HAGA, Japan--Honda Motor Co. said it would focus for now on partially autonomous driving technology to improve safety, adding itself to the list of auto makers that say fully self-driving cars aren't ready for prime time. The Japanese auto maker, an investor in General Motors Co.'s Cruise self-driving unit, this week showed off a prototype system that allows a car to automatically overtake slow-moving vehicles on a highway. It plans to roll out the technology globally starting in 2024, and it says it has found ways to use less-expensive radar and sensor technologies to make the system affordable for mass-market cars. An alert human driver still needs to be at the wheel. Honda's executive chief engineer, Mahito Shikama, said the company intends to focus on technologies such as the automatic passing system and other crash-prevention measures that fall short of full autonomy.

After years of ambitious targets and bold promises, investors are growing impatient with the pace of driverless-car development, applying pressure on an industry that had become accustomed to latitude and piles of cash from investors. Auto makers in recent weeks scaled back plans for the technology amid new pressure to curb expenses during an economic slowdown. An influential hedge fund also has questioned Google-parent Alphabet Inc.'s yearslong effort to advance self-driving technology, an endeavor that has proven thornier than many experts predicted just a few years ago. Activist investor TCI Fund Management this month sent a letter to Alphabet questioning the company's continued spending on its self-driving unit, Waymo. "Waymo has not justified its excessive investments, and its losses should be reduced dramatically," Christopher Hohn, TCI managing director, wrote in the letter.

You approach the car with arms full of groceries and call out, "Open the tailgate!" On the road, as snow builds, the vehicle asks if you'd like to engage four-wheel drive, which you do by saying "yes." Wondering what that digital warning symbol is on your dashboard? The car can explain as you drive. The technology behind these scenarios is expected to make its way into cars in the next year or two, as auto makers expand voice capabilities and allow users to control more of the car through spoken word.

TOKYO--Overall demand for semiconductors may be softening, but the world's biggest auto maker says it still can't get its hands on enough chips. Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday lowered its Toyota and Lexus production target for the current fiscal year through March to 9.2 million units from a previous goal of 9.7 million, citing the risk of chip-supply issues. The situation reflects prolonged underinvestment in certain older types of chips that are particularly needed by car makers. While slowing demand for smartphones and personal computers has eased shortages of memory and other chips and sparked fears of a glut, pockets of constrained supply remain. Analysts and chip executives say the supply-demand mismatch could drag on for years.

For a century, the automobile was a system of interoperating mechanics: engine, transmission, drive shaft, brakes, etc. As those mechanics evolved, electronic sensors and processors were brought in to assist them, but the concepts changed little. The result was cars with dozens or hundreds of specialized microchips that didn't talk to each other. Now that auto makers are moving to electric motors, elaborate entertainment systems and adaptive cruise control, cars need central computers to control all these things--why not use them to control everything? At the hardware level, this might just mean fewer chips handling more of a car's functions. Yet it has profound implications for what future cars will be capable of, how car makers will make money, and who will survive--and thrive--in what could soon be a global automotive industry made unrecognizable to us today.

The next phase of EV competition won't be about battery range, styling, or zero-to-60 acceleration. It's going to be about which cars are smarter. Figuring out winners and losers will have big implications for investor portfolios. Xpeng opened its event by showcasing smartcabin software technology. Drivers can adjust things such as the direction of air-conditioning vents by talking to the virtual assistant.

That's one of the most popular questions I get asked when I am presenting at AI self-driving car events and Autonomous Vehicles (AV) conferences. At the Cybernetic AI Self-Driving Car Institute, we are developing AI software for self-driving cars, and the aspects of driver controls are also of crucial attention to our efforts, along with being notable for the efforts of the auto makers and other tech firms that are developing self-driving cars or so-called driverless or robot cars. If you are willing to strap-in and put on your seat belt, I'll do a whirlwind tour through the nuances of the ongoing debate about driver car controls in AI self-driving cars. It's quite a story and it has both ups and downs, which might leave you in tears or you might be uplifted. In essence, the matter deals with whether or not there should be a steering wheel, a brake pedal, and an accelerator pedal -- which I'll henceforth herein refer to collectively as "driver controls," provided in AI self-driving ...

Hyundai has formed a new partnership to develop autonomous driving software for auto makers to design their own fleet of robot taxis. The South Korean car marker has announced the $4 billion venture with Aptiv, which will design Level 4 and Level 5 production-ready self-driving systems intended for commercialization by 2022. The venture aims to further the firms' leadership position in the global autonomous driving ecosystem. Hyundai has formed a new partnership to develop a production-ready autonomous driving platform for robotaxis. The goal is to develop Level 4 and Level 5 production-ready self-driving systems intended for commercialization, which the duo said will be made available to robotaxi and fleet operators, as well as other auto makers, by 2022.

SABRA LANE: Much of the traditional car making industry around the world could go bust during the next decade, as the cost of electric cars plunge and become affordable for average motorists. That's the prediction of a top researcher and investor who thinks a world of self-driving electric cars, including autonomous taxis, is only a few years away. Brett Winton, the director of research at the US based Ark Invest, believes a disruptive day of reckoning is coming for complacent car making giants, who've failed to adapt their manufacturing models to confront new challengers like Tesla. Mr Winton is visiting Australia and he spoke about a not too distant "new world" of artificial intelligence with Senior Business Correspondent, Peter Ryan. You can look at some of the advances in artificial intelligence and see that computers are going to have the capability to solve the game of driving the car, and likely a lot safer than humans.

GM GM -1.27% said this month it would partner with Honda Motor Co. HMC -0.45% to develop a fully automated car. As part of the deal, Honda committed to investing $2.75 billion in GM's self-driving-car unit GM Cruise LLC over the next 12 years. The investment comes on top of a commitment to Cruise of more than $2 billion from SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund in May. GM bought Cruise in 2016 and also invested in ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. that year. Toyota TM -0.26% is investing $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc. as part of an agreement to collaborate on self-driving-car technology.