Germany’s Volkswagen said on Wednesday it would develop an in-house assisted driving chip for its business in China as it seeks to recover from sagging sales in the world’s largest auto market.

Volkswagen is still the leading foreign group operating in China but the auto giant’s sales have drooped as local brands rise. It is also seeking to insulate itself from global tensions over semiconductors.

The group announced a series of new electric and hybrid vehicles in April and an assisted driving system designed specifically for the Chinese market in an effort to counter that slide.

“We are accelerating and deepening the implementation of our ‘In China, for China’ strategy—moving beyond localized production to mastering the core technologies that shape tomorrow’s mobility,” Ralf Brandstatter, CEO of Volkswagen Group China, said in a news release on Wednesday.

It is the first time the Volkswagen Group has developed its own in-house chip of this sort, a spokesman said.

Responsibility for its design and production will lie with a joint venture between CARIAD, Volkswagen’s software company, and Chinese technology company Horizon Robotics.

Smart driving capabilities have emerged as a key battleground in China’s cut-throat domestic auto market.

Semiconductors have also increasingly become the target of global trade tensions, in particular between the United States and China.

Washington has steadily expanded export controls in recent years, particularly in advanced chips and digital infrastructure.

European automakers have also been rocked by a row between China and the Netherlands over Nexperia chips, which despite being relatively simple in technology terms are nonetheless crucial as vehicles rely more on electronics.

Volkswagen’s aim with the new chip is “taking control of a key technology that will define the future of intelligent driving,” CEO Oliver Blume said in the news release.

“This marks the next logical step in our strategy for outstanding long-term innovation capabilities.”

The chip is expected to be delivered within the next three to five years, the release said.

Asked whether there were plans to eventually use the chip outside the Chinese market, a spokesman said the focus was currently on “localized implementation”.

“Looking ahead, we will align with the Group’s overall strategic roadmap to feed technological achievements from China back into the global business,” he said.

© 2025 AFP

A Stanford analysis shows that strategic investment in burying power lines could shorten blackouts during extreme weather, enhancing energy reliability for millions of U.S. households.

As hurricanes intensify, wildfires spread, and winter storm patterns shift, the combination of extreme weather events and aging grid infrastructure threatens to make energy less reliable for tens of millions of U.S. households.

Experts say burying power lines underground can harden the electrical system against threats from wind, ice, falling trees, and other weather-related hazards. Yet undergrounding power lines remains expensive and unevenly implemented. One obstacle has been a lack of information about where investments in undergrounding by utilities and communities could make the biggest difference for reliable power supplies.

In a recent study posted to the arXiv preprint server, Stanford University researchers led by Associate Professor Ram Rajagopal combined previously non-public and siloed datasets to reveal how the distribution of power lines above and below ground has changed since the 1990s. By combining these data with power outage records, the team modeled how having more power lines underground during recent extreme weather events could have shortened outages.

Patchy progress on burying power lines since 1990

Dense metropolitan areas on the East Coast, parts of southern Florida, and a few southwestern growth hubs were among the first to underground at least a quarter of their power line mileage. The overwhelming majority of power lines remained overhead in most U.S. counties in 1990.

By 2020, some fast-growing suburbs in southeastern and Sunbelt states showed modest increases in undergrounding. For most counties nationwide, however, the median percentage of power lines buried underground remained well below 15%. Large swaths of the Rockies, Midwest, and Gulf Coast showed virtually no change.

Where outages last the longest

Each year, tens of millions of Americans experience power outages. While households on average lose electricity for about four hours over the course of a year, some outages last a day or even weeks. Many of these longer outages are linked to extreme weather events.

New England’s 2017 ‘bomb cyclone’

A nor’easter or “bomb cyclone” that struck Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire in October 2017 left people without power on average for 27.3 hours per home. The Stanford analysis found that burying an additional 25% of overhead power lines could have cut annual outage totals by 10.8 hours.

California’s 2019 wildfire shutoffs

Amid dry conditions and strong winds in 2019, more than 3 million Californians lost power when utilities preemptively shut down equipment in high-fire-risk areas. The Stanford analysis found that undergrounding an additional 25% of overhead power lines would have cut annual outage totals in the affected area to roughly eight hours from 10.5 hours.

Texas’s 2021 deep freeze

In February 2021, unusually cold temperatures in Texas left 4.5 million homes and businesses without power for just over 19 hours. The researchers found having 25% more power lines underground during this event also could have shortened average outage times by 2.5 hours.

Explore the data

You can view more analysis from the Stanford researchers and explore county-level undergrounding and outage patterns in an interactive project developed by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in collaboration with TechSoup. The researchers have made their 2020 data on the proportion of underground distribution power lines publicly available through Stanford’s Data Commons for Sustainability.

In an upgrade that spans network planning to management, and marking a “significant evolution” in its ecosystem, Omada has embarked on a software refresh designed to enable to plan smarter networks that can be deployed faster and managed with greater precision and confidence.

The upgrades from TP-Link Systems business solution brand includes enhancements to Omada Network 6.0, Omada App 5.0, Wi-Fi Navi App V1.5 and a new Omada Design Hub. These upgrades are designed to deliver a smarter, more integrated experience for MSPs, system integrators (SIs) and installers as well as everyday users. With end-to-end tools for planning, deployment and management, Omada claimed that it can empower businesses to build high performance networks with greater speed, precision and reliability.

At the heart of the upgrades is Omada Network 6.0, described as a major refit designed to simplify and supercharge network operations. Listed as being built for professionals who are managing complex deployments, it offers a new interface and enhanced interactions to make troubleshooting faster, monitoring more precise and configuration more intuitive.

The redesigned dashboard features a five-tab layout – including overview, topology, Wi-Fi, client and traffic – to deliver better visual insights, while the newly designed interface and menus are aimed at making configuration and management experience smoother. New visualisations, such as AP density maps and heatmaps, are intended to help IT teams understand user behaviour and deployment performance at a glance.

The company said its “standout addition” is the multi-level health scoring system available in the cloud-based controller. It is engineered automatically evaluates the status of devices, clients, WLANs and sites, enabling simplified monitoring and early detection of issues across multiple layers.

Smart Topology has also been upgraded with real-time VLAN visibility and disconnected device tracking. Customisable filters make it easier to locate faults and streamline troubleshooting. Enhanced client recognition now identifies device type, brand and models automatically, while the new device and client page visualises activity timelines and event history for full lifecycle management.

Omada claims that network configuration is faster than ever with a simple three step VLAN setup and centralised bulk port management across switches. These improvements set out to eliminate guesswork and reduce configuration time from hours to minutes, especially in large-scale deployments.

Integrated with Omada’s core solution, the Omada Design Hub is a free, cloud-based network planner, offering AI-powered precision during each stage of deployment. Design Hub helps to “simulate, visualise and deliver tailored solutions” in use cases such as designing for offices, homes, hotels or schools.

Users can now upload floor plans, auto-detect walls and instantly generate Wi-Fi heatmaps. The platform supports auto AP placement and cabling, including cross-floor connections, and one-click proposal exports with topology maps, device lists and simulation results. It supports users to personalise reports for clients, speeding up communication and delivery.

Bulk adjustments, editable equipment lists with pricing, and real-time topology tools have been updated to make planning faster and more accurate. Adaptive spatial models and signal strength calculations ensure reliable coverage and installation-ready designs.

Meanwhile, the Omada Wi-Fi Navi App V1.5, a free networking troubleshooting tools, expands its toolkit for installers and administrators. New features include Wi-Fi Integrated Test, Walking Test, IP/Port Scanners, Public IP Lookup, and Bandwidth/PoE calculators. It also includes iPerf2 support and improved scanning for deployment validation and on-site issue resolution.