Transportation Weekly: Polestar CEO speaks, Tesla terminology, and a tribute

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch . This is the fourth edition of our newsletter, a weekly jaunt into the wonderful world of transportation and how we (and our packages) move. This week we chat with Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, dig into Lyft’s S-1, take note […]

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Luminar nabs former Uber executive to lead LiDAR startup’s business development

Luminar, the buzzy LiDAR startup founded by Austin Russell, has added another high-profile executive to its ranks. This time, Luminar has hired Uber executive Brent Schwarz as its head of business development. Schwarz, who has been at Luminar for about two months now, comes from Uber by way of self-driving truck startup Otto, which acquired […]

View More Luminar nabs former Uber executive to lead LiDAR startup’s business development

Luminar nabs former Uber executive to lead LiDAR startup’s business development

Luminar, the buzzy LiDAR startup founded by Austin Russell, has added another high-profile executive to its ranks. This time, Luminar has hired Uber executive Brent Schwarz as its head of business development. Schwarz, who has been at Luminar for about two months now, comes from Uber by way of self-driving truck startup Otto, which acquired […]

View More Luminar nabs former Uber executive to lead LiDAR startup’s business development

SoftBank and Toyota team up to develop services powered by self-driving vehicles

SoftBank is getting into self-driving car services after the Japanese tech giant announced a joint-venture with Toyota in its native Japan. SoftBank is invested in Uber and a range of other ride-hailing startups like Didi in China and Grab in Southeast Asia, but this initiative with Toyota is not related to those deals. Instead, it […]

View More SoftBank and Toyota team up to develop services powered by self-driving vehicles

Toyota invests $500 million into Uber

Toyota and Uber are partnering to bring an on-demand autonomous ride-hailing service to market, a deal that includes a $500 million investment from the Japanese automaker. Under the agreement, Toyota Sienna minivans will be equipped with Uber’s self-driving technology and then deployed on the ride-hailing company’s network, the companies said. The deal, which was first reported […]

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BMW, GM, Ford and Renault launch blockchain research group for automotive industry

Car makers BMW, General Motors, Ford and Renault are the big names behind a new group announced today to explore the potential of the blockchain in the automotive and mobility space. MOBI — the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative — launches today with over 30 founding members that also include Bosch, Blockchain at Berkeley, Hyperledger, Fetch.ai, IBM and IOTA. The […]

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang clarifies Uber is not using its Drive platform

While Uber makes use of Nvidia hardware in its own self-driving automotive technology, it does not employ Nvidia’s Drive autonomous computing platform, which includes the GPU maker’s own real-time sensor fusion, HD mapping and path planning. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared this information today during a Q&A session attended by reporters at the company’s GPU […]

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Uber said to be negotiating sale of self-driving tech to Toyota

Uber might begin selling its autonomous driving systems to outside companies, including major automakers, according to a new report from Japan’s Nikkei. The report claims that Uber has had talks with Toyota regarding supplying the automaker with self-driving tech, and that the two are currently in negotiations around how this would work, with talk of […]

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Toyota creates a new advanced research company fo focus on self-driving

 Toyota has an existing think tank, research organization and long-term development wing courtesy of Toyota Research Institute (TRI), but now it’s expanding TRI with a new sub-company of its own: Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD), which I have to assume was so named just so they could have the really cool acronym. The new company will elevate TRI CTO James Kuffner… Read More

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Toyota Research Institute to debut its 3.0 self-driving research car at CES

 Toyota Research Institute is accelerating its autonomous vehicle efforts with a new third-generation test platform that it’ll be showing off in person at CES next week. The so-called ‘Platform 3.0’ car uses a Lexus LS 600hL as its base, and goes further than its predecessors in terms of integrating the autonomous sensing and hardware features with the vehicle’s design for… Read More

View More Toyota Research Institute to debut its 3.0 self-driving research car at CES