Tesla hosts festival at Berlin gigafactory to announce start of production by December

Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw a rager at the new Berlin gigafactory on Saturday – complete with bright lights, techno music, a Ferris wheel, carousel, arcade and vegetarian food trucks – to announce the start of production at the disputed site that’s faced lawsuits by environmental groups. “We’re aiming to start production in a few […]

Elon Musk announces Tesla to move headquarters to Austin

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would be moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, a city that has recently seen a flood of tech companies and remote workers. Musk announced the news at the 2021 Tesla, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which took place at the Tesla Austin gigafactory, rather […]

Cruise plans to have ‘tens of thousands’ of Origin AVs on roads in coming years

Cruise expects to leap from a limited commercial robotaxi and delivery service that will start in earnest in 2022 to a business of “tens of thousands” of its purpose-built Origin AVs on the road over the next few years. The eye-popping projections will be reached, according to CEO Dan Ammann, through a combination of regulatory […]

Tortoise expands remote operated robotic delivery to convenience stores across the US

Tortoise is expanding its remote controlled delivery robots to convenience store chains across the U.S. through a new two-year strategic partnership with King Retail Solutions (KRS), an Idaho-based retail brand strategy company with a national footprint. Under the agreement, KRS will resell and distribute more than 500 of Tortoise’s sidewalk delivery vehicles to help its […]

NHTSA rejects petition for formal investigation into Tesla’s battery management software

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration rejected a 2019 petition requesting the agency open a formal investigation into Tesla’s battery management software over allegations that an over-the-air update was defective and caused fires in five vehicles. The agency decided not to open a formal investigation in part because the majority of those incidents occurred […]

Battery chemistry company Sila’s founder Gene Berdichevsky on the science of scaling up

Before Gene Berdichevsky became the co-founder and CEO of battery chemistry company Sila Nano, he was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors. As principal engineer on the Roadster battery, Berdichevsky was one of the first people crazy enough to experiment with shoving a lithium-ion battery pack into a combustion engine vehicle. The result? The Roadster […]

Cruise, Waymo get OK to launch robotaxi service in San Francisco

The California Department of Motor Vehicles gave General Motors-backed Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo the green light to start charging for autonomous services offered to the public. On Thursday, Cruise received a “driverless deployment permit,” which means it can receive compensation for services provided without a safety operator in the front seat. Waymo’s “drivered deployment permit” […]

Energize Ventures raises $330M to fund energy, mobility and climate resiliency technology

Energize Ventures, an early and growth-stage venture fund, has announced the closing of its second fund with total capital commitments of $330 million. Fund II will be used to help scale and commercialize software across renewable energy, mobility, cybersecurity, battery storage, critical infrastructure and climate resiliency. The fund, which is worth exactly double what Energize […]

How Ford’s electrification footprint will change with planned investments

Earlier this year, Ford Motor Company announced an investment of $30 billion toward electrification by 2025. On Monday, the automaker unveiled some specifics for that plan. Ford and its battery joint venture partner, SK Innovation, will be investing $11.4 billion in the two new campuses it plans to build in Kentucky and Tennessee to produce […]