Automobile

Bloomberg The head of Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous vehicle unit gave a cautious outlook for the nascent industry, saying the technology won’t be ubiquitous for decades and that driverless vehicles will always have constraints. Waymo Chief Executive Officer John Krafcik said self-driving cars will require driver assistance for many years to come, and that he doesn’t envision a day when the ...

Bloomberg Earlier this fall, Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc announced it would make 19 new continuations of its classic DB4 Zagato GT from the 1960s. They’ll be built at Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell, England, the company’s in-house classic-car department, and will have the same all-aluminum bodywork of an original DB4 GT Zagato, digitally scanned from the original ...

Bloomberg Here we go again. For at least the eighth time in two decades, General Motors Co. has a new brand chief vowing to reboot Cadillac, the once-storied luxury name that has been losing market share and prestige for years. GM promises a $12 billion parade of new models, with the perhaps most significant being a smaller, cheaper sport utility ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. and Volkswagen AG are set to strike a deal to use the US software giant’s cloud technology to connect the auto manufacturer’s entire vehicle fleet as the world’s biggest carmaker steps up its transformation into digital and mobility services. VW will channel all of its digital offerings through Microsoft’s Azure software, creating the world’s largest automotive cloud ...

Bloomberg Elon Musk has asked for Tesla Inc. employees to test what the company has billed as full self-driving capability and is dangling $13,000 in savings to entice them to help. Musk wrote in an email obtained by Bloomberg News that Tesla needed about 100 more employees to join an internal testing program linked to rolling out the full self-driving ...

Bloomberg In the race to build safe and affordable driverless vehicles, being first to deliver isn’t fetching a premium from investors. French startup Navya SAS would know: the first standalone self-driving company to be publicly traded has sold 15 of its autonomous vehicles that need no steering wheel, mirrors or pedals, and plans to start deliveries next year. It thinks ...

Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc. shareholders agreed to sell a sizable stake in the ride-hailing leader to an investor group led by SoftBank Group Corp., allowing the Japanese conglomerate to amass a piece of the company at a steep discount to the last valuation. The transaction implies a $48 billion value for Uber, according to a person familiar with the deal. ...

Bloomberg Battery makers must rethink their technology if predictions for a wave of self-driving vehicles pan out, according to one of the inventors of the lithium-ion battery. In addition to focussing on making batteries more powerful to extend the driving range of single-owner cars, manufacturers will also need to develop devices that can withstand the rigors of near-constant driving and ...

Bloomberg About a decade after Chinese billionaire Li Shufu bought the Volvo Car nameplate from Ford Motor Co. and revived the brand, he’s turning his attention to the Swedish company’s heavy vehicles in a bid to bulk up outside China. Li’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. said it plans to buy a stake in Volvo AB from activist investor Cevian ...

Bloomberg As automakers turn their vehicles into app-laden computers on wheels, there’s one habit they don’t want to acquire from Silicon Valley: fighting over patents in court. Manufacturers from BMW AG to Hyundai Motor Co. to Ford Motor Co. are trying to learn from the smartphone wars, which cost technology companies hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees, as ...