| Kitty Hawk takes to New Zealand skies, Fitbit tries again and Volkswagen invests big in batteries. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for March 13, 2018. 1. Kitty Hawk's flying taxi is aiming for a 2021 commercial debut Flying taxis might be closer to reality than self-driving cars. No really – at least according to Kitty Hawk founder Sebastian Thrun. His company just revealed their Cora aircraft, which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane, and a path to commercialization. Kitty Hawk is entering into a certification testing phase in New Zealand, with the goal of having its autonomous flying taxi aircraft operating as a commercial service in around three years. It seems hugely optimistic, but hey, stranger things have happened. 
2. Fitbit takes another crack at smartwatches and broader appeal I am reluctant to call a company doomed before it's all actually over, but Fitbit is probably done. This latest volley of devices, including take two of its smartwatch, shows nothing that's going to really move the needle in the way it needs to. 3. VW has $25 billion in committed battery supplies for EVs Volkswagen is coming on strong with its electric vehicle approach, and it's bought up the battery resources to support that pitch. Keep an eye on this legacy automaker, Tesla. 4. Grab becomes a financial service provider The Uber of Southeast Asia is now also a pretty full-fledged financial services company. In the future, we'll all be both occasional employees and indebted to our ride-hailing providers. Happy Tuesday! 5. Trump blocks Broadcom's Qualcomm takeover bid Well this is a troubling new level of overstep of Presidential authority. Again: Happy Tuesday! 6. Lyft says it's growing at nearly triple the rate of Uber Lyft says its revenue is growing way faster than primary rival Uber's. Couple things to keep in mind, however: Lyft can cherry pick what figures it shares since it's still private, and Uber is far, far larger so Lyft should be growing faster since it has way more headroom. 7. GM is going to start doing peer-to-peer car sharing GM is doing a lot of experimentation to figure out what comes next when people stop buying and owning individual cars. Next up, it looks like it's going to try peer-to-peer car sharing, which could help defray the cost of ownership and keep at least some people buying cars. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment