Skip to main content

Honda to focus on self-driving cars, robotics, EVs through 2030

Automotive industry moving rapidly into electric and self-driving cars. PHOTO: AFP

Automotive industry moving rapidly into electric and self-driving cars. PHOTO: AFP
Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co on Thursday spelled out for the first time its plans to develop autonomous cars which can drive on city streets by 2025, building on its strategy to take on rivals in the auto market of the future.
Unveiling its mid-term Vision 2030 strategy plan, Honda said it would boost coordination between R&D, procurement, and manufacturing to tame development costs as it acknowledged it must look beyond conventional vehicles to survive in an industry which is moving rapidly into electric and self-driving cars.
Honda has already spelled out plans to market a vehicle which can drive itself on highways by 2020, and the new target for city-capable self-driving cars puts its progress slightly behind rivals like BMW.
“We’re going to place utmost priority on electrification and advanced safety technologies going forward,” Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo said.


Developing new driving technologies, robotics- and artificial intelligence-driven services and new energy solutions also would be key priorities for Honda in the years ahead, the company said.
Leveling up
Honda established a division late last year to develop electric vehicles (EVs) as part of its long-held goal for lower-emission gasoline hybrids, plug-in hybrids, EVs, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) to account for two-thirds of its line-up by 2030, from about 5 percent now.
By 2025, Honda plans to come up with cars with “level 4” standard automated driving functions, meaning they can drive themselves on highways and city roads under most situations.
Achieving such capabilities will require artificial intelligence to detect traffic movements, along with a battery of cameras and sensors to help avoid accidents.
BMW has said it would launch a fully autonomous car by 2021, while Ford Motor Co has said it will introduce a vehicle with similar capabilities for ride-sharing purposes in the same year. Nissan Motor Co is planning to launch a car which can drive automatically on city streets by 2020.
Honda has been ramping up R&D spending, earmarking a record 750 billion yen ($6.84 billion) for the year to March.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Develop your own game by learning these free courses

We recently recommended courses you should learn before you will launch your first startup in order to avoid some common mistakes. In Quick Tips today, we’ll recommend you some free courses that will help you make your first game and begin your career as a developer. Before we highlight the details of the courses you ought to take, here are some introductory courses which will prepare you to learn these courses more effectively; Java Programming Basics  – Prepare yourself for programming on Android and the Web Introduction to JavaScript  – Create animations and understand variables and strings. When you have gone through those courses above then proceed to ones given below to develop your first game: 1. Create a 2048 game in just 1 day For those who have zero experience in programming and don’t want to take the above courses, then enroll in this course from Udacity. You will learn the basics of HTML and CSS as well as their interaction with JavaScript. ...

The upgraded Google News app is now available on iOS and Android

One of the more intriguing announcements at Google IO 2018 was of  a new Google News app  to take the place of the Google Play NewsStand, which was initially launched in 2013.  After describing the new Google News app  in a dedicated page for the app on its website, Google has now officially released the app on the  App Store  and  Google Play . Google Play NewsStand was used as a resource to get news around the world. The news would be of every category, even the news which doesn’t interest the user. Whereas with this new Google news app, the artificial intelligence of Google shows you the news you want to see, which you usually search for on Google. According to Google , the Google News app now  “uses a new set of AI techniques to take a constant flow of information as it hits the web, analyze it in real time and organize it into storylines.”  Artificial intelligence(AI) gives the app an ability to process and sort the news from...

Huawei Mate 10 Pro: A Premium Flagship With Some Odd Omissions

When Huawei had launched, they were known as a brand that mostly dealt with budget smartphones and even their flagships were not up to the standards that people expected at that time. However, times have now changed and leading the innovation front nowadays is Huawei. A few of their flagships in the recent year or so have been nothing short of impressive but this year’s Mate 10 line up has changed the brand image forever and consumers now know that Huawei is a serious market player and should not be taken lightly. We’ve already reviewed the  Mate 10 Lite and there was a lot to like about that phone. Today we have with us the most expensive one of the bunch, the Mate 10 Pro. For a more in-depth review and understanding of various Mate 10 Pro features, do watch the video review linked below. Design Like most of the flagships in the industry, Huawei also makes use of some premium material on the Mate 10 Pro. You have curved Gorilla Glass on the front and back and where th...