GM Invests $2.2 Billion in Electric and Autonomous Vehicle Plant
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| GM Invests $2.2 Billion in Electric and Autonomous Vehicle Plant | |
| Number | 1033 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 27, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 5:02 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
GM announced it will invest $2.2 billion to retrofit the Detroit-Hamtramck for autonomous and electric vehicle production, Byte launches on iOS and Android, and India surpasses the US as the second largest smartphone market.
Headlines
- GM announced it will spend $2.2 billion to retrofit its Detroit-Hamtramck plant to produce autonomous and electric vehicles. This will include the recently announced autonomous Origin vehicle from GM-subsidiary Cruise, as well as all-electric SUVs and trucks. Renovations are set to begin in February, and the plant will go idle while underway. GM plans to produce its first electric trucks in 2021, with 20 electric nameplates planned by 2023.
- The Vine successor Byte launched on iOS and Android on Friday. The app was created by Vine’s co-founder Dom Hofmann, and lets users upload and share 6-second looping videos. At launch the interface offers a main feed, Explore page, notifications, and profiles. Byte plans to launch a pilot partner program soon to provide popular users integrated monetization options, something Hofmann hopes will differentiate the service from TikTok and Snapchat.
- Reuters' sources say the U.S. Commerce Department withdrew a rule to further reduce sales to Huawei after the Defense Department cited concerns about the impact on US businesses. The US has restricted trade with Huawei since last May.
- Google is changing its newly-created presentation of paid search results on the desktop. Google had changed the paid results to look just like regular results, but with an "ad" icon in the upper left where a publisher's favicon would otherwise go. In a tweet Google said, "We’ve heard your feedback about the update. We always want to make Search better, so we’re going to experiment with new placements for favicons." The test will try different placements of the icons.
- In response to a San Francisco Chronicle investigation, Grubhub stated it began adding some restaurants to its sites for delivery without a formal agreement with the restaurant. These are usually high demand restaurants, and in these instances, Grubhub sends someone to the restaurant to place the order, with a driver coming for delivery. Grubhub did state that it partners with over 140,000 restaurants, and that most listings are with explicit partners. Restaurant owners say in these cases, Grubhub often has inaccurate or out dated listings and prices.
- A new report from Counterpoint Research found that the Indian smartphone market grew 7% in 2019 to 158 million units shipped. This marks the first time the market surpassed the US in shipments in a year, making it the number two smartphone market in the world, behind China. Chinese brands continued to grow in the country, now accounting for 72% of shipments, up from 60% in 2018. Xiaomi remained in the top spot for the second consecutive year, followed by Samsung with 21% of the market, Vivo with 16%, Realme with 10% and Oppo with 9%. Realme had the biggest marketshare jump on the year, up 255%.
- The analysts at Sensor Tower report that US subscription app revenue increased 21% on the year to $4.6 billion in 2019. Their research specifically looked at the top 100 subscription apps. Subscription spending in 2019 accounted for 19% of all consumer spending across the Apple App Store and Google Play. Google Play grew subscription revenue 42% to $1.1 billion, while the App Store grew 16% to $3.6 billion. Tinder topped subscription revenue across both app stores, with YouTube topping the App Store subscription revenue charts, and Pandora topping Google Play.
- In a paper preprinted on Archive.org, Amazon researchers detailed a new "speech-to-speech" AI pipeline that could automatically dub videos into another language. This starts by translating the original speech to text, translating that into the new language, and generating the translated speech, with the AI also accounting for original timbre, emotion, duration, and environmental sounds of the original speech. Phrases are synched to the video with a fluency-based approach, rather than purely content-based. In early testing, researchers found they were able to synch on a phrase-level, but native speakers found that it increased an unnatural rhythm of the generated speech.
- Google announced its next I/O developer conference will take place May 12th-May 14th. Users participated in Google's annual I/O teaser, which this year was a collaborative online game to restore a fictional satellite network, with the final constellation of satellites spelling out the date. I/O 2020 will be at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.
- Motorola released a series of videos related to the launch of its foldable Razr phone, one of which is called "Caring for Razr." In it, Motorola advises, "The screen is made to bend; bumps and lumps are normal.” The company also advises to close the phone prior to putting it in a pocket.
Links
| Preceded by: "Week in Review for the Week of 1/20/20" |
GM Invests $2.2 Billion in Electric and Autonomous Vehicle Plant |
Followed by: "Huawei Approved in UK" |