Tesla introduced the Autopilot feature for the Model S in October 2015 with the upgrade to its version 7.0 software. Using a combination of radar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and data, the Model S can steer itself on highways, and change lanes and speed according to traffic.
It seemed as if Humpty Dumpty had paid a visit to Central Florence in Italy this week. A 200-metre long section of the Arno River embankment in the middle of this medieval Italian city collapsed, sending at least twenty parked cars into a newly formed riverbed.
In just a mere twenty one years, China has gone from virtually zero private cars to millions upon millions of them; in fact, about 28% new car registrations in the world last year were in China and annual sales are still registering double digit growth. Hellish traffic congestion and the air pollution associated with it have reached epic proportions, and the world’s most populous country is trying to think outside of the box to introduce initiatives that will alleviate the problem, or in this case elevate it.
t could be the latest big thing in road safety, and it has just been patented by Glue-gle…opps, we mean, Google. According to the frontrunner in self-driving technology, it is an adhesive for the front-end of a vehicle, that is intended for the “mitigation of secondary pedestrian impact”. To put it in English, it is basically converting the front part of the car into a flypaper for pedestrians. In the event of a vehicle-pedestrian collision, the unwitting human will remain stuck to the hood of the car, instead of bouncing off or sliding across the vehicle and risking another impact.
In a clear case of the boys are back in town, Lee Sang-yup has jumped ship from Bentley to join up with his old boss, Luc Donckerwolke, over at Hyundai’s Genesis in a bid to realise the Korean automaker’s goal of building a world-class luxury brand. Back in 2012, Donckerwolke became the head of design at Bentley, where he and Lee brought the Bentayga from idea to finished product, but he left shortly after that, in 2015, to become global head of design for Hyundai and of course the Prestige Design Division of the Korean company. And now, he has been followed by his colleague.
Last Friday, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) invited the public to sign up for the first public trial of a self-driving vehicle in the UK. The pilot trial will take place in the borough of Greenwich, which has been designated in its entirety as a Smart Mobility Living Lab. The objective of the test is to ascertain how the public would react to driverless vehicles when they are let loose in a city environment, where there are plenty of motorists and pedestrians.