General Motors Co (GM) is recalling more than 130,000 vehicles because of a parking-brake defect that can cause brake pads to stay partly engaged, leading to “excessive brake heat that may result in a fire,” according to documents posted on Saturday on the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Web site.
The recall covers 2014 to 2015 Chevrolet Impalas built between January 2013 and last month and 2013 to 2015 model Cadillac XTS cars manufactured between February 2012 and last month
The Impala has been at the center of numerous recalls and investigations this year, as GM’s string of recalls worldwide approaches 30 million vehicles.
In February, the 2014 Impala was recalled for a transmission defect that could allow a parked car to roll away. In June, certain Impalas were recalled for ignition problems, and others for a joint fastener that was not torqued to specification.
Then in July, GM recalled more Impalas over a possible loss of power steering, and later that month the NHTSA opened an investigation into the potential failure of passenger air bags on 320,000 Impalas, mostly from the 2008 model year.
In March, another NHTSA investigation focused on sudden unintentional braking by the 2014 Impala’s collision-warning system.
Separately, the Chrysler Group is recalling nearly 190,000 Dodge Durango and Jeep Grand Cherokee SUVs from the 2011 model year because of a faulty fuel-pump relay inside the power module that can cause them to “stall without warning,” according to the NHTSA.
The component, known as the totally integrated power module (TIPM), has been the subject of scores of consumer complaints filed with the NHTSA, and last month the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, formally petitioned the safety agency to open an investigation into the module’s use in a range of Chrysler’s vehicles.
A federal class-action lawsuit filed last year in California also claims that the TIPM is faulty, leaving the vehicles “incapable of providing reliable or safe transportation.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts