Google’s self-driving division Waymo has hired Satish Jeyachandran, the former director of hardware engineering at Tesla, a close competitor in the self-driving race. Jeyachandran will lead the hardware division, according to Bloomberg, focused on building Lidar, radar, cameras, sensors, and silicon for the company’s self-driving cars. See Also: Waymo working on competitor to Uber’s self-driving… Read more »
The University of Michigan is trialling its own self-driving shuttle service, taking students on a two-mile trip from the North Campus Research Complex to the Lurie Engineering Center. The Navya Arma shuttle will take 15 passengers at a time, and students ride for free. To start, the university is running two shuttles on the route,… Read more »
To develop an idea into a business, incubation seems to be the new industry “normal.” There are thousands of incubators worldwide and each year that number is continuing to grow. There are private, public and corporate incubators, many with a distinct focus on local economies, global, communities, or a specific vertical. At this point, it… Read more »
Tesla has hired Andrej Karpathy to be the new Director of AI and Autopilot Vision, following the departure of Autopilot software leader Chris Lattner. Karpathy will split his duties on Autopilot with Jim Keller, the head of Autopilot hardware. See Also: Who is responsible for autonomous car regulation? Lattner has only been around for six… Read more »
They say maintaining your identity in a relationship is hard, but Cruise Automation, the $1 billion self-driving startup acquired by General Motors last year, has kept a significant amount of autonomy from the Detroit-based automotive giant. General Motors works on the development of self-driving vehicles and the installation of hardware, while Cruise installs, tests, and… Read more »
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced last December that its self-driving project would have its own division inside the corporation. That division became Waymo, which analysts at Morgan Stanley believe could be worth $70 billion if it is ever spun-out to a standalone company. The analysis works off the assumption that Waymo cars and… Read more »
Texas, like Finland, never had a law blocking self-driving cars from public roads, until Thursday when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill that set out the rules of the road. The re-legalization makes a few things clear for automakers and tech companies testing their autonomous vehicles in The Lone Star State. First, self-driving cars without… Read more »
Bosch, the world’s largest supplier of automotive parts, has announced plans to build a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) semiconductor plant, focused on self-driving cars, smart homes, and smart city infrastructure. The factory will be located in Dresden, Germany and should be ready by 2021, according to Bloomberg. See Also: Industry split on when first commercial… Read more »
A Republican proposal could see U.S. states effectively banned from regulating self-driving cars and make the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the lead agency for all autonomous vehicles. States are currently allowed to create their own rules and regulations for self-driving cars. That has led to several states legalizing parts of self-driving, in… Read more »
Amazon Friday announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire Whole Foods Market for $42 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $13.7 billion. Amazon has ostensibly been an online retailer for over 20 years — except some niche retail bookstores and their attempt last year at… Read more »
