China Blocks Foreign Companies From Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars (thedrive.com)

The Chinese government is blocking foreign companies from mapping its roads in great detail, according to a Financial Times (paywalled) report. The restrictions, which reportedly do not apply to Chinese firms, are being instituted in the name of national security. China is concerned about spying. From a report: China has restricted the recording of geographic information for more than a decade because it believes giving other countries access to that information constitutes a security risk. Geographic surveys can't be performed without permission from the government, and many digital cameras don't record GPS coordinates for geotagging, as they do in other countries, according to Fortune.

Comments

Re:Then the cars aren't truly self-driving

[Tablizer]

If a car needs a detailed map to drive itself, instead of responding to visual cues like signs, curb position, road markings, then it's not truly "self driving."

The more clues it has, the better. This applies to humans also.

But the bigger issue here is unfair competition: local firms get extra info that foreign firms don't. Being we have a huge trade gap, partly because of this kind of favoritism, I hope the Trump administration makes an issue out of it and threatens sanctions.

This is the kind of thing voters hoped Trump would focus on, instead of Twitter fights with athletes. He used to always rail against China's trade practices. Let's hope the Good Trump comes out instead of the Distracted Trump.