Normal Motors CEO Mary Barra will take the keynote stage at CES in January for the second consecutive yr, the Shopper Expertise Affiliation stated final week. Barra will define GM’s imaginative and prescient for electrical automobile adoption and clarify how superior know-how and EVs will form fashionable mobility. At CES in 2021, Barra introduced plans to launch BrightDrop, GM’s electrical van-powered items and supply model. She additionally laid out GM’s Ultium battery improvement plan and defined modifications to GM’s buyer expertise. Greater than 180 firms from the transportation and automobile know-how trade have dedicated to CES, together with GM, Daimler AG, Fisker, Turing Auto and Waymo, CTA stated.
John Deere, the world’s greatest tractor maker, will purchase autonomous driving know-how startup Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million, a guess that farming will proceed changing into extra automated. Automation is regarded as key to fixing labor shortages, which have lengthy been rife within the sector. “One of many greatest challenges farmers face in the present day is the supply of expert labor to execute time-sensitive operations that influence farming outcomes,” Bear Flag CEO Igino Cafiero stated in a press release. “Autonomy provides a protected and productive different to deal with that problem head on.”
— Bloomberg
The U.S. Senate final week confirmed Jennifer Homendy by voice vote to chair the Nationwide Transportation Security Board. Homendy, 49, has served on the board since August 2018 and beforehand was a senior legislative staffer engaged on transportation points. Homendy beforehand has criticized NHTSA for failing to make sure that driver help programs or nascent self-driving autos are protected.
— Reuters
Redwood Supplies, a battery recycling startup headed by Tesla co-founder J.B. Straubel, introduced an exterior funding spherical of greater than $700 million. “With this capital, Redwood will be capable to speed up our mission to make battery supplies sustainable and inexpensive, undertaking the change we’d like on the planet with a round financial system,” stated Straubel, who left Tesla in 2019.
— Leslie J. Allen