cross pond high tech

A new highway in China is being built that will have dedicated lanes for autonomous vehicles. The lanes reserved for self-driving cars will be built on a new freeway connecting Beijing and the Xiongan New Area in Hebei province. The area is located about 60 miles southwest of Beijing.

The 100-kilometer (62 mile) freeway will be open to two-way traffic, with two of the eight lanes specially designed for autonomous vehicles, according to the Beijing Capital Highway Development Group Co. Construction on the project will begin this year. The speed limit on the highway will range from 62 to 74 mph.

The stretch of highway will also include intelligent road infrastructure and smart-toll facilities. This intelligent infrastructure system can acquire vehicle data and road information through wireless communication and internet technology, improving traffic flow and safety.

"It will be the most convenient freeway between Beijing and Xiongan," Zhou Xiaohong, deputy head of the group's department of technology and planning, was quoted as saying by Beijing Daily.

When the Beijing-Xiongan freeway is complete, travel time from the capital city of Beijing to Xiongan will be cut to one hour from the current two and a half hours, according to the outline.

The highway is one of several planned for the region. An outline for the Xiongan New Area lists four north-south freeways and three east-west expressways which will be built linking Xiongan with surrounding cities, including Beijing, Tianjin and cities in Hebei.

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

Philippe Dewost has been appointed director of Leonard, VINCI's new Group-wide innovation and foresight platform. He took up his duties on 1 September and reports to Pierre Coppey, Executive Vice-President of VINCI.

Philippe Dewost, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), is a Corps des Mines engineer and holds an MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs. 

He is a co-founder of Internet service provider Wanadoo and notably re-launched Orange France Telecom's home devices business.

He also served as CEO of imSense ltd, a British startup based in Cambridge. The company, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, developed and patented one-of-a-kind imaging technologies that are now used more than 500 million times a day across most Apple products.

Starting in 2011, Philippe Dewost headed the Digital Economy section of the Investments of the Future Programme at Groupe Caisse des Dépôts (CDC). At the end of 2015, Philippe Dewost also launched LaBChain, a CDC Blockchain initiative.

Philippe Dewost was the prime mover behind La French Tech, the government's French startup ecosystem initiative, and is also Honorary President of the Centre des Hautes Etudes du Cyberespace (CHECy).

"Philippe has more than 20 years of experience in Internet and mobile ecosystems within large tech and telecoms groups and startups. This expertise will be of invaluable help in developing Leonard, the new VINCI open laboratory focused on the future of cities and infrastructure," said Pierre Coppey, Executive Vice-President of VINCI.

"With Leonard, VINCI is offering me a chance to contribute to the digital transformation of durable structures and move from bytes to concrete. I am honoured and proud to have this opportunity to work with them over the long term to write the digital record of the builders," said Philippe Dewost in taking up his new position.

Voici la vidéo du débat sur "Les nouvelles technologies : vers une évolution culturelle et cognitive" auquel je représentais Leonard à la Sorbonne dans le cadre de la Cité de la Réussite aux côtés d'Anne Lalou (Web School Factory) et Sophie Stanton (IBM), modérés par Annabelle Laurent d'Uzbek & Rica