Business_Spotlight_-_Nr.2_2020

12 Business Spotlight 2/2020 WORKING WORLD

Say goodbye to boring car journeys. Audi has created a start-up

called Holoride that aims to put the joy into “joyride.”

Holoride is software that is used by passengers traveling

in a car. As the car moves, Holoride creates a fantasy world for

passengers wearing virtual reality headsets. Jesse Schell, chief

executive of Schell Games, told FT.com that Holoride is like “the

best video game you’ve ever played, combined with a theme

park ride.”

The Holoride technology uses data from the car to create the

virtual environment. The software uses the car’s steering angle,

GPS, navigation route, and G-forces from acceleration to direct

what the passenger sees, hears, and feels in the fantasy world.

Holoride has collaborated with well-known U.S.-based enter-

tainment and gaming companies such as Disney, Universal Stu-

dios, and Schell Games. The companies have created content for

fantasy worlds. In these virtual environments, passengers can

battle spaceships, cruise underwater, or participate in a game,

making complaints of boredom from the back seat of the car a

thing of the past.

GERMANY / UNITED STATES

Come join

the joyride

MEDIUMUS

acceleration

[Ek)selE(reIS&n]

, Beschleunigung

boredom

[(bO:rdEm*]

, Langeweile

chief executive

[)tSi:f Ig(zekjEtIv*]

, Geschäftsführer(in)

joyride

[(dZOIraId]

, Spritztour

steering angle

[(stI&rIN )ÄNg&l*]

, Lenk(rad)winkel

A couple in the United States sharing a home spends

7 hours and 42 minutes a week doing household chores. This

is down from the 58 hours a week a couple spent on house-

hold chores in 1900.

Sources: Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org);

“Engines of Liberation” (https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-

abstract/72/1/109/1581345); American Time Use Survey (www.bls.gov/tus/

charts)

Up and down MEDIUM

In Canada, there has been a 14 per cent increase in the num-

ber of foreign objects left inside patients after surgery over

the past five years. In the past two years, 553 foreign objects,

such as sponges and instruments, have been left behind in

patients.

sponge [spVndZ] , Schwamm

surgery [(s§:dZEri] , Operation,

chirurgischer Eingriff

UP

DOWN

household chore [)haUshEUld (tSO:]

, Hausarbeit

The number of

tonnes of CO 2 that

would be saved if

people in the UK

wrote one less unne-

cessary email each

day — such as one

saying only “thank

you”. That is equiva-

lent to 81,152 flights

from London Heath-

row to Madrid. OVO

Energy calculates

that one email pro-

duces about 0.

tonnes of CO 2.

Source: OVO Energy (www.ovoenergy.com)

16,

Holoride: a

treat for the

back seat

* This symbol marks

standard US pronunciation.

Source: Canadian Institute for

Health Information

(www.cihi.ca)