Page 41 - min.soc 9 jan,2016

TECHNOLOGY A23
Saturday 9 January 2016

Does your battery life stink? Try Renault-Nissan:
some high-tech workarounds
10 self-driving vehicles expected by 2020
RYAN NAKASHIMA
AP Business Writer MICHAEL LIEDTKE Motors’ latest luxury mod- thrusts the alliance into a
LAS VEGAS (AP) — It’s enough to make you want to AP Technology Writer els, already are capable motorcade of major au-
drop everything and race for the nearest power out- SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) of shifting into self-driving tomakers and technol-
let: Your workday isn’t even done, and your smart- — The Renault-Nissan Alli- mode on highways, while ogy companies working
phone or laptop battery is already in the red zone. ance is entering the race other vehicles have been on self-driving cars. Their
If you’re hoping that techno-progress will dispel that to build autonomous cars able to automatically park goal is to change the way
depleted feeling, you may be in for a long wait. Bat- with a plan to introduce 10 themselves for several people get around and re-
tery life is constrained by limitations in chemistry, and different models capable years. duce the number of traffic
improvements aren’t keeping pace with demands of temporarily relieving hu- Renault-Nissan, a partner- accidents caused by dis-
from modern gadgets. mans of their driving du- ship between car makers tracted, drunk or hapless
We’re still dependent on the venerable lithium-ion ties on highways and city in France and Japan, still humans behind the wheel.
cell, first commercialized by Sony in 1991; it’s light, safe streets. isn’t ready to identify which The competition includes
and holds a lot of charge relative to most alternatives, The road map laid out this models will be infused with Toyota, Ford Motor, Gen-
but it isn’t getting better fast enough to keep up with week calls for Renault- the self-driving technol- eral Motors, Google Inc.,
our growing electronic demands. Nissan to gradually phase ogy or specify how much ride-hailing services Uber
So instead, manufacturers are doing their best to in the self-driving vehicles the autonomous vehicles and Lyft and possibly even
“cheat” their way around lithium-ion’s limitations. The in the U.S., Europe, Japan will cost. Apple Inc. The intensifying
CES gadget show in Las Vegas this week featured
plenty of workarounds that aim to keep your screen A prototype of the autonomous driving Nissan Leaf is shown at Renault-Nissan Silicon Valley in
lit longer. Sunnyvale, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. The Renault-Nissan Alliance is entering the race to build
Proceed with caution, though: Manufacturer claims autonomous cars with a plan to introduce 10 models capable of temporarily relieving humans of
of battery life improvement can fall short of real-world their driving duties on highways and city streets.
experience.
(AP Photo/Terry Chea)
NEW CHIPS
Not that long ago, computer-chip makers competed and China as its engi- The alliance still has lot of focus on self-driving tech-
to make their chips ever faster and more capable, neers fine-tune the auto- work to do to perfect its ro- nology reflects a belief
with power consumption a secondary consideration. mated technology and botic technology, a point il- that people would rather
But the boom in energy hungry smartphones and its management wrangles lustrated during a Thursday be texting, checking Face-
laptops means that companies like Intel need to put with regulators over safety test drive in a self-driving book, reading, or watching
much more emphasis on power efficiency these days. concerns. Nissan Leaf with an Asso- videos instead of having
Intel says its sixth-generation Core chips, known as Sky- If things pan out the way ciated Press reporter. The to spend so much of their
lake, add a little more than an hour to battery life to Renault-Nissan envisions, human driver had to grab time tediously steering and
laptops compared with the previous generation, ac- its first batch of self-driving the steering wheel or step braking on increasingly
cording to spokesman Scott Massey. The chips utilize cars debuting later this on the brakes on at least congested roads.
a more compact design, hard-wired functions that year will be able to steer three occasions during a Just how long it will take
used to be run via software and fine-tuning how they while traveling down a sin- 25-minute excursion. Dur- before cars can be trusted
ramp power use up and down. gle lane on the highway. By ing the journey, the vehi- to drive completely on their
2018, the cars will be able cle strayed from a lane as own is a matter of debate.
BETTER-DESIGNED LAPTOPS automatically navigate the road curved, became Google, which has logged
Laptop manufacturers are smartly sipping power, too. across several highway confused by a flashing sign more than 1 million miles in
HP says the Spectre x360 notebook it introduced in lanes and then handle tra- in a construction zone and self-driving cars since 2009,
March gains up to 72 minutes of battery life, for a total versing city streets on their didn’t decelerate quickly is hoping to have vehicles
of up to 13 hours, thanks in part to Intel’s new chip. own by 2020. enough as a traffic signal that don’t require any hu-
Among other tricks, the PC doesn’t refresh the screen Renault-Nissan’s agenda turned red. man intervention on the
as often if the image isn’t moving. “If we can solve a doesn’t represent a huge Thursday’s announcement road by 2020 in licensing
bunch of small problems, they can add up,” HP vice breakthrough. at Renault-Nissan’s Silicon deals with established au-
president Mike Nash said. Some cars, such as Tesla Valley research center tomakers. q
Similarly, Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X1 Yoga tablet turns
off its touch screen and keyboard backlight if it senses
its owner is walking and has the screen folded back
like an open book. Vaio, the computer maker former-
ly owned by Sony, says its Z Canvas launched in the
U.S. in October benefits from shrinking components
and efficiently distributing heat to make more room
for a bigger battery.

NEW CHARGERS
Maybe it’s your phone that’s not keeping up. If so, you
might check out new accessories designed to make it
easier and faster to charge back up.
Kickstarter-funded Ampy uses your body’s kinetic en-
ergy to charge up a pager-sized device. Strap it to
your arm or a belt and it can recharge a smartphone
in real time; an hour of jogging or similar exercise yields
about an hour of use. You could also just throw it in
your bag and get the same extra hour of gadget life
after a week of walking around — not an awesome
trade off, maybe, but possibly better than nothing. q