Ivan Reut

In the last several years, the automotive industry has been undergoing a series of significant transformations: from interior touchscreens and autonomous driving assistance features, which are now standard even in low-cost cars, to sophisticated software architectures that today act as the brain of any modern vehicle. There is another transformation happening right now: more and more cars are becoming fully electric. This is the aspect I want to briefly explore in this article.

Average usage of a plastic bag is less than 30 minutes and its lifespan can be about 1000 years.

Smartphones & e-waste. In 2007 Apple introduced its first iphone, since then over 7 billion smartphones have been sold all over the world. This number is almost equal to number of people on our planet. The average smartphone life cycle is now less than two years. The moment you get a new 2-years contract from your mobile operator you can forget about the old phone. Most of the used smartphones and other electronic devices simply dumped in the landfills. It feels like modern electronics were designed to be thrown out every year. Recent statistics estimates that nearly 44.7Mt of e-waste was generated in 2016 and only 20% of it were properly recycled.

In the late 40’s of the last century Japanese industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno developed and implemented in Toyota Plant principles of what later has become Lean Manufacturing system. In simple words Lean Manufacturing is a systematic method of excluding all unnecessary activities and wastes from production process, which are not adding values to the final product.

A self-driving car (also called an autonomous or a driverless car) is a computer-controlled vehicle that uses a multiple sensors, cameras, radars to travel between destinations without a human input.