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NASA seeks to build a quieter supersonic plane for passenger flight
NASA has designed a supersonic plane that it hopes will help reduce flight time for international travelers, and its design is intended to reduce the noise of the jet to well below that of the Concorde. Starting in August, Bloomberg reports, NASA will seek bids from aircraft manufacturers to bring their design to life with a full-scale mode, with a budget of nearly $400 million from the… Read More
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Ford’s 2018 Mustang GT can do 0-to-60 mph in under 4 seconds
Ford’s latest Mustang GT is the fastest ever – in its new Drag Strip mode, it can do 0-to-60 mph in under four seconds, which is faster than a lot of expensive sports cars, including the Porsche 911. The Drag Strip mode setting optimizes torque, and transmission to achieve the new acceleration, and hits that sub-four second time when paired with Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires on… Read More
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Daimler and Bosch create a driverless parking garage
Daimler and Bosch teamed up to bring autonomous driving tech to one of the more annoying parts of driving – finding and parking a vehicle. Their automated valet system is debuting today at the parking garage for the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, making it easy for vehicles to simple drive up, leave their vehicle, and trust the system to negotiate the multi-story parking… Read More
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Nexar releases 55K street pics from 80 countries to spur autonomous driving
Nexar has released a dataset that it says is the world’s largest photo set featuring geographically diverse images for automotive tech development, for an open competition. There are 55,000 tagged photos in the set, taking from over 80 countries, in a variety of lighting and weather conditions. Each of the photos is taken from street level, using Nexar’s community-based V2V dashcam… Read More
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What it’s like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin’s sleep pod bus
Last weekend, I traveled from San Francisco to Los Angeles roundtrip on Cabin. When I arrived to the bus pickup location in San Francisco, a smiley attendant greeted me. She then proceeded to check me in and stow away my bag. Upon entering the bus, I saw the social lounge, where people can chit chat and hang out if they don’t want to go to sleep right away. I bypassed that area and… Read More
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SF city attorney seeks court order to force Lyft and Uber to hand over driver data
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is seeking a court order to force both Uber and Lyft to share records on driver safety, disability access and other operations, in compliance with the city attorney’s subpoenas from last month. Read More
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GM now lets developers test their in-car apps running in actual cars
GM has been doing a lot to try to make it easier for developers to create software for use in their vehicle infotainment systems. Back in January, it opened up access to a wide range of data points from the vehicle, and made it possible to develop using a simulator on the desktop, instead of having to use very specific developer hardware based in Detroit. Now, GM is introducing GM Dev Client… Read More
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Lyft launches a new self-driving division and will develop its own autonomous ride-hailing technology
Lyft is betting the future of the road centers on sharing autonomous vehicles. It aims to be at the forefront of that technology with a new self-driving division and a self-driving system car manufacturers could plug into their self-driving cars. The company expects to hire “hundreds” of people for the new division by the end of next year and has just signed a lease for… Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Uber’s SVP of leadership and strategy says she hasn’t seen any toxicity
Uber SVP of Leadership and Strategy Frances Frei is optimistic about the future of Uber, despite the allegations of sexual harassment, greyballing and an executive accessing a rider’s medical records. In fact, Frei wears an Uber t-shirt every day and plans to wear one every day until every single one of Uber’s 15,000 employees feels proud about wearing one. Read More
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Cargo wants to put a vending machine in every Uber
How many times have you been in an Uber or Lyft and wanted a few Advil, or a 5-hour Energy? While some enterprising ridesharing drivers occasionally try to sell essentials (or non-essentials like tablets and digital cameras), there really isn’t a structured way to facilitate this… until now. Enter Cargo, a startup that wants to turn drivers’ vehicles into little mobile shops. Read More
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Elon Musk says he has ‘verbal’ okay to build multi-state underground Hyperloop
Elon Musk said on Twitter that he received “verbal government approval” to build an underground Hyperloop transit network connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC, with stops connecting each city center, and a dozen more entry or exit elevators located within each city. The project would be run through The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling venture, which… Read More
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Citymapper will offer actual paid bus service in London this year
Citymapper has long been a top option for navigating in major urban centers thanks to its app, but now it’s getting even closer to the heart of the problem – by operating its own buses, starting with its first commercial bus route in London. The inaugural route is a nighttime one, running between 9 PM and 5 AM on weekend nights in East London, which Citymapper identified as… Read More
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US lifts laptop ban for all remaining airlines and airports
The U.S. has now lifted entirely a controversial ban on laptops in hand luggage for passengers flying to the country from the Middle East or via certain Middle Eastern airlines, with the Department of Homeland Security professing itself satisfied with “enhanced security measures in place”. Read More
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The virtual used car dealership Shift raises $38 million
Shift, the online used car reseller that takes the crappy dealership out of the sales experience, has raised $38 million in its latest round of funding. The company, which is wildly popular among millennials that still buy cars, managed to raise the money from investors led by BMW i Ventures, which has been on an investment tear recently. Read More
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Elon Musk offers updates on Falcon Heavy, Dragon 2 and Mars mission
During a talk at the ISS R&D conference on Wednesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk provided a number of updates about progress on the Falcon Heavy rocket, crewed Dragon capsule development and his vision for an eventual crewed mission to Mars with the ultimate goal of human colonization of the red planet. Spoiler alert for those looking forward to the Falcon Heavy’s inaugural flight… Read More
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SpaceX targets 24-hour first stage rocket re-use turnaround by 2018
In a talk at the ISS R&D conference on Wednesday, Elon Musk shared some more insight into SpaceX’s path to fast and full rocket reusability. The company hopes to achieve its 24-hour turnaround window for used Falcon 9 rockets sometime next year, he said, and there is already “a technical path in place to achieving that.” Some of its reuse efforts aren’t… Read More
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Nauto raises $159M to fuel expansion of its autonomous driving data platform
Nauto, a Palo Alto company focused on retrofitting existing vehicle fleets with networked safety camera-equipped devices, has raised $159 million in a Series B round led by SoftBank. The company’s products focus on gathering data about human drivers and their behavior in order to improve safety practices. Read More
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Uber faces another lawsuit due to a lack of wheelchair-accessible rides
The Brooklyn Center for Independence for the Disabled, along with other disability rights groups, is suing Uber, alleging Uber is in violation of New York City human rights laws because it doesn’t have enough wheelchair-accessible cars available to people who need them. Read More
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Microsoft to help Baidu’s ‘Android of autonomous cars’ go global
We already knew Microsoft Azure Cloud was a member of Baidu’s Apollo self-driving platform alliance, but now Microsoft has revealed more details about what it will be providing the cross-industry partnership. Basically, Microsoft will be offering cloud infrastructure services via Azure for customers in markets outside of China looking to adopt Apollo, which Baidu has described as an… Read More
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