A former Apple employee who downloaded a plan for a self-driving car circuit board and booked a flight to China was arrested at the San Jose airport on July 7th. The man, Xiaolang Zhang, had made known that he was going to go work for a Chinese self-driving car startup and was bouncing with the […]
This is a comeback story. Or at least the first chapter to one. Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, is back. And he is connected to an autonomous trucking company that is still in stealth mode, TechCrunch has […]
Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on local deliveries, has partnered with 135-year-old grocery retailer Kroger to offer same-day deliveries. The two have yet to announce which market this will be live in, but the plan is to launch the several-month-long pilot this fall. Nuro’s intent is to use its self-driving technology in the last […]
LiDAR company Luminar and its whiz founder Austin Russell burst onto the autonomous vehicle startup scene last April after operating for years in secrecy. Now, Luminar has nabbed two high-profile hires that signal its grander ambitions in the race to develop and deploy autonomous vehicles. Luminar announced Thursday it has hired Fitbit executive Bill Zerella as […]
Aclima, a San Francisco-based company which builds Internet-connected air quality sensors and runs a software platform to analyze the extracted intel, has closed a $24 million Series A to grow the business including by expanding its headcount and securing more fleet partnerships to build out the reach and depth of its pollution maps. The Series […]
Byton, a Chinese electric car startup, has secured a $500 million Series B funding round to fuel the development of smart, connected cars. Investors include FAW Group, Tus-Holdings and CATL. Byton also announced the opening of a new HQ in Nanjing, China. This is on top of Byton’s research and development center in Santa Clara, Calif. […]
The long-term future of transportation might see less people owning cars, but today a lot of private vehicles are still on the road, and now a startup that’s building a multi-faceted marketplace to help fix them has raised some funding. Caroobi, a Berlin company that connects individuals with mechanics, and mechanics with parts suppliers, has […]
Want to understand all the most important tech stats and trends? Legendary venture capitalist Mary Meeker has just released the 2018 version of her famous Internet Trends report. It covers everything from mobile to commerce to the competition between tech giants. Check out the full report below, and we’ll add some highlights soon. Then come back […]
At some point in the future, while riding along in a car, a kid may ask their parent about a distant time in the past when people used steering wheels and pedals to control an automobile. Of course, the full realization of the “auto” part of the word — in the form of fully autonomous […]
The initial report by the National Transportation Safety Board on the fatal self-driving Uber crash in March confirms that the car detected the pedestrian as early as 6 seconds before the crash, but did not slow or stop because its emergency braking systems were deliberately disabled. Uber told the NTSB that “emergency braking maneuvers are […]