CNBC (April 27)
“So is it really the end of the American car on its home turf? From the way Detroit’s major executives are talking, it would seem so. Ford said Wednesday it will only offer two new cars in North America over the coming years…. GM is moving along the same lines.”
Financial Times (November 23)
“Mitsubishi Materials has admitted its subsidiaries falsified data about products used in crucial parts of aircraft and cars, dragging another of Japan’s largest manufacturers into the data falsification scandal at Kobe Steel…. The disclosure will raise the pressure on Japan’s manufacturing sector, which has been struck in the past two months by certification scandals at carmakers Nissan and Subaru, as well as Kobe Steel, Japan’s third-largest steelmaker.”
Tags: Aircraft, Cars, Certification, Disclosure, Falsified, Japan, Kobe Steel, Manufacturers, Mitsubishi Materials, Nissan, Pressure, Product data, Scandals, Steelmaker, Subaru
Washington Post (October 12)
“When future auto historians look back, they may pinpoint 2017 as the year electric vehicles went from a promising progressive fad to an industry-wide inevitability.”
Tags: 2017, Cars, Electric vehicles, Fad, Future, Inevitability
Bloomberg (October 10)
“Kobe Steel Ltd. unleashed an industrial scandal that reverberated across Asia’s second-largest economy after saying it falsified data related to strength and durability of some aluminum and copper products used in aircraft, cars and maybe even a space rocket.” Following on the heels of the Takata scandal and Nissan Motor’s unauthorized vehicle inspections, “Kobe Steel’s admission raises fresh concern about the integrity of Japanese manufacturers.”
Tags: Aircraft, Aluminum, Cars, Copper, Falsified data, Integrity, Japan, Kobe Steel. Scandal, Manufacturers, Nissan, Takata
New York Times (July 18)
“There is simply no credible way to address climate change without changing the way we get from here to there, meaning cars, trucks, planes and any other gas-guzzling forms of transportation. That is why it is so heartening to see electric cars, considered curios for the rich or eccentric or both not that long ago, now entering the mainstream.”
Tags: Cars, Climate change, Credible, Electric cars, Gas-guzzling, Mainstream, Planes, Transportation, Trucks
The Economist (May 20)
The WannaCry attack reads like the script to “a Hollywood disaster film.” Even though it had a relatively happy ending, “the incident rammed home two unpleasant truths about the computerised world. The first is that the speed, scalability and efficiency of computers are a curse as well as a blessing.” Digital data “can be sent around the world in milliseconds,” both a blessing and a bane. “The second unpleasant truth is that opportunities for mischief will only grow.” As we embrace the internet or things, vulnerabilities will multiply “as computers find their way into everything from cars and pacemakers to fridges and electricity grids.”
Tags: Cars, Computers, Curse, Efficiency, IoT, Pacemakers, Scalability, Speed, Vulnerabilities, WannaCry
The Economist (April 8)
Most cities now waste a tremendous amount of space providing parking for cars that aren’t moving 95% of the time. This could change. “When autonomous cars that are allowed to move with nobody inside them become widespread, demand for private cars could fall sharply. Starting in the morning, one car could take a child to school, a city worker to his office, a student to her lecture, party people to a club, and a security guard to his night shift, all more cheaply than taxis. Cars that now sit idle could become much more active, which would drastically change parking needs.”
The Economist (February 18)
We are approaching a tipping point. The automotive dominance of internal combustion engines (ICE) looks increasingly limited. Electric cars are “set for rapid forward thrust. Improving technology and tightening regulations on emissions from ICEs is about to propel electric vehicles (EVs) from a niche to the mainstream.” But the transition “from petrol power to volts will be a tough one for carmakers to navigate.”
Tags: Auto, Cars, Combustion, Dominance, Electric, Emissions, Engines, EVs, Mainstream, Regulation, Technology, Tipping point, Transition
Wall Street Journal (January 7)
“Does Donald Trump understand business?” He might know real estate and branding, “but the President-elect’s Twitter assaults on auto companies make us wonder if he understands cross-border supply chains, relative business costs, regulatory mandates, or anything else about building and selling modern cars and trucks.”
Tags: Automakers, Branding, Business, Cars, Costs, Cross-border supply chains, Real estate, Regulatory mandates, Trucks, Trump, Twitter
The Economist (January 7)
“Voice has the power to transform computing, by providing a natural means of interaction…. Being able to talk to computers abolishes the need for the abstraction of a ‘user interface’ at all. Just as mobile phones were more than existing phones without wires, and cars were more than carriages without horses, so computers without screens and keyboards have the potential to be more useful, powerful and ubiquitous than people can imagine today.”
Tags: Cars, Computers, Computing, Horses, Interaction, Interface, Keyboards, Mobile phones, Voice
