Volvo goes leather-free in all its EVs as part of new sustainability report Electrek
Showing posts with label report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label report. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Monday, January 10, 2022
Report: No AMD Ryzen Retrofits For Older Tesla Model 3/Y - InsideEVs
- Report: No AMD Ryzen Retrofits For Older Tesla Model 3/Y InsideEVs
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- Tesla Quietly Improving Model 3 And Model Y Features During Q1-Q2 2022 Torque News
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- View Full coverage on Google News
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Santander to settle consumer watchdog auto-finance claims, report says
WASHINGTON -- European lender Santander has agreed to settle claims by a U.S. consumer watchdog that it misled drivers about the costs of loans and the coverage of related insurance policies, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc., an affiliate of the Spanish banking group, allowed borrowers to make interest-only monthly payments without explaining that doing so would increase the total cost of the loan, said the people familiar with the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
The lender also failed to explain to customers how an insurance policy -- known as guaranteed auto protection -- would not always cover the costs of replacing a car that was destroyed in an accident.
Santander Consumer has agreed to pay a fine and strengthen its consumer protections, said the sources. Reuters could not determine the size of the fine.
A spokeswoman for Santander Consumer declined to comment on any possible settlement but said the lender has in recent months improved its consumer protection controls. A spokesman for the bureau said the agency does not comment on enforcement actions.
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VW pursued self-driving startup Aurora, report says
Volkswagen AG is on the hunt for self-driving technology and recently tried to buy Aurora Innovation, an autonomous-driving startup founded by veterans of Tesla Inc. and Alphabet Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
The German carmaker has been scouring Silicon Valley for targets or partnerships that can help it develop self-driving cars and other mobility technology. Volkswagen had talks to buy Aurora, which is already a partner, only to be rebuffed because the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company wanted to maintain its independence and work with multiple carmakers, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
For Volkswagen, the search to purchase self-driving technology is a play to catch up to rivals that have forged ahead for several years. Alphabet’s Waymo unit is seen as the leader, and rival automakers have bought self-driving technology developers. Buying Aurora or another company would follow moves by rivals to align with AI specialists. General Motors Co. paid more than $1 billion to acquire Cruise Automation in 2016 and Ford is investing $1 billion to take a stake in Argo AI.
A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment. Aurora, which has raised $90 million in venture capital, declined to comment.
Robotaxi race
Automotive manufacturers are racing to develop self-driving vehicles to get into the business of selling transportation as a service with robotaxis, rather than just selling cars. GM Cruise LLC attracted a $2.25 billion investment from Japanese private equity fund SoftBank Vision Fund in May, which effectively valued the unit at $11.5 billion.
Aurora is the brain child of Sterling Anderson, the former director of autonomy for Tesla, Drew Bagnell from Uber Technologies Inc. and Chris Urmson, who headed Alphabet’s self-driving car project before it was named Waymo. Volkswagen and Aurora announced a partnership at the CES technology show in Las Vegas in January. Volkswagen said it planned to use Aurora’s self-driving system, including sensors, hardware and machine-learning and artificial-intelligence software, in its vehicle platforms.
!function(d, s) {var ip = d.createElement(s);ip.async = 1, s = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], ip.src = "//s.idio.co/ip.js", s.parentNode.insertBefore(ip, s)}(document, "script");$(function() { $idoWidget = $('#idio-article-recommendations-8'); $imageContainer = $idoWidget.prev().prev(); $imageEle = $imageContainer.children('img'); if ($imageEle && $imageEle.length > 0) { $imageContainer.insertAfter($idoWidget); }});At CES, Aurora also announced a similar partnership with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co., which is integrating Aurora’s technology into the Nexo fuel-cell vehicle.
Crucial pivot
VW Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess, in the job since April, has pledged to adapt the world’s biggest automaker to accelerating industry change, highlighting innovation as a key pillar in that quest. Presiding over a sprawling 12-brand empire that includes supercars costing more than 1 million euros ($1.16 million), mass-market delivery vans and motorcycles, Diess is trying to emerge from the long shadow of the diesel-engine emissions cheating crisis.
The company plans to form new partnerships or make acquisitions of software companies, Diess told German newspaper Handelsblatt in an interview this week. Volkswagen hopes to present results in the coming months, he said. Automakers’ survival will depend on mastering the digital transformation, a task even more important to tackle successfully than the switch to electric vehicles, Diess told the newspaper.
VW Chief Digital Officer Johann Jungwirth left that position in July to set up a new business for the automaker in California focusing on mobility as a service. He aims to start commercial operations with a fleet of self-driving taxis in the U.S. in 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Volkswagen may have to find another player to acquire. At CES, Urmson told Bloomberg in an interview that the company’s goal is to deploy its technology into many vehicles. He said he was attracted to working with Volkswagen and Hyundai because they sell millions of cars in markets around the globe.
ATTENTION COMMENTERS: Automotive News has monitored a significant increase in the number of personal attacks and abusive comments on our site. We encourage our readers to voice their opinions and argue their points. We expect disagreement. We do not expect our readers to turn on each other. We will be aggressively deleting all comments that personally attack another poster, or an article author, even if the comment is otherwise a well-argued observation. If we see repeated behavior, we will ban the commenter. Please help us maintain a civil level of discourse.
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