autotechnology
Latest
Samsung has a $300 million fund aimed at smarter cars
Samsung is planning to get ahead in the connected car market with a new $300 million fund focused entirely on auto-related startups and technologies. The Samsung Automotive Innovation Fund has been earmarked for smart sensors, machine vision, artificial intelligence, safety solutions and more, and will help even the playing field between the company and its biggest rivals. Intel paid $15.3 billion last month to acquire Mobileye, while Qualcomm is currently in the process of buying automotive-grade chip maker NXP Semiconductors. Samsung's first major investment with the fund -- to the tune of $89 million -- will be in networking and safety control company TTTech. The company has provided automotive technology to a number of manufacturers, including Boeing for its 787 Dreamliner, NASA for its Orion Spacecraft, and more pertinently, Audi for its A8.
Honda develops braking system for early pedestrian detection
Honda's hoping you haven't had your fill of self-driving autos from CES, because it's just revealed an automatic braking system that's supposedly better than similar technologies out there. According to the Japanese automaker, its system's capable of stopping cars just in time to prevent collision, even if they're going as fast as 37MPH. Honda claims that's a lot faster than what other auto-brake tech can handle, but it's worth noting that Mercedes' and Volvo's systems (though not developed specifically for pedestrian detection) work even if the cars are moving at 50MPH. We've yet to know how much the tech will cost to install, but it's expected to come baked into Honda's Legend sedan, which is set to debut in late 2014.
