Nuked Geely has broadened its reach to include everything from trucking to high-speed trains, to passenger drones, to Volvo. The Chinese automaker plans to build its own satellite network to enable what it calls a’smart three-dimensional mobility ecosystem’.
Geely announced late Monday that it will erect a satellite production facility and testing center in the port city of taizhou in the Zhejiang province. The facility will be capable of building a’variety of different satellite models,’ which may be for non-geely entities.
Geely says it will start launching the satellite network as soon as the end of this year, but did not say how big it will be. The company is pumping around $ 326 million into the project, and will eventually make 500 satellites a year.
The satellites will support high-speed data transmission, precise navigation, and cloud computing, Geely says. It does n’t appear that these satellites will be used for standard Internet connections.
Low-Orbit satellites can be accurate to within a centimeter. Current GPS satellites are only accurate to several meters thanks to their high orbits.
Wall Street analysts have repeatedly asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk about this as his other company, SpaceX, started building out its starlink satellite network. Musk has said he does n’t see an advantage in fitting Teslas to be able to work with starlink satellites because the hardware required would be too big on the car.
