Impact

Ford, Argo AI to deploy autonomous vehicles on Lyft network

Ford Motor Co. and a self-driving vehicle company it partly owns will join with the Lyft ride-hailing service to offer autonomous rides on the Lyft network. The service using Ford vehicles and a driving system developed by Pittsburgh-based Argo AI will begin in Miami later this year and start in Austin, Texas, in 2022. It […]

Tesla launches beta version 9 of its self-driving car

Tesla has finally released through the weekend its beta version 9 update of its full self-driving system, after four years of delay, the automaker’s CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet. Musk had stated earlier in 2018 that version 9 is coming soon, then again in 2019. However, earlier this month, the CEO again swore […]

Stellantis: 98% of models to be electric or hybrid by 2025

Stellantis is a little late to the global electric vehicle party, but on Thursday it pledged to catch up and pass its competitors. CEO Carlos Tavares says that by 2025, 98% of its models in Europe and North America will have fully electric or plug-in gas-electric hybrid versions. He says the company that combined Fiat […]

Spotify’s Sound Up looks to amplify female voices in India

Sweden-based music streaming company Spotify are launching a global female empowerment program meant to equip women of the world with proper training within the podcasting realm.   The program, called “Sound Up!”, aims to identify under-represented communities and enables participants to enhance their podcasting skills through training, mentoring workshops, and full-program support provided by the audio streaming […]

Rembrandt's huge 'Night Watch' gets bigger thanks to AI

One of Rembrandt van Rijn’s biggest paintings just got a bit bigger. A marriage of art and artificial intelligence has enabled Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to recreate parts of the iconic “Night Watch” painting that were snipped off 70 years after Rembrandt finished it. The printed strips now hang flush to the edges of the 1642 painting […]

Automakers face a threat to EV sales: Slow charging times

If the auto industry is to succeed in its bet that electric vehicles will soon dominate the roads, it will need to overcome a big reason why many people are still avoiding them: fear of running out of juice between Point A and Point B. Automakers have sought to quell those concerns by developing EVs […]

New technology ‘listens’ for endangered right whales population

One of the world’s most endangered whale species could have added protection from threats posed by human marine activity, through technology developed by the University of East Anglia (UEA). In partnership with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and the marine survey company Gardline Geosurvey Limited, UEA researchers have developed machine learning techniques that […]

Ford: Electric vehicles to be 40% of global sales by 2030

Ford expects 40% of its global sales to be battery-electric vehicles by 2030 as it adds billions to what it’s spending to develop them. The automaker said in a presentation for investors Wednesday that it will add about $8 billion to its EV development spending from this year to 2025. That brings the total spend […]

EXPLAINER: How vaccine passports for global travel will work

Boarding pass, suitcase, passport and … digital vaccination certificate? Keen to avoid losing another summer of holiday revenue to the coronavirus pandemic, the European Union, some Asian governments and the airline industry are scrambling to develop so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports to help kickstart international travel. They’re working on systems that would allow travelers to use […]

8th noose found at Amazon site despite additional security

NAACP, state and local officials on Wednesday denounced what they called continued racism at an Amazon warehouse construction site in Connecticut where eight nooses have been found within a month, despite additional security measures added last weekend. The latest noose was found at the site in Windsor on Wednesday morning, the day of a scheduled […]