Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in for an unwelcome surprise. The car is filled with a remote immobilizer and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again.

The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car contains a mini-cellphone, a micro-processor and memory, and a GPS satellite positioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the control center to block the vehicle’s engine management system and prevent the engine being restarted.

In the UK, a set of technical fixes is already making life harder for car thieves. “The pattern of vehicle crime has changed,” says Martyn Randall, a security expert. He says it would only take him a few minutes to teach a person how to steal a car, using a minimum of tools, but only if the car is more than 10 years old.

Modern cars are far tougher to steal, as their engine management computer won’t allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition(点火) key. In the UK, technologies like this have helped achieve a 31% drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.

But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars, often by getting hold of the owner’s keys. And key theft is responsible for 40% of the thefts of vehicles fitted with a tracking system.

If the car travels 100 meters without the driver confirming their ID, the system will send a signal to an operation center that it has been stolen. The hundred meters minimum avoids false alarms due to inaccuracies in the GPS signal.

Staff at the center will then contact the owner to confirm that the car really is missing and keep police informed of the vehicle’s movements via the car’s GPS unit.

The 2023 China-Germany Automobile Conference was held in Jilin, Henan and Zhejiang recently. At the conference, people discussed plans for new energy vehicles (NEVs) and collaboration between Germany and China.

China has established a competitive edge in NEVs. In 2022, China’s market share of NEVs accounted for more than 65 percent of the global total, maintaining its position as the world’s leading NEV market for eight years, China Daily reported.

Reflecting on the journey of leading Chinese electric car manufacturer (制造商) BYD, Chairman Wang Chuanfu recalled about 2003 when BYD entered into the NEV industry amid doubts and mockery, as few people back then believed in the future of NEVs. Surprisingly, within a few years, China’s NEV exports increased greatly. In 2022, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers reported an impressive total export volume of 679,000 NEVs.

In the European market, Chinese brands, such as BYD and Hongqi, have entered the top 50 best-selling motor companies across Europe, The Times reported. Shu Youxing, general manager of BYD International Cooperation Division and the European Automobile Sales Division, said that the company’s pure electric buses have now hit the roads of more than 100 major European cities such as Amsterdam, London and Copenhagen, helping Europeans cut carbon emissions by over 200,000 tons.

NEVs made in China are also popular in Mexico. One local, Israel Aguilar, is deeply impressed. After nearly a year of trying out a Chinese NEV, Aguilar said he may never go back to driving his traditional petrol car, stating that the NEV offers better comfort.

“Technology is truly very important in these times, especially for a vehicle. And it has been truly extraordinary for me to handle these technologies that come from China,” Aguilar told Xinhua.

The thriving global expansion of Chinese NEVs is primarily thanks to the efforts of companies to improve their capability for innovation. One major example of this is China’s drive to become the global leader in making EV batteries, fueled by an advantage in the supply chain and raw materials such as lithium (锂) and cobalt (钴).

All networks like 3G and 4G will be things of the past, because people already have access to 5G. So, what’s so special about a 5G future? First of all, its download speed can be as fast as 20GB/s, which is 100 to 200 times faster than that of 4G. But what’s more impressive is 5G’s low delay rate. Now, 4G takes an average of 200 milliseconds to send and receive information. But 5G will get it down to 1 millisecond.

5G is a great breakthrough (突破). It’s going to change the way equipment connects to the Internet, and more importantly, to each other. And self-driving cars may be one of the biggest breakthroughs to come out of 5G. Human reaction (反应) time is 200 milliseconds, yet we still have accidents every day. The self-driving car under the 5G network could react and communicate its reaction to hundreds of cars around it, all within 1 millisecond. It’ll play a great role in preventing car accidents and completely ending traffic jams.

5G can benefit us in many other ways. Operations could be performed by robots controlled by experts from the other side of the world. Therefore, more lives will be saved in time. Factories can be staffed by robots that can communicate their tasks to each other, and they can do more work over the 5G network. As a result, more labour forces will be freed.

However, 5G is not perfect. 5G uses the millimeter waves, while 4G uses the 15- to 40-centimeter-long waves. And shorter waves go fast but not very far. On the 4G network, the signal (信号) can go 10 kilometers. But the 5G signal can go at most 300 meters, and it can’t even go through walls or rain. So, what does that mean? Having such a short signal distance means we need to build a lot of signal towers in the future.