Industry

General Motors‘ autonomous driving unit Cruise has started charging fares for driverless rides in San Francisco, the company said on Thursday, a step towards commercialization of the service. Cruise earlier this month became the first company to secure a permit to charge for self-driving car rides in the U.S. city, after it overcame objections by

Spin, the San Francisco-based electric bicycle- and scooter-sharing company, said it will invest up to $2 million in university research on micromobility at Michigan State University and the University of Utah. “We want it to be a collaborative process. Our anchors here are the common goals that we share with universities around transportation,” said John

Getty Images Ford has chosen a plant in Valencia to build its next generation electric vehicles in Europe, as the company reorganises its operations. The US automaker selected the site over a rival facility in Saarlouis, Germany. The company plans to only sell electric cars in Europe by 2030, ahead of a planned EU ban

FedEx Corp has 150 BrightDrop zero-emissions delivery trucks rolling on Los Angeles streets and highways as it transitions from EV testing to adoption. The partnership with BrightDrop, an 18-month-old General Motors subsidiary, advances FedEx toward its goal of making 100 percent of its pickup and delivery fleet vehicle purchases electric by 2030. “You start off

Cars.com revealed on Tuesday its annual American-Made Index for 2022, which ranks vehicles by how American-made they really are. According to the index, based on data collected in April and May, 95 of the 379 automobiles produced in the U.S. auto market made the independent ranking. The ranking considered manufacturing employment compared to automakers’ footprint,

General Motors‘ lidar provider Cepton Inc. opened an office in suburban Detroit to serve as its automotive business hub and help expand its relationship with automakers in the region. The Silicon Valley company said last week the office in Troy, Mich., will “house members of Cepton’s senior leadership team as well as product, program management,

Lawmakers must press for a more reliable and resilient electric grid to support the millions of electric vehicles slated to arrive on the nation’s roads. That’s the conclusion of a report issued last week by a pair of nonprofit organizations that say policy and legislation are needed to provide and expand the possibilities offered by

A year and a half in, General Motors’ new delivery and logistics entity, BrightDrop, has outlined plans for at least two electric delivery vans, logged more than 25,000 orders from e-commerce heavyweights including FedEx Express and Walmart, and recruited several executives from the advanced autonomous technology, software and robotics sectors. “The demand for electric vehicles

The Internet of Things revolution is powered by a combination of connectivity, sensing and intelligence, enabling formerly dumb “things” such as vehicles to understand and respond to their environment, driving improvements in efficiency and safety. The widespread adoption of connectivity, sensing and intelligence in millions of vehicles not only helps to make them individually safer

TOKYO – Honda Motor Co. and Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. have inked an agreement to set up a “high-value-added” electric vehicle joint venture this year under the name Sony Honda Mobility Inc. that will deliver a “new generation of mobility and services.” The move, announced in a statement Thursday, teams two iconic Japanese brands

Advanced technologies such as intersection-assistance may be relevant to 650,000 crashes per year and could prevent hundreds of thousands of accidents, new data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows. “Left turn assist and other, upcoming intersection-assistance technologies could deliver big safety benefits for drivers in their 70s and 80s,” said Aimee Cox, IIHS

Volvo Cars broke ground Friday on a new technical center specifically for electric vehicles at its headquarters in Mahwah, N.J. The 12,800-square-foot facility is expected to open next March and will be used to train dealership technicians from the U.S., Canada and South America. Anders Gustafsson, Volvo’s senior vice president of the Americas and president

Mukesh Chatter, CEO and co-founder of Alsym Energy, hopes to bring groundbreaking battery technology to the automotive market. On Wednesday, he unveiled work related to the company’s progress on developing batteries that aim to be more cost effective and less flammable than traditional batteries. Alsym Energy is targeting electric vehicle use cases. The Massachusetts company’s

Getty Images The sight of a car limping along on a near-flat tyre, or a roadside wheel change are still common. So is the expense of replacing tyres that have worn out prematurely, perhaps because the driver may not have been checking the pressure as regularly as they should. Sometimes it’s difficult not to feel

John Kuolt is certain of what he’s not doing as founder and CEO of the year-old UP.Labs. He’s not building a startup incubator, nor a studio, and definitely not an accelerator program. What exactly is he doing? “We’ve been trying to figure out how to best describe it,” he said, mulling his choice of words

WASHINGTON – General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Chrysler-parent Stellantis and Toyota Motor North America on Monday urged Congress to lift a cap on the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, citing higher costs to produce zero-emission vehicles, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The CEOs — GM’s Mary Barra, Ford’s Jim Farley, Stellantis’ Carlos Tavares

The electric version of the Chevrolet Blazer will retain key elements, such as a low, sporty profile and a hunched rear profile, featured on the gasoline-powered crossover when it launches next year. But it will also feature plenty of strakes and scoops up front and behind the front wheels, based on a newly released image.

General Motors‘ electric van unit, BrightDrop, said it acquired technology startup Marain Inc. to “analyze, forecast and identify multi-modal solutions for fleet customers.” BrightDrop launched as a GM subsidiary in January 2021 to produce electric products, software and services to “empower delivery and logistics companies to move goods more efficiently.” Since then, BrightDrop has developed

Jeep’s off-road contingent can take quiet excursions into the wilderness these days with the brand’s plug-in hybrid 4xe models. For limited distances, at least. The Grand Cherokee 4xe can get up to 25 miles of electric range, while the plug-in Wrangler offers 21. This capability represents a steppingstone to the next phase of electrification for

Editor’s note: What3words provided an updated figure for how many JLR vehicles were involved in this integration. The updated figure is more than 230,000 vehicles, a spokeswoman for What3words said. Jaguar Land Rover said it will integrate geolocation program What3words into more than 230,000 existing vehicles to streamline in-vehicle navigation. Only vehicles with the Pivi

Jaguar Land Rover said it will integrate geolocation program What3words into more than 350,000 existing vehicles to streamline in-vehicle navigation. Only vehicles with the Pivi Pro infotainment system will be able to download the update, and all new vehicles with the system will include What3words. The Jaguar F-Type, which utilizes a different infotainment system, will

Self-driving truck startup Gatik will expand its operations through an agreement with new partners Georgia-Pacific and KBX to deliver paper goods to 34 Sam’s Club hubs and stores in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. For Gatik, which concentrates on traveling shorter “middle mile” truck routes and foregoing interstate travel, the new partnership represents substantial growth

Automakers seek every edge in the race for innovation, from investing in startups to incubating solutions in-house. Porsche is adding a new page to that playbook — joining with a Los Angeles-based startup accelerator program to develop next-generation technologies and business models. Porsche will partner with UP.Labs to seed six mobility startups by 2025. The

One of the earliest battlegrounds in industry efforts to commercialize self-driving truck technology may play out on Uber Freight, the online platform that matches carriers and customers. On Tuesday, Waymo said it reached an agreement with Uber Freight to deploy its self-driving trucks on the network at a scale eventually reaching “billions of miles” of

Getty Images German carmaker Mercedes-Benz is recalling almost 1m older vehicles from around the world because of potential problems with their braking system. Over the weekend, the company said it will contact owners of the vehicles as their brakes may be affected by what it called “advanced corrosion”. The recall affects a total of 993,407

Public electric vehicle charging infrastructure is not as reliable as many providers claim, according to a study in electric vehicle-heavy California. A study of 657 connectors at 181 public direct-current fast charger stations in the San Francisco Bay area found about 23 percent of them to be “nonfunctioning.” That finding, by researchers with the University

General Motors Cruise on Thursday became the first company to secure a permit to charge for self-driving car rides in San Francisco, after it overcame city officials’ objections. Self-driving test cars with human safety drivers have become a constant sight in San Francisco, and completely driverless ones are increasingly common too. Turning them into a

Tucked beneath the floor of most electric vehicles today is a nickel manganese cobalt battery, a type of lithium ion battery. The chemistry has had a dominant run as EVs have proliferated because of its ability to hold an ample charge. But nickel manganese cobalt, called NMC, is being challenged, experts say, as lithium iron

German supplier Robert Bosch signed a partnership deal with WeRide, a Guangzhou-based autonomous driving technology provider, to develop software enabling autonomous driving functions for passenger vehicle makers in China.  Vehicles equipped with the software can deliver SAE Level 2-3 advanced intelligent driving experiences on urban, highway, and elevated roads in China, Bosch said this week.

ECARX Holdings Inc. said on Thursday it would go public through a merger with a blank-check firm in a deal that values the automobile technology company at $3.82 billion. The deal with COVA Acquisition Corp. includes a $45 million investment from mobility tech company Geely Holding Group, lidar sensor maker Luminar Technologies Inc. and automotive