Notable reads and other tidbits
Autonomous vehicles
Anthony Levandowski was interviewed on stage at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech. It covers a lot of familiar ground but there were a few new tidbits that makes it worth the watch.
Apple’s eight-year struggle included meaningless demos, false hopes and map handicaps, The Information reported.
Aurora demonstrated its Fault Management System, specifically its self-driving vehicle system’s ability to detect issues and respond by safely pulling over to the side of the road without any human involvement.
Cruise’s robotaxi service is weeks old and it’s already being reviewed by California regulators, an action prompted by an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be an employee.
Motional, which expanded AV testing to San Diego, describes its encounters with trolleys.
Nuro is closing its Phoenix facility as it shifts its commercial strategy away from the desert metropolis and toward the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston. A few employees were laid off as a result. Several other employees in Houston and Mountain View, California have also been laid off recently.
Zoox completed the self-certification of its purpose-built, fully autonomous, all-electric passenger vehicle to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.
Electric vehicles & batteries
Arrival, the U.K.-based commercial EV company, plans to slash costs and cut as much as 30% of its workforce as it attempts to protect the business from a challenging economic environment while meeting its production targets.
Audi started construction of an EV factory in China that is expected to come online in 2024.
Battery recycling could be the next investor darling of the EV era, TechCrunch’s Jaclyn Trop reported. Her report was timely: Redwood Materials just locked in a partnership with Volkswagen of America and Audi.
General Motors said it will team up with Pilot Flying J to build a national fast-charge network for EVs. Plans call for 2,000 charging stations — including 350-kilowatt DC fast chargers — at roughly 500 Pilot Flying J travel centers at 50-mile intervals.
Hyundai unveiled its new Ioniq 6, an EV sedan that it says will deliver range on par with the Tesla Model 3. Hyundai also said it will begin building electric vehicles under its high-performance N brand created to compete with luxury sports cars from Mercedes-Benz and BMW.
Panasonic announced plans to build a $4 billion factory in Kansas that will manufacture and supply lithium-ion batteries to EV makers. The factory is slated to be larger than the Gigafactory it operates with Tesla in Sparks, Nevada, which is already one of the largest lithium-ion battery factories in the world.
Polestar, the electric vehicle maker that made its Nasdaq debut in June, said is on track to meet its annual sales target of 50,000 cars this year.
Rimac began production of its $2.5 million Nevera hypercar EV. But it’s not the only $2.5 million EV hypercar on the block this summer. There’s an interesting twist on these two dueling vehicles.
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told employees in an internal email viewed by TechCrunch that its restructuring could lead to job cuts. The email was sent to employees following reports the EV automaker was planning to lay off about 5% of its workforce.
VinFast, Vietnamese EV maker, received $1.2 billion in incentives to build a factory in North Carolina.
Walmart struck a deal with electric vehicle company Canoo to purchase 4,500 of its last-mile delivery vehicles. Ah but, an interesting line in the contract, first discovered by Bloomberg, prevents Canoo from making sales to Walmart’s rival Amazon.
Miscellaneous
Amazon’s drone delivery is headed to Texas.
BMW of North America, following media reports that prompted a backlash from consumers, clarified how its Functions on Demand strategy will be implemented in the U.S. market. Tl;dr: Vehicles ordered with heated seats will always have that option for the life of the vehicle.
In Texas, a pregnant woman was pulled over for driving alone in the HOV lane. She argued that under the state’s abortion ban, her fetus counts as a second person.
Uber is facing lawsuits from as many as 550 women passengers across the U.S. who have alleged they were assaulted by drivers on the platform.
People
Andrej Karpathy, the deep learning and computer vision expert who was hired five years ago as Tesla’s director of AI and led Autopilot vision team, is officially leaving the company.
Fisker appointed Alpay Uguz as senior vice president of global manufacturing. He will report to CEO Henrik Fisker. In his role at Fisker, Alpay will oversee the company’s global manufacturing as Fisker grows towards its goal of producing one million vehicles annually in 2027.
Ford announced two long-time employees, Hau Thai-Tang and Frederiek Toney, are retiring. Thai-Tang is Ford’s chief industrial platform officer and Toney is vice president, global Ford Customer Service Division. Meanwhile, Dave Bozeman is joining the company to help advance the Ford+ plan after successful tenures at Amazon, Caterpillar and Harley-Davidson.
Lordstown Motors promoted Edward Hightower as CEO. Hightower is the first Black CEO of a U.S. automaker in more than 100 years, Automotive News reported. He was previously president of the company. Numerous other executive appointments were also made: Daniel A. Ninivaggi was elected as executive chairman of the board; Dr. Donna Bell, a long-time Ford executive, was appointed executive vice president of product creation, engineering and supply chain; Andrew Reyntjes is now senior vice president of sales, service and marketing; and Jill Coniglio-Kirk was appointed vice president of people and culture. Finally, Jane Ritson-Parsons is leaving her job as Chief Commercial Officer and will become an advisor to the company.
Tesla is laying off 229 data annotation employees who are part of the company’s larger Autopilot team and is shuttering the San Mateo, California office where they worked, according to a California regulatory filing.
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