C2A raises $6.5M for its in-car cybersecurity platform

Cars are now essentially computers on wheels — and like every computer, they are susceptible to attacks. It’s no surprise then that there’s a growing number of startups that are working to protect a car’s internal systems from these hacks, especially given that the market for automotive cybersecurity could be worth over $900 billion by […]

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Softbank’s next bet: $940M into autonomous delivery startup Nuro

Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup, has raised $940 million in financing from the Softbank Vision Fund, a whopping amount that will be used to expand its delivery service, add new partners, hire employees and scale up its fleet of self-driving bots. Nuro has raised more than $1 billion from partners including SoftBank, Greylock Partners and […]

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Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or […]

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Optimus Ride deploys more self-driving vehicles

Optimus Ride, an MIT spinoff, is gearing up to deploy its self-driving vehicles within a mixed-use development located in Reston, Virginia. Thanks to a partnership with Brookfield Properties, Optimus Ride will deploy an autonomous vehicle service throughout Halley Rise, a development that features housing, retail, offices and public spaces in June. “We are pleased to announce […]

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UK moves towards driverless car tests without safety drivers

The UK government has announced it’s working on a process to support so-called ‘advanced trials’ of autonomous vehicles — i.e. trials without human safety drivers. It also says it will be beefing up the existing Code of Practice for testing driverless cars to provide a framework to support the evolution of the tech, saying it’s on […]

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China will stop at nothing to steal information from Apple’s secret self-driving car project

Few people outside of Apple really know what the end goal of its top secret “Project Titan” car development project is. 
Is Apple building a Tesla killer? Just further developing CarPlay? Experimenting with autonomous driving technologies and se…

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Argo.AI acquires permit to test autonomous vehicles in California

Argo.AI, the self-driving car startup that burst onto the scene in 2017 with $1 billion in backing from Ford, has obtained a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in California. The permit, issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, is for one vehicle and two drivers. Unlike other self-driving car companies, California isn’t the […]

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Waymo chooses snowy location for its factory devoted to self-driving cars

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“Dashing through the snow in a Level 4 self-driving car…”

That’s what Google autonomous car spinoff Waymo is humming today (probably) after announcing plans for a self-driving car factory in southeast Michigan. 

The company said it’s building the “world’s first factory 100%-dedicated to the mass production” of Level 4 autonomous vehicles, which technically don’t require a driver in the front seat. (So far, Waymo has decided to keep a safety operator up front anyway.)

The first order of business is finding a facility in Michigan and then hiring engineers, operations staff, and fleet coordinators to build and eventually test the self-driving cars. Waymo has a Michigan presence already with a development center in Novi that opened in 2016. The space served as a testing spot for the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which was used in a self-driving taxi service launched last year in the Phoenix area.  Read more…

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Waymo plans to open a self-driving car factory in Michigan

Waymo and Magna plan to build thousands of self-driving cars at a factory in southeast Michigan, including autonomous versions of the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan. Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, announced Tuesday that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation voted to approve […]

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Self-driving car startup Zoox gets a new CEO

Self-driving car startup Zoox has selected its new CEO following the unexpected firing of co-founder and former CEO Tim Kentley-Klay in August. Aicha Evans (pictured above), Intel’s now-former chief strategy officer, is joining Zoox as CEO and member of the board of directors on February 26. “I’m thrilled to join Zoox and challenge the status quo […]

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