Volume 23
| Tesla’s dominant autonomous EV leadership, ride-hailing services, and the Boring Company ZDNet, January 26th ARK Invest focuses solely on offering investment solutions to capture disruptive innovation in the public equity markets. ARK believes that the world is rapidly changing and passive investment strategies are counterproductive. ARK also believes that innovation is causing disruption and the risks associated with the traditional world order are rising. Therefore ARK invests at the pace of innovation. |
| Self-driving cars are faced with too many moving objects and too little time Forbes, February 1st One of the greatest challenges for a self-driving car is the AI being able to figure out the various objects surrounding the car and that is within the realm of the driving effort. You might think this is an easy thing to do since, as a human driver, you do this nearly effortlessly. While in the driver’s seat, you are constantly scanning back-and-forth to spot the other nearby cars and those pesky pedestrians that might suddenly dart into the street. |
| Biden’s green energy boom could send the electric car sector into overdrive Yahoo Finance, January 31st One of President Biden’s most important promises is his plan to spend $2 trillion on reimagining the country’s infrastructure. This plan, which has seen support from both sides of the aisle, will focus on new technology and new sources of energy. |
| While most car subscriptions struggle, Volvo and Porsche expand Car and Driver, January 30th The idea of swapping out a sedan for an SUV or a coupe for a convertible on a whim seems great. With a subscription service, you pay one flat fee each month, you’ve got access to many or all of an automaker’s lineup, and insurance and maintenance costs are included. You can also cancel your subscription much more easily than you can get out of a traditional lease. However, in practice, automakers have found that the frequent swap gets old for most customers. |
| UPS: Feds must help fund electric last-mile delivery Freight Waves, January 26th Last-mile delivery and the electric vehicles it will take to fuel it will require a jump start from public money that should be included in the next infrastructure package, according to parcel delivery giant UPS (NYSE: UPS). |
| Baidu is the sixth company approved to test fully driverless cars in California The Verge, January 27th Baidu has gotten the green light to test fully autonomous vehicles on public roads in California. The Chinese search giant is the sixth company to receive a fully autonomous testing permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (the others being Cruise, Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX). Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California. |
| Tesla is in decline, SUVs are king, and more insights from the world’s largest electric-vehicle market Market Watch, February 1st Europe overtook China in 2020 to become the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, amid a pedal-to-the-metal push to increase EV adoption from governments and supercharged demand from consumers. |
| Lyft test program offers drivers more rides in exchange for 10% pay cut CNet, January 22nd In late September, Earla Phillips got what she described as an irritating email from Lyft. The ride-hailing company was reaching out to drivers, like her, to notify them about a new feature called “priority mode.” |
| GM’s electric vehicle makeover reverberates far beyond Detroit Pymnts, February 1st Beneath a banner proclaiming “Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions, Zero Congestion,” General Motors’ CEO Mary Barra announced her company’s plan to produce 100 percent electric vehicles by 2035, the most sweeping overhaul of any major global automaker in the history of the industry. |
| Can DoorDash make a quick turnaround in 2021? The Motley Fool, January 28th While it might seem counterintuitive to ponder if food delivery service DoorDash Inc. (NYSE:DASH) can make a turnaround just slightly more than a month after its Dec. 9, 2020, IPO, the company’s extremely high stock valuation when it went public raises the question of whether it will rise or sink from here. |
| This EV platform will help low-volume sports cars survive Top Gear, February 1st Designing and developing EVs is an expensive game. Which is a problem for cottage-industry carmakers that only build a handful of cars every year. They don’t have the colossal cash reserves of the big guns, so they simply can’t afford to develop EV platforms of their own. Not ideal, given many countries’ intentions to prohibit the sale of new petrol- and diesel-engined cars in just a few years’ time. |
