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Little bird
Last week, Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick reported that Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick worked with investors to buy the US division of Chinese autonomous car company Pony AI, and that Uber might help make it happen.
Some little birds say Kalanick Ally and Uber ATG veteran Eric Meyhofer are involved. We are overflowing to learn more. In the meantime, here is a little history lesson. Meyhofer officially moved to Uber after joining Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center in 2015. He eventually became CEO of Uber ATG. Meyhofer is connected to Kalanick’s Cloudkitchens Enterprise through the restaurant automation and robotics business, first reported by Spoon in 2023.
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Notable readings and other information
Self-driving cars
A catchy new term has been coined for recent recordings of Autonocast, Alex Roy and Ed Niedermeyer (full credits will be sent to Roy) and co-hosts. The term is MVAT, or the smallest viable autonomous theatre. It’s time for businesses to deploy the smallest viable autonomous products, enough to perpetuate the narrative of progress.
One possible example was to have Tesla drive a Model Y SUV into an apartment about 15 miles from the factory, where he moved to the apartment where the new owner of the car lives, completing what CEO Elon Musk called the first “autonomous delivery” of the customer’s vehicle. If this is a one-time only, if it is an alias demonstration, it is MVAT.
Incidentally, this doesn’t just mean choosing Tesla. Many other companies have posted flashy videos to showcase the features of their respective automated driving technology. But in 2015 it was a much more common practice. Because AVS was running to the top of the hype cycle.
Electric cars, batteries, charging
The second quarter is over, and that means sales and production numbers! While many automakers publish monthly reports, some of the EV companies they monitor offer only quarterly figures.
Electric Hummers sell most of the lightning bolts of F-150
Clear sales progress as EV manufacturers push to increase gravity production
Libian will receive the next billion dollars from Volkswagen as sales struggle continues
Tesla faces second consecutive year of decline in sales after another bad quarter
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have passed a settlement law that unleashes many of the inflation reduction laws, including the solar, wind and clean hydrogen, among other things. EV tax credits are also eliminated in the installation of new and used electric vehicles and household EV charging devices.
The end of the EV tax credit has already spread across the industry, including companies that do not have EVs to sell. Slate Auto, a Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup, had planned to sell pickup trucks for under $20,000 with the EV tax credit applied. However, the language of the website has been changed to reflect the passage of the bill.
Also, a bit of news from the world of electric RVs and vans… Pebble, a California-based startup we previously wrote, has begun customer distribution for its flagship all-electric travel trailer. And the Detroit-based startup, founded by a former SpaceX engineer, has brought a new electric van to its first customers, called the G3.
safety
The FBI and cybersecurity companies are warning that the prolific hacking group known as the scattered spiders is currently targeting the airlines and transportation sector.
Qantas, the Australian airline giant, said it had experienced a data breaches that damaged the personal information of at least 6 million passengers.
