Oct 11th, 2017 News of the Day: Ford invests in Autonomic to make open-source mobility service platform

author: Lydia   

Ford invests in Autonomic to make open-source mobility service platform

Ford has taken a stake in Silicon Valley's Autonomic to be the basis for the automaker's future mobility efforts.

In its investors report last week, Ford said it had made an investment in Palo Alto-based Autonomic Inc. to build a basis for future iterations of mobility services that will use Ford vehicles, such as its Chariot service that employs Transit vans, as part of the company's plan to move people through cities in every way, according to CEO Jim Hackett.

"The platform would allow us to build services, as well as others because the platform would be open to cities and other services," Ford Smart Mobility communications manager Alan Hall told The Verge. "The layer that Autonomic provides is non-differentiated services."

Tesla is adding automatic emergency braking to ‘Autopilot 2.5' cars with new update

Tesla's recently introduced a new Autopilot hardware suite, dubbed "2.5", in all its vehicles to enable more power and redundancy for its future self-driving capability.

The new hardware has been under a ‘calibration period', which resulted in those vehicles not having ‘automatic emergency braking'. Now we learn that Tesla started gradually rolling out the safety feature. Under the new update, the feature will be still limited to up to 50 mph. In April, Tesla had a similar rollout for vehicles equipped with Autopilot 2.0 cars, but it was actually limited to 28 mph. 

Tesla updated the feature to work at full speed two months later and the speed limit is also expected to eventually be lifted for Autopilot 2.5 cars.

Los Angeles order 100 new all-electric buses, New Flyer unveils next-gen Xcelsior electric buses

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA or "LA Metro") has been updating its fleet with new electric buses. Earlier this year, it placed an order for 60 new BYD all-electric buses, which was a significant order.

Now we learn that they are making an even bigger order of 100 new all-electric buses from New Flyer, which just unveiled its new Xcelsior all-electric bus with up to 600 kWh battery packs.

It's part of LA Metro's commitment for its transit to go all-electric by 2030.

California DMV changes rules to allow testing and use of fully autonomous vehicles

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is changing its rules to allow companies to test autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel — and to let the public use autonomous vehicles.

The DMV released a revised version of its regulations and has started a 15-day public comment period, ending October 25, 2017.

California law requires the DMV to work on regulations to cover testing and public use of autonomous vehicles, and the regulator said that this is the first step.

Lydia

Lydia is the project manager of audience development and social media at Futurecar. Lydia started her career in Tokyo at a Fortune Global 500 company before moving to Silicon Valley. Lydia put her bilingual skills to the test by covering the automobile industry and entrepreneurship. Her other journalism experience includes a sports reporting internship at Titan Media and numerous freelance writing gigs. Her professional skills include content optimization, business innovation, and working with industry trends in technology sectors. Lydia holds an M.A in Public Policy from Hitotsubashi University and B.A. in Arts Journalism from Fudan University.