EuroSports Technologies to unveil home-grown battery-powered scooter
Listed motor group EuroSports Global - the Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo franchise holder in Singapore - is venturing into electric motorbike manufacturing with an initial investment of $2 million and potentially another $3 million in the future.
Its newly set up EuroSports Technologies is expected to unveil a prototype of its home-grown battery-powered scooter, codenamed EST-X (above), late next month.
The exhaust-free carrier is expected to be affordable and targeted at South-east Asia's motorcycle market of 15 million units a year.
South Korea fines BMW $13.7 million
South Korea will fine German automaker BMW 11.2 billion won (S$13.7 million) for allegedly dragging its feet in recalling cars with faulty engines linked to dozens of engine fires, according to Agence France-Presse.
BMW vehicles bursting into flames made headlines in South Korea earlier this year, with local media reporting more than 40 cases this year and some parking lots refusing to accept BMW cars over fears they could catch fire.
The company has recalled more than 170,000 vehicles in South Korea with a faulty exhaust gas recirculation cooler, which it blamed for the fires. In August, it announced a recall in Europe and some Asian countries - including South Korea - of 480,000 cars affected by the same problem, before expanding it to more than one million additional diesel cars two months later.
Volkswagen takes over WirelessCar from Volvo
Volkswagen Group is acquiring a 75.1 per cent stake in Swedish telematics specialist WirelessCar from Volvo, with a view to making further advances in fleet connectivity. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the first half of next year and is subject to approval from anti-trust authorities.
Gothenburg-registered WirelessCar, a wholly owned subsidiary by Volvo since 2007, turns 20 next year. The Swedish company has a workforce of about 370 IT experts worldwide and is acknowledged as a leading specialist in vehicle connectivity.
Kia to debut mood recognition technology at Consumer Electronics Show
Kia Motors will preview a range of new technologies developed for the post-autonomous driving era at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month. Kia's interactive Space of Emotive Driving exhibit looks to a future when autonomous driving is the norm and priority is given to improving the human mobility experience.
Central to this concept is Kia's new Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving System (above) - a technology developed with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab's Affective Computing group. The system can optimise and personalise a vehicle cabin space by analysing a driver's emotional state in real time through artificial intelligence-based bio-signal recognition technology. It then tailors the environment of the interior according to its assessment - potentially altering conditions relating to the human senses within the cabin and creating a more enjoyable mobility experience.
Christopher Tan
