As the race towards autonomous production vehicles heats up, it seems like we hear of a technology startup acquisition by a major automaker each week. Keeping with the trend, Ford has announced a major investment in a self-driving startup called Civil Maps. This particular business uses computer maps to create an infrastructure for fully autonomous vehicles to plug in and safely navigate to or from a destination.
While automakers have already invested resources in technology within self-driving cars, or the tangentially related operation of vehicle sharing, this is among the first investments in the broader facilitation of autonomous infrastructure.
Using data crowdsourced, processed, and transmitted by Civil Maps, fully autonomous vehicles could identify on-road and off-road features, understand what they mean, and notice when they change, allowing them to react like human drivers (when they aren’t playing Pokémon Go).
Read More: Watch Ford’s Autonomous Fusion Drive At Night Without Headlights
Civil Maps differentiates itself further by shrinking the data needed to build multidimensional, highly precise maps to guide self-driving cars via A.I. (artificial intelligence) programming. Presently, this type of mapping necessitates thousands of human hours and can take as much as six months to complete. Civil Maps says it can do the same task faster and more accurately.
In addition to its mapping technology, the company plans to accelerate production development and deployment with several automakers and tech co-developers. “By creating and managing live semantic maps of all the roads in America, the company is providing a technology essential for the leap to fully autonomous vehicles that can transform the future of transportation,” said Jim DiSanto, managing director of Motus Ventures.
Ford isn’t the only backer of Civil Maps’ $6.6 million seed round. Motus Ventures, Wicklow Capital, StarX Standford, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures all joined in the funding.
Though leading automakers are approaching autonomous driving from all angles, expect their investments to start meeting in the middle as we approach target vehicle production dates in the late 2020s and early 2030s.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.