Hello from Quick Shift, your daily guide down the road to the transportation future. — Katie Burke
Quick exits. Uber has settled with the family of Elaine Herzberg, the pedestrian who was struck and killed by an autonomous test vehicle last week. The action avoids what might have been a highly public legal battle that would have raised novel legal questions of liability in autonomous fatalities and revealed key information about the company's autonomous system. Now, Uber will only have to deal with investigators from NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board, whose investigations are ongoing.
Separately, Lior Ron, Uber's head of freight and co-founder of Otto alongside Anthony Levandowski, has left the company. And General Motors' Cruise Automation has lost its chief technology officer, A.G. Gangadhar, who left the company citing disagreements with CEO Kyle Vogt. Gangadhar was at the company for less than six months and came to Cruise from Uber, where he was prominently accused by engineer Susan Fowler of creating a hostile workplace.
Tesla's jump off the high dive. Tesla Inc. stock plunged Wednesday, following reports of an NTSB investigation into a fatal Model X crash in Mountain View, Calif., and Waymo's partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to operate driverless electric crossovers. The electric automaker's market capitalization dipped below that of Ford Motor Co. for the first time in nearly a year.
Quick hits:
- Daimler and BMW Group are combining their mobility efforts, Car2go and ReachNow, in a joint venture.
- China startup SF Motors debuts its premium EV crossover.
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted that the Uber crash will quicken investment and r&d in self-driving tech.
- Seven Northeast states are teaming up to boost zero-emission vehicle sales.
- Waze is entering the local advertising market.
