Latest news with #automotiveinnovation
Motor Trend
a day ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
The Era of Cars Running a Single Computer and Operating System Is Here
Is China really 'there' already, producing cars with centralized computers and a hypervisor? Coming out of CES 2025 earlier this year, we covered a Snapdragon innovation Qualcomm was pitching to automakers, capable of running an entire car on a single chip. Now we just returned from China where we drove a similar system by Chinese EV maker Nio—which designed, developed, and manufactured its own chip in-house, along with the software that runs on it. 0:00 / 0:00 See All 5 Photos Chinese Smart-EV startup Nio's Shenji NX9031 Chip--the world's first Automotive 5nm chip. How are these newish Chinese car companies (Xpeng has designed its own chip, too) able to pull this off? By prioritizing digital development. Nio's engineering workforce of between 10 and 11,000 engineers is split about 70/30 between software versus other branches of engineering, so they do their own electrical architecture, for example, while leaving some hardware-based tasks such as suspension design and development to third parties. Tesla's engineering mix is similar in scope to Nio's, but most legacy automakers reverse those percentages. See All 5 Photos Nio SkyOS Operating System Schematic SkyOS The name may conjure frightening references to SkyNet from the Terminator movies, but this comprehensive vehicular operating system is designed to oversee all systems onboard Nio's entire range of cars—from its simple, compact Firefly EV to the all-singing, all-active-suspension-dancing Nio ET9. We asked whether there was a measurable difference in the number of lines of code or the computing power between a Firefly application and ET9 and were told that no, one SkyOS system fits all. There will simply be fewer features on some models, all connected via an ethernet backbone. A huge benefit touted for SkyOS is its extremely low latency (response time), which is said to be far less than a millisecond. That's considerably quicker than competing Linux systems, and drivers can appreciate such an improvement in latency through touchscreen responses and shorter ABS stopping distances. See All 5 Photos Nvidia's Orin chip has been one of the auto industry's top-performing chips. Nvidia Orin or Shenji NX9031? SkyOS is designed to run on various chipsets, so cars demanding fewer features can utilize less expensive existing chips, while full-featured cars like the ET9 get Nio's new Shenji NX9031—hailed as the automotive world's first production 5nm chip. (Note: 5nm is simply a chip-marketing term that refers to the next step in the evolution of transistor density—the gates are not physically 5 nm apart, but the chip houses more than 50 billion transistors.) Billed primarily as an autonomous driving enabler, the chip reportedly possesses at least double the processing power of two Nvidia Orin chips with a pixel processing capacity of 6.5GB/s and a response time of less than 5 ms, yet it draws considerably less power than an equivalent Nvidia array. Such processing power improves things like the vision systems' ability to recognize objects in low light and for AI personal assistants like Nio's NOMI to process large-language models. See All 5 Photos Schematic comparing and contrasting domain-based versus zonal electrical architecture. Isn't Rivian Basically Right There Too? Close. Rivian's electrical architecture is in the vanguard of American manufacturers, but its system still largely qualifies as zonal, in which various zones aggregate signals from nearby sensors and send them (via simpler communications) to the central computer. Rivian runs an OS from QNX Blackberry. Nio employs zones, as well, but generally fewer of them. Low-feature-set cars like the Firefly might employ one or two zones while a fancy ET9 needs four. What About Tesla? The other vanguard player in America's SDV universe is Tesla, which still employs considerably more than a handful of zones in its more centralized zonal architecture. It also runs open-source software (OSS) such as Linux, GNU toolchain, and other community-based projects such as Ubuntu. SkyOS is Also Open Source Perhaps a future Tesla may leverage Nio's SkyOS, which the company has announced it has made 'open source.' What does that mean? Mostly the software development community is free to look under the hood and develop products and apps to run on the SkyOS system. This is the main motivation for Nio making the software opens source: to improve the user experience with more potential over-the-air updatable features and Easter eggs developed out-of-house. (For reference, Android is open source, while Apple's iOS is not.) Might Americans Ever Experience SkyOS? Barring outright bans on Chinese software, there's every possibility that, say, a domestic or European automaker could leverage Nio's open-source software. Perhaps that possibility is highest with McLaren, which has a technology sharing agreement with Nio. It would certainly seem wise to leverage the development expense of those NX9031 chips by selling them to other automakers, but a lot of strategic calculus goes into making any such decision.
Top Gear
a day ago
- Automotive
- Top Gear
Omoda: smart tech makes cars ‘luxury' now, not engine performance
Tech TG gets the lowdown on what makes a fancy car from Omoda Jaecoo UK chief, Gary Tan Skip 1 photos in the image carousel and continue reading Gary Tan, UK boss of the Omoda Jaecoo outfit, reckons luxury isn't about horses under bonnets or the smell of polished burr walnut anymore. It's about gadgets, glowing things, and digitised comfort. Fancier car brands might roll their quilted-leather armrests and shagpile car mats at that, but speaking to Tan said: 'Nowadays, especially the younger generation, they want a vehicle to be as smart as their phone, so we feel that making a car very smart is another way of luxury.' Advertisement - Page continues below Air purification for your hayfever? Check. Acoustic glass? Check. Fragrance patterns? Sure, why not. Once the domain of fancy six-figure saloons, now such features are available in cars costing less than £30k, alongside karaoke kit, of course. Tan says dealer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. 'Because the cars are so well specced and priced a segment below, customers have experienced features they never knew they needed. And once they've had them, it's quite hard to go back.' You might like Omoda has two trim choices to keep things simple, but shrewdly, it's also offering 70,000 miles' worth of RAC breakdown cover to build trust... and for those times you accidentally change the interface language into Turkish. Smart enough to drive itself? Not yet. Tan says there's more work to be done locally, highlighting roundabouts, potholes and poor data connectivity as critical obstacles to this development; 'The UK has very unique road conditions so we don't feel ready. Plus, in the UK, the internet speed is different from other countries.' Advertisement - Page continues below And by different, we presume he means 'slower'. What do you reckon? Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Look out for your regular round-up of news, reviews and offers in your inbox. Get all the latest news, reviews and exclusives, direct to your inbox.
The Drive
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Drive
The Disappearing Car Door Was a Cool Idea With Impossible Execution
The latest car news, reviews, and features. It's fascinating how today's algorithms can dredge up something from the depths of the internet and serve it up to vast swaths of people. If not for that phenomenon, this video of a clever 'disappearing car door' system built by a defunct company called Jatech would've assuredly faded away ages ago. There's precious little information on it, but if the associated YouTube comments on this video are any indication, it will continue to mystify people for generations. The video was uploaded by an account named 'Disappearing Car Door' 18 years ago; this, unsurprisingly, is its only contribution to the platform. In the three-minute film, we see demonstrations of the system on a pair of Lincoln Mark VIIIs. The door, which has been lengthened by 10 inches to bypass the car's original B-pillar, swivels under the vehicle as its window retracts. In a later demonstration of a different implementation on a prototype passenger cell, we see a door rotate down without lowering the effective floor of the car. That would be handy, as ground clearance is probably one of the system's most obvious issues. You'd think another would be side impact safety, but Jatech was confident that not only was its concept not a detractor to crashworthiness, but it reportedly improved it. We're definitely lacking some details here, but the company talked of a 'structural reintegration of the door with the unibody' and a bespoke custom door frame system cryptically named 'Cruciform' on its website, which is fortunately still accessible by way of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Jatech also promoted that it worked with 'the finest and most experienced coach builders in the U.S. and Europe' to realize its breakthroughs. And yes, there was supposedly a manual override of some kind, somewhere. It's unclear how much time exactly was spent working on this system, but it seems it had a long history. As the company told it, the Lincoln Mark VIII prototypes were supposedly built at Ford's suggestion after the automaker invited Jatech to visit its design subsidiary Ghia, in Italy. Cadillac purportedly expressed interest as well. Neither manufacturer bit, though, and as of 2010, Jatech was still hoping to commercialize its invention. The 'designers of the exciting Disappearing Car Door technology are now in a position to equip your favorite car with our cool, sexy, safe, and convenient automatic car door,' the company's website read in a snapshot from 15 years ago. Jatech was even willing to 'design an original vehicle body' that incorporated the tech. While no such examples apparently ever existed, the site does feature sketches of generic sports cars, indicating that Jatech felt its solution was viable across a variety of body styles. This alternate example Jatech tested keeps the flip-down door within the car's body. In that way, it's more similar to the approach BMW took with the Z1, but more complicated. disappearingcardoor via YouTube Credit to Jatech, the disappearing door did bear some advantages. The extended aperture was ideal for vehicles with rear seats but no back doors. The swiveling door also consumed almost no space when opening, meaning you could park much closer to other vehicles without risk of contact. Also, note how the side mirrors on the Mark VIII prototype are attached to the A-pillar and not the door; because of this, an exiting passenger could still use that mirror to determine when to safely leave the vehicle. All that said, the benefits didn't seem to outweigh the drawbacks. Without more specific information or any crash test data to suggest otherwise, we're skeptical of the claimed safety advantages of the system. Complexity is an obvious problem, and if you look at the insides of the doors on the cars Jatech did convert, you'll notice that they're completely featureless—no pockets, no design, nothing. Perhaps the company didn't feel a need to waste effort mocking up custom door cards for these prototypes, or perhaps space and clearance were challenging considerations to overcome. Either way, you'd have to figure there was a reason the folks at Ford and GM didn't play along, let alone steal the idea for their own. Still, that quaint three-minute ad has racked up over 21 million views on YouTube as of this writing, indicating that for all its faults, Jatech achieved something remarkable here. Who can guess how many impressions it'll have amassed by the time it reappears in our social feeds in another five or 10 years' time? Got a tip? Email us at tips@
Zawya
15-05-2025
- Automotive
- Zawya
Automakers focus on R&D and design investment as China's electric vehicle exports increase
GUANGZHOU, CHINA - Media OutReach Newswire - 15 May 2025 - The market size of new energy vehicles in China is expanding, and automakers are constantly carrying out innovative reforms. In the first four months of 2025, China's automobile production and sales both surpassed 10 million units for the first time, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). A report from the Passenger Car Market Joint Branch of the China Automobile Dealers Association pointed out that in April, China's export volume of new energy passenger vehicles reached 189,000 units, increasing by 44.2 percent year-on-year and 31.6 percent month-on-month, accounting for 44.6 percent of the total passenger vehicle exports, up by 14 percentage points compared with the same period last year. Under this trend, Chinese automakers, such as GAC Group, have increased their investment in research and development, especially by constantly innovating in the field of design to meet the needs of young consumers. Chen Ping-chun, an exterior designer of GAC, introduced that in the current electric vehicle industry chain, automotive designers play the role of "magicians," aiming to turn an attractive pattern into a product. Besides retaining creativity, it also needs to comply with the norms of the automotive industry. Chen Ping-chun introduced that the vehicle appearance he made at that time was the first new energy vehicle with gull-wing doors among the self-owned brands of Chinese automakers. Due to its fashionable body lines, it received a lot of praise. Chen Ping-chun was born in Taiwan and later went to work in Guangdong Province. He said that while living on the Chinese mainland, he found that the most common vehicles he saw on the roads were new energy vehicles. In terms of autonomous driving, some Chinese automakers represented by GAC have already taken the leading position internationally, said Chen. Hashtag: #ChinaNewsService The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. China News Service
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Auto reviewer shreds 'dumb' car features nobody wanted... but they're stuck with them anyway
Car companies are spending billions to pack vehicles with more screens, sensors, and semi-intelligent assistants. Some of it works: adaptive cruise control, automatic child locks and phone mirroring have made driving safer and more family-friendly. But much of it is 'just dumb.' That's the opinion of Kristen Brown, who has driven hundreds of vehicles — from rugged off-roaders to bloated minivans — for outlets like A Girls Guide to Cars. As a mom of two toddlers, she often evaluates new features while wrangling car seats, dropped toys, and rambunctious kids. Her verdict: these million-dollar tech innovations are bloating car prices. Plus, many of the features are redundant and not built for real life — especially for mothers. 'I see cars from a different perspective than other reviewers,' she said. 'My goal is to speak to an underrepresented, underserved, and unappreciated audience.' Here are the features Brown says aren't worth the hype. In-cabin fridges Luxury SUVs and minivans have started offering built-in fridges, often as high-priced add-ons. Brown encountered one in a $59,869 Toyota Sienna priced at $735 — and found it almost completely useless. 'You can't take the fridge out of the car, like you can with a $35 cooler from REI,' she said. 'The fridge barely kept our drinks cool.' Worse, it became a cumbersome hazard. She tripped over it while securing her daughter's car seat. Built-in navigation systems Massive infotainment screens that mirror phone apps have become standard across the industry. That's fine — until automakers force in their own navigation systems. 'It's redundant to have its own dedicated navigation system,' Brown said. 'Why can't they just give us the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?' Brown said there is a bit of a distinction: EVs and plug-in hybrids can benefit from automaker-produced navigation settings. Built-in maps in electric vehicles can help plan charging stops and precondition the battery for faster fill-ups. But for gas cars, third-party apps are more reliable and easier to use. Voice Recognition Touchscreens are distracting, so automakers are turning to voice commands to keep eyes on the road. Brown's take: most don't work. 'Voice recognition is redundant to me,' she said. Recently, she test drove a Kia Carnival, and found its voice-command particularly egregious. 'Every time I tried to make it do basic stuff it misunderstood me or didn't work.' Sometimes, the cars have even misheard regular conversations with activation phrases, starting the voice recognition software in error without being prompted. Ventilated seats Some drivers love cooled seats, but Brown isn't sold. Unlike seat warmers, cooled seats only circulate a small amount of air through the seat and back panels. To Brown, they don't change a body's temperature enough to justify the often hundred-dollar add-on. The internal fans are also prone to breaking, she said — and replacing them isn't cheap. Brown praised Toyota's phone storage systems, which can turn off wireless charging pads Wireless phone charging New vehicles often include wireless charging pads inside center consoles. In theory, they encourage drivers to stash their phones. In practice, they overheat devices and wreck battery health, according to Brown. 'They're dumb,' she said. 'They always just make my phone really hot, and it's actually really bad for your phone's battery health.' But one automaker earns a pass: Toyota. Some of its models, including the GR Corolla and Sienna, include a power-off button for the pad — allowing phones to be stored safely without constant heat buildup. Leading car warnings Some new cars now alert drivers when the vehicle ahead starts to pull away at a red light. If the driver in the new car doesn't start to pull forward, the leading car warning will chime. Brown loves the feature, saying that it helps when she has to take her eyes off the road while stopped to retrieve fallen toys dropped by her children. But her in-laws hate the tech. They think its a reminder of how much cars monitor driving habits. 'It's definitely a generational thing,' she said.
