In this week’s roundup, we look at two new EVs as well as future auto tech from Honda, IBM, Callum and Nvidia.
Honda and IBM
Earlier this month, Honda announced plans to invest $64 billion in electrification, aiming for EVs to account for 40% of its annual sales by 2030.
Honda, which currently manufactures over four million vehicles annually, is moving quickly. This week, the Japanese giant signed a memorandum of understanding with IBM to collaborate on overcoming the challenges associated with ‘processing capability, power consumption, and design complexity’ of the software-defined vehicles of the future.
The partnership anticipates that AI technologies in cars will significantly accelerate by 2030. As a result, IBM and Honda are prioritising research in specialised semiconductor and chiplet technologies to address the increased computing power consumption in next-generation cars. The two companies also plan to explore ‘open and flexible software solutions’.
Callum Skye
Until battery technology catches up, electric cars remain disadvantaged with the huge engineering downside of mass.
However, a new electric prototype has just been launched that defies this trend, with an official reveal on Savile Row in Mayfair, London. This prototype, the Callum Skye, weighs only 1 150 kg, which is considered very light for a rugged off-roader. In fact, it is about three to four hundred kilos lighter than an electric Mini, and it’s roughly equal in size to a four-door Mini
The prices start between £80k and £110k, but Callum promises (as in Ian Callum, the famous former design boss of Jaguar Land Rover) a range of 270km and compact urban-minded dimensions.
Callum also plans to introduce different variants of the Skye, including on- and off-road models. While exact specifications are still to come, they did give away the acceleration figures: zero to 100km/h is claimed in under four seconds.
Kia EV3
Speaking of the challenges facing mass electronic vehicle (EV) adoption, more than half of consumers in Europe responding to a Statista survey last year cited high prices as the main deterrent when it comes to purchasing a new EV.
Slowly, though, affordable EVs are starting to surface from the likes of Renault (and Renault’s Romanian budget brand Dacia), as well as Chinese carmakers such as BYD and MG.
South Korea’s Kia, too, is ready to enter the affordable end of the EV market with the just-revealed KIA EV3. This launch is part of the company’s global strategy to introduce 15 new EVs by.
The EV3 promises a best-in-class range of 600km on a full charge, over-the-air updates, superfast charging capability, as well as the introduction of Kia’s AI assistant. Thanks to generative AI, the EV3 can understand complex and natural language, which hopefully means less heated arguments with your car’s infotainment system in the future.
Nvidia Drive Thor
Nvidia is anticipating a future dominated by driverless cars as autonomous technologies continue to advance.
On last week’s earnings call, company CEO Jensen Huang praised Tesla as the current world leader in self-driving vehicles. Nvidia reported a record quarterly revenue of $26 billion, marking an 18% increase from Q4 and a 262% increase from Q1 2023. This includes earnings of $329 million from Nvidia’s automotive and robotics sector.
The company’s next-generation vehicle platform, Nvidia Drive Thor, is set to reach production cars next year. Key customers, including Chinese giants BYD and Xpeng, have already signed up for the AI software, which features Blackwell GPU architecture.
Share