Technology in Vehicles News - Page 1

Apple was in the headlines for all the right reasons last year when it comes to its Apple Car project, reportedly teaming with Hyundai to make its car happen in 2024 -- and now, Apple has just secured ex-Porsche Vice President of Chassis Development Manfred Harrer.

Harrer comes with a lot of expertise from Porsche where he was for over 10 years, where he worked on the Cayenne series recently and has been leading the chassis division since 2016. The news is coming from Business Insider Deutschland, which said that Apple, Porsche, and Dr. Harrer declined to comment on the news.

Business Insider did report that a former top Volkswagen manager said that Dr. Harrer was a "hidden champion" and the "measure of all things in his field".

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has announced that it will be making automobile processors at a much faster rate, as governments across the wrold struggle getting their hands-on those chips for new cars.

The global shortage of automobile chips is causing enough of an issue economically that governments have requested authorities in Taiwan to push TSMC to increase production of the much-needed automotive processors. Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Ms. Mei-Hua Wang requested a meeting with representatives from Germany, TSMC, dean of Taiwan's Economic Research Institute and other semiconductor companies.

In this meeting they talked about shortage of automotive chips, and how Germany along with other countries in the world could assist Taiwan -- where Taiwan (through TSMC) would make automotive chips at a rate that no other company in the world can do right now -- in exchange for COVID-19 vaccines.

Tesla announced its refreshed 2021 Model S electric vehicle teasing that it had 10 TFLOPs of compute performance, but now we know it is a custom AMD RDNA 2-based Navi 23 GPU and its GPU block diagram. Check it out:

The AMD Navi 23 GPU should be used inside of the 2021 Tesla Model S for its entertainment and navigation systems, with GDDR6 memory (Samsung 16Gb chips) with 8GB in total. The Navi 23 GPU has 10 TFLOPs of performance, which is virtually identical to that of the Sony PlayStation 5 console and its semi-custom AMD chip.

Navi 23 has 32 Compute Units (2048 Stream Processors) with GPU clocks of at least 2.44GHz, while the 8GB of GDDR6 finds itself on a 128-bit memory bus -- making the memory bus of Tesla's new 2021 infotainment system similar to Microsoft's slower Xbox Series S console.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is starting 2021 off well, with news floating around that it will be making chips for Intel in the near future, record products for 2020, an expanded $28 billion spend on advanced chips in 2021 -- and now TSMC will solve global auto chip shortages.

Volkswagen announced last month that it was worried about the low supply of chips coming in from China would disrupt production for the German automaker, while Honda said it would be closing its UK plant temporarily because of global auto chip shortages.

Never fear, TSMC is here!

TSMC CEO CC Wei explained: "The shortage in automotive supply has become more obvious. In TSMC, this is our top priority. The automotive industry needs a lot of semiconductor components... such as mature technology for sensors and power management. We are working with customers to mitigate the shortage impact".

Uh, I don't even know what to say -- no car that I ever drive again will come anywhere close to how amazing this new Digital Cockpit 2021 concept that Samsung has made. Check it out:

The big star of the show there is the huge panoramic 49-inch QLED display that can be used for entertainment, think future 8K content over Netflix or YouTube being blasted to your car over 5G -- all with surround sound speakers that pop out from next to your ears attached to the headrest. Awesome stuff, Samsung.

Samsung co-developed the Digital Cockpit 2021 concept with Harman, with Samsung explaining that it is "transforming vehicles into places where passengers would love to stay" with its main goal of "simplifying communication and delivering fun on-the-go experiences".

Well, it looks like Apple is making its autonomous electric cars with Hyundai -- with Reuters reporting that Apple and Hyundai will "start production around 2024 in the United States" according to local newspaper Korea IT News.

The new Apple Car will either be made at Kia Motors' factory in Georgia, or alternatively a new factory somewhere in the US that will produce 100,000 vehicles around 2024 -- Kia Motors being an affiliate of Hyundai Motor. The full capacity of the plant is expected to eventually reach 400,000 and I'm sure Apple and Hyundai will only build more plants as production (and sales) ramp up.

Interestingly, Reuters reports that Apple and Hyundai have plans to release a "beta version" of the Apple cars next year... a beta version car. Alright. We do know that Apple's new Car is meant to have "next level" battery technology, which will "radically" reduce the cost of the batteries inside of the car and increase the range that it can drive on a single charge.

Chinese electric vehicle startup NIO has just unveiled their new electric car, the new NIO ET7 being a fully autonomous, massive battery beast that can take on Tesla.

NIO has been referred to as "the Tesla of China" where it has been selling electric SUVs in the Chinese market for a while now, but at NIO Day 2020 in Chengdu, China yesterday -- the company unveiled their new NIO ET7 vehicle which has a list of great features, power, and technology.

We're looking at a 480 kW dual motor drivetrain with a battery pack that scales up to 150 kWh, with up to 621 miles (1000km). You'll probably never get close to it, but you should get upwards of that -- so expect around 500 miles of driving on a single charge in the NIO ET7.

Elon Musk has shared some gorgeous new drone footage of the nearly-ready Tesla Gigafactory that is located in Brandenburg, about 20 miles south-east of Berlin. Check it out:

The new facility might not look tall from that eagle-eye view, but Musk confirms that the new Tesla Gigafactory is a 5-story tall building. The new Gigafactory in Germany will open up 10,000 jobs for the economy and make 500,000 vehicles per year.

Tesla will be manufacturing the Model Y electric vehicle for Europe, which should begin rolling out in the coming months and flooding into the European market.

• Read more: Elon Musk predicts 500K sales for Tesla, prediction happened in 2020

Tesla delivered 500,000 vehicles throughout 2020 -- but now we have Deutsche Bank analysts saying they expect Tesla to deliver around 800,000 vehicles in 2021.

Deutsche Bank is optimistic about Tesla estimating 775,000 vehicle deliveries in 2021, increasing those expectations by around 3% or so. The bank also expects Tesla will earn around $46 billion in revenue in 2021, up from the $31 billion in revenue for 2020 -- an increase by a hefty 48%.

The demand coming out of Europe and Asia for Tesla electric vehicles has given Deutsche Bank some of those hairs standing on their arms, so they consider 2021 a big year for the electric car giant in other markets outside of their success in the US.

Tesla might have its Autopilot Full Self-Driving (FSD) in beta but that doesn't mean people aren't trying it out... with one Tesla EV owner taking their FSD-capable Model 3 vehicle and driving from SF to LA without a single intervention.

This is the first video that I've seen with a full trip using the Full Self-Driving (FSD) ability, without making any adjustments or human-intervention. The only time the owner puts his hands-on the wheel, is when he explains: "there was one tiny intervention where a giant piece of debris on the road popped up suddenly after a car moved out of the way. To be cautious I couldn't wait to see if FSD would avoid it and had to make sure to move over myself. But besides that one second of grabbing the steering wheel, there were no interventions from start to destination".

• Read more: Used Model S has Autopilot feature remotely disabled by Tesla