LAS VEGAS — South Korean automaker Kia wants to introduce an autonomous car using its own technology by 2030 under a new initiative dubbed “drive wise.”
Kia, a unit of Hyundai, had previously indicated plans for a partially autonomous vehicle by 2020 and, at the Consumer Electronics Show, announced its ambition for a fully self-driving car.
“By 2030, Kia will bring the fully autonomous driving technology to the market,” Kia vice president Seung Ho Hwang said. “By 2020, Kia will commercialize the partially autonomous driving technologies. To this end, Kia will invest up to $2 billion in developing necessary technologies by 2018.”
Kia is the latest of several automakers to invest in self-driving cars along with Google. Analysts see this as a gradual process starting with automating some functions like parking and crash avoidance. Hwang said that making autonomous driving ubiquitous “is possible by reducing its cost” and that this is happening with the cost of sensor technology coming down.
Greenest Car Country in the World? That Would Be Norway
OSLO, Norway — Zero emission cars accounted for 17.1% of new registrations last year in Norway, the industry said on Wednesday, the highest market share for clean vehicles anywhere in the world.
Almost 26,000 zero emission cars — all of them electric except for nine hydrogen vehicles — were registered last year in the Scandinavian country, out of a total of 150,700 private new cars, the Information Council for Road Traffic said.
The most sold models were the electric version of Volkswagen’s Golf, the Tesla S, Nissan’s Leaf, the BMW i3 and the Renault Zoe. In 2014, zero emission cars made up 12.5% of the Norwegian market.
The Scandinavian country is cementing its role as a pioneer in the field. By comparison, in neighboring Sweden, green cars represented 4% of new car registrations last year, while in France they accounted for just 0.9%.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2016
