Ford’s legendary and popular F-Series pickup line will soon have electric options, the company announced today. The move is intended to “future-proof” the enormous truck business against rising gas prices and regulations favoring electric vehicles over internal combustion.
Jim Farley, Ford’s president of global markets, announced the news at a press conference in Detroit. As reported in the Detroit Free Press, he specified that there will be both pure/battery electric and hybrid options — they aren’t dipping their toe but jumping in at the deep end.
Ford has been leaning into electric harder than ever over the last year, detailing an ambitious $11 billion plan to offer 40 electrified vehicles by 2022; some of those are entirely new cars, like the “Mustang-inspired electric crossover” coming next year, while others will be electric versions of classic lines like the F-Series.
Tesla is also planning an electric pickup, but that company’s success in the luxury sedan market is unlikely to translate directly to the much different truck market. Rivian has one entering production, but it’s hard to imagine the brand breaking out of a rather small niche with its first model.
Ford knows that trucks and utility vehicles are its stronghold: it dedicates 90 percent of its capital to that side of the business. A million F-Series trucks sold last year, and even if a tiny percentage of those were to be electric it would be a huge barrier to entry for companies with less reputation.
As more evidence of the company leaning into the renewable future, Ford announced last year that it would stop selling all but two cars in the U.S.: the Mustang and Focus Active. That doesn’t include SUVs and trucks, of course, but one senses there will be a similar shift once those product categories are ready to be similarly phased out.
Ford detailed more general plans for its various regions and businesses in a press release.
“Over the last 19 months, we have worked to reshape and transform our company – sharpening our competitiveness, taking actions to improve our profitability and returns, and investing in our future,” said president and CEO Jim Hackett in the release.
Source: TechCrunch
Despite the backlash, the fact that the Gillette ad exists at all is an undeniable sign of progress.
Source: Wired
The “Google of Russia” showed up in Vegas with a bold and daring demonstration of what a Moscow-trained robot Moscow can do.
Source: Wired
Resolute Ventures, an early-stage firm with offices in San Francisco and Boston, just closed its fourth fund with $75 million.
It’s an almost shockingly conservative amount of capital in today’s era of big-is-better funds. And with valuable companies like the real estate startup OpenDoor, the applicant tracking system company Greenhouse and the dog products company BarkBox in its portfolio, one imagines that seven-year-old Resolute could have raised more.
It didn’t want to do that, says firm founder Mike Hirshland, who spent 17 years with Polaris Partners before founding Resolute and soon after bringing aboard the firm’s only other general partner, Raanan Bar-Cohen, a former exec with WordPress parent company Automattic.
It’s much the same story as Hirshland shared with us back in 2017, when the firm closed its third fund with $65 million. As he told us in a call yesterday, “There was a lot of interest in having us raising a larger fund, but that would require a shift in strategy, and we want to stick with what we do.” What that is, exactly: investing “very early, in some cases, pre-product and pre-launch.” Says Hirshland, “Much of the seed-stage industry has become more focused on early signs of traction, but we’re really still betting on teams.”
Hirshland points to OpenDoor, calling its team so “phenomenal” that it “didn’t take a genius to say yes to that one.”
Greenhouse was meanwhile “two guys and a really crappy PowerPoint” when Resolute met with the team. Founders Daniel Chait and Jon Stross “wildly impressed” Hirschland, but their pitch also resonated. Says Hirshland, “There was nothing special or sexy about this big recruiting jobs market” the company was chasing. But Chait and Stross had “both done a bunch of stuff at large companies” and “seemed like the perfect team. Daniel was very CEO-like. He had a technical background but also knows how to run a business; Jonathan was the quintessential product guy.”
OpenDoor was most recently valued at roughly $2 billion. Greenhouse has not disclosed its valuation, but it has raised $110 million to date, including from Riverwood Capital and Benchmark.
“On the spectrum,” says Hirshland, “we lean toward going with a team. However, we fundamentally need to believe in the market opportunity.” Yet even then there are exceptions to the rule, he says. One case in point is BarkBox, the New York-based pet supplies company that is surviving and — says Hirshland — thriving on customers who pay it a monthly subscription fee.
Founder Matt Meeker, who previously founded Meetup.com, had “had worked with me [when I was with Polaris],” says Hirshland, and “I did not like the idea. I didn’t think a subscription doggy business would be a big one. But,” he continues, “I’d back Matt any day of the week, and now BarkBox is enjoying hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, so we know who was right and wrong about that one.”
Resolute looks to fund between 30 and 35 companies with each fund. Its median size check is $750,000. It also prefers to lead deals, typically securing 10 percent of a startup’s equity by working with teams at their most nascent stages.
Asked whether Resolute has taken advantage of the vibrant secondary market to sell any of its still-private shares, he suggests it has not, but that it may well. Asked if Resolute might raise an opportunity fund at some point to support its breakout winners, Hirshland says that that’s “always on the table. We’ve been approached about one, but we don’t have the conviction yet that we know the right answer.”
For now, he says, the firm relies from time to time instead on special purpose vehicles — basically pop-up funds created to back one company at a time — to ensure its investors have as much exposure as possible to Resolute’s hardiest startups.
It has also seen a few outright exits in its portfolio, including the sale of the calendaring app Sunrise to Microsoft for more than $100 million in 2015, and the sale of Orbitera, a platform for cloud marketplaces, which also sold for a reported $100 million, to Google the following year.
Source: TechCrunch
Changes are on the way for two key features in Windows 10. A separation of Windows 10 search and Cortana will allow Microsoft to more often innovate on each of the features independently.
The post Microsoft to separate Cortana from search with the next version of Windows 10 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
After not having a presence at Mobile World Congress for three years, Microsoft is now sending out media invites for a press conference on February 24 during the annual event in Barcelona. Could a next-generation HoloLens be on the way?
The post Could the next Microsoft HoloLens be announced at MWC 2019? appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Antibiotics are still massively overprescribed, a new study shows. With no new drugs in sight, some scientists are turning to Crispr for a reboot.
Source: Wired
According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, U.S. federal prosecutors are preparing a criminal indictment against Huawei for stealing trade secrets. The report, which cites sources with knowledge of the indictment, specifically mentions Huawei’s actions surrounding a T-Mobile smartphone testing tool known as “Tappy.” The report notes that the current investigation is far enough along that an indictment may come soon.
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of Tappy. In 2014, T-Mobile sued Huawei for allegedly gaining access to a company lab outside of Seattle and photographing and attempting to steal parts of the robotic smartphone testing device. In May 2017, T-Mobile won $4.8 million against Huawei, only a fraction of the $500 million the U.S. mobile carrier sought. The current federal criminal investigation reportedly arose from that civil suit.
The Chinese phone maker has faced increased scrutiny, escalating to open hostility from U.S. agencies and lawmakers who believe that Huawei poses a security threat due to its close relationship with the Chinese government. The tension escalated considerably last December, when Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at the request of the U.S. Meng was charged with fraud for deceptive practices that allowed the Chinese company to avoid U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Huawei, now the world’s number two smartphone maker, trails only Samsung when it comes to mobile device sales, beating Apple for the second slot in late 2018.
Source: TechCrunch
Local TV broadcasting company Sinclair Broadcast Group today announced the launch of a new streaming service called STIRR that aims to bring local TV news and other content to the growing number of cord cutters across the U.S. The company today owns over 190 TV stations, which it’s leveraging in order to create its own “skinny bundle.” However, unlike TV streaming services such as Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, Hulu with Live TV, or YouTube TV, for example – STIRR will be free and ad-supported instead of a paid subscription.
The service will offer access to national news, sports, entertainment and digital-first channels and a video-on-demand library in addition to its local content, which serves as the anchor for the new service.
In a special channel called STIRR CITY (yes, all caps), the service will stream a curated, 24/7 program lineup based on where the viewer lives. This will include local news, local and regional sports, entertainment and city-focused lifestyle programming from the local Sinclair TV station in that city.
STIRR CITY joins other original channels developed for the service, including STIRR Movies (for some reason, no caps), STIRR Sports, and STIRR Life.
STIRR Sports and Life will offer locally focused programs, we’re told. For example, the Sports channel may show high school football, and the Life channel might show a local lifestyle show like “Seattle Refined.” When local content isn’t available, the channels will be fleshed out with content aggregated from other networks on STIRR.
STIRR Movies will also be aggregated content, but the company is exploring additional deals, we’re told.
At launch, there are over 20 national networks and digital-first stations available, but few are notable.
The list includes: BUZZR, Charge, Cheddar, Comet, CONtv, Dove Channel, DUST, FailArmy, Futurism, Gravitas, Mobcrush, MovieMix, NASA TV, Outdoor America, The Pet Collective, SOAR, Stadium, TBD, The T, and World Poker Tour.
The company says it plans to grow its selection to over 50 networks by the end of 2019.
It’s clear, however, that the network selection won’t be the draw here – it’s the local content.
Today, it’s still fairly difficult for cord cutters to access local programming. While consumers can use a digital antenna to capture over-the-air TV signals for free, it requires the installation of a not-very-aesthetically-pleasing antenna. (At least Amazon’s Fire TV Recast gives you the option of hiding the antenna in a back room so as not to junk up your entertainment center.)
But even with an antenna, signals can be hit-or-miss – some areas have poor reception, or are too far from the signal’s source for a good experience.
And while the new crop of live TV streaming services provide another means of accessing local channels, they are not free.
Plus, the live TV services include cloud DVRs which subscribers use to record programs then skip the ads. STIRR doesn’t have a recording option, which may make it attractive to advertisers.
“Despite the explosive growth of new national over-the-top (OTT) services, local TV station’s programming, especially local news, has remained some of the most popular and desired content to audiences and advertisers alike,” said Adam Ware, STIRR’s General Manager, in a statement. “By creating the STIRR CITY channel format, local TV stations can now extend their programming strength to OTT,” he added.
Ware also points out that STIRR will give advertisers a way to reach a different demographic who is no longer watching traditional TV.
“Local broadcast traditional skews older. Streaming skews younger,” he tells TechCrunch. “This brings the two together for the first time,” he says.
STIRR’s ad sales will be coordinated between Sinclair Digital, OTT Compulse and Sinclair’s local stations. And its ad revenue is shared with content partners. (The company hasn’t ruled out a premium version that eliminates ads, we understand, but has nothing like that at launch.)
Also of note, you don’t have to live in a particular city to tune into its local programming via STIRR. That’s good, too, because STIRR doesn’t have a presence in all major metros. But it will suggest your closest markets when you load the app.
One caveat about STIRR: while local programming is available, STIRR won’t stream the primetime shows that these networks carry – you’ll still need your antenna or a paid streaming service for that. (Or, if you’re like a growing number of TV viewers, you don’t watch much network TV these days, in favor of streaming shows on Netflix and Amazon.)
In time, STIRR’s selection of content could be enhanced by more regional sports channels, as it’s a top bidder for those being sold by Disney and Fox. That could make the service more compelling.
STIRR is available for free on the web, iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Roku.
*We’ve run into some launch bugs when testing STIRR, and have gotten page load errors when trying to access the Channel Guide. Hopefully these will smooth out in time as traffic stabilizes.
Source: TechCrunch
Donald Trump’s new military branch earns a send-up from the people who brought us The Office.
Source: CNET