AirPods charging on the back of your iPhone could be a beautiful thing.
Source: CNET
Ford of Europe’s vision for electrification includes 16 vehicle models — eight of which will be on the road by the end of this year — the company announced at its Go Further event in Amsterdam.
Those plans include a plug-in hybrid variant of its Kuga SUV, its Mustang-inspired crossover, and a commercial transit van.
Ford’s European electrification strategy is in line with its plans for North America to focus largely on hybrids. For instance, in a separate event on Tuesday Ford took the wraps off its latest generation of the Escape, a 2020 model vehicle for the North American market that is sportier, loaded with technology and, comes with hybrid and electric options.
Last year, Ford ramped up its plans, announcing that it would phase out most cars it sells in North America. Ford will continue to produce the Mustang and focus the rest of its efforts in North America on trucks, utilities and commercial vehicles, as well as a move into electric vehicles.
The operational piece of Ford of Europe’s strategy, which does include a couple of all-electric vehicles in the mix, namely the Mustang-eseque SUV, will be largely led by Stuart Rowley.
Rowley, who took over as vice present and president of the regional outfit on April 1, will be responsible for all operational leadership of the business unit, including acceleration of the European transformation strategy. He reports to Jim Farley, president of Ford Global Markets.
The majority of the vehicles introduced Tuesday at Ford of Europe’s event are either hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicles. Two of those vehicles – a plug-in hybrid Explorer SUV and a new plug-in hybrid Tourneo for the commercial van market – made their global debuts at the Go Further event.
A plug-in hybrid variant of Ford’s new mid-size Kuga SUV, which will have a 31-mile range for the battery piece of the hybrid picture, was also introduced along with new Fiesta EcoBoost Hybrid and Focus EcoBoost Hybrid models that feature mild-hybrid technology for optimized fuel-efficiency.
Ford focused on the commercial end of the market as well, with plans to bring an all-electric Transit van to Europe by 2021. Ford is bringing a plug-in hybrid version of the Transit van to market this year. This plug-in hybrid will have a 13.6 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and Ford’s 1-liter EcoBoost gas engine, which acts as a range extender. The powertrain will have an all-electric (sometimes referred to as a zero-emission driving range) of 31 miles, and a total 310 miles range using the range extender. The vehicle is being trialed in London, with further testing scheduled to start soon in Valencia, Spain, and Cologne, Germany.
The Ford of Europe event confirmed that the often-teased ‘Mustang-inspired’ electric crossover will be more than a North American market. The vehicle, Ford said Tuesday, will be able to travel 600 kilometers, or 370 miles, on a single charge when it comes to market in 2020, an estimate based on European fuel consumption and emissions standard known as WLTP.
The WLTP, or World Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure, is a new standard that is supposed to make European fuel economy labels more realistic. (In the past, ranges in Europe were wildly overstated compared to the more conservative EPA estimates. Vehicles in the U.S. use EPA estimates.
Ford has said it’s targeting a 300-mile range for its electric crossover in the United States.
Source: TechCrunch
But in his internet vision, you’ll have to pay for services no longer subsidized by advertising.
Source: CNET
The night is dark and full of malicious files.
Source: CNET
The Qs Inspiration electric sedan concept will make its debut in Shanghai in April.
Source: CNET
The Spark and Spike email apps want to pick up where Google’s beloved Inbox left off.
Source: CNET
Catch up on the most important news today in 2 minutes or less.
Source: Wired
She said she was going to the pool.
Source: CNET
This morning, Forbes wrote a lengthy profile of Andreessen Horowitz, the now 10-year-old venture firm that its rivals love to hate but nevertheless tend to copy. It’s a great read that revisits some of the firm’s wins and losses and, interestingly, regrets, including the founders’ early predisposition to talk trash about the rest of the venture industry.
As Ben Horowitz tells reporter Alex Konrad, “I kind of regret it, because I feel like I hurt people’s feelings who were perfectly good businesses . . . I went too far.”
The story also suggests that Andreessen Horowitz — whose agency-like model has been widely replicated by other big venture firms — is re-shaping venture capital a second time. It’s doing this, says Forbes, by turning itself into a registered investment advisor.
But the firm isn’t alone is morphing into something very different than it once was, including an RIA. SoftBank is already one. General Catalyst appears to be in the process of registering as one, too. (It recently withdrew its status as a so-called exempt reporting advisor.) Other big firms with a range of un-VC-like products are similarly eyeing the same move.
They don’t have much choice. While VCs have traditionally been able to dabble in new areas through their limited partner agreements with their own investors, they’ve also faced what’s traditionally been a 20 percent cap on these activities, like buying in the public markets, investing in other funds, issuing debt to fund buyouts, and acquiring equity through secondary transactions.
Put another way, 20 percent of their capital could be used to experiment, but the rest had to be funneled into typical venture capital-type deals.
For Andreessen Horowitz, that cap clearly began to grate. An early and enduring believer in crytpocurrencies, marketplaces, and applications, the firm grew particularly frustrated over its inability to invest more of its flagship fund into crypto startups. It raised a separate crypto fund last year so it could move more aggressively on opportunities, but according to Forbes, the constraints that came with creating that separate legal entity gave rise to new aggravations.
By becoming a registered investment advisor, Andreessen Horowitz will no longer have to limit these stakes, including in its general fund — the newest of which it’s expected to announce shortly. It will also have the freedom to invest any percentage of its fund that it wants in larger high-growth companies, to buy shares from founders and early investors, and to trade public stocks, as Forbes notes.
It’s the same reason that SoftBank is a registered investment advisor and other big firms with more assets will invariably be, as well. As longtime startup attorney Barry Kramer observes, “Like the now-giant operating companies that VCs once funded, like Google and Apple and Amazon — each of which used to play in discrete market segments and now overlap — hedge funds, mutual funds, secondary funds, and venture funds that used to play in discrete market segments are starting to overlap, too.”
In fact, the opportunity to shop for secondary stakes alone could drive a venture firm to restructure. “Secondary markets are eating” the public markets, observes Barrett Cohn on the investment bank Scenic Advisement, which helps broker sales between equity buyers and sellers. Cohn has a vested interest in this turnabout, but it’s also hard to argue he’s wrong, considering how long startups remain private, and how much more secondary activity now takes place before they’re acquired, go public, or conk out.
Little wonder the powerful venture capital lobby group — the National Venture Capital Association — has been trying to talk the SEC into changing its definition of what constitutes a venture capital firm. It recognizes that it will lose more and more members if venture firms aren’t afforded more flexibility.
In the meantime, becoming an RIA isn’t without its downsides — a lot of them, notes Bob Raynard, the managing director of the fund administration services company Standish Management in San Francisco.
Though he thinks many firms like Andreessen Horowitz may not have a choice at a certain point (“I think there are a lot of other growth equity and venture firms that should be registered for their own sake”), the new rules to which it will be adapting can “be quite onerous,” beginning with a complete lack of privacy, as well as expenses.
One estimate we found suggests that the median annual compliance costs are eight times higher for RIAs than for exempt registered advisors.
“If [Andreessen Horowitz] is becoming an RIA, its cost structure just went way up,” says Raynard, observing that a compliance officer will have to sign off on everything an employee at the firm does, as well as the investing decisions that its partners’ spouses, children, and even parents make. “As a VC, you don’t have to report your trades,” Raynard notes, but an RIA has to ensure that nothing and no one with a pecuniary interest in the firm creates an expensive misstep.
One could also imagine it creating headaches for limited partners, who typically like to invest in distinct asset classes, whether venture capital or private equity or hedge funds. If Andreessen Horowitz, among other firms, starts to look like an amalgamation of all three, how will it be viewed? In which bucket will it land?
The firm declined to answer that question and others of ours today, saying it’s focused for now on completing the process of registering as an RIA. Raynard pushes back on the idea that its new look might throw off the institutions that have long funded it, however. “I think regulators will view it as a good thing, and I think most LPs would view it as a favorable shift, because of increased outside scrutiny involved.”
Indeed, Raynard thinks that beyond expenses and added layers of management and and an eagle-eyed SEC watching more closely, a bigger trade-off as venture firms become investment firms more broadly could be that it becomes harder to recruit.
Despite widespread interest in working for a brand-name firm, “if you’re a junior-level person and you’re being recruited by a firm that’s a registered investment advisor versus a venture firm where your deals are not being scrutinized and you have some privacy,” says Raynard, “it’s something you’re going to think about.”
Source: TechCrunch
Long before phones had cameras, people transmitted photos. Snap + Share, an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, looks at how.
Source: CNET