Most new cars offer some sort of voice-recognition feature, and generally speaking, they’re all terrible. The majority of them rely on pre-programmed phrases and prompts, and even these simple inputs are often misunderstood. Consumers usually ignore them altogether, and until cars get smarter, that isn’t going to change.
IBM and Arizona-based automaker Local Motors have just debuted a vehicle that redefines the term “smart car.” Named Olli, the self-driving EV is powered by IBM’s Watson technology platform, meaning it’s powerful enough to engage in authentic dialog with all 12 of its riders. Instead of being limited to phrases like “Call Mom,” or “Go home,” Olli can understand and answer complex questions such as, “How do you work?” “Where are you going next?” and, “Can you take me to the closest Mexican restaurant?”
To accomplish this, Olli wields four of Watson’s APIs — Speech to Text, Natural Language Classifier, Entity Extraction, and Text to Speech — and by utilizing cloud-based cognitive computing, the vehicle can track down any information its passengers could want quickly. Before you know it, people will be talking to their cars just as they would talk to their friends and family.
“Olli offers a smart, safe, and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue,” said Local Motors CEO John B. Rogers. “Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we’ve been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year. We are now ready to accelerate the adoption of this technology and apply it to nearly every vehicle in our current portfolio and those in the very near future. I’m thrilled to see what our open community will do with the latest in advanced vehicle technology.”
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Starting on June 16, Olli will be used on public roads in Washington D.C., and will begin silently roaming the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, later this year. In addition, Miami-Dade County is currently developing a pilot program in which a group of Ollies would be used as public transportation, and to meet these requirements, Local Motors is building more.
Concerns about driverless vehicles are as prevalent as ever, but if we can talk to our cars and have a little fun doing it, they become a lot less scary. After all, if your ride can bring you to the best taco shop in town with nothing more than a few words, everything else is kind of secondary, isn’t it?
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.