WCA November 2016

From the Americas (LAN), to optimise its own operation and maintenance even as it enhances the driver and passenger experience. A report from BI Intelligence, the research service of Business Insider (New York), takes note of a significant uptick in the number of these cars on the road. According to “The Connected-Car Report: the Transformation of the Automobile,” over the next five to ten years Internet integration will in fact revolutionise the auto industry, pacing the development of fully autonomous vehicles and changing the car ownership model. In the BI view, the market position of the connected car today is similar to that of the smartphone in 2010: ready to explode. Here are the three key takeaways from the report:  While technological, regulatory and other hurdles to adoption remain, the fully autonomous car – one that can drive itself from point A to point B with little or no human interaction – is only a few years away  With more automakers all the time preparing to satisfy consumers who are embracing the connected car faster than expected, over 380 million connected cars will be on the road by 2021  Given the eagerness of automakers to “connect up” the vehicles they sell, tech companies will be playing a major role in the automotive market. A big question, says BI Intelligence, is whether tech companies – presumably no less alert to opportunity than carmakers – may not eventually turn to car manufacture themselves. Elsewhere in automotive . . .  Automakers including Germany’s Volkswagen and Japan’s Nissan are striving to raise their market share in India’s passenger car market, forecast to be the third-largest globally by 2020. But General Motors appears to be rethinking its strategy for the price-sensitive Indian market, where the USA carmaker commands a less than one per cent share. In July, GM officials said that the company is re-evaluating a $1 billion investment in India, announced in 2015, and has put on hold plans for a new car platform there. The new platform would have helped GM to be competitive in the Indian market, whose buyers favour low-cost cars and which is dominated by the domestic company Maruti Suzuki India and South Korea’s Hyundai Motor. Jack Uppal, vice president of marketing at GM India, told Reuters (24 th July) that, instead of launching the Spin MPV, GM will focus on bringing a compact SUV to India soon. But he added that GM has not altogether abandoned plans to launch small cars there.  Computer security experts at the University of Birmingham in England have published a paper highlighting the vulnerability of remote keyless automotive entry systems. The research team, led by computer scientist Flavio Garcia, said, “Our findings affect millions of vehicles worldwide and could explain unsolved insurance cases of theft from allegedly locked vehicles.” As reported by Stephanie Mlot in PCMag (12 th August), the keyless feature – found in most Volkswagen

Group vehicles manufactured since 1995 – relies on a few global master keys. Using cheap, off-the-shelf equipment, eavesdropper-hackers within 20 yards can simply clone a driver’s key fob; and, wrote Ms Mlot, “Voila! – they gain unauthorised access to the car.” Insecure vehicles include Audi, VW, Seat and Škoda models sold over the past two decades. But a VW spokesman told Reuters that the current Golf, Tiguan, Touran and Passat models are safe, and that the Birmingham findings will serve to further improve the company’s security technology. Meanwhile, owners of at-risk vehicles were advised to be wary of unlocking their car doors remotely. Leaving no physical traces, the wireless hack poses “a severe threat in practice,” the researchers warned. China’s record exports of steel prompt countermeasures, but not everyone is convinced of the efficacy of duties and tariffs “From the USA to India, regulators around the world are pushing harder than ever to shield local steel industries from foreign competition.” Citing data from the Russian Steel Association, which counts both preliminary and permanent trade-restrictive measures, Bloomberg News reporters Yuliya Fedorinova and Thomas Biesheuvel noted that nations imposed 85 new duties and other taxes on steel imports in the first half of this year. That is 49 per cent more than at the same point a year earlier. (“Steel Protectionism Goes Global as Few Can Survive Low Price,” 11 th August) The trade frictions are, of course, largely a response to record exports from China, which accounts for about half of the world’s supplies of steel and shows scant sign of curbing its output. Despite its pledge to cut some 150 million tons of steelmaking capacity, China’s production of steel was down just an annualised 0.5 per cent over the first seven months of the year. Output for July was higher than in July 2015, and data from China on 10 th August showed that mills there were still churning out steel. In August, the European Union imposed five-year tariffs as high as 36.1 per cent on Chinese and Russian producers of non-stainless cold rolled steels, upon its finding that imports from the two countries unfairly undercut European manufacturers. Even so, recently there has been a slight but noticeable shift in emphasis from China’s failure of self-restraint to the perils of overreaction, with Fitch Ratings Ltd senior director Peter Archbold among those analysts warning that the duties pose a risk in the long term. In a broader context, the World Trade Organization in July said that it has seen a “significant increase” in trade-restrictive measures generally. In an online statement the WTO called this “the last thing the global economy needs.” Steel

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2016

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