???? NEOM and ?? Autonomous Driving ??
The topic is something personal to me.
Before talking about my personal thing, please have a look at this video.
What do you think?
It is a gem glittering in different colours to my eyes, and I needed to have a deeper look?? .
Short summary on the autonomous driving part of NEOM with my quick research:
There are more interesting tech and business topics, who the sensor suppliers are, what cooperation pony.ai and #horizonrobotics have and so on, but I move on to my thoughts, which is more about the geopolitical things.
Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of the crown prince MbS, is going through a series of reforms and among them, one important goal is to build an economy not depending on the oil revenues.
But how? I had asked myself in the past. Many years ago, I had researched a bit about #SABIC company a long time ago. Since then I haven't heard progress significant enough to transform the economic structure of the country. In case of the automotive industry, the country had some success stories for some energy intensive products, for example, lithium processing for #BMW. But to attract other industries and service businesses, which crown prince envisions, it is not enough.
Attracting foreign investment faces, by nature, a global competition. Arabian countries which rely a lot on foreign workers, what can it offer other than the oil and energy?
And it can indeed offer something - Testbed for automated driving in a future city for Chinese companies!
(the video is not related to the article directly)
As the US tightens the access to its market, among other reasons, for its national security by limiting the foreign influence in its land, the data retrieved by vehicle are, and will be more, significant. That hit not only but especially the Chinese companies hard.
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So they needed to seek new markets.
There comes Saudi Arabia. It offered capital participation. It offered a new city where less human factors will be for road safety. It can even offer road environment which is optimized for autonomous driving.
This case exemplifies the complexity of our multipolar world economies to the politics, while the global businesses often don't care so much about the national interests of their homelands as the governments. And sadly, politicians of the democratic world are too often too late and too little to make impacts... With this reality, managers need to be aware of implications posed by the Great Game of 21st Century, so that they can make right decisions to earn profits and to bear the responsibility to the societies which enables them to run the business on their own.
And I continue to wonder. How will this world evolve in this environment?
Technological development will advance even more rapidly than in the past. The no single dominant super power will not be present for many years from now (unless a few leaders of several big countries destroy their economies with bad policies, which unfortunately could happen.), how can we have more peaceful and productive world? The gurus of tech companies experiment universal basic income ahead of governments, but what their true goals? And it's certain that we need a total solution for the world, solving single issues of each country won't be enough, though it seems impossible to have such a holistic change to our politics...
But the great ability of human being is the resilience, or the ability to adapt to the environment where it lives whatever challenges are put on them, right? I do what I can do and I believe there will be smart and good people who present a new solution for a social reforms, and there will be people who believe in such optimism and drive changes.
And finally, please let me share my humble story.
As a child, I was fascinated by the architecture, industrial design, and a bit later also city planning. I had read many books and I used to imagine how Tokyo could look like if the 1920's Tokyo Urban concept, which was developed at the time when the great earthquake hit the city in 1923. That time Japan was still not so developed, but the city planning envisioning a huge airport and such. I had dreamt about living in a city, which is comfortable to live, exciting to experience, and in which each person live a life of her/his dream.
Autonomous Driving - I started to get interested in this topic around 2010, when I read about the progress of #Google's project by #sebastianthrun on the DARPA Grand Challenge, whose result is the foundation of #Waymo . At that time, I was working for Robert Bosch, which develops hardware and software for automotive cameras, radars, actuators and more. It was a precious experience to learn from the great colleagues there about their insights and technical challenges.
2018 I switched my job and started to work for Nissan. One of the reasons I joined was the following concept - Future City with Electric Mobility. Yes, I thought, that we were in the time to envision how to re-shape our loved cities to be more sustainable, and more enjoyable by making the best use of the limited spaces in the cities. My earlier passion for the city planning meets the industry I worked for, again in my time. (Yes, I am not fond of the time when the mass production of cars has proceeded with the creations of auto cities, especially in the US, which had an extensive railways, though I do not deny the fruit of personal mobility brought by cars.)
I recall that I mentioned this as a motivation during the job interview, and I had an honour to work at this company, in the team of connected vehicle development, where IT and auto industries meet.
And a bit later in my career, I had an opportunity to work in the 3rd party logistics company, which handled the coordination of industrial goods transportation between countries, I had lead the European operations and it gave me valuable insights, especially the daily challenges posed by various factors - natural disaster to geopolitical issues - which can be, and will be, improved significantly by the power of technology with the wisdom nurtured for generations of extensive human labours.
The concept of NEOM gave me a hope, that the challenges which the industries where I was active could be tackled in a fundamental manner, and it could provide a role model for other cities
I wish such a success helps all of us. And I strongly hope it gives a chance to bring sustainable growth of war-torn regions like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and Syria and such. (Re-)building new cities are tough but will be easier if there is a successful case, especially by the economies which previously had less industrialisation. In this sense, I believe that Saudi Arabia has a unique position for the global south.
Significant successes in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia will not only help their citizens, but also help solve or improve the immigration issues Europe faces. Spending millions of euro to build walls to the boarders, dispatching boarder controls, and send people by air won't solve anything in the long run.
We live in one world, and I wish that we can all live peacefully with economic security and fun in our lives. And for my personal tastes, I want a delightful city life, enabled by diverse aesthetics and sustainable technology.
Fun at work is not a luxury, It is a must.
6 个月In 2019, Saudi Arabia approached Toyota without tangible results, FYI. The challenges of high labour costs remain. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/toyota-snub-dents-saudi-arabias-manufacturing-drive-idUSKCN1TK09D/