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Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

BMW will launch iNext autonomous car in China, too

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BMW has every intention of launching iNext, its first autonomous car, concurrently in China, Europe, and the United States, barring any regulatory resistance.

Speaking at an artificial intelligence and robotics conference in Shenzhen, Maximilian Doemling, the senior manager of the autonomous group, said:

“If you’re expecting autonomous function where you can be on the highway, press the button and the car does everything for you, like lane changing and driving, and you can play with smartphone, and you’re al
ways safe, we had the big announcement with Intel and Mobileye that we will have the iNext in 2021.”

It’s not surprising that BMW is prepared to launch iNext in China in the opening year. The country buys more cars than anywhere else, and in the past ten years people have started moving from General Motors, Toyota, and Volkswagen to more luxury brands, like BMW and Mercedes Benz.



BMW wants in on booming China market

Electric cars are also becoming a lot more popular in China, as residents in large cities see the impacts of pollution everyday and seek to reduce their own.

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has said in the near future the company may start manufacturing cars in the country, due to the high demand for the Model S and expected demand for the Model 3.

BMW has a 2021 release date for the iNext, though that is only preliminary. While Tesla and Google may boast that self-driving is already safer, it still needs to get through a lot of regulatory hurdles before people can drive without looking at the road.

That said, BMW is positioning itself as a key player in the market, partnering with Intel and Mobileye to build a driverless system. BMW is also part of a consortium of German manufacturers that purchased Here Maps, giving them another resource for its self-driving endeavour.

Samsung to Launch Galaxy Note 7 With 128GB of Storage and 6GB of RAM in China

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galaxy note 7-3

For those overly concerned about the amount on onboard storage and RAM in a device, China might be the best place for you. According to the latest report from the Korea Herald, Samsung is indeed reviewing the possible launch of a Galaxy Note 7 with upgraded specs, in comparison to the model that will launch in other parts of the globe on August 19.
The Galaxy Note 7 headed for China will feature upped storage, 128GB from the base of 64GB, as well as 6GB of RAM. The model shipping in the US, Europe, and Korea features 4GB of RAM. So, why is China getting so lucky? For a high-end flagship to compete, it’s all about the specs. Apparently, the Chinese market is saturated with devices that feature 6GB of RAM and high amounts of storage, meaning Samsung needs to deliver those numbers to be considered as someone’s next smartphone purchase. 
For us in the US, let’s quickly discuss why our model of 64GB onboard storage and 4GB RAM shouldn’t disappoint. First, the Galaxy Note 7 does allow for expandable storage. If you need more, simply pop in a microSD card. Storage problems resolved. As for the RAM, just look at the OnePlus 3. The device comes with 6GB of RAM, but does it really make a difference to a consumer’s overall experience? In our experience, no, not at all. Until the Android OS and apps are completely optimized to utilize that amount of RAM, it’s simply not a deal breaker. If you think it is, then by all means, proceed to get belligerent in the comments. I won’t stop you.
Moving past that non-disappointment, another tidbit was mentioned in the Herald’s report. According to Samsung’s Koh Dong-jin, a few US banks, including Citibank, Bank of America and US Bank, are working to bring the iris scanning technology of the Note 7 to its mobile platforms. This means that, at hopefully some point in the future, you can use your eyes to log into your mobile banking app.
While no one would argue that having a base of 128GB storage and 6GB RAM in the US model would not have been a bonus, there’s nothing to be upset about. If anything, be grateful Samsung didn’t release the phone for a solid $1,000 with those specifications onboard. If that happened, there would be plenty to get pissed about.

Thruway boycott presses paths for China's self-driving auto industry

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In a potential misfortune for China's quickening independent vehicle industry, the administration has banned such autos from testing on the country's interstates. 

A Bloomberg report by means of Motor trend that uncovered Chinese vehicles controllers chose to piece self-driving autos from experiencing tests on open interstates. 

The report found that Chinese auto powers are working together with police to create controls around the testing of self-driving autos on the nation's principle streets. Without a doubt a preparatory draft of controls has as of now been produced by the business. 

Be that as it may, there is no time allotment for when the new directions will be prepared by top functionary at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, She Weizhen. Until that unspecified date, self-governing autos must stay unavailable for general use on China's busiest avenues.



China headed to self-driving

In spite of the fact that the service said chip away at the new directions are well in progress, any postponement for the business could slow down force in China's up to this time hard-charging self-ruling vehicle industry.

Specifically, the ban on parkway testing of self-driving autos on the interstates will hurt research that joins information on genuine driving propensities and movement conditions.

The choice by the Chinese government to breaking point testing takes after negative response to a deadly mishap this spring in the U.S. including a Tesla auto driving in autopilot mode. As an aftereffect of the casualty the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an examination that opens independent vehicles to unwelcome wariness.

As reported before by Mashblur, China was well in front of administrative bend with respect to self-governing vehicle testing from a worldwide point of view. The legislature had expressed that they meant to actualize controls that are institutionalized over the whole nation. It said that these tenets would prepare for self-sufficient vehicles that will show up on China's interstates in three to five years, and after that in Chinese urban areas by 2025.

The brought together administrative methodology was seen as giving China a critical preferred standpoint over nations like the U.S. which experiences an incoherent interwoven of state models and laws for self-driving autos.

What's more, an immense sum is riding on rivalry for strength in the business sector for self-governing vehicle improvement and creation. The Chinese government has flagged that a great part of the nation's modern recuperation is reliant on rotating its conventional assembling commercial ventures to imaginative divisions like self-sufficient vehicles.

China's Premier Li Keqiang as of late reported his nation is looking for new development in rising innovation like the Internet of Things (IoT) and self-driving vehicles.

Volvo also wants an autonomous car on the road by 2020

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Plenty of automotive companies have announced plans to have an autonomous car on the roads at the start of the next decade, but Volvo went a step further and said no human supervision will be needed for its self-driving vehicle.
“The thing that is unique is that we are trying to deploy the technology in reality. And when I say that, I mean self-driving cars that allow drivers to do something else behind the steering wheel,” said Erik Coelingh, senior technical leader for driver support technologies, to Tech Insider.
See Also: Are live drivers too scared to merge with self-driving cars?
Volvo essentially wants to reach Level 5 autonomy, or completely driverless. Currently, a few cars are testing Level 3 (hands-off) technologies, like Tesla’s AutoPilot or Ford’s self-parking, but Level 4 (mind-off) and Level 5 are still off-limits on all public roads.
To prepare for this autonomous future, Volvo plans to launch a program next year, called DriveMe. It will give 100 normal customers the chance to drive an autonomous car in Gothenburg, Sweden, London, and select cities in China. This program will come on top of tests in China and Sweden, which are already underway.



DriveMe takes Volvo to next level

“What is unique with DriveMe, is that we are not only building a concept car or doing demos, we are really doing research to help us understand how we can bring self-driving cars to the real world, to public roads with ordinary customers behind the wheel,” said Coelingh. “And by accomplishing that objective, we will learn about the reality of self-driving cars, that it’s not just a fantasy. We will learn about technology, we will learn about the human factors, and how self-driving cars will impact society.”
Volvo also plans to add a semi-autonomous system to select cars in 2017, similar to Tesla’s AutoPilot. This public testing has been invaluable to Tesla, providing the company over one million miles of autonomous driving data to analyze.
Another plus for Volvo is the U.K.’s recent legalization of autonomous cars on public roads. Announced in the Queen’s Speech, the new legislation allows autonomous car owners to apply for insurance and test self-driving features in the country.

China moves into passing lane with self-driving regs

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In the race to be a global leader in self-driving cars, China is moving to overtake the current U.S. and European front runners with a new regulatory structure that could significantly open up its vast network of roads and streets.
Australia’s SBS reports that China is preparing a draft regulatory framework on self-driving cars that could be ready as early as this year. The regulations are expected to pave the way for autonomous vehicles that will appear on China’s highways in three to five years, and then in Chinese cities by 2025, according to the chair of the committee preparing the framework Li Keqiang.
China’s powerful Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is backing the committee tasked with developing the draft framework that will feature a unified regulatory structure for the whole country. Such a holistic regulatory framework could prove highly advantageous compared to the current patchwork of U.S. state standards and laws for self-driving cars. The plan will include infrastructure and regulatory guidelines as well as technical standards that will see autonomous vehicles communicating in a common language. The committee chair sees this unified approach to the burgeoning technology as giving China an advantage that could allow it to leapfrog its Western competitors to a much quicker rollout of self-driving cars.
“If we can convince the government that every company, every car on the road must use this (single standard) … then there is a chance China can beat the rest of the world” to broad integration of autonomous vehicles, said the leader of Chongqing Changan Automobile’s autonomous drive program Li Yusheng.


China can centralize its rule-making

Unlike the U.S. and other Western markets that face chaotic regulatory regimes for self-driving cars, China’s new top-down approach to developing a unified regulatory framework could give it a significant competitive edge. Multinational car-makers, who up until now have largely developed industry standards among themselves in the vacuum of universal regulations, could soon have a harmonized playbook to tackle the self-driving car market in China.
And that market is going to be a global game changer.
China is currently the world’s largest automobile market and, according to Boston Consulting, in 20 years it will be the largest market for autonomous vehicle features, encompassing at least 25% of demand worldwide.
Part of China’s autonomous vehicle growth potential is related to the population being more open to self-driving cars in their daily life than western countries. A 2015 study found that 75% of Chinese residents would be comfortable using an autonomous vehicle, compared to just 50% of U.S. people surveyed.
As well, widespread integration of self-driving cars could address several of China’s quality of life problems, such as crippling air pollution, traffic congestion and erratic driving that sees more than 200,000 people die in road accidents each year.

China’s LeEco unveils its own concept self-driving electric car

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China’s LeEco unveiled its own self-driving electric car concept at a Beijing press conferenceearlier today, adding to the laundry list of products currently produced by the “Netflix of China”.

LeEco chief executive Jia Yueting demoed some of the self-driving capabilities at the event, including driving and parking. Yueting controlled the car through voice commands on a mobile device, a different approach to Google and Tesla that still use a touch interface.
See Also: Baidu wants self-driving cars on the roads by 2018

The car, named the LeSee, is still in concept stage, as far as we can tell. Yueting made no mention of specifications or price, but in the video teaser we got to see rear suicide doors and back seats that change shape to fit passengers bodies. Touchscreens are also fitted in the back seats, and Yueting said the car will feature face recognition and self-learning, though he did not demo this at the event.
We will hopefully get a clearer picture of the self-driving car at Beijing Auto Show on April 24, which LeEco are attending, according to Engadget.


Not LeEco’s first foray

It is not LeEco’s first foray into the self-driving market, it owns the startup Faraday Future, which introduced its self-driving concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year.
For those that haven’t heard of LeEco — previously LeTV — the company started as an entertainment provider in China. It holds a large amount of copyright content for TV shows and movies. In the past few years, it has made significant investments in new technologies, like mobile, smart TVs, music, and cloud computing.

While the company hasn’t outright said it, the pushes into new hardware appear to be an attempt to create a ‘hardware-software-services’ ecosystem similar to Apple. That makes the move into self-driving cars less bizarre, as drivers will spend more time watching videos, listening to music, and messaging friends rather than driving in the future.

China Wants a Manned Moon Mission, Experts Say

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Moon-sr1

 China this week became the third nation to land a rover on the Moon, and experts believe the country will follow up with a manned mission to the lunar surface in just a matter of years. The country's rapidly improving program and America's perceived lack of direction could, years from now, lead to a new space race.
The spacecraft Chang'e 3 and its rover, Yutu, are only on the lunar surface to explore. But China's zeal for space is unmatched, and its program is developing fast — to the point that it can be recognized as a space power. Just what that means for the U.S. is up for debate.
"I'm not saying they're militarizing space, or occupying it or [that] they're going to claim the moon ... but there's always that consideration in that relationship between countries," Paul Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, told Mashable.
For Spudis, the issue is not China's presence in the lunar region, but the United States' absence. He's worried a country that doesn't advocate for a free market could some day stifle how other nations and private businesses operate in space.
"I don't think it's anything to panic about," Spudis said. "It's something to think about seriously."
John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told Mashable that if China wants to play with the big powers on Earth, they bhad etter play with them in space, too. That means, at some point, a manned trip to the Moon.
China has launched several military satellites, which have also caused consternation among some U.S. officials. But Logsdon thinks China's program has caused undue alarm. What the Chinese have done is impressive, sure, but they're a long way from their own mission to Mars.
"People have very short attention spans," Logsdon said. "A year and a half ago we landed a remarkable rover on Mars, and it's producing all kinds of discoveries."
Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, toldMashable he wouldn't disagree that America's program is superior. But he feels China's recent success needs to renew American interest in the space program because Beijing's progress has been steady for years, and their missions have so far been almost flawless.
What's more, China seems to have its eyes on tougher missions in the near future. Chang'e 3 is big enough to hold much more than the rover it deposited, meaning the Chinese could have fit a larger, more capable robot in there. With a few more upgrades, they might be able to squeeze in a person or two.
"The truth is these events are really remarkable and they need to get our attention," Lee said. "As soon as we see a Chinese astronaut walking on the Moon, I think it's going to become a national interest of the U.S. to get back to the Moon."

Bitcoin Prices Plunge After China Cracks Down on Currency

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Bitcoin Prices Plunge After China Cracks Down on CurrencyBitcoins

The price of bitcoin surged to $1,000 last month, but it dipped far below that mark just as quickly.
Baidu, China's largest search engine, announced this week that it would no longer accept the digital currency as a form of payment, triggering a steep drop in the price of bitcoin. The announcement, which was posted on the Baidu website, followed a decision from China's central bank to prohibit financial institutions in the country from processing or insuring bitcoin transactions.

Baidu’s website-acceleration platform decided to suspend Bitcoin payment acceptance from Friday, as recent large fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value makes it unable to safeguard users’ interests,” Baidu said in a statement on its website, translated via Bloomberg.
The price of bitcoin, which hit $1,000 for the first time at the end of November and peaked at $1,200 on some exchanges shortly after, has since plummeted to the low $700-range. Its fluctuations can be seen in the chart, below, from Blockchain.info, which aggregates prices across exchanges:
Screen Shot 2013-12-08 at 10.57.46 AM
On BTC China, the country's largest bitcoin exchange that previously helped drive up the currency's price worldwide, the price of bitcoins dropped below $700 at one point, and is currently valued at around $775. The chart, below, from Bitcoincharts.com, shows the drop as measured in Chinese yuan.
Screen Shot 2013-12-08 at 11.22.40 AM

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