Public, private sector engagement key to smart cities, experts say
Collaboration between the public and private sectors will be key to advancing smart cities of the future, industry leaders said during a panel portion of SAE International’s WCX Digital Summit this week.

Public-private partnerships are key for mutually beneficial technology deployments and can help expedite these deployments, said Blaine Leonard, transportation technology engineer at the Utah Department of Transportation.

“As an agency, we used to have the luxury of allowing new developments to mature over time,” Leonard said Wednesday in a session on smart cities. “In this environment today, with these kinds of technologies, it’s just moving too fast to afford us that kind of time.

A quick peek inside Fontinalis, one of Detroit’s best-known young venture firms
Fontinalis, the 12-year-old, Detroit-based early-stage venture firm, is known for being among the very first investing outfits to focus squarely on mobility as an overarching theme. It wasn’t a surprising mandate, given that the outfit’s cofounders include Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford and the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company.

Nevertheless, the firm has used its ties to the traditional automotive industry to effectively compete against, and invest alongside, many Silicon Valley venture firms in the intervening years, creating an interesting portfolio along the way. It had stakes in Postmates, acquired in an all-stock deal by Uber, and in Lyft, for example. It also backed the self-driving startup nuTonomy, which sold to auto supplier Delphi Automotive in 2017 for $450 million. Some of its newer bets include Gatik, a startup developing an autonomous vehicle stack for B2B short-haul logistics; Robust.AI, a startup at work on an industrial-grade cognitive platform for robots; and Helm.ai, a maker of driverless car AI.

To get a better sense of what makes a deal attractive to Fontinalis, as well as to understand how a venture firm in Detroit ensures that it’s top of mind for the founders it most wants to work with, we talked recently with Dan Ratliff, an investor with Fontinalis who joined the firm nearly seven years ago. Our chat has been edited lightly for length.

Pepperoni For The Robot: Domino’s, Nuro Test Autonomous Pizza Delivery
Domino’s and Nuro are kicking off a robotic pizza delivery pilot in Houston this week, giving customers there the option to have orders brought to them by the Silicon Valley autonomous driving tech developer’s small vehicles that look a bit like toasters on wheels.

The program involves just one Domino’s shop, located in Houston’s Woodland Heights neighborhood, and is open to a limited number of customers who make prepaid orders online, the companies said. People opting to get a delivery via a Nuro R2 robotic vehicle will receive text updates on the order and a unique code number to unlock and retrieve their pizza from a storage compartment when it arrives.

“There is still so much for our brand to learn about the autonomous delivery space,” said Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer. “This program will allow us to better understand how customers respond to the deliveries, how they interact with the robot, and how it affects store operations.”

Ford, GM, UAW have plenty to like in Biden’s $2T infrastructure plan
President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal would represent a dramatic expansion of investments across the country, affecting everything from electric vehicle production to lead water pipes.

Not surprisingly, the American Jobs Plan unveiled Wednesday in Pittsburgh is generating enthusiastic responses from interested parties as well as some pushback.

The full details of the plan have yet to be sketched out, and the plan is likely to face resistance, but that isn’t stopping industry, labor groups, and others from weighing in.

UAW President Rory Gamble said the union sees significant labor benefits in Biden’s approach. Some aspects, in particular, sound tailor-made for UAW concerns because the plan seeks to address the global semiconductor shortage that has crippled some auto production this year. Biden’s plan also seeks to get Congress to undermine key aspects of so-called “right-to-work” laws that labor groups despise.

VW Comes to Detroit To Develop Its Artificial Intelligence
We’re only starting to get to grips with the benefits of artificial intelligence in modern vehicles now. Recently, Hyundai announced new AI-based voice recognition technology for the 2021 Elantra that can learn the driver’s habits, improving interaction with the system. Chrysler and Jeep vehicles are set to use a similar system called Alexa Custom Assistant.

But AI’s benefits extend well beyond the vehicle and the driver; the tech also has advantages in automotive factories and on the business side as well. Volkswagen is digging deeper into this with its new AI Detroit unit, a research and development unit with its home in the Motor City.

“We want to leverage new opportunities in applied Artificial Intelligence to further improve products and services for our customers, supporting our employees and become even more efficient as a company,” explained CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, Johan de Nysschen.

GM is betting its electrified future on a revolutionary new battery system
When the Hummer EV SUT (sport utility truck) and its newly-unveiled SUV variant hit dealer show floors in the fall of 2021 and 2023, respectively, they’ll be among the first models in GM’s new electrified lineup to be built atop the company’s Ultium battery system.

When the Hummer EV SUT (sport utility truck) and its newly-unveiled SUV variant hit dealer show floors in the fall of 2021 and 2023, respectively, they’ll be among the first models in GM’s new electrified lineup to be built atop the company’s Ultium battery system.

General Motors is no stranger to the electric vehicle market. GM began its electrified venture in 1996 with the EV1, one of the very first viable battery-powered sedan models produced by a major automaker which continued its run until being discontinued in 2003. It was superseded by the BEV2 platform of which the 2016 Chevy Bolt was the first model. Today, GM relies on an EV platform powered by the Ultium battery system as the basis for the 30-plus models it plans on producing in the coming years (with 20 zero-emission models available by 2023) as part of the company’s quest to reinvent its business into that of an EV automaker – though you’ll be hard-pressed to find references to a “BEV3” in GM’s press materials.