No car company is making more headlines right now than Tesla. Can the electric vehicle company stay ahead in the battle for electric car dominance?
Mark Rechtin, Executive Editor at Motor Trend, says Tesla's competitors are quickly gaining ground. Motor Trend tested out the Tesla Model 3, Nissan Leaf, and Chevrolet Bolt. Rechtin says that the Leaf and Bolt offer the best options, especially if you don't have $60,000 to spend on a Tesla.
Rechtin also discusses the ongoing problems Tesla is having with its Model 3 production. The company continues to fall behind its original target numbers, while its CEO Elon Musk is tweeting about a possible Tesla pickup truck. Rechtin says Musk should focus more on the Model 3 and less on his dream projects.
Cryptocurrencies and digital assets are ideally left to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Congressman Darren Soto (D-Fla.). "Securities laws can be very intense and hurt the market unless it’s truly a security,” Soto told Cheddar Thursday.
Bitcoin's rebound over the $4,000 mark was short-lived, tumbling on Thursday below the $4,000 price level for the first time since Jan. 6. "I think it is a good chance we are going to retest 3,000 as a low and there is a good chance it will probably break through that ー if it hits that low," said Civic CEO Vinny Lingham in an interview with Cheddar. "The market is definitely trying to find a bottom, and I don't think we've found one yet."
Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm, spoke to Cheddar's Hope King from CES, where Qualcomm is unveiling several new products and initiatives, including A.I.-based infotainment centers for vehicles. But the big story of the year, Amon said, will be the spread of 5G technology, which he expects to be in most major cities and on most new Android devices by the second half of this year.
Adoption of new technology won't necessarily cause jobs to disappear ー even if that technology is a humanoid robot, said Steve Carlin, the chief strategy officer of SoftBank Robotics America. "I think the incorrect assumption is simply because you're employing technology, that therefore a job has to go away," Carlin told Cheddar's Hope King on Thursday.
Dustee Jenkins, global head of communications for Spotify, came to CES to "put a stake in the ground" for podcasting. She told Cheddar that Spotify still sees upside in new forms of audio storytelling, and its "discover" algorithm can help users find podcasts that will appeal to them, much in the way millions of people use the feature to find new bands.
GoPro has carved out a niche for itself as the go-to maker of action cameras. And one trend in particular helped kick-start the camera-maker's success: the selfie. CEO Nick Woodman told Cheddar's Hope King the company had a real "aha" moment around 2009 when it introduced high-definition (HD) footage into its selfie-style camera.
Cars in 2019 are about so much more than transporting passengers from point A to B. That's why luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz chose to sit out the Detroit Auto Show, and debut its second-generation CLA Coupe at CES instead. "Today's cars aren't just about metal and an engine anymore," Dietmar Exler, president and CEO at Mercedes-Benz USA, told Cheddar from the Las Vegas convention Wednesday.
The electric vehicle industry got a jolt this week as Harley-Davidson introduced its new LiveWire electric motorcycle at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. "We're the leader in the category, so we're going to lead the electrification of the sport," Heather Malenshek, senior vice president of marketing and brand at Harley-Davidson, told Cheddar at CES.
This year, CES marked a new partnership between gaming hardware maker Alienware and "League of Legends" developer Riot Games, a union that was a year in the making, according to the general manager at Dell's gaming arm, Alienware. "It actually started here a year ago," Azor told Cheddar at the Las Vegas conference on Wednesday. "That's where we first met."
Among the attendees at this year's CES was Aurora, a startup building autonomous driving technology, backed by some of the top talent in the field. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson, who co-founded the company with a former Tesla engineer and robotics expert, told Cheddar's Hope King that Aurora was "building the driver" for driverless cars.
