"These are new growth initiatives that could create a lot of value for the company," Farley told Reuters, after Ford announced that he will succeed Jim Hackett as the automaker's fourth CEO since 2014. In addition to Ford's work on self-driving vehicles, "these are concrete areas that will change Ford," Farley said. In the meantime, Farley, 58, must wrestle with a painful restructuring of Ford's global operations amid the ravages of the coronavirus crisis that has saddled the No. 2 U.S. automa
In the automotive world, low-latency 5G is often trumpeted as a way to put more safety and entertainment features into the car. Samsung-owned Harman is one of the companies working on bringing the next-generation mobile broadband to your commute, and it has identified other potential uses for it, including teaching your car how to diagnose its own problems and instructing it to warn its owner if it detects an issue.
"5G can improve vehicle analytics. The car will be able to listen to wave forms or vibrations that can be analyzed on-board and uploaded to cloud-based systems," Roger Jollis, Harman's director of product management, told Autoblog. He added the technology can warn a motorist or a fleet operator when a part is about to fail, which would save time and money. It can even make an appointment with a dealer to get the problem fixed.
Humans already do this. When your engine sounds like it's about to leap out of the car, you think "that's not good," pull over, and pop the hood. And, this technology is commonly used in the aerospace sector (notably in the helicopter world), so it's not 100% new, but 5G would play a key role in automatizing it and allowing the car to communicate with a repair center in real-time by letting it send a vast amount of data in a matter of seconds.
Bringing this technology to production would require putting together a library of what common failures (like a wheel bearing, for example) sound like. Engineers would also need to strategically place sensors around the car so they can monitor what noise the timing belt makes without interference from the stereo. None of these obstacles are insurmountable; what remains to be seen is whether there is a demand for this feature.
Jollis stressed making vehicle diagnosis more accurate is merely a potential use case his team identified for in-car 5G, and Harman is not actively working on bringing it to production. It has other priorities, like helping BMW launch its first 5G-compatible car (the production version of the electric iNext SUV) before the end of 2021. Samsung announced its partnership with the Munich-based company at CES 2020. Details about what they plan to achieve remain vague, but they hinted at zero-delay streaming which opens the door to in-car gaming (including virtual reality-based experiences) and movie streaming at resolutions up to 4K. The partners also cited the ability to download high-resolution maps and to unlock vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology as advantages.
Male hand holding manual gearbox in car, test drive of new automobile, closeup
Not long after purchasing my first car with parking sensors, after a few delighted first days marveling at how they helped me park in the tightest of spots, I found myself in some situation where they were beeping incessantly, so I turned them off. A half-hour later, I listened for beeping that never came as I backed into a wall, bruising my ego and the bumper skin. In a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, psychiatrist Vatsal G. Thakkar tells a similar story in which he placed blind reliance on proximity sensors — in a car that didn't have them.
He cites the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who says, "Many drivers are not aware of the limitations" of driver-assist technologies, while one in five drivers have had an accident or near miss because they too fully relied on these systems.
Thakkar points out something we often say at Autoblog: Driver-assistance technologies can be useful, but they require increased attentiveness, not less. It's not even a trust-but-verify situation — if you have these technologies, don't trust. Ever. Do have a thorough understanding of how they work, how they can be fooled, and be prepared to override them at a second's notice.
One might ask: If I have to be so attentive operating these technologies, then why have them in the first place? Why not just ... be attentive? Good question. I think we all have a pretty good sense that the impetus for lane-keeping, adaptive cruise and various other systems, in part or in full, is driver distraction brought on primarily by smartphones and infotainment screens. Driver distraction is undoubtedly a big factor in our alarming trend of traffic fatalities. But as Thakkar asks, "Could technology designed to save us from our lapses in attention actually make us even less attentive?"
In his concise piece, Thakkar makes the case that over-reliance on technology can be blamed for recent Tesla crashes, medical errors and even the recent crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners.
But his solution is one after our own hearts, and why we suggest you read his piece. The answer to all of the above is simple, engaging and beautiful — it's the manual transmission. When your brain and all four limbs are fully engaged in the driving experience, who needs beeps?
Volvo has announced that it will limit the top speed of its cars to 180 kph, or 112 mph. The carmaker says it wants to send "a strong signal about the dangers of speeding," and from 2020, no Volvo cars can go faster than that. The limit is part of Volvo's Vision 2020, which aims for zero road deaths or severe injuries in a Volvo by 2020. Polestar models were not mentioned.
"Volvo is a leader in safety: We always have been and we always will be," said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. "Because of our research, we know where the problem areas are when it comes to ending serious injuries and fatalities in our cars. And while a speed limitation is not a cure-all, it's worth doing if we can even save one life."
Volvo's flagship XC90 SUV currently has a top speed of 131 mph.
Samuelsson, speaking ahead of the Geneva Motor Show, said it is unlikely to meet the Vision 2020 goal without additional measures to address driver behavior.
"We've realized that to close the gap we have to focus more on the human factors," Samuelsson told Reuters. Volvo did not elaborate on the data but said its passenger fatalities were already well below the industry average before the goal was announced in 2007.
In addition to the speed cap, Volvo plans to deploy technology using cameras that monitor the driver's state and attentiveness to prevent people driving while distracted or intoxicated, two other big factors in accidents, Samuelsson said.
There's also nothing preventing these Volvos from being driven at 60 mph in a 30 mph zone yet, except for proposed EU-mandated automatic speed limiters. But Volvo is also looking into limiting lower speeds with technology. Volvo's statement says: "Apart from limiting top speeds, the company is also investigating how a combination of smart speed control and geofencing technology could automatically limit speeds around schools and hospitals in future." In other words, if drivers cannot be trusted to make the decision to slow down, the cars will do that for them.
It has to be said the 112 mph limit is somewhat peculiar. Even if Japanese home market cars have had the same speed limit implemented for ages, there aren't that many countries where you can legally pass 110 mph. European highway limits are usually around 75-80 mph at maximum, and crashing at 90-100 is already dangerous enough. It feels like Volvo has set a limit no one would ever reach in normal driving, except perhaps on the German Autobahn. Samuelsson conceded that the limit could be a turnoff for German buyers.
That also brings us to an another aspect of the matter: which more strongly affects sales, a message that a manufacturer voluntarily limits its cars from reaching a certain speed, or that the cars are guaranteed to attain a given speed that few buyers ever reach?
"We cannot please everybody, but we think we will attract new customers," the CEO said, recalling that the roll-out of three-point seat belts pioneered by Volvo in 1959 had initially been criticized by some as intrusive.
"I think Volvo customers in Germany will appreciate that we're doing something about safety," he said.
Kia is going to show an electric concept car at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show (we got our first look last week), and the automaker has revealed some interesting and even funny details about the car ahead of time. For starters, there will be 21(!) individual high-resolution screens in this puppy. The teaser photo of the interior is showing off a lot of them, but don't fret, there are still more in there somewhere. Kia isn't exactly serious about this kind of a setup; here's a section of the press release for you as an example: "In a humorous riposte to the industry's current obsession with ever increasing dashboard screens, the concept features 21 individual ultra high-resolution screens. These curve their synchronized way across the top of the dashboard in a layout that's at the same time both casual and coordinated."
So yes, it's a joke. But it's still sort of incredible a concept like this one will exist. We don't expect 21-screen interiors to be reality anytime soon, especially when the folks who designed it agree that it's completely laughable, too. What comes next in the release is also a bit confusing.
Kia says this is its first pure-electric four-door passenger car — nothing wrong there. However, it then goes on to say it combines elements from "a muscular sports utility vehicle, a sleek and athletic family saloon and a versatile and spacious crossover." SUVs and crossovers are mentioned twice there, but this is meant to be a four-door passenger car? The teaser makes it look like the concept is much more car-like than a crossover, but it could be deceiving. A hint of black cladding is shown in this side profile shot as the closest hint to its intentions of being more crossover-like.
Another interesting detail here is the evolution of Kia's tiger nose grille we saw introduced on the Stinger. It looks like future Kia electric cars will have a "tiger mask" (ha) instead of a traditional flow-through grille. We dig the normal design itself on the Stinger, and the teaser itself doesn't disappoint. The car/crossover/combination thereof will be revealed in Geneva on March 5, so check back then to see the full concept.
On this episode of AutoblogVR, pop a squat inside an actual, functional mech suit. If you have a VR headset, you're gonna want to pull it out for this one.
"These are new growth initiatives that could create a lot of value for the company," Farley told Reuters, after Ford announced that he will succeed Jim Hackett as the automaker's fourth CEO since 2014. In addition to Ford's work on self-driving vehicles, "these are concrete areas that will change Ford," Farley said. In the meantime, Farley, 58, must wrestle with a painful restructuring of Ford's global operations amid the ravages of the coronavirus crisis that has saddled the No. 2 U.S. automa
On this episode of AutoblogVR, pop a squat inside an actual, functional mech suit. If you have a VR headset, you're gonna want to pull it out for this one.