Volkswagen

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

Tesla faces a huge fine in Norway for throttling battery charging speeds

Tesla has been ordered to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each to thousands of customers in Norway for slowing down charging speeds, according to Nettavisen via Electrek. A 2019 software update was found to have affected the battery life in Tesla Model S vehicles manufactured between 2013 and 2015, sparking a complaint by dozens of Norwegian… Read more

Ford teams up with South Korea’s SK Innovation to build EV batteries in the US

Hot off the heels of the public debut of the F-150 Lightning pickup truck, Ford announced that it will form a joint venture with South Korea’s SK Innovation to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles at scale. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture called BlueOvalSK that would manufacture batteries… Read more

Android 12 will turn your Pixel phone into a car key — assuming automakers bother

Nearly a year after Apple announced the iPhone would become your digital car key, Google is doing the same. Android 12 will officially let “select Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones” natively double as a car key later this year, the company just announced at its Google I/O 2021 developer conference today. It’s not like Google… Read more

Lamborghini will debut its first all-electric supercar after 2025

The first all-electric Lamborghini is on the horizon. The Italian automaker finally unveiled its electrification plans, which will proceed in two distinct phases over the next decade. By the end of 2024, the company plans to roll out gas-electric hybrid versions of its entire lineup. Following that, Lamborghini will debut its first all-electric model sometime… Read more

Volvo XC40 Recharge review: Electrified elegance

(Pocket-lint) – One of our very favourite electric cars ever is the Polestar 2. You might be wondering why on earth we’re mentioning that as a prelude to this Volvo XC40 Recharge review. Well, it’s simple really: they’re like long lost cousins (Polestar was once an arm of Volvo, which separated back in 2017). Anyway,… 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

Meet the real Alexa: voice actor reportedly responsible for Amazon’s AI assistant revealed

Amazon’s Alexa has a voice familiar to millions: calm, warm, and measured. But like most synthetic speech, its tones have a human origin. There was someone whose voice had to be recorded, analyzed, and algorithmically reproduced to create Alexa as we know it now. Amazon has never revealed who this “original Alexa” is, but journalist… Read more

Every other EV brand showed up to Elon Musk’s SNL

At least five of Tesla’s competitors bought ad time during Saturday Night Live hosted by Elon Musk, using the billionaire’s appearance to sell their own. non-Tesla EVs. Commercials for the Audi E-tron, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen ID 4, and Lucid Air all aired within the first 30 minutes of SNL. Lucid Motors, a company founded… Read more

The autonomous vehicle world is shrinking — it’s overdue

Photo Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge ‘The AV industry has promised too much for too long, and has delivered too little’ After years of positive vibes about the future of autonomous vehicles and nearly unrestricted access to cash from Kool-Aid-drunk venture capitalists, the AV industry is confronting some hard truths. The first is… Read more

Intel Seeks $9.7 Billion Subsidies for European Fab

Home News (Image credit: Intel) Intel is committed to building a leading-edge fab in Europe, but to do so the company will need almost $10 billion in subsidies, CEO Pat Gelsinger said in an interview with Politico Europe, as confirmed by Reuters. The exec pointed to the need for $9.7 billion in subsidies during a… Read more

Volkswagen is being investigated for its ‘Voltswagen’ stunt

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating Volkswagen’s “Voltswagen” debacle to see how the stunt affected the automaker’s stock price, and whether it broke any securities laws, according to Der Spiegel. The faux rebranding took place on March 29th, when Volkswagen’s American subsidiary “accidentally” published a draft press release about changing its… Read more

General Motors has a solution for our crappy EV charging infrastructure

General Motors announced a “holistic charging approach” to electric vehicle charging that it’s calling the Ultium Charge 360. Much like Ford does with its FordPass network, the Ultium Charge 360 will integrate GM’s own vehicle apps and software with a variety of third-party charging services, such as Blink, ChargePoint, EVgo, Flo, Greenlots, and SemaConnect. The… Read more

The UAW wants to unionize EV startup factory workers

The United Auto Workers union is “laying the groundwork” to organize factory workers that will build electric vehicles for startups like Rivian and Lucid Motors, president Rory Gamble told CNBC. “That’s a given. We are formulating plans to go out to all these start-ups to give these workers a voice,” he said. “In today’s world,… Read more

Ford takes its first step toward producing its own electric car batteries

Ford announced the launch of a new battery development center in Michigan, the first step toward taking on some of the burden of building its own battery cells for electric cars in-house. The new “global battery center of excellence” will be called Ford Ion Park and will be based in Southeast Michigan. Ford said the… Read more