WCA November 2016

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52 Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2016
From the Americas
(LAN), to optimise its own operation and maintenance
even as it enhances the driver and passenger experience.
A report from BI Intelligence, the research service of
Business Insider (New York), takes note of a significant
uptick in the number of these cars on the road.
According to “The Connected-Car Report: the
Transformation of the Automobile,” over the next five to
ten years Internet integration will in fact revolutionise the
auto industry, pacing the development of fully autonomous
vehicles and changing the car ownership model. In the BI
view, the market position of the connected car today is
similar to that of the smartphone in 2010: ready to explode.
Here are the three key takeaways from the report:
 While technological, regulatory and other hurdles to
adoption remain, the fully autonomous car – one that
can drive itself from point A to point B with little or no
human interaction – is only a few years away
 With more automakers all the time preparing to satisfy
consumers who are embracing the connected car faster
than expected, over 380 million connected cars will be
on the road by 2021
 Given the eagerness of automakers to “connect up”
the vehicles they sell, tech companies will be playing
a major role in the automotive market. A big question,
says BI Intelligence, is whether tech companies
– presumably no less alert to opportunity than
carmakers – may not eventually turn to car manufacture
themselves.
Elsewhere in automotive . . .
 Automakers including Germany’s Volkswagen and
Japan’s Nissan are striving to raise their market
share in India’s passenger car market, forecast to
be the third-largest globally by 2020. But General
Motors appears to be rethinking its strategy for the
price-sensitive Indian market, where the USA carmaker
commands a less than one per cent share. In July, GM
officials said that the company is re-evaluating a $1
billion investment in India, announced in 2015, and has
put on hold plans for a new car platform there.
The new platform would have helped GM to be
competitive in the Indian market, whose buyers favour
low-cost cars and which is dominated by the domestic
company Maruti Suzuki India and South Korea’s
Hyundai Motor. Jack Uppal, vice president of marketing
at GM India, told Reuters (24th July) that, instead of
launching the Spin MPV, GM will focus on bringing a
compact SUV to India soon. But he added that GM has
not altogether abandoned plans to launch small cars
there.
 Computer security experts at the University of
Birmingham in England have published a paper
highlighting the vulnerability of remote keyless
automotive entry systems. The research team, led by
computer scientist Flavio Garcia, said, “Our findings
affect millions of vehicles worldwide and could explain
unsolved insurance cases of theft from allegedly locked
vehicles.”
As reported by Stephanie Mlot in PCMag (12th August),
the keyless feature – found in most Volkswagen
Group vehicles manufactured since 1995 – relies on
a few global master keys. Using cheap, off-the-shelf
equipment, eavesdropper-hackers within 20 yards can
simply clone a driver’s key fob; and, wrote Ms Mlot,
“Voila! – they gain unauthorised access to the car.”
Insecure vehicles include Audi, VW, Seat and Škoda
models sold over the past two decades. But a VW
spokesman told Reuters that the current Golf, Tiguan,
Touran and Passat models are safe, and that the
Birmingham findings will serve to further improve the
company’s security technology.
Meanwhile, owners of at-risk vehicles were advised to
be wary of unlocking their car doors remotely. Leaving
no physical traces, the wireless hack poses “a severe
threat in practice,” the researchers warned.
Steel
China’s record exports of steel prompt
countermeasures, but not everyone is
convinced of the efficacy of duties and
tariffs
“From the USA to India, regulators around the world are
pushing harder than ever to shield local steel industries from
foreign competition.”
Citing data from the Russian Steel Association, which
counts both preliminary and permanent trade-restrictive
measures, Bloomberg News reporters Yuliya Fedorinova
and Thomas Biesheuvel noted that nations imposed 85 new
duties and other taxes on steel imports in the first half of
this year. That is 49 per cent more than at the same point a
year earlier. (“Steel Protectionism Goes Global as Few Can
Survive Low Price,” 11th August)
The trade frictions are, of course, largely a response to
record exports from China, which accounts for about
half of the world’s supplies of steel and shows scant sign
of curbing its output. Despite its pledge to cut some 150
million tons of steelmaking capacity, China’s production of
steel was down just an annualised 0.5 per cent over the first
seven months of the year. Output for July was higher than in
July 2015, and data from China on 10th August showed that
mills there were still churning out steel.
In August, the European Union imposed five-year tariffs as
high as 36.1 per cent on Chinese and Russian producers
of non-stainless cold rolled steels, upon its finding that
imports from the two countries unfairly undercut European
manufacturers.
Even so, recently there has been a slight but noticeable
shift in emphasis from China’s failure of self-restraint to the
perils of overreaction, with Fitch Ratings Ltd senior director
Peter Archbold among those analysts warning that the
duties pose a risk in the long term. In a broader context,
the World Trade Organization in July said that it has seen a
“significant increase” in trade-restrictive measures generally.
In an online statement the WTO called this “the last thing
the global economy needs.”