cross pond high tech

More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed electric vehicle start-up NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed monitoring centers, The Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge.

The automakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning, and to prevent fraud in subsidy programs.

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According to national specifications published in 2016, electric vehicles in China transmit data from the car’s sensors back to the manufacturer. From there, automakers send at least 61 data points, including location and details about battery and engine function to local centers like the one Ding oversees in Shanghai.

Data also flows to a national monitoring center for new energy vehicles run by the Beijing Institute of Technology, which pulls information from more than 1.1 million vehicles across the country, according to the National Big Data Alliance of New Energy Vehicles. The national monitoring center declined to respond to questions.

Those numbers are about to get much bigger. Though electric vehicle sales accounted for just 2.6 percent of the total last year, policymakers have said they’d like new energy vehicles to account for 20 percent of total sales by 2025. Starting next year, all automakers in China must meet production minimums for new energy vehicles, part of Beijing’s aggressive effort to reduce dependence on foreign energy sources and place itself at the forefront of a growing global industry.

Intel inked a deal to acquire Mobileye, which the chipmaker’s chief Brian Krzanich said enables it to “accelerate the future of autonomous driving with improved performance in a cloud-to-car solution at a lower cost for automakers”.

Mobileye offers technology covering computer vision and machine learning, data analysis, localisation and mapping for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving. The deal is said to fit with Intel’s strategy to “invest in data-intensive market opportunities that build on the company’s strengths in computing and connectivity from the cloud, through the network, to the device”.

A combined Intel and Mobileye automated driving unit will be based in Israel and headed by Amnon Shashua, co-founder, chairman and CTO of the acquired company. This, Intel said, “will support both companies’ existing production programmes and build upon relationships with car makers, suppliers and semiconductor partners to develop advanced driving assist, highly-autonomous and fully autonomous driving programmes”.

Here is the list of 25 unusual predictions developed in this great post. They state that in the US : 

1. Life expectancy of autonomous vehicles will be less than 1 year
2. One Autonomous Car will Replace 30 Traditional Cars
3. Less than 4 million autonomous cars will replace 50% of all commuter traffic in the U.S.
4. Fleet owners will become the primary influencers on the design of new cars
5. Driverless cars will be electric vehicles
6. Electric vehicle range will exceed 1,000 miles per charge by 2027
7. Noise levels in cities will be cut in half
8. 80% of driverless cars will be one-passenger vehicles
9. 40% of sales tax will disappear
10. Over 10% of retail businesses will disappear
11. Police departments will shrink by 80%
12. U.S. will lose over $35 billion/year from gas taxes
13. New York City will lose over $2 billion per year in traffic fines
14. 41% of airport revenues will disappear
15. Cities will lose over 50% of their revenue
16. Healthcare industry will lose over $500 billion per year
17. There will be 700,000 fewer stolen vehicles per year
18. Auto insurance industry will lose over $150 billion a year
19. Location no longer matters
20. Remodeling garages in people’s homes will soon become a thriving industry
21. Over 5 million acres of parking lots will suddenly come available for redevelopment
22. Overall transportation costs will shrink by 50%
23. Car ownership will soon become a very expensive hobby
24. Overcrowding will officially come to an end
25. Driverless technologies will cause 1 in 4 jobs to disappear

Imagine there was a device that could help make your car run quicker, cheaper and help you save the environment? Well that’s what OOCar is offering with its latest service.

The startup claims it can save you as much as 30 percent on fuel costs and 40 percent on insurance premiums. Not bad.

When the dreaded engine warning light comes on, it can give you a breakdown of the damage and also a rough cost of repairs, so you can tell if a mechanic is trying to pull a fast one. The app is only available in France right now, but the team hopes to start expanding across Europe soon.