The Verge - Transportation Posts |
- Merlin Labs wants to fill the sky with pilotless planes carrying cargo and passengers
- Ford is making an electric Explorer, boosts EV investment by $8 billion
- Lockheed Martin and GM are working on an electric Moon buggy
- Waze names former Hotwire president Neha Parikh as CEO
- Tesla will store Chinese car data locally, following government fears about spying
- Jaguar I-Pace is Google’s first electric Street View car
- Tesla is already shipping cars without radar sensors
- Electric vehicle startups hit speed bumps after raising tons of cash
| Merlin Labs wants to fill the sky with pilotless planes carrying cargo and passengers Posted: 26 May 2021 09:00 AM PDT  Autonomous flight startup Merlin Labs is coming out of stealth mode to announce that it's raised $25 million in funding from Google Ventures and First Round Capital. The company has also struck a deal with aviation services contractor Dynamic Aviation to begin putting its pilotless plane technology into commercial operation. The two announcements are the first steps toward Merlin Labs' larger goal of filling the sky with pilotless planes carrying cargo and passengers. As part of its deal with Dynamic, the startup will supply its autonomous flight technology to 55 of the contractor's King Air aircraft. Merlin is already conducting test flights with the first King Air plane outside its dedicated flight facility at the Mojave Air and Space...  |
| Ford is making an electric Explorer, boosts EV investment by $8 billion Posted: 26 May 2021 08:39 AM PDT  Ford will spend $30 billion on electric vehicles by 2025, and says 40 percent of its global fleet will be all-electric by 2030. The company is working on an all-electric versions of its Explorer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. And it's developing two new electric vehicle platforms: one that will power full-size pickup trucks, and one that can easily flex between all- and rear-wheel drive to fit multiple vehicle types. The company had previously committed $22 billion to EVs and had announced a goal to be all-electric in Europe by 2030. Ford is also creating a standalone business for its commercial vehicle division called Ford Pro. The company hopes that by offering more dedicated services to these customers, it can build on what is already a...  |
| Lockheed Martin and GM are working on an electric Moon buggy Posted: 26 May 2021 08:30 AM PDT  Lockheed Martin and General Motors unveiled plans on Wednesday to build an autonomous buggy-like vehicle that future astronauts can use to zip around the surface of the Moon. The two companies collaborated to pitch a conceptual Lunar Terrain Vehicle to NASA's Artemis program, a Moon exploration campaign that calls for various robots, vehicles, and scientific bases to be planted on the lunar surface within the next decade. Ahead of a presentation Wednesday morning, Lockheed and GM said in a joint press release that the vehicle will use the automaker's autonomous driving technology and is "being designed to traverse significantly farther distances" than Apollo-era buggies. Just like those Moon buggies from the '70s, the Lockheed-GM concept...  |
| Waze names former Hotwire president Neha Parikh as CEO Posted: 26 May 2021 06:55 AM PDT  Waze has a new CEO: Neha Parikh, the former president of Hotwire and a board member of Carvana. Parikh replaces Noam Bardin, who stepped down as CEO of the Google-owned navigation service last November after leading the company for 12 years. Parikh will join Waze as CEO starting in June, the company says. She is a veteran of online hospitality brand Expedia, having served in a variety of positions at two of the corporation's subsidiaries: Hotels.com, where she ended as senior vice president for global brands and retails, and flight and hotel booking service Hotwire, where she is currently president. As Hotwire's youngest and first female president, Parikh "led a return to growth by revamping the business model, reshaping the product,...  |
| Tesla will store Chinese car data locally, following government fears about spying Posted: 26 May 2021 04:26 AM PDT  Tesla says it's established a data center in China to store and process information produced by its vehicles locally. The announcement, made on Weibo, comes as the US carmaker faces pressure from Chinese authorities over fears its cars could be used for spying. "Car data security is very important," said Tesla (via Google Translate). "All data generated from the sales of vehicles in the Chinese mainland market will be stored in China." Reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg said Tesla's cars have been banned from Chinese military sites, and that "military staff and employees of key state-owned companies" are prohibited from owning the vehicles. Chinese authorities...  |
| Jaguar I-Pace is Google’s first electric Street View car Posted: 25 May 2021 04:01 PM PDT  Google finally has its first all-electric vehicle for capturing Street View. The tech giant and Jaguar Land Rover announced today that they have collaborated to rig up an all-electric I-Pace SUV with the equipment required to capture Street View imagery, and deployed the car in Dublin, Ireland. The I-Pace will also collect more general Google Maps data, and it will be outfitted with air quality sensors from Aclima — something Google has done with its Street View cars for the better part of the last decade. The I-Pace will collect "street-by-street air quality" data in Dublin, measuring nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as fine particles. Google will make the data available to the Dublin City Council. Jaguar Land...  |
| Tesla is already shipping cars without radar sensors Posted: 25 May 2021 01:49 PM PDT  Tesla has stopped building forward-facing radar sensors into its Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs in North America, after CEO Elon Musk publicly expressed a desire to rely on cameras to power the company's advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot. Tesla has been developing the vision-based version of Autopilot during the limited beta test of its "Full Self-Driving" software. But it's not completely done making sure Autopilot works without the radar sensor, though, as it is limiting or disabling some features on these vehicles for an indefinite amount of time. Autosteer — the Autopilot feature that can keep a Tesla centered in a lane, even around curves — will only be usable at 75 miles per hour and below. Tesla is also only making it...  |
| Electric vehicle startups hit speed bumps after raising tons of cash Posted: 25 May 2021 11:46 AM PDT  Electric vehicle startups have raised an absurd amount of money in the last year by merging with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. That money — billions of dollars, collectively — was supposed to be enough to help each of them start fighting for space in a market dominated by Tesla. But many of these startups are still having trouble getting rolling. EV startup struggles are not new. Most of the ones focused on passenger vehicles that are still around spent years grappling with the inherent, unavoidable difficulties of automotive manufacturing. Now, though, the bruises of that fight are developing in broad daylight — all while they try to beat deep-pocketed legacy automakers to the punch.  |
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