Arvind’s newsletter

1.Auto sector in is becoming much more export oriented.

Made-in-India cars are finding increased global acceptance with top carmakers pushing exports to make the most of the strong cost and talent advantage available in the country.

Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Mahindra, Tata Motors, Honda and Skoda have all reported significant jumps in exports in 2023 even as market leader Maruti Suzuki hit a new high by exporting 261,700 passenger vehicles including cars and SUVs, data by Jato Dynamics show.

With the Indian regulatory norms moving towards global standards, vehicles being developed and sold here need minimum adaptation for export markets, industry officials said. India's low-cost manufacturing, arbitrage in labour costs, availability of skilled manpower, and a well-developed supplier base offer carmakers a competitive cost advantage, they said.

"With increasingly stringent regulations focusing on safety, emissions, and technological advancements, car manufacturers are investing in research, development, and innovation," said Piyush Arora, managing director and CEO of Škoda Auto Volkswagen India. VW exported 40,920 passenger vehicles in 2023, registering a growth of 29%, while Skoda's exports soared 431% to 1,530 units.

Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/more-made-in-india-cars-hit-the-roads-abroad-in-2023/articleshow/106602575.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

2.While we await news on Tesla’s plans, VinFast to come up with $2 bn integrated EV facility in Tamil Nadu

VinFast, Vietnam’s leading electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, and the Tamil Nadu State Government announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Saturday, through which both players will invest around $2 billion, with an intended commitment of $500 million for the first phase of the project, spanning five years. Situated in Thoothukudi, the VinFast Tamil Nadu project aims to evolve into a first-class electric vehicle production hub in the region, with an annual capacity of up to 150,000 units.

3.U.S. officials ordered the grounding of 171 Boeing planes — including its entire 737 Max 9 fleet — after a panel ripped off as one took off, the latest in a series of safety mishaps for the aircraft maker. Boeing shares fall as investigators locate door that blew out during flight. Pilots reported pressurisation warnings on three flights in month before Alaska Airlines incident

The episode caps months of lapses, and follows deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, piling further pressure on the company’s chief executive, who had hailed this year as critical to reverse Boeing’s fortunes. The roots of its worries may lie farther back, a 2019 Atlantic piece noted, in a decades-old strategy shift that resulted in “one of the most successful engineering cultures of all-time” eroding in favour of a prioritisation of short-term financial success.

4.Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s biopic on the father of the atomic bomb, was the biggest winner at the Golden Globes.

The film won five of the eight awards it was up for, including best director and best actor for Cillian Murphy’s role as its eponymous protagonist. The Golden Globes, which were “almost sidelined into extinction” after it was revealed the 2021 edition didn’t include a single Black voting member, have come back into the spotlight.

5.A purge of China’s defense establishment was triggered by widespread corruption in its military ranks, U.S. intelligence reportedly believes.

More than a dozen top Chinese defense officials have been removed from their posts in recent months, a blow to Beijing’s modernisation program and raising questions over the country’s military readiness, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported: In one instance, Chinese missiles were apparently filled with water instead of fuel. The reports come as China menaces neighbours across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. The articles, written by journalists widely respected among China watchers, acknowledged that the reasons for the dismissals remained unclear and that, if anything, they had strengthened Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hold over the military.

6.A team of Stanford PhD roboticists and AI researchers released the latest version of their autonomous, mobile robot.

Essentially, this bot combines the dexterity of a humanoid and the intelligence of an AI model to learn and then execute everyday tasks. In the video, you’ll see Mobile ALOHA do everything from cooking shrimp, to calling elevators, to cleaning up messes, to giving (totally not creepy) high-fives to humans. Seriously, check out this post of all the things the robot can do. One of the big findings in the research behind Mobile ALOHA is that demonstrating behaviors alongside standard AI training leads to a massive jump in the robots ability to autonomously complete complex tasks.

Today it can learn to cook up some shrimp, tomorrow we could train it to complete any number of complex tasks that we flesh humans no longer want to do.

7.MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2024

MIT Tech Review’s annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies that their reporters and editors think will have the biggest impact on the world in the years to come has just dropped.