Talking Tech: Driverless Vehicles Build Driverless Highway
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Two weeks ago, Xinhua News reported that roughly 100km of the new expressway connecting Beijing and Xiong’an had been built and that it will be open for travel in June 2021. Pretty unimpressive, save for the fact that the 100km stretch of road actually has two lanes that will be exclusively used by driverless cars, and that it was built exclusively by driverless construction vehicles. That's right, robots are coming to steal our jobs, they're stealing our road trips too.
Looks like the world's slowest Formula 1 race track
The construction team was comprised of three pavers and six road rollers equipped with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, which uses sensors in the vehicle to process information about the area in real-time and complete tasks accordingly. Perhaps more notable – and detrimental to us fallible mortals – is that the path's construction can be controlled within a two- to three-centimeter margin of error, which is 50 percent more accurate than if the machinery was controlled by a human hand.
If there's any silver lining to the hostile robot takeover, it's that once the highway is complete, travel time between Beijing and the Xiong’an New Area will be reduced to one measly hour. Long enough to catch up on your favorite TV show before we're all forced to watch Game of Drones.
With the development of cashless payments and e-commerce, WeChat and Alipay have successfully cornered the digital currency market (not to be confused with the digital cryptocurrency market). Meanwhile, more traditional financial institutions such as UnionPay have tried to find their foothold in the e-conomy sphere, albeit without much success.
That all may change, however, after UnionPay recently unveiled their first digital bank card "银联无界卡" (yínlián wújiè kǎ, Bank Union Borderless Card, if translated literally). It has all the same features as the old UnionPay card in that it's a thin piece of plastic, however, it has a few other additions that will help it go toe-to-toe with WeChat and Alipay: namely, supplementing the traditional bank card with a digital card allowing for easier mobile payments, and a streamlined application process that can be done from UnionPay's app, eliminating the need to visit a bank branch in person (because human interaction is so 20th century).
The first batch of participating banks includes 17 national commercial banks, various regional banks, and a few international institutions. Eager to drag folks away from the comfort of Alipay and WeChat, UnionPay is rolling out a number of campaigns to drum up excitement about their new product including coupons that can be used at supermarkets and convenience stores such as Walmart, Carrefour, Family Mart, as well as offering various rewards and discounts for making X amount of purchases with a certain time frame.
Unfortunately, despite UnionPay's best intentions, the card does not maketh the consumer. Lamented one Weibo user, “I have enough cards to play poker, but none of them have money.”
Read: Trending in Beijing: Jackie Chan’s House, Pervert Cat and Mouse, Rainbow Wows
Images: cntechpost.com, WeMP, Sina, Bold Business
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