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Now is the era of electric cars as more and more countries aim to combat global warming. In line with the legislation of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the European Union proposed an effective ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 to target a 100% cut in CO2 emissions (Carey & Steitz, 2021). It promotes the switch to zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs), which leads car manufacturers such as Volkswagen to focus on producing EVs (Volkswagen, 2019). Also, purchasing an electric car is highly recommended to customers when they are selecting a new vehicle.

More than 550,000 electric cars and 20,000 electric vans were sold in Europe in 2019, which indicates a 0.5 %-points increase in market share from 2018 (EEA, 2020). In 2019, the percentage of electric vehicles in total car registrations increased in all European countries, with the highest share in Norway (56%), and the share in the Netherlands (16%) which marked the third-highest. The leading countries in electric mobility offer various incentives that make purchasing electric vehicles a better option, such as tax reductions and exemptions for EVs and allowance to drive on the bus lanes (EEA, 2019).

As possessions of EVs has increased, there is still a lack of EV charging spots. People who own EVs sometimes encounter the situation when they get to the station to charge it, and all the chargers are occupied. To overcome the difficulties arising from EV charging stations’ limited spots, Volkswagen released a prototype design for a mobile charging robot (Volkswagen, 2020).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMC1H__xL3Y&t=110s

The robot stays in self-contained areas, such as at the corner of parking lots. Drivers can call it through an app or ‘Car-to-X communication’ to charge their EVs. The car-to-X communication indicates the car itself calls the robot. When the robot receives the request to come over, it attaches to an energy storage unit and brings it to the car. It opens the charging port, plugs the unit in, and returns to its central station to respond to the next call. When it notices the vehicle is fully charged, it accesses the car and unplugs the unit to take it back. Since the robot is designed to plan the route flexibly, it can provide the charging service as many vehicles simultaneously. A significant benefit is that it electrifies every parking space without running wires and installing a separate charger at certain spots, saving high costs (McIntosh, 2021).

Developers are also working on several other charging solutions. One such solution is wireless charging. Wireless car charging is an enhanced version of wireless smartphone charging, but there are some severe constraints. To charge a much bigger car than a smartphone, the complexity and size of the power management electronics must be enlarged. There would be another homework to accurately place the car in an accurate position to maintain the proper distance from the charger (Emilio, 2021).

Still, the solutions above are not implemented in our real lives yet.  However, it should not take that long to adopt the new technologies as several automobile companies and tech companies strive to disseminate them. It will indeed thrive in your EV life!

References

Carey, N., & Steitz, C. (2021, July 14). EU proposes effective ban for new fossil-fuel cars from 2035. Reuters. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/eu-proposes-effective-ban-new-fossil-fuel-car-sales-2035-2021-07-14/.

Emilio, M. D. P. (2021, May 27). Wireless Charging Technology for EVs. Power Electronics News. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.powerelectronicsnews.com/wireless-charging-technology-for-evs/.

European Environment Agency. (2020, December 3). New registrations of electric vehicles in Europe. European Environment Agency. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/proportion-of-vehicle-fleet-meeting-5/assessment.

European Environment Agency. (2019, December 10). Tax breaks and incentives make Europeans buy cleaner cars. European Environment Agency. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/tax-breaks-and-incentives-make.

McIntosh, J. (2021, May 20). Need to charge your electric car? This robot from VW can do it for you. Driving. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/need-to-charge-your-electric-car-this-robot-from-vw-can-do-it-for-you.

Volkswagen. (2020, December 28). Initial contact: The Mobile Charging Robot – presenting a vision. Volkswagen Newsroom. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/initial-contact-the-mobile-charging-robot-presenting-a-vision-6736.

Volkswagen. (2019, December 27). Volkswagen significantly raises electric car production forecast for 2025. Volkswagen Newsroom. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/volkswagen-significantly-raises-electric-car-production-forecast-for-2025-5696.

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“We are gonna go to a few websites and see if we can find any advertisements for this(dog toys). Now I don’t own of these(dogs), so it’s not like I’ve ever searched for in the past…” 

“Oh my gosh, it’s right there! There are dog toys right here!”

One YouTuber conducted an interesting experiment on his YouTube channel. He aimed to find out whether Google still listens to his words while not using the Google search engine and then shows relevant advertisements. The results were astonishing. Before experimenting, he mentioned that he had not had dogs in his lifetime and never searched the keyword ‘dog toys’ on the website. Firstly, he browsed some random websites on Google to check if there were any advertisements, and then beer, breast cancer pills, and science festival ads popped up. After then, he closed Google and spoke intentionally about ‘dog toys’ several times. He browsed the random websites on Google again, and on the first and some following website he accessed, shockingly, he found the dog toys ads on the side!

In fact, this YouTuber’s ‘Google mike test’ experiment had some significant flaws that he admitted later in his video. The first fatal error was; actually, he was inserting his voice and words via his microphone while recording the YouTube video. It is bound to the fact we allow them to collect and use our data when creating a video and upload it on websites. And his second mistake was, he clicked the first dog toys ad when he encountered it, which helped Google customize the ads for him more actively. Whether or not his experiment was successful, people were shocked and anxious about Big Brother surveillance.

Google sells smart home devices at a much affordable price than expected. (You can get it at €44,90 from Bol.com!) The market size of smart home products was US$78.3 billion in 2020, while anticipated to reach US$135.3 billion in 2025 (Markets and markets, 2021). Many customers are likely to purchase it as it offers convenient and controllable life just saying out the order they desire. Smart home applications are interconnected with highly sophisticated technologies that process the large volume of data collected from various sensor devices (Balakrishna et al., 2020). After acquired, the data is tagged with its source, ingested, and discovered for further analytics (Krishnan, 2020). There is no need to repeat that big data collecting is happening anywhere – while you are scanning what you buy at the supermarket, taking a picture and uploading it on your social media account, and accepting the cookies on the websites.

However, you do not even notice that you are offering your private information to the big data hub. What if the smart home devices are keep listening to you even when you do not want to? Of course, you can log off from your devices or change into ‘incognito mode’. Still, it seems unfair that you need to be aware of unwanted information leakage every time.

Many ethical problems from big data collection and management without the users’ agreement have arisen. In April 2018, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified to a privacy issue on Facebook in front of senators. He was reproved of the misuse of private data from 87 million Facebook users, which were revealed to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign (Brenner, 2018). At the time, Mr. Zuckerberg insisted that data harvesting would not happen again and clarified that Facebook never collects data from users by combining the app and audio from each mobile device when it is off.

Nowadays, big data ethics is emerging as people are aware of the importance of securing big data composed of the data from each individual. Richards et al. (2014) suggest four high-level principles on big data ethics. We shall understand that privacy is a rule of information, and shared private information can remain confidential. Big data requires transparency, and lastly, big data can compromise identity. Reckless collection and usage of big data can invade people’s rights not to be known. Indeed, it would be one of the most crucial virtues that big data analysts and AI developers should cultivate, reminding them that the purpose of all of these technological innovations is a better life for human lives.

References

Balakrishna, S., & Thirumaran, M. (2020). Semantic interoperability in IoT and big data for health care: a collaborative approach (thesis). Handbook of Data Science Approaches for Biomedical Engineering. Retrieved September 14, 2021.

Brenner, T. (2018, April 10). Mark Zuckerberg Testimony: Senators Question Facebook’s Commitment to Privacy. The New York Times. Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/politics/mark-zuckerberg-testimony.html.

Krishnan, K. (2020). Big Data introduction (thesis). Building Big Data Applications. Retrieved September 14, 2021.

Markets and markets. (2020). (rep.). Smart Home Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Product (Lighting Control, Security & Access Control, HVAC Control, Entertainment, Home Healthcare), Software & Services (Proactive, Behavioural), and Region – Global Forecast to 2025 (Ser. SE3172). Retrieved September 14, 2021, from https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/smart-homes-and-assisted-living-advanced-technologie-and-global-market-121.html.

Richards, N. M., & King, J. H. (2014). Big data ethics. Wake Forest Law Review, 49(2), 393-432.

Image source

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/06/which-investigation-reveals-staggering-level-of-smart-home-surveillance/