Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker by volume, will include technology from tech giant Tencent technology in a China-made passenger vehicle that will go on sale this year, said Toyota’s Yiming Xu, a director for brand and communications for China.
So, that makes it sound like they’re just tailoring their Chinese market cars for that market. Seems like a normal thing to do.
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This coincides with Kia/Hyundai announcing the same thing. Either they need Baidu tech to compete with BYD in the Chinese market because it’s just that good or locally desirable. Or the countries regulators require it. Given they all announced this at the auto show at the same time, seems too coordinated for competing car companies.
I believe its about the map and coordinate system used by China. They uses an encrypted (?) coordinate system claiming national security. That’s why Google maps never work in China.
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I got curious. It’s at least partially the government regulation thing. They’ve been working on standards that get inforced soon around data privacy and updates to software. So they can roll their own Chinese version of the software with in-country servers, privacy compliance, surveillance compliance, etc. or pay Baidu/Tencent.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chines-mandatory-standards-vehicle-cybersecurity-icv-data-振强-焦-qupec
trusting USA is a huge mistake.
Makes sense. China is where cutting edge technology is these days.
China wishes it could hold a measly candle to the engineering magnum opus that is 🇧🇷Brazil 🇧🇷.
- Caller ID
- Electric Shower
What more do you need?