Net Work
Alan Winstanley
Our Net Work columnist observes how Chinese EV makers are queuing up to conquer
Europe, AI is becoming ever more humanlike and there’s news of NASA’s ambitions to return
soil samples from Mars.
R
ecently an old, abandoned
shipping container holding
three Tesla Roadster cars made
13 years ago, was found at a Chinese
quayside. The Teslas were reportedly
destined for a start-up EV maker to
be dismantled and their technology
copied, but the EV maker had gone
bust and the cars, worth $2m today,
were being auctioned off. China’s
nascent car makers have seized every
opportunity to get a toehold in the
global car market, having started by
grabbing some well-known brand
names. The famous British marque
Rover became ‘Roewe’ under Chinese
ownership and, as a sign of how
rapidly its owners Shanghai Motor
(SAIC) have evolved since then, their
range now covers everything from
a tiny all-electric car (the Roewe
Clever), up to some monstrouslooking SUVs, such as the RX-9:
https://bit.ly/pe-aug23-ro1
Their website showcases a wealth
of vehicle design and production that
is seemingly limitless. You can take
a virtual tour of these brittle-looking
cars online, and the Google Lens app
on a smartphone is great for translating
Chinese web text into English – see:
https://bit.ly/pe-aug23-ro2
Until the 1980s, car ownership in
China was unthinkable: according
to the Christian Science Monitor, in
1985 the average was one passenger
car per six million people. In
December 2020’s Net Work I
wrote how Chinese-owned
SAIC had grabbed the British
MG brand to market its own
Chinese-built cars, describing
themselves as a ‘94-yearold start-up’. As predicted,
thanks to their keenly priced
EVs, the MG brand has enjoyed stellar growth, both
in Britain and overseas. Fast
forward 2½ years to today
and, according to SMMT
statistics, MG has sold in The luxury HiPhi X has TI (Texas Instruments)
2023 about 32,000 units, or micromirror-controlled headlights and on-road night4.1% of the UK car market time warnings.
share, 2½ times more than Renault (13,000), with volumes
approaching those of mainstream Vauxhall cars (39,000).
Tesla sold 18,600 cars, after
disrupting the market with
major price cuts.
Despite the decline of British car brands, we can still
claim that Britain’s MG saloons contained the first
mainstream digital dashboard nearly 40 years ago, see:
https://youtu.be/gH8orI8jdCA HiPhi’s sophisticated dashboard is dominated entirely
– preceded only by the dire by three HD screens for managing the car’s controls.
and best forgotten electronic dash on the 1976 Aston Martin Hi Phives
Lagonda, a favourite of oil sheiks at There’s more to come: back in April, UK
Government officials met in Shanghai
the time.
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Practical Electronics | August | 2023
A tiny electric Light Utility Vehicle (LUV) has been proposed by Sweden’s Luvly AB. It
would be assembled from kits in microfactories.
with the CEO of Chinese luxury car
maker HiPhi, a brand owned by Chinese group Human Horizons that I
mentioned briefly in June’s issue. HiPhi
has ambitions to sell their ultra-sophisticated high-end electric cars in
Europe, and they ‘expressed hope to
see HiPhi cars on the UK streets soon’.
Tomorrow’s technology is heading our
way and these premium cars show
what’s now possible today. The cars
are crammed with tech, including
LED matrix headlights directed by 2.6
million individually-controlled Texas
Instruments digital micromirror devices
(DMDs – see: https://bit.ly/pe-aug23-ti),
electronic technology that shapes the
beam and makes today’s car headlights
seem like acetylene-burning carbide
lamps in comparison.
From what I can gather, their
‘night-vision imaging’ LED lights project warning signs onto the road surface,
with features like ‘intelligent pedestrian tracking’, which detect bystanders
waiting to cross. Naturally, the dash is
dominated by digital screens and the
feature list is out of this world. Under
the heading of ‘Too silly’, though, must
come the idea that its LED matrix lamps
can download and display text, emojis
and animations. Whether it complies
with UK road regulations is doubtful;
an early taster is at: https://youtu.be/
mAkIXVnH7sU and you can sign up
for news or see more about the HiPhi-X
at: www.hiphi.com/hiphi-x
This inexorable shift towards electric
propulsion is creating a sea-change in
the auto market, hampered in Britain by
the usual infrastructure problems and
bottlenecks. BYD (Build Your Dreams,
see Net Work, May 2023) has shifted
Practical Electronics | August | 2023
just 84 of their electric Atto 3 SUVs so
far, according to SMMT figures. But
this EV builder is huge in Asia and
has big plans to conquer Europe with
their next cars, called the Dolphin and
the Seal. The GWM (Great Wall Motor)
Ora ‘Funky Cat’ described 18 months
ago (see Net Work, January 2022) has
sold just 258 so far this year, but Ora
has already set its sights on expansion,
with a so-far unnamed premium saloon
coming in 2024. Some teaser shots are
at: https://gwmora.co.uk/nextgwmora/
Dealer appeal
New brands like BYD and Ora are
slowly and carefully building up a dealership network and, judging by MG’s
success, they are in it for the long term.
Here in the UK, it feels like owners of
fossil-fuelled cars are becoming an endangered species, with all manner of
‘green’ policies making car ownership
difficult and increasingly unrewarding; yet EVs are still expensive and,
for many, remain impractical to use.
Prices of used EVs are finally starting
to recover, says Autocar, yet 29 of the
top 30 biggest used car price drops in
the last six months were still electric
vehicles, according to the trade site
Car Dealer. Cars are being seen more
as ‘white goods’, Heycar’s CEO Karen
Hilton is quoted as saying: brand loyalty in Britain is fast disappearing and
cars are now being purchased simply
because customers ‘need one’, showing little regard to the badge on the
hood. This trend will be manna from
heaven for Chinese car makers trying
to expand into the market.
The Internet has played a major role
in skewing the way cars are bought
and sold. Instead of trawling round
showrooms and grabbing brochures,
websites such as Heycar, Cinch and
Cazoo have sprung up selling cars
online, all polished up nicely to look
like new. Personally, I find it incredible that consumers would buy an
expensive car at arm’s length without
trying it first, reassured only by a money-back guarantee – but some people
really do. This idea backfired on Cazoo,
who over-expanded into Europe and
has since shut down all its overseas
sales operations. However, not even
Rolls-Royce produces a printed brochure now, but when I played with
their ‘online configurator’ I was greeted
with a ‘Something went wrong’ pop-up
that redirected me to a ‘2D Experience’
instead. Even Rolls-Royce gets online
sales wrong sometimes.
At the other end of the scale, another emerging segment is the ‘NEV’ or
Neighbourhood Electric Vehicle, tiny
electric cars and mini-trucks capable of
no more than 25 mph for zipping round
town, though these have yet to appear
in Britain (where new urban 20mph
speed limits and punitive emissions
charges are proving highly unpopular).
The Ed and I were just joking about
how a flat-pack car would be good for
use around town, when news arrived
of a concept EV that is just that – a brilliant idea from Sweden (where else?).
The ‘Luvly O’, which is the brainchild
of Luvly AB, is classed as an ‘LUV’ or
light utility vehicle. Designed from the
start to be lightweight but tough and
safe, the tiny, spartan two-seater has
urban life firmly in mind and would
be ideal for nipping around congested towns. The Luvly O aims to be
13
The Mars Sample Return Mission (MSR) would see samples of Martian rocks and
sediment return to Earth for analysis, ten years from now. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Bing Chat is a conversational system
integrated with Microsoft’s search engine
that allows users to talk to its AI chatbot
rather than simply filling out search queries.
(Bing Chat’s own definition of itself.)
sustainable and fully recyclable and
uses just two small batteries giving a
range of 60+ miles. Naturally, it would
communicate with a Luvly app on the
driver’s smartphone. Unlike Chinese
NEVs, the Luvly O could indeed be
delivered as flat packs, IKEA style,
although not to the end-user (no confusing instructions to deal with, then!),
but in kit form to regional microfactories for local assembly. The vehicle
– if it ever sees production – is a few
years away yet and would cost about
€10,000 (£8,600). You can sign up for
newsletters and find more details at:
www.luvly.se
Artificial sweeteners
Artificial intelligence (AI) is never far
from the news and there’s no escaping
the impact that AI now has on mundane everyday activities. There aren’t
enough expensive human beings (or
phone lines) to offer us a personal customer service anymore, so many of us
have been conditioned into using online
‘chat’ instead. Terminal-style chat may
be awkward and robotic but there might
at least be a human being at the other
end, maybe halfway round the world
or working from home in a bedroom
somewhere. Humanoid chatbots are
increasingly relying on AI to try holding intelligent conversations with us,
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and a lot of AI-crafted content is now
indistinguishable from human-generated material. The paradox is that, in
trying to emulate a human response,
AI-powered chat seems to de-humanise the experience even more.
The advent of ChatGPT – an OpenAI
chatbot programmed to converse
naturally – has caught the public’s
imagination and has been covered extensively by others. You can try it at:
https://chat.openai.com – note that the
site openly admits that it may sometimes generate wrong information and
harmful or biased content. Intelligent
chatbots do have their uses though,
and when they work efficiently, they
can save time and hassle – for example, when I used their own chatbot to
close an OpenAI account.
Elsewhere, Microsoft is finally killing
off Cortana, its unloved and largely forgotten voice assistant. Having
already abandoned mobile applications, Cortana as a standalone app
will silently disappear from Windows
10 and 11 towards the end of this
year, a measure Microsoft quietly announced in an earlier bulletin, see:
https://tinyurl.com/mr323r4e
In its place, new AI-powered search
technology is being used that gives Bing
search results an altogether friendlier, chatty style. I must admit that
using Bing’s AI in Microsoft Edge to
search the web makes a pleasant change
from punching in search phrases and
trawling mindlessly through pages of
hyperlinks and paid-for ads.
Waiting in the wings is Windows
Copilot, a centralised AI tool coming
to Windows 11 that promises to ‘help
people easily take action and get things
done’. Bing and ChatGPT plugins will
be embedded into the Windows OS,
and Windows Copilot promises (at
last) to offer plain English AI-generated
answers to our everyday questions,
acting like a more intelligent Help
screen. Copilot is already making its
way into Microsoft Office 365.
Is there life on Mars?
Back in Net Work, October 2020, I
wrote that NASA had launched a space
mission to Mars hoping to fly a small
helicopter called Ingenuity in the very
thin Martian atmosphere, which has
just 1% of the Earth’s density. This feat
would be the first such powered flight
made on another planet. The helicopter’s mothership, called Perseverance,
is a mobile laboratory bristling with
sophisticated geological test equipment and it landed successfully on
Mars in February 2021. Ingenuity was
then released to fly ahead as a ‘scout’
for Perseverance. Although Ingenuity
was expected to fly just five missions
as a proof-of-concept demonstrator,
the hovering craft has exceeded all
expectations and has now celebrated
more than 50 successful flights, travelling a total of nearly 12km. NASA
engineers have learned how to exploit gruelling weather patterns, for
example, to let frozen components
thaw out in the sun again, after the
helicopter has taken a nap in hibernation mode. The fascinating story of
some of Ingenuity’s perilous journeys
is recounted by NASA engineers at:
https://bit.ly/pe-aug23-nasa
Looking to the future, an even greater
challenge is that of returning Martian
soil samples to Earth, and for this
NASA has partnered with ESA, the
European Space Agency, as part of the
highly ambitious Mars Sample Return
(MSR) project. The scale of the technology needed is astonishing: samples of
Martian rocks and sedimentary deposits, contained in small tubes, would be
gathered together at a location on Mars
Practical Electronics | August | 2023
Virgin Galactic’s twin-bodied space carrier plane VMS Eve releases the VMS Unity space plane on a successful test flight prior to
going commercial. (Image: Virgin Galactic)
and a craft called the Sample Return
Lander would eventually land with
extreme precision nearby. The lander
would contain a small rocket – the
two-stage Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV)
– into which the sample tubes would
be loaded by a Perseverance-type rover,
helped by two Sample Recovery Helicopters. Ten such soil sample tubes
have already been curated by Perseverance, patiently awaiting their collection
some time in the distant future.
In another space programme first, the
MAV rocket would then be launched
from Mars back into orbit, to rendezvous with an Earth Return Orbiter (ERO)
launched separately from Earth by
the European Space Agency. It would
be the first interplanetary spacecraft
to capture an object orbiting around
another planet and make a full round
trip to Mars and back again. For this to
happen, NASA’s Capture, Containment,
and Return System (CCRS) would ‘capture the Martian sample container in
orbit, double-seal it in a clean vessel,
and integrate it into the Earth Entry
System, which would safely return the
samples to Earth’s surface’, NASA says.
The feasibility of this highly ambitious
programme will be scrutinised by an
independent review board this year. If
it goes ahead, a target of the early 2030s
has been slated for the MAV launching from the red planet, carrying its
priceless Martian booty back to Earth.
I hope a future Net Work writer will
be able to report on its success, but in
the meantime you can learn more at:
https://mars.nasa.gov/msr
Galaxy Invader
In other space news: sadly, Virgin Orbit’s efforts to re-finance its 747-based
LEO launcher were unsuccessful, leaving the bankrupt company with no
choice but to break up and sell off the
company’s assets – proof that space is
still hard to do. There is better news
from Virgin Galactic’s space tourism
programme, though (Net Work, July
2021), as the company has successfully completed a spaceflight of its
twin-bodied carrier plane ‘mothership’, the VMS Eve, in readiness for
the company’s first commercial flight.
After being transported into the upper
atmosphere by the plane, the re-usable
orbital spaceplane will reach an altitude of 80km, carrying its passengers
and crew. The craft then folds in two,
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Practical Electronics | August | 2023
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Under construction: Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is the world’s only winged commercial spaceplane, set to supply their privately
owned Orbital Reef space station.
offering passengers a glimpse of space
and the planet below, before gliding
back to earth.
Meanwhile, US manufacturer Sierra
Space is a commercial space company currently constructing what will be
the world’s only winged commercial
spaceplane, the ‘Dream Chaser’. The
craft is intended to resupply the International Space Station, and would
land back on Earth on ‘compatible
airport runways’. (Fun fact: NASA’s
original 1980s Space Shuttle missions
would land back on airstrips either in
Florida or California, but one backup emergency landing site was none
other than Doncaster Sheffield airport
in England, which had one of the longest runways in the country. My parents
were married in Finningley church, by
the same RAF runway.)
The first Dream Chaser space plane
was successfully powered up for the
first time at the end of May. Sierra Space
is also building the backronym-titled
LIFE habitat (Large Integrated Flexible
Environment), described as a ‘modular,
three-storey commercial habitation and
science platform designed for low-earth
orbit’. The Dream Chaser spaceplane and
the LIFE platform are key elements in
their proposed ‘Orbital Reef’ space station, the first commercially owned and
operated private space station, described
as a ‘mixed-use business park in lowearth orbit’, being developed by Sierra
Space and Blue Origin, the space corporation owned by Jeff Bezos. It is slated
Amazon Kuiper’s smallest and lowest-cost satellite Internet terminal will measure just
seven inches square.
16
to be operational by 2027. As they say,
remote working will never be the same
again, and you can learn more about the
Orbital Reef at: www.sierraspace.com
Finally, this month, on the LEO broadband front, in a market dominated by
SpaceX’s Starlink service, Amazon’s
long-overdue Kuiper program has finally received the green light from the
US Federal Trade Commission. The
service, first mentioned four years ago
in Net Work, will eventually see a constellation of some 3,200 LEO satellites
launched in 77 missions, to beam Internet services back down to earth. It will
harness Amazon Web Services (AWS),
their managed cloud-computing platform, which is used by everyone from
small operators all the way up to the
UK Government. Amazon expects to
start building five satellites a day in its
own facility and is compelled to have
at least half of the satellite constellation
operational by July 2026. The aim is to
start connecting early adopters by the
end of 2024 and a range of terminals
will be offered. The fastest service is
expected to offer a speed of 1Gbps for
high-bandwidth users, but a small 7-inch
array may suit home users or travellers.
That’s all for this month’s Net
Work – you’ll find all the above
links ready-made for you in the
Net Work blog on the PE website at:
www.electronpublishing.com
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Practical Electronics | August | 2023
