These are the smart functions in a car that can talk to other devices or the internet, like getting traffic info or having your phone call through the car’s system.
The instrument cluster is the screen or dials in front of you that tell you how fast you're going, how much gas you have, and if something needs attention.
LIVE
This podcast is brought to you by proton dealership IT, experts in dealership cybersecurity and IT management. Interested in a free cybersecurity compliance or IT consultation? Visit protontax.com. That's PRO-T-O-N-T-E-C-H-S.com. Welcome to Daily Drive for Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. I'm Jake Nier in Detroit, in for Kellyn Walker, who's on assignment. Today on the show,
Netherlands relinquishes control of Nexperia. Nissan considers a rogue spinoff for infinity, and Stellantis will offer access to Tesla's Supercharger network. Plus, what happens when connected cars drive into cellular dead zones? Stefano Marzani of Amazon Web Services joins the show to talk about how to best serve customers in areas like the American West. The cabin of a vehicle is not something else that is
impossible to understand. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry. There's a bit of relief, but still plenty of uncertainty around the Nexperia chip crisis. The Dutch government says it's suspending its takeover of the Chinese-owned chip maker after what it called constructive talks with Beijing. The move eases a dispute that had put global auto production at risk. Volkswagen says it has secured an
enough chips for now, but others aren't in the clear. Bosch says disruptions continue at three plants with thousands of workers on furlough or reduced hours. ZF says its task force has secured supply through at least next week, though it says it still can't rule out furloughs later this month. Automakers, including BMW, warn the situation is still volatile, even with the political thought.
Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa says the company's lineup overhaul could include a new infinity model spun off from the rogue and built in Tennessee. He says next year's launch of the hybrid rogue, a full year of centrist sales, and added U.S. capacity for larger SUVs should help stabilize growth even as tariffs pressure Mexican built name plates.
You can hear our full interview with Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa, including his plans for a full hybrid lineup on Thursday's episode of Daily Drive.
And Stellantis is adopting the North American charging standard, unlocking access to over 28,000 Tesla superchargers across North America, Japan, and South Korea.
Starting in 2026, EVs like the Jeep Wagonier S and Dodge Charger Daytona will tap into Tesla's network with the Jeep Recon and future models following suit.
And those are today's headlines so you can find more details on all of those stories at autonews.com.
In a minute, we're going to hear from Amazon Web Services, Stefano Marzani, about a big issue with connected vehicles. They need cell service. A brief personal story.
I was out west with my family over the summer in the backcountry of states like Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. And if you found yourself out that way, you know that the service is spotty if you're lucky.
Kind of nice for escaping the hustle and bustle when you're on vacation like me, but not great if your car is designed to rely on 4G, 5G, or even better.
Our own Molly Boygon has been reporting on this issue for us at automotive news, and she joins me now to talk about it. Molly, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thanks, Jake.
So give us the overall picture here. How big a problem is this for connected vehicles and what are the possible solutions?
So it's a sort of nuanced problem because most of the US has access to at least 4G cellular service and in some cases 5G cellular service.
However, there are significant parts of the country, especially out west in the great state of Alaska, which I know you've spent some time in Jake.
Where there's really, it's dead zones. I mean, there's really not adequate cell service. And as vehicles become more connected, you can't rely on a Wi-Fi connection unless you're close to home.
You know, something like a Bluetooth connection is really not going to help you do access cloud servers or backend servers from the automaker.
So you need the cellular network and increasingly different connected vehicle services are relying on that network.
So you have things like remote unlock for your vehicle. You have things like different infotainment services, even the sort of feedback loop for some autonomous and ADAS functions relies on the network.
So it's really an interesting problem. And one that has like kind of a counter intuitively simple cause, which is that the west is so beautiful.
The landscape is so varied and these huge mountains and dramatic canyons and dense forests are the source of much consternation for the network providers because they block cell service. And that's kind of the functional issue at play.
Is there something that the automakers and others that are working on connected vehicles are thinking about to try to address this? I mean, is there much that can be done? Honestly.
So there's a few things that the automakers are looking at. One is kind of a like pragmatic solution, notifying the driver when they're planning a trip that's going to encounter a dead zone so that they can download map data and infotainment data and stuff like that ahead of time.
On the more kind of space age end of things, you know, there are antennas that the automakers currently used to access the network. If the antennas are bigger, they could potentially get signal in parts of the country that don't have as good access.
And then lastly, the thing that I really had no idea about before reporting this story is that the industry is looking at reliance on low orbital satellites for parts of the country where there's really no service
and where even like an antenna improvement would not be enhancing access. So in that case, vehicles would access the network via those low orbital satellites.
However, they're really expensive and there are some sort of regulatory limits to that. But there is a sort of suite of solutions that the industry is looking at to mitigate this problem.
Interesting. We're about to hear your interview with Stefano Marzani of AWS. Set this up a bit, Molly. What role does AWS play in all of this and what were your big takeaways?
So AWS is one of the main companies that provides software infrastructure that enables connected vehicles. So, you know, they have different products that enable things like OTA updates and predictive maintenance.
And so, Stefano is one of these people that's really intimately dealing with how the companies can enable connected vehicle features. And, you know, this is this is one thing that they're looking at. And I'll also add, it's an interesting sort of like hyper regional problem because the US does have these wide open spaces, you know, home home on the range, etc.
And it's a really like interesting regional problem for the US to tackle in particular.
All right. Well, very interesting stuff. We're about to hear that interview in just a minute. Molly, thanks for joining me on daily drive.
Thanks, Jake.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Jake Near.
As you heard before the break, our own Molly Boygon is looking into the issues surrounding connected vehicles
and their reliance on cellular service to function as designed.
Stefano Marzani is engineering technology and strategy leader at Amazon Web Services or AWS.
He tells Molly that the auto industry is working on several solutions to provide connected car services in the country's dead zones.
First, he says companies must ensure that safety critical functions remain on board the vehicle.
Here's a piece of their conversation.
I think let's begin by explaining what connected vehicle features rely on the cellular network at this point.
Yeah, there's plenty of them.
Think about every day's consumer experience in a vehicle, as a passenger or a driver,
from the basic one, like making a call to somebody while you're driving to real.
What we intend is that connected features like, for example, sending information in order to receive assistance,
or support, or diagnostic troubleshooting, or this kind of roadside assistance as well.
This kind of a traditional functionality test.
Surely, if you enter a modern vehicle nowadays, you see way more than that.
Infotainment is becoming really connected experience.
You can watch movies under the proper conditions and safety conditions, obviously.
You can listen to podcasts.
You want to connect your digital experience, your digital life to that kind of environment.
The cabin of the vehicle is not something else that disrupts your digital lifestyle.
You want to just continue digital lifestyle there, have that integrated.
That can deal with, of course, vocal assistance systems, agents, artificial intelligence.
Our customers are asking really a lot in terms of how we can integrate that in vehicles,
how we can have a vehicle assistance that talks about the functionalities that are available.
In some cases, even to control the vehicle functions through a voice assistant.
There's plenty of it.
There's plenty a lot as well, very recent times, not just with the simple stream of data, as it was in the past, but reach media as well.
For example, video streams or collecting sensor data, reach sensor data and transfer that to servers.
That can be done for real-time functionalities.
Think about the kind of the sentry mode.
You want to see what's going on in your vehicle while you are away through your phone.
Or other cases like collecting data to improve autonomous driving functionalities.
Those are some of the use cases that require a connected.
Provide experience, provide service and improve the product itself.
When you talk about ADAS and autonomy, that's interesting to me because I think someone who's not familiar would say,
oh, well, the local sensors and cameras are collecting data onboard the vehicle and filtering it through.
I guess map data would be relying on the cellular network, real-time map data.
Is that really where the crux of the cellular network relies on for ADAS and autonomy or is it something else?
For ADAS and autonomy, we need to have information local to the vehicle.
Especially when you are driving, you can't rely on decision taken elsewhere in order to perform a maneuver that is real-time.
Everything needs to stay in the vehicle for that specific usage.
If you have a line on HD maps, the maps need to be readily available.
They need to be downloaded before you are taking a maneuver.
The sensor and all the data is executed real-time.
Real-time is a super-important constant in automotive.
Everything is real-time. It needs to be processed locally, especially if the requirements of throughput and latency are strict because they are exercising a sensitive functionality.
For these parts of the country that don't have good access to cellular networks, what solutions are available?
I know that for something like OTA, automakers advise and configure the vehicle so that it's relying on the cellular network.
Obviously, something like a Bluetooth connection is entirely local.
What other solutions are available to ensure not only the fun features, like you said, streaming, gaming, which, while not necessary, are still a sort of value add that the consumer is planning to access,
but also some of those safety-related functions that are really a core offering of some of the software defined in connected vehicles.
There's a lot to the deals with how these functionalities are engineered.
I don't think it's just a matter of, let's say, having a functionality deployed and that's it.
There's a very simple rule. Everything that is critical needs to be executed in the car and doesn't need to rely on quality of service as we call it of the cellular connectivity.
Having said that, I give you a specific example we've worked on.
Let's assume you want to ask your car, hey, I see a light in my instrument cluster, what's going on?
In automotive classify that as technically an easy-to-be functionality, meaning it's kind of a critical because the car can respond to you.
Oh, it's nothing. Just move ahead. And then after a mile, you're just the car breaks or takes, catches fire because it was a very serious issue.
Why is that? Because LLM can be an SLM, all these, let's say, agentic technologies.
They are subject to hallucinations, they are subject to other kind of things.
And you can say, yeah, we can give this functionality to every driver and it's just relies on cloud. We have a lot of models up there.
That's not the case, right? So we can create a small language model, we can deploy it and it locally and not depend on the cloud.
It's not really tackling the issue that I'm talking about, right? So I think it's really, you need to understand the use case very well and put together the workflows that are necessary to manage the use case.
Not very holistic in a very, very holistic fashion. So the engineering processes that in automotive are absolutely well established, right?
So the famous V-model of the engineering, functional safety practices needs to be adopted in considering the quality of service and considering the usage of technologies, the deal with artificial intelligence.
So and going back to your question specifically for this area, I think that's the approach, right? So what can we understand back at the user?
What's their mission? Why are they taking a car vehicle? Can we prepare the car with some of that content in advance in order for them to safely or having fun in enjoying that kind of workload while they are doing this drive?
That's something that is made possible by, again, better connecting your digital lifestyle to the current environment because we have all the technical ways and technological ways to do that.
So I don't see just that as an isolated kind of experience. That needs to be prepared, especially if a user is aware that the cellular connectivity may be poor during that specific route they are going through.
So that's maybe think about an assistant that was going to tell you, hey, I know that tomorrow you got to go there and there may be some blind spot areas for cellular connectivity.
So why don't we prepare some of the content you may enjoy for that trip, right? So that can be a possible answer to some of these things because we want to have a better connected experience for the users themselves.
So if I hear you correctly, the auto industry can using some of the sort of personalization and AI enabled information in the vehicle, first of all, prepare the user for the possibility that they may encounter a dead zone while driving.
And second of all, knowing the user enables companies to ensure that the sort of like mission critical functions remain on board the vehicles.
And I know you were talking about in the case of a voice assistant having sort of function related or like sort of almost manual like I'm thinking of a driver's manual related functions stored in a small language model on board the vehicle rather than pulling to the cloud for
you know, even for even natural speech involving those types of commands.
Okay, thank you.
Exactly, exactly right. I think this is these two elements needs to go together.
So it's what we call the mixed critical orchestration and management.
So clearly classifying relevant use cases from the functional safety perspective, the criticality and separate their design and their deployment.
And their monitoring super important rather than a okay, I'm just giving you the latest podcast because I know that this blind spot in your route.
Totally different things from the workflow orchestration management.
So what I'm saying is it's not just a technical measure, it's a workflow and methodological measure that needs to be in place.
And are you familiar at all with this?
I was reading on the five TAA's website about non terrestrial networks.
So the effort to basically overcome some of the hardware limitations of a cellular tower by by deploying like a cellular network calls to a satellite.
How common is this now and how sort of big of a part of the conversation is this becoming?
But surely, you know, satellite connectivity is a super interesting technology to address this issue, especially for rural areas or artists.
You may have an adventure going in a forest somewhere and they surely that's maybe not covered by so cellular and kind of satellite connectivity.
It's extremely promising for all of it.
Kavia to what I said before is not just the media is the way we design and deliver a specific experience that is extremely relevant and that can take into account and should take in account all available channels.
That are available to improve the quality of service, but at the end it's always a quality of service measurement.
I have a technology model that I can use to transfer data with a specific quality of service.
Yeah, let's add it, but the workflow needs to be consistent for across all the channels that are available.
Surely, it can improve. Surely if we have satellite connectivity, yeah, fantastic.
So I really hope to see that more and more.
And what is the practical limitation of deploying that more?
Because I would think from a person who's not in the space as much as you, it's like, oh, this is a no-brainer.
The satellites are already up there. Let's just access them to access the cellular network. So what is the sort of obstacle?
So I'm not a specialist in satellites. We surely have specialists in our quiper leo division.
So I can definitely refer you to them and have their expertise on this specific topic.
What I can tell you is, anyway, there's a time to get there. What do we do in the meanwhile?
And on the other side, we have awesome cellular connectivity in a lot of places.
And again, I think knowing the user better in any case is another value for every auto manufacturer or anybody who needs to provide an automotive service.
So why don't we invest really to support the user with what we have to start with?
And then when something else comes available, we can definitely use that to facilitate amplify accelerates.
But there are opportunities nowadays that the OEM manufacturers should look at because they are technically possible.
Like some of those sort of workflow and user needs understanding across this.
Yes.
You can hear the rest of AWS's Stefano Marzani's interview with our own Molly Boygan on the next bonus episode of Daily Drive that'll be available Sunday morning.
That's Daily Drive for today.
I'm Jake Nier, in for Helen Walker.
Thanks to automotive news journalists Hans Grimell and Vince Bond Jr. for their reporting for today's podcast.
You can get the latest news on tech and innovation, supply chains, and everything happening in the auto industry at autonews.com.
Come back tomorrow for our exclusive interview with Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa.
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About this episode
The podcast covers significant automotive industry news, including the Netherlands' decision to relinquish control of Nexperia, easing chip supply concerns. Nissan is exploring a Rogue spinoff for its Infiniti brand, while Stellantis will integrate Tesla's Supercharger network into its EVs. A key discussion features Stefano Marzani from Amazon Web Services, addressing the challenges connected vehicles face in cellular dead zones and potential solutions, including local data processing and satellite connectivity. The episode provides insights into how automakers are adapting to these technological hurdles.
