Ride-hailing services provider Ola has decided to shut down operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand and will continue to focus on India business, its promoter ANI Technologies said on Tuesday.
Ola Electric Mobility Ltd.'s shift to 4,000 brick-and-mortar showrooms since 2022 has faced regulatory challenges. A Bloomberg News investigation found that over 95 percent of the 3,400 showrooms analysed lacked trade certificates under India’s Motor Vehicles Act. In response to customer complaints, authorities across states have raided showrooms, seized vehicles, and issued show-cause notices to the company, highlighting compliance issues with unregistered two-wheelers.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has signed an agreement with Beckhaul Digital Technologies Pvt Ltd to enhance internet connectivity across its corridors. The telecommunication company will lay 700km of fibre optic cables along all metro lines, including the Airport Line. The rollout will occur in phases, starting with the Pink and Magenta Lines, with the rest expected to be ready within six months.
Ride-hailing platform Uber has moved to a zero-commission model for its autorickshaw drivers in India and will instead charge them a subscription fee, mirroring a strategy followed by local rivals as competition intensifies.
Ola has said that it does not set fares based on a user's phone model. The development comes after media reports and complaints claimed that Apple users were charged higher for the same ride than Android users.
Uber Technologies has begun offering its first autonomous rides outside the US in Abu Dhabi, making good on an earlier partnership struck with Chinese vehicle partner WeRide.
Uber One subscription has been launched in India. The loyalty programme targets frequent users of the ride-hailing platform by offering benefits such as Uber One credits as cashback, top-rated drivers on eligible rides, priority support for members, and a complimentary subscription to a food delivery platform.
Bosch will collaborate with Tenstorrent to create a platform for standardising the building blocks of automotive chips. Hastened by the introduction of electric vehicles, autos have increasingly become products that resemble large computer systems that operate via a battery on four wheels.
Amazon has developed new systems to shave seconds off each package delivery and to help customers make faster buying choices. The technology, which Amazon is calling Vision Assisted Package Retrieval, works by shining a green light on packages so that the deliverer does not have to waste precious seconds reading labels.
Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have signed an MoU for the supply of lithium, cobalt and other critical minerals used in electric vehicles and clean energy applications.
Karnataka plans to cut levies and offer financial incentives to companies in the clean mobility sector, including a steep tax cut for hybrid cars. The move could make the state, home to the tech hub of Bengaluru, the second after northern Uttar Pradesh to provide tax breaks to hybrid cars, for which Toyota has lobbied New Delhi.
India has approved a scheme to spend Rs. 109 billion ($1.3 billion) on incentives for the adoption of electric vehicles. Adoption of EVs is still low in India, but is on the rise as the government promotes clean energy, offering companies incentives to build vehicles and parts in the country.
Uber has hired former Tesla Inc. executive Rebecca Tinucci to oversee its shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Tinucci will start on September 16 as global head of sustainability, according to an internal company announcement Tuesday obtained by Bloomberg News.
Ola Electric's shares surged on Friday as the company's investors bet on increasing adoption of EVs in the country. Ola Electric's $734 million IPO is India's biggest so far in 2024 and with a 39% market share as of July, Ola Electric dominates sales of electric scooters in India, having launched its first model just three years ago.
WhatsApp is rolling out a new facility to make the commute easier for Metro users in Delhi and NCR. With the rollout of its latest feature, WhatsApp users can now recharge their smart cards issued by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) via a dedicated chatbot on the instant messaging platform. It also offers other services such as ticket purchasing, viewing previous transactions and contacting customer support.
Ferrari is preparing to let its European customer base make purchases through cryptocurrencies. The 85-year-old company said in its blog that it is leveraging the expertise of multiple companies from the crypto payment sector to make sure all transactions are secure.
Elon Musk said on Monday that Tesla will have humanoid robots in "low production" for the company's internal use next year. Humanoid robots have been in development for several years by Japan's Honda and Hyundai Motor's Boston Dynamics.
Tesla is going to take more time to unveil its robotaxi so it can incorporate an important design change to the front of the vehicle. The event, originally set to be held in August, has reportedly been delayed to October.
Tesla's humanoid robot is still in the lab, but it may be ready to sell as soon as the end of next year, chief executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday.
Airport security in India asks passengers to remove all personal gadgets like mobile phones, tablets and laptops from their hand baggage and place them separately in trays for a scan. While this is a necessary step to ensure that the devices are safe to be taken on an aircraft, it does pose considerable inconvenience for travellers. Not to mention, the time taken to remove devices from your bags and placing them in trays causes long queues at security check. The gadgets-in-tray security check process could, however, be slowly phased out at major Indian airports.
Delhi's transport department has been directed to ban app-based taxis "in accordance with the Supreme Court's orders" on Wednesday the city's Environment Minister Gopal Rai said on Wednesday. The Supreme Court asked the Delhi government to consider allowing only locally registered taxis to ply on the city's roads earlier this week.
Going for a movie or an interview and want to safely keep your handbag or cameras for few hours at some place, well, Delhi Metro commuters can do that now by renting digital lockers at 50 of its stations through a new mobile app launched on Wednesday.
Nokia demonstrated several 6G and 5G technologies at the 2023 India Mobile Congress in New Delhi on Friday. The new technologies shown off included a 6G-based radar-like sensing technology, a Rapid Rail NCRTC private wireless network, a 4G/ LTE network on the Moon. Nokia also demoed a metaverse-based intelligent factory management system at the annual forum.
Google showed off a host of new AI-powered features and services at its Google I/O event earlier this year in May. Among those, Google Maps, too, was promised a suite of new AI capabilities, including an impressive Immersive View feature that would provide a birds-eye view of your route. Now, “Immersive View for routes” and a few other AI features are finally arriving as part of a new Maps update, Google has announced.
India will come up with new policy to attract electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers and encourage greater investment in the sector, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday. Asked about the government's plans, Goyal said consultation on the new policy will be held with the industry.
India is working on a new electric vehicle policy that would slash import taxes for automakers that commit to some local manufacturing, following a proposal by Tesla which is considering entering the domestic market, people with direct knowledge said.
Xiaomi has won the approval of China's state planner to manufacture electric vehicles (EVs), said two people with knowledge of the matter, marking a major step towards the smartphone maker's goal of producing cars by early next year.
Seeking to enhance green mobility, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the 'PM-eBus Sewa' scheme under which 10,000 electric buses will be provided to 169 cities under the public-private partnership (PPP) model. The scheme would have an estimated cost of Rs. 57,613 crore out of which Rs. 20,000 crore will be provided by the central government and the remaining will be borne by states.
Foxconn's EV platform unit Mobility in Harmony (MIH) would be willing to work with its parent or another company to build the new three-seat EV priced below $20,000 (roughly Rs. 16,00,000) and tailor-made for a corporate delivery fleet, MIH CEO Jack Cheng told Reuters in an interview. MIH has been in talks with convenience stores, car rental companies and courier companies ahead of unveiling its first prototype EV at Japan's largest auto trade show in October, Cheng added.
India's largest e-scooter maker Ola Electric recorded an operating loss of $136 million on a revenue of $335 million in the last financial year which concluded in March, three sources told Reuters, missing its publicly disclosed revenue goal.
Tesla reported a jump in second-quarter profits Wednesday as a series of price cuts translated into sharply higher car sales. The EV manufacturer reported profits of $2.7 billion (roughly Rs. 22,156 crore), up 20 percent on the year-ago level. Revenues surged 47 percent to $24.9 billion (roughly Rs. 2,04,334 crore).
All new tourist vehicles, as well as cabs and motorbikes provided on rent in Goa will have to be electric vehicles from January 2024, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Wednesday.
Tata Group will build an electric vehicle battery plant in Britain, the company and the government said on Wednesday, in a major boost for a car industry in need of domestic battery production to help secure its long-term future.
Ola Electric Mobility is in line for an initial public offering sooner than its founder previously imagined, reflecting the Indian startup’s whirlwind pace of growth since it started selling electric scooters in late 2021.
US automaker Tesla on Saturday announced that its first electric pickup -- a slick-looking silver Cybertruck -- had rolled off the assembly line at its huge plant near Austin, Texas, after almost two years of delay.
LG Electronics said on Wednesday it is targeting $77 billion (roughly Rs. 6,33,791 crore) in sales by 2030 and plans some KRW 50 trillion (roughly Rs. 3,19,007 crore) of investment as the South Korean company announced its future strategy. It plans to become a global top 10 company in vehicle components by more than doubling revenue to KRW 20 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,27,595 crore) by 2030, while strengthening service platforms on its home appliance and TV businesses that generate recurring profits, such as media subscriptions and rentals.
Uber Technologies Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai is planning to leave the ride-hailing company, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Chai reportedly informed Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi of his intentions to move on, though a decision on the timing of his departure hasn't been made.
Nasscom has flagged concerns over "unrealistic electrification targets" for EVs in the national capital citing supply constraints, inadequate charging infrastructure and challenges ahead for cab drivers in its submissions on Delhi Motor Vehicle Aggregator and Delivery Service Provider Scheme.
Airtel Payments Bank has collaborated with Park+ to enable FASTag-based smart parking solutions at Varanasi's Lal Bahadur Shastri Airport. The FASTag-based smart parking solution enables automatic cashless payments at airport parking, making vehicle movement in the parking zone frictionless and time efficient.
Kentucky is requiring that electric vehicle charging companies include Tesla's plug if they want to be part of a state program to electrify highways using federal dollars, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. Kentucky's plan went into effect on Friday, making it the first state to mandate Tesla's charging technology, although Texas and Washington states previously shared such plans with Reuters.
Tesla beat analyst expectations in the second quarter, delivering 4,66,140 vehicles despite a difficult market. The nearly half million deliveries represent an 83 percent increase over the same period last year and a 10 percent rise from the previous quarter.
Volkswagen is in talks with Tesla to adopt its North American Charging Standard (NACS) technology. Other automakers including Ford, General Motors and ChargePoint are adopting Tesla's charging design on concerns of losing out on customers if they offer only the Combined Charging System (CCS) design.
Global automakers have touted plans to re-use electric vehicle (EV) batteries when they lose power, but competition for battery packs and cell materials, and the appetite for affordable cars cast doubt on this part of the circular economy.
Uber Technologies said on Wednesday it would cut 200 jobs in the company's recruitment division amid plans to keep the staff count flat through the year and streamline costs. The reductions affect less than 1 percent of Uber's global workforce. The ride-share company laid off 150 employees in its freight services division earlier this year.
Rivian said it has agreed to adopt Tesla's charging standard. This would give customers access to the biggest US charging network and adding momentum to Tesla's bid to set the industry standard. Rivian's customers will be able to access 12,000 Tesla Superchargers with adapters in the United States and Canada as early as spring 2024, the company said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that the electric carmaker is looking to invest in India "as soon as humanly possible." Musk said it hopes to bring Starlink satellite Internet service to India as well. Executives of Tesla visited India and held talks with Indian bureaucrats and ministers last month on establishing a manufacturing base for cars and batteries in India.
Japanese automaker Suzuki Motor said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement with SkyDrive to make "flying cars". The companies will use a Suzuki Group factory in central Japan to make electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and aim to begin production by around spring next year.
The European Parliament recently approved a new rule focused on the production, design, and recycling of all rechargeable batteries that are being sold in the region. This new rule requires manufacturers to make design changes that will allow users to remove the batteries and replace them on their own.
New Delhi city authorities will start impounding the bike taxis of companies such as Uber and local rival Ola if they do not cease operations in line with a court order backing a ban on them, a senior government official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Electric vehicle charging companies are cautiously embracing Tesla's charging technology as the main US standard, mere days after Ford and GM said they were adopting it, but questions remained about how any interoperability would work. The rare agreements between Tesla and each of the two US automakers, who among them control more than 60 percent of the country's EV market, is likely to give top billing to Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS).
