Notable reads and other tidbits
ADAS
Tesla scored a victory after a California jury determined the automaker was not to blame for a 2019 crash that involved its advanced driver assistance system, known as Autopilot. The jury awarded no damages to Justine Hsu who sued Tesla in 2020.
Autonomous vehicles
Apollo Go, Baidu’s robotaxi service, has hit some milestones recently. The service now has more than 100 fully driverless vehicles operating in Wuhan, and in 2022, the company doubled its active users, with some riders taking nearly 1,000 trips.
Kodiak Robotics is partnering with truckload carrier C.R. England to autonomously haul Tyson Foods products between Dallas and San Antonio, Texas. (A human safety operator is still behind the wheel.)
Uber is expanding its partnership with sidewalk delivery robot startup Cartken to Fairfax, Virginia.
Electric vehicles, batteries & charging
BorgWarner will invest $42 million into the expansion of its Seneca, South Carolina production facility, including the development of new manufacturing lines to launch the production of 3GWh of annual battery module capacity.
Bugatti is getting ready to go electric.
Einride is expanding to the U.K. Its first U.K. deployment will be in partnership with PepsiCo snack-food subsidiary Walkers, which will use Einride’s trucks and platform to deliver goods between the cities of Leicester and Coventry.
Jaguar Land Rover has rebranded to JLR with four main brands: Defender, Discovery, Jaguar and Range Rover. Yup, that’s right you did not see the Land Rover in there. The company is also continuing its push into EVs. The first car under the Jaguar brand will be a four-door electric GT with a range of about 435 miles (under WLTP) and a more than $124,000 price tag.
On a side note: JLR also selected Elektrobit to supply its software platform and automotive OS for its next-gen EVA Continuum electrical architecture that will come to JLR’s full line of vehicles beginning in 2024.
The U.S. Treasury updated its list of electric vehicles eligible for a $7,500 EV tax credit per its new rules for battery sourcing. It initially appeared that Rivian would lose the entire tax credit. The EV company clarified that current model year 2023 R1T and R1S vehicles qualify for $3,750 in federal tax incentives, as the batteries are compliant with the critical mineral sourcing requirements passed in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Earnings
Tesla kicked off Q1 earnings season on a bit of a down note. The company’s EV price-cutting strategy boosted sales, but at the expense of profits. Tesla earned $2.51 billion in net income in the first quarter, a 24% drop from the same period last year.
Tesla has repeatedly reduced the price of its four EVs — the Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3 — in the United States as well as Europe and China (including the day before earnings). That strategy has helped push revenue in the first quarter to $23.3 billion, a 24% pop from the same period last year. But it has also squeezed the automaker’s traditionally robust automotive gross margins.
People
Aston Martin appointed Ferrari’s former chief manufacturing officer Vincenzo Regazzoni to the newly created position of Chief Industrial Officer and Giorgio Lasagni as Chief Procurement Officer.
Hyzon Motors named Dr. Bappa Banerjee as Chief Operating Officer effective May 1, 2023. He was most recently as vice president of mining equipment at GE Transportation.
Lyft is about to make some deep cuts to its workforce — as many as 1,200 people, or 30%, according to WSJ, which cited unnamed sources. We know the layoffs are coming, per an email sent to employees by newly appointed CEO David Risher, who them that the company is “significantly reducing its workforce” as part of a restructuring effort.
Risher said the restructuring is part of Lyft’s plan to “better meeting the needs of riders and drivers.” That’s code — at least for me — that other programs and services outside of ride-hailing will be axed. What’s less clear is how this might affect its bike-sharing service.
Redwood Materials hired Cal Lankton ( former Tesla exec focused on energy sales/infrastructure and most recently Lyft’s EVP of fleet and global ops) as its chief commercial officer, per his post on LinkedIn.
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