Tag: cars
The 5 best affordable electric cars of 2022
23-Year-Old ‘Crypto King’ Has Luxury Cars Seized After $35 Million of Investor Money Vanishes
Pleterski’s YouTube channel and Instagram account have been deleted but it appears he purchased articles on websites like Forbes.mc (the top level domain for Monaco) and the far-right news outlet Daily Caller to get his name associated with success in crypto investment. The Daily Caller article from December 2021 includes a photo of Pleterski looking at his phone in what appears to be a private jet. Notably, December 2021 was a time when cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum were trading near all-time highs. The headline reads, “Aiden Pleterski: Meet the Young Canadian Investor Who Is Taking the World of Crypto By Storm.”
The question remains whether Pleterski actually invested any of the money in crypto to begin with, and speaks to just how strange the crypto market has been over the past year. For all anyone knows, Pleterski may have actually invested the money and lost it like so many others since the peak of November 2021. Bitcoin is down 56% since its price a year ago, while ethereum is down 57%. Pleterski insists he invested the money but that he’s just bad with record-keeping. But some investors suspect Pleterski didn’t even bother investing the money, instead pocketing it for himself, according to people who spoke with the CBC. Investors are trying to get their money back through the bankruptcy court and two civil lawsuits, but criminal charges haven’t been pursued, even though some have reported their incidents to Toronto police, according to the CBC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tesla ordered to recall more than a million US cars
Project Cars 2 is gone from Steam forever
NTSB Wants Alcohol Detection Systems Installed In All New Cars In US
Under a US law enacted last year, the NHTSA is already required to examine whether it can issue this type of rule. While drunk driving is a longstanding problem that has caused many deaths, the NTSB said its recommendation was spurred by its investigation into one crash that killed nine people — including seven children — in January 2021 on State Route 33 near Avenal, California. On that two-lane highway with a speed limit of 55 mph, an SUV driver leaving a New Year’s Day gathering “was driving at a speed between 88 and 98 mph,” the NTSB report said. […]
Section 24220 of the Bipartisan Infrastructure LawSection 30111 of Title 49 in US law, it can delay issuing a rule for three years and submit annual reports to Congress describing the reasons for not issuing the rule. Each annual report would also have to contain an update on “the deployment of advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology in vehicles.” In writing the law, Congress noted that “in 2019, there were 10,142 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in the United States involving drivers with a blood alcohol concentration level of .08 or higher, and 68 percent of the crashes that resulted in those fatalities involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration level of .15 or higher.” Congress also cited a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimating that “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology can prevent more than 9,400 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities annually.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
: Ford stock drops more than 4% as supply costs to jump by $1 billion, parts shortages to leave more cars unfinished
Ford Hopes People Will Download an App to Avoid Being Hit by Its Cars
The year is 2022. Cars have Bluetooth. Phones have Bluetooth. So, logically(?), Ford is asking: Can Bluetooth protect pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable, non-car people from being struck by its vehicles?
Ford thinks Bluetooth LE can keep pedestrians and cyclists safe from cars
One good thing that came out of the pandemic is that more people picked up cycling. In the first three months of 2021, American consumer spending on bikes and cycling accessories increased by 34 percent year on year to $8.2 billion. However, the pandemic also saw more die and suffer injuries while biking. According to the National Safety Council, 1,260 cyclists were killed in 2020, a 16 percent increase from 2019.
It’s a problem that Ford thinks technology can address. On Monday, the automaker announced it’s working with Commsignia, PSS, Ohio State University, T-Mobile and Tome Software to explore how a smartphone app could warn drivers of pedestrians and cyclists they may not see. As someone sharing the road with a car, you would install the company’s software on your phone. With the help of Bluetooth Low Energy, vehicles with Ford’s Sync infotainment system would see you as “beacons.” If the car then determines there’s the potential for a crash, it will warn the driver using audiovisual cues.
According to Ford, its approach has a few advantages. One is that Bluetooth LE is nearly ubiquitous. The technology has been part of the Bluetooth protocol since 2009, meaning every modern smartphone has access to it. If you own a Ford vehicle, you won’t need to bring your car to a dealership for a hardware upgrade since the Sync system features Bluetooth compatibility. The other advantage of using Bluetooth LE is that your car won’t need to see pedestrians and cyclists before it can warn you. Ford and T-Mobile are also working on a version of the app that uses 5G instead of Bluetooth LE.
In practice, the company’s approach is reminiscent of the COVID exposure notification apps some countries and states deployed at the beginning of the pandemic. As you may recall, those also used Bluetooth LE. However, despite backing from Apple and Google, they were never effective due to low usage. In Canada, for instance, the federal COVID Alert app was only downloaded 6.9 million times and logged 63,117 positive tests. Put another way, nowhere near enough Canadians downloaded the software to make it an effective contact tracing tool. Ford’s app is likely to experience some of the same issues.
As an avid cyclist, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen riding their bikes at night without an LED light to make themselves visible to traffic. On the other hand, statistics suggest motorists have been driving more aggressively in recent years, leading to the aforementioned increase in cyclist deaths as well as vehicle crashes. Any kind of intervention would be welcome, but Ford’s app isn’t likely to be a meaningful solution if it ever comes to market. While the Bluetooth LE solution to COVID had only one uphill climb, apps like Ford’s have two: adoption by cyclists and adoption by automakers.
Elon Musk says Tesla cars will connect to Starlink’s new cellular-broadcasting satellites
Elon Musk just announced that the upcoming second-generation Starlink internet satellites include cellular antennas for connections with phones from T-Mobile in the US, and potentially other operators as well.
Following the event, he responded to tweets asking whether the connections will work with Tesla’s electric cars, which currently connect to AT&T’s LTE network. According to Musk, the answer is yes.
Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2022
He didn’t go into detail about how it will all work or how much data owners could expect to access from the connections when they’re somewhere out of reach by terrestrial cellphone towers. Musk said during the event that the satellite-to-cellular coverage from Starlink will be capable of…