Cruise, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Microsoft and Honda, has secured a permit that will allow the company to shuttle passengers in its test vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The permit, issued by the California Public Utilities Commission as part of its…
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Thousands of electric vehicle charging stations will be built around the country over the next decade. ChargerHelp!, founded in January 2020 by Kameale C. Terry and Evette Ellis, wants to make sure they stay up and running. The idea for the on-demand repair app for EV charging stations came to Terry when she was working…
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The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from Point A to…
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Wejo, the connected vehicle data startup backed by GM and Palantir, plans to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Virtuoso Acquisition Corp. The agreement, announced in a regulator filing Friday, will give the combined company an enterprise valuation of $800 million, which includes debt. The deal raises $330 million in proceeds…
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MotoRefi has raised another $45 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs just five months after investors poured $10 million into the fintech startup to help turbocharge its auto refinancing business. The startup developed an auto refinancing platform that handles the entire loan process, including finding the best rates, paying off the old lender…
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Ford is increasing its investment in its electric vehicle future to $30 billion by 2025, up from a previous spend of $22 billion by 2023. The company announced the fresh cashflow into its EV and battery development strategy, dubbed Ford+, during an investor day on Tuesday. The company said it expects 40% of its global…
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Smart Eye, the publicly traded Swedish company that supplies driver monitoring systems for a dozen automakers, has acquired emotion-detection software startup Affectiva for $73.5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. Affectiva, which spun out of the MIT Media Lab in 2009, has developed software that can detect and understand human emotion, which Smart Eye is keen…
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Fisker Inc., the EV startup-turned publicly traded company, is working on a modified version of its all-electric Ocean SUV for Pope Francis. The company said Friday that it plans to deliver to the Vatican late next year a Popemobile based on its upcoming Fisker Ocean SUV. An initial agreement was reached during a private meeting…
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Chinese robotaxi startup Pony.ai has been given permission by California regulators to pilot its autonomous vehicles without a human safety driver behind the wheel in three cities. While dozens of companies — 55 in all — have active permits to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver, it’s far less common to receive permission for…
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Tesla CEO and self-dubbed Technoking is back-peddling on the company’s stance about bitcoin and has suspended purchases of its electric vehicles with the cryptocurrency. The change of stance, which was delivered via tweet, comes just weeks after Tesla CFO and dubbed “Master of Coin” Zach Kirkhorn said the company believes in the longevity of bitcoin,…
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