Industry

For a new generation of car shoppers, going to a physical lot and kicking the tires seems to have lost some of its appeal, a trend that accelerated with the coronavirus pandemic. A Cox Automotive report released in January said 64 percent of vehicle shoppers wanted more of the purchase process to take place online,

Electric vehicle producer Rivian plans to hire 100 workers and invest $4.6 million into a new customer service center near Detroit in Plymouth, Mich., following the launch of its first electric pickup. The 12-year-old startup, backed by Amazon, Ford Motor Co. and others, established its Service Support Operations Center to provide “around-the-clock” business-to-business and customer

Back in the mid-1990s, I bought my first new car. It was a personal triumph — after years of driving used cars that kept breaking down. The purchase also marked my first experience with anything close to online car-shopping. In a move that was tech savvy at the time, I sat down at my fancy

Self-driving technology company Aurora said it will begin piloting trucks loaded with its software this week to haul goods for U.S. package delivery firm FedEx Corp between Dallas and Houston, albeit with a safety driver. Aurora, which is led by former heads of self-driving programs at Google, Uber and Tesla Inc., added on Wednesday it

Rick Ricart, president of Ricart Automotive Group in Columbus, Ohio, knows about selling electric vehicles. He’s been doing so for a decade. His dealership group has been designated an official Electrified Dealer by Smart Columbus, a smart-city initiative. Ricart, 42, discussed the program, selling EVs and the digital retailing trend with Contributor Sebastian Blanco. Here

For many car owners, renewing their registration is one of the more annoying (and easily forgotten) tasks on their car to-do lists. ReviverMX, of Sacramento, Calif., aims to change that with digital license plates, and it’s using growing relationships with dealers to do so. Reviver’s digital license plates, known as Rplates, function via a cloud-based

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., is taking more office space in San Francisco. The company is subleasing more than 48,000 square feet at 555 Market Street in the city’s financial district from Uber Technologies Inc. Waymo already has space in the Bayview neighborhood, while Google has several offices in

Deploying vast fleets of robocars has been much tougher than Tesla Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and others thought. One European startup is now pitching an intermediate step to full autonomy: teledriving. Germany’s Vay, which has been quietly testing a fleet of remote-controlled electric vehicles all over Berlin, plans to roll out a mobility service in

The recently completed IAA Mobility show in Munich will be remembered perhaps as the first major automotive show to take place amid the pandemic. It may also be remembered for something else: bikes. Two halls were devoted to vehicles of the two-wheeled variety. Approximately 70 bike and e-bike companies showcased their latest models, and there

Rather than usher in an era of low-pollution travel, future fleets of all-electric robotaxis could instead deliver unintended environmental consequences. Despite the emissions problems they might solve, new research suggests electrified self-driving fleets could, at least in some cases, exacerbate pollution problems. The counterintuitive findings were published in Environmental Research Letters this month, and come

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. and its partner Argo AI will soon launch an autonomous vehicle delivery service with retail giant Walmart in three U.S. cities, the companies said Wednesday. The service, which will begin later this year in Miami, Washington and Austin, Texas, will use Ford Escape hybrid test vehicles equipped with Argo technology

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and four domestic venture capital firms have jointly invested more than $300 million in DeepRoute, an autonomous driving technology developer based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. DeepRoute said this week it will tap the investment to expand its team, ramp up R&D, and scale up collaboration with automakers

WASHINGTON — Electric vehicle company Workhorse Group voluntarily dismissed on Tuesday its legal challenge against a U.S. Postal Service move to award a multibillion-dollar contract to Oshkosh Defense for delivery vehicles. The 10-year contract announced in February could be worth more than $6 billion and allows for delivery of between 50,000 and 165,000 vehicles. Workhorse

BEIJING — Xpeng Heitech, a flying car startup backed by electric vehicle maker Xpeng Inc., said on Wednesday that it would deliver electric flying cars to customers in 2024. The startup, founded in 2013 and funded by Xpeng and Xpeng’s CEO He Xiaopeng, now employs 400 people and will expand its work force to 700 by

SAN FRANCISCO — General Motors’ venture capital arm has invested millions of dollars in Oculii, a U.S. startup maker of software for radar sensors used in self-driving cars, Oculii co-founder Steven Hong said. GM can use Oculii’s low-cost software to boost the resolution of radars and scale up its partially automated vehicles and full self-driving

The Biden administration has an ambitious, $7.5 billion plan to expand electric vehicle charging to underserved areas, but it must first overcome a host of obstacles that have discouraged private investment in more equitable charging networks. The experience of California — the state with the largest number of EVs and the most advanced charging infrastructure

Short of Apple’s secretive foray into automated and electric vehicles, perhaps the most interesting ongoing mystery in the automotive industry revolves around Sony Group Corp. and its Vision-S prototype. The Japanese entertainment and consumer electronics behemoth dropped the surprise of CES in January 2020, unveiling an all- electric sedan that made public its ambitions in

TOKYO — Asia’s two auto superpowers, Hyundai Motor Group of South Korea and Toyota Motor Corp. of Japan, may be competitors, but they also have something in common when it comes to their visions of the future: They both believe that hydrogen power is a promising and commercially viable alternative for a coming generation of

Getty Images US car giant Ford is to stop making cars in India and shut down both of its plants in the country, according to a company statement. Ford said it would close the plants in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu states by the second quarter of 2022 but it would continue to make car engines

MUNICH — German supplier giant Continental is counting on the launch of a new business unit dedicated to autonomous mobility to help it become more nimble and more attractive to tech startups it wants to partner with. The creation will also help make Continental’s push deeper into emerging technologies more visible to outsiders and investors,

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — 5G networks will not completely change the game for autonomous vehicles, but they will make self-driving technology more robust and widespread. Whether they use 4G LTE or 5G, AVs are connected vehicles and regularly communicate basic safety information, such as vehicle position and driving patterns — an aggressive braking incident, for

LOS ANGELES — Holoride, the company behind a groundbreaking extended reality (XR) in-vehicle media platform, is looking to drive the passenger entertainment experience in ways never imagined, with the wider adoption of 5G. The German tech company — started in 2018 with backing from Audi — has developed an application that delivers unique immersive virtual

General Motors is joining the march toward 5G, a key step for establishing the foundation for enhanced autonomous-driving technology. GM and AT&T have partnered to equip GM vehicles with 5G cellular connectivity, which also includes Microsoft services, starting with the 2024 model year. Previous model-year vehicles will be able to upgrade to 5G via an

Getty Images This week marks the beginning of Germany’s biennial Internationale Automobil Austellung – or International Motor Show. Traditionally, it is a chance for the country to parade the enduring strength of its own car industry, while welcoming the biggest brands from around the world. But this year’s event, held in the Bavarian city of

MAASAI MARA, Kenya — In the Maasai Mara National Reserve, the Toyota 4×4 Land Cruiser of tour guide and driver Sylvester Mukenye glides silently past a herd of grazing elephants, then past a pride of lions lying in the grass. The animals are completely unperturbed by the proximity of the vehicle because its diesel engine

LOS ANGELES — The in-vehicle experience is poised for one of its biggest transformations to date, with the wider adoption of 5G technology. Nearly every company tied to the automotive sector, from tech startups to staples such as Jeep, are preparing for high-speed, high-capacity, low-latency wireless tech to enhance in-vehicle experiences for both passengers and

TOKYO — When its newfangled e-Palette people mover hit a visually impaired judo wrestler in the athlete village for the 2020 Paralympic Games last month, Toyota proposed a rather ironic safety solution for a supposedly self-driving vehicle: more humans and more human oversight. The boxcarlike shuttle buses — a public display of Toyota’s interest in

On one hand, John Avery believes transportation stands on the cusp of dramatic transformation. Enhanced by 5G networks, more machines can communicate with each other. Higher bandwidth and lower latency will enhance automated operations. Artificial intelligence can be dispersed both in the cloud and in edge computing. “Before 5G, those things just weren’t possible,” said

A truism developed at the start of the self-driving era: Cars needed to do the hard work themselves. Developers decided it would be a strategic mistake to rely on information coming from outside the vehicle. Sensing and computing needed to be done on board. That approach is starting to undergo substantial change — but only

In a 40-minute video posted to YouTube, dashcam footage shows a car maneuvering around double-parked trucks, closed lanes, pedestrians and an endless stream of other vehicles on a trip from Midtown Manhattan to Queens—all while the driver keeps his hands off the wheel. The footage, taken in July, is from a vehicle equipped with technology