COVID-19 cuts number of Florida traffic crashes in half.
Florida traffic accidents have been cut in half due to coronavirus quarantine.
Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles officials and the county’s transportation planning agency announced that the number of traffic crashes in Florida dropped by 50% in April compared to the same time last year.
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New York Auto Show was canceled for 2020 and pushed to spring 2021.
The New York Auto Show, organized by the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, is typically held in April and draws over 1 million attendants. The event was scheduled to begin April 10 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. After COVID-19 swept into Europe and North America, the organizers delayed it until August but now they are saying they won’t be able to meet that deadline and officially canceled it for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The next show will take place April 2 to April 11, 2021 and press days will be March 31 and April 1.
More »BMWs bursting into flames made headlines in South Korea earlier this year. The local media reported more than 40 cases in 2018 and some parking lots refused to accept BMW cars over fears of fire.
South Korea said Monday, December 24, it will fine German automaker BMW $10 million and file a criminal complaint with state prosecutors over allegedly dragging its feet in recalling vehicles with faulty engines after dozens of engine fires.
The auto giant apologized and recalled 172,000 vehicles of 65 different models in July and October with a faulty exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler, which the company blamed for the fires.
In August, a recall of 480,000 vehicles with the same EGR cooler issue for Europe and some Asian countries, including South Korea, was announced — including South Korea — of 480,000 cars affected by the same problem. The recall was expanded to more than one million additional diesel cars two months later.
After a five-month review, South Korea’s Transport Ministry concluded that the German automaker deliberately tried to cover up technical issues and was slow to recall the cars. The ministry found the fires to be caused by faulty valves in the exhaust gas recirculation coolers (EGR). Combined with carbon and oil sediment the leaks could cause fires when the vehicle was driven at high speeds for long periods of time, but the carmaker said the problem would be solved by the exchange of faulty hardware.
Six out of 10 imported vehicles are from Germany in South Korea. BMW sold nearly 39,000 cars in the first six months of 2018, according to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association.
According to MSN.
The Japanese automaker has teamed up with the Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald to create the ‘perfect’ ad, which it is billing as the first commercial scripted by artificial intelligence.
The 60-second spot is entitled Driven by Intuition and directed by Macdonald, working from a script that was developed by IBM’s Watson AI system. Macdonald’s credits include The Last King of Scotland and the Whitney Houston biopic Whitney. The storyline itself along with the script was created using AI along with technical partner Visual Voice, IBM and Lexus’s creative agency The&Partnership. The agencies collaborated with the IBM Watson team to use AI to analyze 15 years’ worth of footage, text and audio for car and luxury brand campaigns that have won Cannes Lions awards for creativity, as well as a range of other external data. More »
The German automaker is considering a second manufacturing plant in U.S. that could produce engines and transmissions, BMW Group Chairman and CEO Harald Krueger said to reporters Tuesday in Los Angeles ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show. According to a company spokesman, the Munich-based BMW Group is considering building an engine plant in the U.S. to supply its vehicles made in the U.S. and Mexico. More »
Hackers can steal your keyless car in 60 seconds.
Top tips to protect your vehicle from being hacked.
Car makers are adding increasing amounts of technology to our cars, and new technology comes with new risks that drivers need to understand and learn how to prevent. The rise of keyless cars has triggered a wave of thefts, studies reveal. While three in five wouldn’t buy a keyless car due to hacking risk, insurance premiums could rise for those who own a model frequently targeted.
Here are three of the most popular car hacks and tips to protect yourself from falling victim to this crime. More »
Volvo Cars unveiled a fully electric robot-taxi a few days ago, as the Swedish company races to meet an ambitious target for driverless vehicle sales with its Uber supply deal on hold.
Volvo’s self-driving ambitions have been closely linked with Uber for a long time. Ride-hailing company was operating a fleet of autonomous Volvo XC90s until a fatal collision occurred with a pedestrian which brought the program to a halt.
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Tesla stock drops after Musk smokes joint on live web show.
The billionaire CEO Elon Musk Friday lit up a cigarette described as containing tobacco and marijuana during a chat on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” a popular YouTube talk show.
The two-and-half-hour chat on the streamed podcast late on Thursday touched upon a wide range of topics, including the Boring Company, artificial intelligence, Musk’s plan to use SpaceX’s yet-to-be-built BFR rocket for suborbital travel, and his idea for an electric-powered supersonic airplane that takes off vertically.
Just hours after the interview, two of Tesla key executives quit and the electric car maker’s share prices fell as much as 10 percent to reach a five-month low on Friday morning. The company’s head of accounting, Dave Morton, and head of human resources, Gaby Toledano, said they were leaving the company.
Mercedes EQC is the first in a range of premium electric vehicles.
Mercedes showed its first fully electric SUV at an event in Stockholm this week, becoming the latest automaker to take on Tesla. Called the EQC, the sports utility vehicles has been built as the first car from “Electronic Intelligence” brand that aims to knock rival Tesla from its spot as a leader in the sector and take a lead in the fastest growing automotive market.
The new electric SUV, Mercedes EQC, was seen at Artipelag art gallery in Gustavsberg, Sweden only a few days ago. More »