Electric light-duty truck manufacturer Lordstown Motors has officially sold its 6.2-million-square-foot Lordstown, Ohio factory to Foxconn, the Taiwanese hardware manufacturing company best known for making Apple’s iPhone. The $230 million deal is expected to close by the end of April next year, according to a statement from Lordstown. The terms of the deal are in […]
Rivian expands into fleet business beyond its ‘exclusive’ Amazon deal
Electric vehicle startup Rivian is expanding a fleet business that appeared to be exclusively tied to Amazon. The company, in which Amazon holds a 20% stake, will start taking orders for its electric delivery vans in 2022, with plans to deliver them to customers by early 2023, according to a new section of Rivian’s website. […]
Point One Navigation raises $10M to bring its precise location tech to all vehicles
Drivers who spend any time commuting in a new car or truck have likely experienced ping ponging — a phenomenon when a vehicle equipped with an advanced driver assistance system has trouble centering itself in a lane and bops back and forth until it finds that sweet spot. Point One Navigation jumped on the scene […]
Cruise lays out its plan for ‘how’ it will make robotaxis a reality
The string of engineers who spoke Thursday night during a deep dive into Cruise’s autonomous vehicle technology never mentioned Tesla’s name. They didn’t have to, although the message was clear enough. GM’s self-driving subsidiary Cruise presented a technical and deployment roadmap — at a granular level — that aimed to show how it has built […]
Amazon reveals 20% stake in Rivian ahead of EV maker’s IPO
Amazon disclosed Friday that it owns a 20% stake in Rivian, the electric automaker that filed for an IPO earlier this month. As of September 30, the e-commerce giant held equity investments, including preferred stock of Rivian that represented about 20% ownership interest, according to the filing. That holding had a “carrying value” of $3.8 […]
Tesla’s deal with Hertz opens a new frontier for the EV maker
Auto rental giant Hertz gave its strongest signal to the markets that it had resurrected from bankruptcy with this week’s news that it would purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles for a reported $4.2 billion. Hertz made headlines again two days later, when it said that Uber committed to renting up to half of that order for […]
Audi turns to software to add more range to its older e-tron EVs
Audi has rolled out a new software update to its 2019 model year e-tron electric SUV that will add up to 12 miles of range to the battery. While the improvement might not seem significant — it is, after all, only 12 miles — it does show how automakers are using software to improve older […]
Self-driving company Cruise on track for early commercial operations in 2022
General Motors CEO Mary Barra is “pretty confident” that the driver will be out of Cruise vehicles by 2022, as the company looks to enter early commercial operations for autonomous robotaxi and delivery services. Her comments reiterate a timeline outlined earlier this month by Cruise CEO Dan Ammann at the automaker’s investor day. The guidance […]
Smart Eye’s latest acquisition points to consolidation among driver monitoring system suppliers
Smart Eye, a supplier of driver monitoring systems for automakers, has agreed to acquire human behavior software company iMotions for $46.6 million just five months after it snapped up emotion-detection software startup Affectiva. Smart Eye, a publicly traded Swedish company, said Tuesday this is a cash-and-stock deal. Smart Eye will provide $23.2 million (200 million Swedish […]
An all-electric Range Rover is coming in 2024
Land Rover plans to add an all-electric Range Rover to its lineup in 2024, the brand said Tuesday. The announcement was made alongside its reveal of the 2022 Range Rover, the redesigned fifth generation of its luxury SUV that is loaded with tech, features an electrical architecture to support over-the-air software updates and sits on […]