Rebecca Bellan

President Joe Biden will trigger the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. sources of critical minerals and materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. The order is in response to spiking gas prices and supply chain constraints...

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, has begun offering its San Francisco employees fully autonomous rides, the company said Wednesday. Waymo will begin its rider-only operations within its “initial San Francisco service territory,” which spans from the Presidio to the farthest corner of Candlestick Point, and gradually ramp up from there. The...

VinFast, the Vietnamese automaker under Vingroup, said Tuesday it will build its first U.S. factory in North Carolina, part of the company’s previously stated plans to invest and expand in the country. The automotive newcomer said it will spend about $2 billion in the first phase of construction of...

Shared micromobility company Bird is launching a limited pilot to test a battery powered attachment for wheelchairs in an effort to increase accessible mobility for disabled persons. The new “adaptive program” will be a part of the New York City e-scooter pilot in the Bronx, which is being expanded...

Shared micromobility company Spin and ride-hailing company Lyft are partnering to bring Spin electric scooters to the Lyft app in 60 U.S. markets by the end of the year. The integration, which will enable users to not only find but also pay for scooters through Lyft’s app, will...

Dan Ammann, the New Zealand native who served as CEO of autonomous vehicle company Cruise since 2019, has moved on to ExxonMobil, where he will be leading a new business focused on commercializing low-emission business opportunities in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and low-emission fuels, according to a...

U.S. securities regulators on Tuesday said they have authority to subpoena Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his tweets and urged a federal judge not to let the executive get away with tweeting with abandon. Musk has called the actions of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which in 2018...

Nvidia has launched a new mapping platform that will provide the autonomous vehicle industry with ground truth mapping coverage of over 300,000 miles of roadway in North America, Europe and Asia by 2024, founder and CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC event on Tuesday. The platform, dubbed...

Luminar, a company that builds vision-based lidar and machine perception technologies for autonomous vehicles, is acquiring high-performance laser manufacturer Freedom Photonics on Monday. The all-stock transaction involves Luminar selling 3 million shares of its common stock, or about $42.3 million at today’s share price, per a regulatory filing. The...

Thomas Duscha, founder and CEO of Berlin-based battery swapping startup Swobbee, was in Poland visiting family in early March when the reach of the Ukraine crisis galvanized him to action.  “I was just there a few weeks ago with my wife and newborn child, and it was normal, and...