Toyota-backed robotaxi unicorn Pony.ai sues ex-employees over trade secrets

Toyota-backed robotaxi unicorn Pony.ai sues ex-employees over trade secrets

Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the U.S., resigned to start a competitor called Qingtian Truck. […]

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TuSimple addresses autonomous truck crash during Q2 earnings call

TuSimple addresses autonomous truck crash during Q2 earnings call

Autonomous trucking company TuSimple used its second-quarter earnings call to address an April crash during which one of the company’s autonomous trucks suddenly veered across the I-10 highway in Tuscon, slamming into a concrete barricade.  The crash first came to light via a YouTube video that showed footage of the crash along with a letter […]

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Hear how to accelerate slow-moving industries on TechCrunch Live

Hear how to accelerate slow-moving industries on TechCrunch Live

Dan Lewis launched Convoy in 2015 into an established industry dominated by several legacy businesses. Now worth $3.8 billion, the company is a leader in bringing digital services to trucking and freight. We’re thrilled to have him on TechCrunch Live this week, along with Chris Howard, founding partner at Fuel Capital, which invested in Convoy’s […]

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The Station: Rivian trims its workforce and a supply chain-tainted earnings season begins

The Station: Rivian trims its workforce and a supply chain-tainted earnings season begins

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Listen up […]

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Polymath Robotics launches to bring plug-and-play autonomy software to any industrial vehicle

Polymath Robotics launches to bring plug-and-play autonomy software to any industrial vehicle

“Robots suck.” It’s a bold declaration for a startup founder aiming to work with robots — or more accurately, the software that helps turn a tractor, tiller or forklift into an automated vehicle. But Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, who previously founded and led the now shuttered autonomous vehicle startup Starsky Robotics, is trying to make a point. […]

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First impressions of the Nimbus 3-wheeled urban transportation pod

First impressions of the Nimbus 3-wheeled urban transportation pod

It describes itself as the “future of urban mobility.” With a 93-mile range, and a 50 mph top speed, the futuristic-looking electric three-wheeler from Nimbus costs $10,000-ish and wants to position itself as a green alternative to cars, safer than motorcycles, and with a high degree of ease of ownership. We test-drove a prototype of […]

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Tesla to increase cost of FSD beta software beyond its $12,000 price tag

Tesla to increase cost of FSD beta software beyond its $12,000 price tag

Tesla plans to increase the price of its branded “full self-driving” beta software, the advanced driver assistance system that CEO Elon Musk has said will mean the difference between the company “being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.” Tesla vehicles today come standard with its driver assistance system called Autopilot. For an […]

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Security flaws in a popular GPS tracker are exposing a million vehicle locations

Security flaws in a popular GPS tracker are exposing a million vehicle locations

Security vulnerabilities in a popular Chinese-built GPS vehicle tracker can be easily exploited to track and remotely cut the engines of at least a million vehicles around the world, according to new research. Worse, the company that makes the GPS trackers has made no effort to fix them. Cybersecurity startup BitSight said it found six […]

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Kodiak Robotics’ founder explains why autonomous freight could brush off inflation

Kodiak Robotics’ founder explains why autonomous freight could brush off inflation

If solving the problems of autonomous driving were a question of money, it’d have been solved long before now.

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Cruise robotaxi service under review following anonymous letter

Cruise robotaxi service under review following anonymous letter

Someone claiming to be a Cruise employee sent an anonymous letter to a California regulatory agency raising concerns that the company is launching its robotaxi service too early. The employee cited the regularity of instances that Cruise robotaxis malfunction in some way and are left stranded on streets, often blocking traffic or emergency vehicles, as […]

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