Vans

General Motors’ electric vehicle plan just got even more expensive

General Motors announced that it would increase its investment in electric and autonomous vehicles to $35 billion through 2025. The new figure represents a 30 percent increase over the amount the automaker said it would spend last November, and a 75 percent increase from its initial investment prior to the pandemic. It’s a staggering amount… Read more

Amazon workers demand company quit polluting near communities of color

Hundreds of Amazon tech workers are pressuring Amazon to quit polluting — especially in communities near its warehouses. More than 600 workers signed a petition asking Amazon to bring its pollution down to zero by 2030. They also called on the company to prioritize deploying zero-emissions technologies near the communities hit hardest by Amazon’s pollution…. Read more

VW will start testing its Argo AI-powered self-driving vans in Germany this summer

Volkswagen will start testing its new autonomous vehicles in Germany this summer, the company announced Wednesday. The German automaker’s electric ID Buzz vans will use hardware and software developed by Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup that is backed by Ford and VW. The aim is to launch a commercial delivery and micro-transit service in Germany… Read more

Amazon delivery drivers were told to turn off safety apps to meet quotas

According to a Vice report, some Amazon delivery drivers are instructed by their employers to turn off Amazon’s safe driving monitoring app, so they can drive faster and get their deliveries done. The drivers don’t work for Amazon directly, but instead for companies known as Delivery Service Partners, and they report that their managers or… Read more

Garmin Varia RTL515 radar tail light review: Trip the light fantastic

(Pocket-lint) – When out cycling it’s not just your eyes but also your ears that can be crucial in assessing what’s going on around you – it’s why we’d never put in headphones and listen to music while out on the road. But sometimes your own limited senses aren’t quite enough. That’s where the Garmin… Read more

Discover the stupidity of AI emotion recognition with this little browser game

Tech companies don’t just want to identify you using facial recognition — they also want to read your emotions with the help of AI. For many scientists, though, claims about computers’ ability to understand emotion are fundamentally flawed, and a little in-browser web game built by researchers from the University of Cambridge aims to show… Read more

Amazon delivery drivers have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans or lose their jobs

Amazon is well-known for its technological Taylorism: using digital sensors to monitor and control the activity of its workers in the name of efficiency. But after installing machine learning-powered surveillance cameras in its delivery vans earlier this year, the company is now telling employees: agree to be surveilled by AI or lose your job. As… Read more

Ryder says EV startup Chanje owes millions for undelivered vans

Truck rental company Ryder says it’s owed nearly $4 million from EV startup Chanje after it failed to deliver 100 of the 125 vans promised back in 2017, according to a previously unreported lawsuit in Florida. The lawsuit comes as a massive shift toward electric propulsion is underway in the commercial vehicle space, with new… Read more

Amazon delivery app Mentor tracks drivers’ locations and measures their performance

Amazon built its own in-house mobile app called Mentor that it uses to track the location and rate the performance of third-party delivery drivers, according to a new report from CNBC. The app tracks a driver’s location at all times and also generates a daily score that factors into performance evaluations, with low scores potentially… Read more

Amazon’s electric Rivian vans will start making deliveries in 16 cities this year

Amazon’s new electric delivery vans will hit the road in more than a dozen cities starting this year, the company announced Wednesday. The vans, which are being designed and built by buzzy EV startup Rivian, are already making deliveries to customers in Los Angeles. Amazon plans to expand its testing to 15 more cities this… Read more

Electric cars: Rivian raises another $ 2.65 billion

The US electric car developer Rivian has closed another financing round. Now let 2, 50 billion US dollars (2, 19 billion euros), the company announced. The other investment companies Fidelity, Coatue, D1 Capital and others who have already participated in earlier rounds will be involved in the round, led by T. Rowe Price Associates. Also… Read more

PSA's newest power box: the Citroën ë-Berlingo e-van

After ë-Jumpy and ë-Jumper, the new Citroën ë-Berlingo has electrified the entire range of PSA commercial vehicles. Intended for the city, top speed and long ranges do not play a major role in the electrified vans. Rather, it is about locally emission-free driving in the city, due to ever increasing restrictions on traffic with combustion… Read more

GM unveils electric delivery van with 250 miles of range as part of new spinoff business

General Motors announced Tuesday it will be spinning out a new delivery and logistics business called BrightDrop, the first products of which will be an electrified pallet and delivery van. Both vehicles, which will be powered by GM’s Ultium battery platform, are slated for release this year. The announcement of the new logistics business comes… Read more

More than half of Norwegian new cars in 2020 were purely battery-electric

In Norway 141. 412 Newly registered cars. 76. 789 of which are purely battery-powered, that is 050 percent. This means that for the first time in Norway, more than half of all new cars are battery-electric. Added to this are 28. 905 Plug-in hybrids, the share of new cars with rechargeable batteries in Norway is… Read more

Nuro autonomous vans approved in California

The startup Nuro is the first company to operate an automated and commercial delivery service in California. The delivery robots of the company founded by two ex-Google employees had already been tested in California in April. Now they have received a commercial license from the Department of Motor Vehicles. The deliveries should 2021 – initially… Read more