum and 2016 was a big year for AV. A lot more needs to happen,” says Kirk. “AV should be a key focus in the (forthcoming) Innovation Agenda … Canada can contribute and play a leading global role.”

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