Gadgets
Hyundai Ioniq Is an Electric Car That Can Also Cook Your Dinner
It’s part of a push by Hyundai to appeal to a younger audience as it plays catch-up in the EV market. The South Korean automaker is behind EV pioneers such as Tesla and established brands like Volkswagen AG and BMW AG, only introducing its electric car in 2016.
“We looked at the wider meaning of space that would include outdoor and daily activities that consumers can do with their cars,” Heung Soo Kim, a senior vice president and head of product and EV businesses, said in an interview last month. “We are constantly looking into new features that will appeal to users.”
Hyundai says it’s the first major electric-car maker to offer bi-directional charging, which means owners can power electronic devices from the car battery. While conventional car batteries can be used to charge laptops and phones, they drain quickly if hooked up to anything more powerful, like a portable fridge or sound system, meaning serious campers need to install a dual-battery system or lug around heavy, noisy generators to power their home comforts.
The Ioniq 5 also comes with the option to install a solar-panel roof that will charge the battery pack, giving the vehicle additional driving range of about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) annually.
US-based EV start-up Rivian Automotive. is also looking to attract buyers who love the great outdoors, but with some creature comforts. It has developed a slide-out camp kitchen for its Sedona SUV complete with an induction cooktop powered by the car battery.
‘New Era’
Hyundai in the next few months is set to start sales of the Ioniq 5, its first EV built on a dedicated platform called the Electric-Global Modular Platform, or E-GMP. The flattened chassis allows the automaker to create more spacious interiors, another drawcard to entice drivers to switch from convention gasoline-powered vehicles.
“This year will be the start of a new era for Hyundai and Kia as its full EVs go on sale,” said Lee Jae-il, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities in Seoul. “Hyundai has come a long way from being one of the latecomers to the EV market to offering a very competitive product with the Ioniq 5.”
Still, demand for the Ioniq 5 is expected to be slow initially. Hyundai received orders for just more than 20,000 of the vehicles in South Korea on the day pre-orders opened. The automaker aims to sell 26,500 of the EV model in its home market this year, a fraction of its total sales target of 741,500 vehicles.
The Ioniq 5 will start at SKW 52 million (roughly Rs. 34.6 lakhs) before subsidies, according to Hyundai’s website. The smaller Kona EV starts at 49 million won before subsidies, and its Palisade SUV starts at SKW 36.4 million (roughly Rs. 24.2 lakhs).
Hyundai shares rose 0.4 percent in early Seoul trading Wednesday. They have risen 20 percent this year, making them one of the best-performing auto stocks behind the likes of VW, General Motors, and Ford Motor.
Another features Hyundai says sets it apart from rivals is its charging speed. The platform enables EVs to charge up to 80 percent capacity from 10 percent in 18 minutes and add as much as 100 kilometers of driving range in just 5 minutes. They’ll have a top range of 500 kilometers on a single charge. It will also charge at 800 volts and 400 volts, allowing owners to access more charging infrastructure, Kim said.
That compares with Volkswagen’s ID.4, which takes about 38 minutes to charge up to 80 percent from 5 percent in about 38 minutes and add 100 kilometers in about 10 minutes. It falls short of the Porsche Taycan, which can add enough charge for 100 kilometers in 4 minutes, and has a total range of 450 kilometers. Tesla markets the Long Range version of its Model 3 at about 515 kilometers.
Hyundai’s Kia unit last month also unveiled its new EV6 model that will be assembled on the same E-GMP platform and is expected to go on sale in July.
“We also focused on having a modular platform that will enable us to offer various types of vehicles on the same platform,” Kim said.
Hyundai is also working to build charging infrastructure to encourage more people to buy EVs. The conglomerate unveiled plans in March to provide ultra-high-speed charging stations through its E-pit brand. It plans to open 20 stations in South Korea this year and will work with potential partners overseas to build the infrastructure.
Emerging markets beckon too, with India and Southeast Asia part of the company’s long-term strategy, Kim said. Hyundai is also considering partnerships with local governments to build charging infrastructure to support demand for EVs, he said.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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