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Business
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MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 2020
An Apollo Robotaxi is seen on a street in Changsha. PHOTO: AFP
Road test: Chinese
‘robotaxis’ take
riders for a spin
SHANGHAI (AFP) - Chinese entrants in the race to
put autonomous vehicles on the road are bringing
“robotaxis” online in hopes that a hired-car format
can be the key to unlocking wide acceptance of the
futuristic technology.
It is expected to be years before cars that operate
completely without human intervention are unleashed
owing to lingering technological, regulatory, and
safety hurdles.
But as China challenges US tech dominance,
Chinese players such as Baidu, Alibaba-backed
AutoX and ride-sharing king DiDi Chuxing recently
launched autonomous taxi pilot projects in cities
around the country.
Similar efforts are under way in the US, and AutoX’s
Chief Executive Xiao Jianxiong told
AFP
the irst fully-
autonomous vehicles could be on the roads by the
end of the year.
Robotaxis or delivery services are considered
ideal for accumulating the driving time and huge
data cache needed for cars to “learn” and become
safe enough. Chinese consumers - known for eagerly
embracing e-commerce, online payments and other
digital solutions - are lining up for a spin in DiDi
Chuxing’s self-developed autonomous taxis at a
Shanghai pilot project launched in June. Underlining
the work-in-progress nature of the concept, a DiDi
staffer occupies the driver’s seat, ready to take the
wheel if needed.
But Da Xuan, a 24-year-old social-media worker,
leapt at a taste of the future.
“I heard companies like Uber or Tesla were doing
autonomous driving, so I was curious what Chinese
companies were doing, whether they can go into
production, and if so, what will the (riding) experience
be like,” she said.
“It was very smooth,” Da said, adding that she
would feel safe in such a car.
Test subjects use DiDi’s mobile app to plot a
ride through suburban roads in a Volvo fitted with
a crown of tech hardware topped by a spinning
radar device.
The vehicle conidently sets out, accelerating,
braking, signalling and turning on its own in real
trafic as a female voice calmly narrates: “Yielding for
crosswalk”; “Your car has been disinfected”.
When a large truck abruptly swerved in front, DiDi’s
AI driver smoothly applied the brake.
Like any student driver, however, it still needs
practice.
At one stop sign, it braked so abruptly that
passengers lurched forward.
And any impromptu deviation from the plotted
route requires human intervention.
But Chief Operating Oficer of DiDi’s autonomous
driving company Meng Xing told
AFP
its AI system
“is already smart enough to handle most of the
situations”, and safety drivers almost never need to
touch the steering wheel or brakes.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, known for his
overly rosy predictions, raised eyebrows in July
by saying the US electric carmaker could have a
completely autonomous car ready this year, which
analysts have dismissed.
A LG I E R S ( A F P ) - C u r r e n c y
depreciation, inlation, negative
growth, businesses closed: Algeria’s
economy has been battered by the
one-two punch of the coronavirus
crisis and tumbling oil revenues.
And unless remedial action is
taken on a massive scale, a slide into
foreign debt will become inevitable,
economists warn.
The National Ofice of Statistics
(ONS) reported a 3.9 per cent fall
in gross domestic product (GDP)
in the irst quarter alone, with
unemployment nearing 15 per cent
- “alarming” igures, according to
Mansour Kedidir, associate professor
at the Higher School of Economics in
Oran. Excluding the energy sector,
GDP fell by 1.5 per cent year-on-year
in the 1
st
quarter, against an increase
of 3.6 per cent last year compared to
Q1 2018.
With coninement measures in
place since March 19 to curb the
spread of the novel coronavirus,
sectors such as services and freight
have come to a virtual standstill.
The construction sector, a major
provider of jobs, has been paralysed
for months.
F i n a n c e M i n i s t e r Ayme n
Benabderrahmane estimates the
losses of state-owned enterprises at
nearly USD1.17 billion. Private sector
losses have yet to be assessed, but
many closed businesses, including
restaurants, cafes and travel agencies,
risk bankruptcy.
Algeria faces an “unprecedented
economic situation”, said Prime
Minister Abdelaziz Djerad, who has
also blamed mismanagement under
the rule of ousted longtime president
Abdelaziz Boutelika.
Due to a lack of diversiication, the
Maghreb region’s largest economy
is highly dependent on oil revenues
and exposed to luctuations in
crude prices.
The International Monetary Fund
(IMF) forecast that Algeria’s economy
will shrink 5.2 per cent this year.
Kedidirpredicts that unless reforms
are brought in, “a Pandora’s box will
be opened... riots, irredentism,
religious extremism”.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
has already ruled out seeking loans
from the IMF or other international
inancial agencies, in the name of
“national sovereignty”.
Algeria economy rocked
by one-two punch
Algerian Finance Minister Aymane Benabderrahmane in the capital Algiers.
PHOTO: AFP
NEWYORK (AFP) -Twitter is in preliminary discussions
for a possible combination with TikTok,
the Wall Street
Journa
l
(WSJ)
reported on Saturday, after US President
Donald Trump said he would ban the app, calling it a
threat to national security.
Trump declared on Thursday that the popular
Chinese video app TikTok and social network WeChat
“threaten the national security, foreign policy, and
economy of the United States (US).”
In an executive order, Trump gave Americans
45 days to stop doing business with the platforms,
effectively setting a deadline for a sale of TikTok by
its Chinese parent irm ByteDance.
He has also demanded that a signiicant portion
of the sale go to the US Treasury.
Microsoft has been the primary suitor for TikTok,
saying it was in talks to buy the company’s US,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations.
The
Financial Times
reported on Thursday that
Microsoft has expanded negotiations and was now
after the app’s entire global operations.
As a smaller company, Twitter would have a long-
shot bid for TikTok, but the social media platform
believes it would come under less antitrust scrutiny
than larger corporations such as Microsoft, the
WSJ
said, citing people familiar with the talks.
Twitter, however, would likely need the support of
other investors to complete the combination.
While Twitter does allow for the sharing of videos,
most posts contain short text messages and photos
or GIFs.
In 2012 Twitter acquired the platform Vine, which
allowed users to share short videos, but shut down
the service in 2016.
Twitter, TikTok discuss potential combination