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South African rand slumps after Moody's warning, stocks tumble

  • Date: 15-08-18
  • Category: Rand
  • Source: Reuters

South Africa’s rand slumped on Wednesday as ratings agency Moody’s warned that the pace of fiscal consolidation in Africa’s most industrialised nation had slowed and retail sales data disappointed, underlining the fragility of the economy.

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DIESEL: Truckers asleep at the wheel as diesel price shock creeps closer

  • Date: 15-08-18
  • Category: DIESEL
  • Source: Bloomberg

Every time Chuck Paar makes the over 500-mile round trip from his home in Mt. Jewett, Pennsylvania, to Buffalo and Syracuse, New York, his 18-wheel tractor trailer carries 25 tons of sand or cement and burns about $265 of diesel in one day. That’s up from as little as $166 for the same route two years ago, and the increased cost of fuel is squeezing already thin industry profit margins.

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AUTONOMY: Robotaxi Revolutions Don't Come Cheap, So Zoox Boosts Funding By $500 Million

  • Date: 17-07-18
  • Category: AUTONOMY
  • Source: Forbes

Zoox knows it needs hefty investment to turn a vision of an on-demand ride service using purpose-built robotic vehicles designed without conventional driving controls into reality. Luckily, the stealthy startup made more progress on the financial front, snagging $500 million in a Series B funding round led by Atlassian cofounder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is also joining the Zoox board.

Led by Australian artist and entrepreneur Tim Kentley-Klay and computer scientist Jesse Levinson, the Foster City, California, company has raised nearly $800 million with a goal of launching its branded service in 2020. The new funds, reported earlier by Bloomberg Businessweek, lift Zoox's valuation to about $3.2 billion, Kentley-Klay told Forbes.

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AUTONOMY: Audi, Airbus and Italdesign are building a new self-driving car that can fly

  • Date: 11-05-18
  • Category: AUTONOMY
  • Source: Forbes Middle East

Carmaker Audi, engineering firm Italdesign and aircraft manufactured Airbus have designed an electrical vehicle-dubbed Pop.Up Next- that has the capability to transport people both vertically and horizontally.

The ultra-light, two-seater passenger cabin can be attached either to a car module or to a flight module. One of the main interior feature is a 49-inch screen, while interaction between humans and the machine is performed by speech and face recognition, eye-tracking and a touch function.

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AUTONOMY: Lyft, Aptiv to launch self-driving car program in Las Vegas

  • Date: 05-05-18
  • Category: AUTONOMY
  • Source: https://business.financialpost.com/

LAS VEGAS — Ride-hailing service Lyft is partnering with an automotive technology company to deploy a fleet of 30 self-driving cars to the streets of Las Vegas this summer.

Lyft and Aptiv will run the self-driving BMWs between the same predetermined sites that the companies used during a successful demonstration at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, the Las Vegas Sun reported Thursday.

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AUTONOMY: Self-driving testers pause to rethink after fatality

  • Date: 26-03-18
  • Category: AUTONOMY
  • Source: http://www.rubbernews.com

A self-driving test gone horribly wrong has caused industry stakeholders to reflect on the future of autonomous vehicle development.

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AUTONOMY: Hungarian car firm AImotive touts “vision-first” approach to autonomous driving

  • Date: 06-03-18
  • Category: AUTONOMY
  • Source: Tahawultech.com/

It will take about a decade for fully autonomous or almost fully autonomous technology to filter down into family cars, a fast-growing company working on the technology has predicted.

Budapest-headquartered AImotive has said however that premium vehicles are likely to be equipped with the technology much more quickly.

The company has focused on a “vision-first” approach to autonomous driving, developing technology in which vehicles are fitted with multiple cameras, including fish-eye cameras, as well as radar and electronic sensors.

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