Year: 2019

Harley Davidson released new specs for its electric motorcycle and pulled the covers off the concept designs for its electric bicycle and scooter as the company’s push into electrifying its product line continues.

And the company showed that going electric doesn’t mean losing any of the muscle that’s intrinsic to the Harley Davidson chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected brand. In fact, the 2019 EV debut can out-accelerate any of the company’s gas motorcycles, according to specs released today at CES.

The battery powered LiveWire will do 0-60 mph in just over 3 seconds, go 110 miles on a charge, and be available in US dealerships in August for a $29,799 MSRP.

“It’s one of our fastest production bikes ever. We’re also announcing H-D Connect, which allows riders to monitor battery charge status remotely via their smartphone and enables features like a GPS enabled anti-theft system,” Harley Davidson’s Media Relations Manager Jen Hoyer told TechCrunch.

The specs bring greater detail to the company’s pivot to electric, which will also see HD enter the e-scooter/bicycle space. Through a series of announcements in 2018, Harley-Davidson—an American symbol of internal combustion, chrome and steel—indicated it’s going all in on two-wheeled EVs.

The Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer committed to release its first production e-moto last year. HD followed that up with announcements of an expanded EV line-up—including bicycles and scooters—and opened a Silicon Valley Based R&D center in late 2018.

“The LiveWire represents the future of Harley-Davidson, bringing high-performance electric propulsion…and cellular connectivity to today’s rider,” HD said today in a release. Beyond battery power, the 2019 EV production motorcycle also differs from the company’s gas line-up in offering an automatic drive-train: no clutch no gears; just twist and go.

The e-moto is equipped with an on-board Level 1 charger that plugs into a household outlet and can also be charged by a Level 3 DC Fast Charge. On charge times, the LiveWire gets 13 miles for each hour of charging using Level 1 and can reach 80 percent of charging capacity in 40 minutes at Level 3.

The new LiveWire also brings a signature sound — something of a hallmark on HD’s gas motorcycles — produced by the gear set between the motor and the drive belt.

Harley also released info on two new concept electric two-wheelers, resembling a mountain bike and a scooter, “that further explore the potential of urban mobility,” the company said. HD wouldn’t reveal any additional information on its non-motorcycle EV concepts or business plans, but it’s notable the historic motorcycle-maker also plans to enter the electric moped and bicycle space, where venture investors have deployed a great deal of capital recently.

“We’re at a historic juncture in the evolution of mobility…Our vision for the future is all encompassing….for all ages, from urban professional to exurban retiree, and from commute-minded to thrill-seeking,” said, Harley-Davidson’s CEO Matt Levatich on the LiveWire and e-concept releases.

Both are signs the 115 year-old U.S. company is willing to buck convention to appeal to a younger generation and remain relevant in today’s anything but static transit market.

Something needs to be done to revitalize a U.S. motorcycle industry that has been in the doldrums since the recession.

New U.S. sales dropped roughly 50 percent since 2008, with sharp declines in ownership by everyone under 40, with the exception of women—the only growing ownership segment. By and large, motorcycle manufacturers are now competing for an aging and shrinking American buying demographic.

E-motos could be a way to change that by bringing some segment of a more tech savvy younger generation back to motorcycles.

Some upstarts have entered the two-wheeled market with mixed success. Electric motorcycle startups Brammo and Mission Motors already tried and failed. And per TechCrunch’s reporting, California based Alta Motors—that had $45 million in VC—ceased operations late last year.

E-moto startups Energica and Zero Motorcycles have revved up U.S. promotion, distribution and sales. The two have extensive R&D facilities and roughly $90 million in VC among them.

The major gas names have been slower to embrace production EVs. Currently none of the big motorcycle manufacturers offer a street-legal, electric motorcycle for sale in the U.S.

With the LiveWire release—and subsequent two-wheel e-offerings—Harley Davidson will become the first major two-wheel player to do so. The market reaction and sales stats over the next several years will determine if the company’s e-motorcycle mobility bet pays off. HD’s entry into the e-scooter/e-bicycle space will also be a major development. Look for a TechCrunch update on that soon.

If you use wired headphones with your new iPhone, you’re probably familiar with the pain that comes along with trying to listen to music while you’re charging your phone via the Lightning port. Mophie unveiled its solution to this problem at the Consumer Electronics Show today.

Thanks to Qi wireless charging, Mophie’s new battery case for iPhone X, Xs Max, Xs/X and XR gives you full access to your iPhone’s Lightning port. That means you can listen to music with wired headphones while wirelessly charging your phone.

To charge the pack itself, you plug it in with a USB-C input or place it on a Qi-based wireless pad. The case provides up to 25 hours of talk time for iPhone Xs/X and up to 31 hours of talk time for the iPhone Xs Max and iPhone XR. This particular juice pack will be available this quarter for $119.95.

Self-driving technology company Torc Robotics is partnering with Transdev, the public transportation giant, to deploy fully autonomous electric shuttles designed to provide free connections to existing transit like trains and buses.

The companies, which made the announcement Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, are integrating Torc’s self-driving software stack and sensor suite into an autonomous shuttle known as i-Cristal that was unveiled earlier this year by Transdev and French manufacturer Lohr. Torc is licensing its Asimov self-driving software and sensor suite to Transdev.

The shuttles, which can seat up to 16 passengers, will operate in a dedicated lane offering a shared-ride mobility service at night and off-peak hours between the Massy transit station and the Paris-Saclay campus. Another autonomous shuttle service will operate on public roads offering a shared-ride mobility service throughout the business park and connecting to the tramway station in Rouen.

The partners are testing on closed courses and public roads before launching the public service trials in Paris-Saclay and Rouen.

The aim is integrate autonomous shuttles into Transdev’s public transportation networks, which are considerable. The public transportation company operates in 20 countries and its transit services provide 11 million passenger trips per day.

“At Transdev, we believe the future of mobility is increasingly P.A.C.E.: Personalized, Autonomous, Connected and Eco-Friendly,” Yann Leriche, Transdev’s North America CEO and head of autonomous transportation systems said in a statement. “We believe that public transport will lead and be the first place real autonomous services will be developed.”

The electric i-Cristal shuttles have Level 4 autonomous capabilities, a designation by the SAE that means these vehicles are able to operate fully autonomously in certain conditions or geographic areas. The shuttles, which operate without a steering wheel or pedals, can travel up to 19 miles per hour.

Torc Robotics’ specialty has been in automated heavy machinery and commercial equipment. But the company shifted its attention to consumer products in recent years. The company has integrated its Asimov self-driving car technology into Lexus RX and Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. Torc says it has tested these vehicles in more than 20 U.S. states while operating on both public roads and closed courses. 

Last year, at CES 2018, Torc announced a partnership with AAA to work on a set of safety criteria for using self-driving cars.

Alexa may be front and center for Amazon’s play this CES, but the just unloaded a whole bunch of news about Amazon Key. The list includes a name change to the more passive Key By Amazon, a title designed to reflect the broader scope of the line.

Alongside the vague rebranding, Key is getting a whole bunch of new features this week. In addition to the standard home and car delivery, the company is adding Key for Garage into the mix. Using the Key app, customers can remotely monitor the door and accept deliveries while they’re out.

It’s a nice addition to the existing offerings, for those looking to thwart package thieves or missed deliveries. Of course, the standard issue of how much access you’re willing to give Amazon and delivery services is still very much an open question — for some, however, garage access may ultimately be less invasive than a house or car.

This week also sees the addition of Key for Business, which is, well, pretty much what it sounds like. The fob lets building owners/staff manage deliveries, including hours and entry. The system has already begun to role to to a handful of apartment properties and is compatible with most building access systems, according to Amazon.

There’s a new WiFi deadbolt designed specifically for Key by Schlage, as well. That goes by the unwieldy name, Schlage Encode Smart WiFi Deadbolt. That ought to make it easier for interested parties to incorporate Key into their home. It will hit the States in Q1 of this year. Price is still TBD.

One last bit: Ring is always getting Key access for a bit of inter-brand synergy. Ring towers will be able to lock and unlock compatible locks via the Ring feed. “For example,” the company writes in the release, “when your dog sitter arrives, you can pull up the live feed using your Ring Video Doorbell, verify it’s your sitter, and unlock your Yale, Kwikset, or Schlage lock with the push of a button right in the Ring app.”

If you’re a GitHub user, but you don’t pay, this is a good week. Historically, GitHub always offered free accounts but the caveat was that your code had to be public. To get private repositories, you had to pay. Starting tomorrow, that limitation is gone. Free GitHub users now get unlimited private projects with up to three collaborators.

The amount of collaborators is really the only limitation here and there’s no change to how the service handles public repositories, which can still have unlimited collaborators.

This feels like a sign of goodwill on behalf of Microsoft, which closed its acquisition of GitHub last October, with former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman taking over as GitHub’s CEO. Some developers were rather nervous about the acquisition (though it feels like most have come to terms with it). It’s also a fair guess to assume that GitHub’s model for monetizing the service is a bit different from Microsoft’s. Microsoft doesn’t need to try to get money from small teams — that’s not where the bulk of its revenue comes from. Instead, the company is mostly interested in getting large enterprises to use the service.

Talking about teams, GitHub also today announced that it is changing the name of the GitHub Developer suite to ‘GitHub Pro.’ The company says it’s doing so in order to “help developers better identify the tools they need.”

But what’s maybe even more important is that GitHub Business Cloud and GitHub Enterprise (now called Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise) have become one and are now sold under the ‘GitHub Enterprise’ label and feature per-user pricing.

Note: this story was scheduled for tomorrow, but due to a broken embargo, we decided to publish today. The feature will go live tomorrow.

Audi has spun out a new company called Holoride that aims to bring a VR experience to the backseat of every car, no matter if it’s a Ford, Mercedes or Chrysler Pacifica minivan.

Holoride was announced Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

While Holoride says it’s an independent company, the roots of this startup are all Audi. The automaker holds a minority interest through subsidiary Audi Electronics Venture, which developed the technology. Audi will license the technology to Holoride and the startup will use an open platform to allow any automaker as well as content developers to create whatever reality formats they desire.

Nils Wollny, head of digital business at Audi co-founded Holoride with Marcus Kühne, who was project lead of Audi’s VR experience and Daniel Profendiner, a software engineer at the company. Wollny is Holoride’s CEO.

Holoride’s founding story didn’t have one single starting point. Profendiner and Kühne didn’t know each other. But both were working on the same patent application to use VR as a sales application and for simulation purposes. “We came to the same idea because we wrote the same patent,” Profendiner said, who then built a prototype to show Kühne.

The pair introduced the idea to Wollny, who recognized a much bigger opportunity, the two said.

“Car entertainment today is limited, you have small screens, people get sick. Here we’re expanding this potential,” Profendiner told TechCrunch before a demo at CES 2019. “We wanted to create something that benefitted from moving.”

TechCrunch experienced what this VR future in the car might look and feel like. And it didn’t make either participant sick or nauseous. Part of the magic is that what users view through their VR headsets is matched with the movement of the vehicle. It’s what made TechCrunch guinea pigs Matt Burns, and myself, have trouble distinguishing just how fast we were moving while we had our VR headsets on. (It felt like 35 miles per hour during the 10 minute demo at Las Vegas Speedway. We learned the vehicle was traveling at speeds of up to 90 mph.)

The interesting piece is what Holoride plans to do with this tech. The company is keen on making this an open platform and agnostic in every way.

Holoride hopes to have a software development kit out by the end of the year that it can share to content and game developers. The SDK will serve as the interface to the vehicle data and transfer those into virtual realities. This allows the developer to create movies and games that will synchronize with the user’s motion as they sit in the backseat of a vehicle. Conventional movies, series or presentations can also be viewed with a significantly reduced chance of motion sickness, according to Audi.

Holoride plans to launch the VR entertainment on the market within the next three years using standard VR glasses for backseat passengers. The company sees other opportunities to expand and incorporate the surrounding environment, like a traffic jam, becoming a part of the experience. For example, stopping at traffic lights could introduce unexpected obstacles to a game or interrupt a learning program with a quick quiz, the company said.

A Chinese voice assistant has been rapidly gaining ground in recent months. DuerOS, Baidu’s answer to Amazon’s Alexa, reached over 200 million devices, China’s top search engine announced on its Weibo official account last Friday.

To put that number into context, more than 100 million devices pre-installed with Alexa have been sold, Amazon recently said. Google just announced it expected Assitant to be on 1 billion devices by the end of this month.

Voice interaction technology is part of Baidu’s strategy to reposition itself from a heavy reliance on search businesses towards artificial intelligence. The grand plan took a hit when the world-renown scientist Lu Qi stepped down as Baidu’s chief operating officer, though the segment appears to have scored healthy growth lately, with DuerOS more than doubling from a base of 90 million installs since last June.

When it comes to how many devices actually use DuerOS regularly, the number is much less significant: 35 million machines a month at the time Baidu’s general manager for smart home devices announced the figure last November.

Like Alexa, which has made its way into both Amazon-built Echo speakers and OEMs, DuerOS also takes a platform play to power both Baidu-built and third-party devices.

Interestingly, DuerOS has achieved all that with fewer capabilities and a narrower partnership network than its American counterpart. By the end of 2018, Alexa could perform more than 56,000 skills. Devices from over 4,500 brands can now be controlled with Alexa, says Amazon. By comparison, Baidu’s voice assistant had 800 different skills, its chief architect Zhong Lei revealed at the company’s November event. It was compatible with 85 brands at the time.

This may well imply that DuerOS’s allies include heavy-hitters with outsize user bases. Baidu itself could be one as it owns one of China’s biggest navigation app, which is second to Alibaba’s AutoNavi in terms of number of installs, according to data from iResearch. Baidu said in October that at least 140 million people had activated the voice assistant of its Maps service.

Furthermore, Baidu speakers have managed to crack a previously duopolistic market. A report from Canalys shows that Baidu clocked in a skyrocketing 711 percent quarter-to-quarter growth to become China’s third-biggest vendor of smart speakers during Q3 last year. Top players Alibaba and Xiaomi, on the other hand, both had a sluggish season.

While Baidu deploys DuerOS to get home appliances talking, it has doubled down on smart vehicles with Apollo . The system, which the company calls the Android for autonomous driving, counted 130 OEMs, parts suppliers and other forms of partners as of last October. It’s attracted global automakers Volvo and Ford who want a foothold in China’s self-driving movement. Outside China, Apollo has looked to Microsoft Azure Cloud as it hunts for international partnerships.

Baidu has yet to prove commercial success for its young AI segment, but its conversational data trove holds potential for a lucrative future. Baidu became China’s top advertising business in part by harnessing what people search on its engine. Down the road, its AI-focused incarnation could apply the same data-crunching process to what people say to their machines.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Nvidia launches the $349 GeForce RTX 2060

Nvidia broke with tradition and put a new focus on gaming at CES. Last night the company unveiled the RTX 2060, a $349 low-end version of its new Turing-based desktop graphics cards. The RTX 2060 will be available on Jan. 15.

2. Elon Musk’s vision of spaceflight is gorgeous 

This spring SapceX intends to launch the next phase in its space exploration plans. The newly named Starship rocket, previously known as the BFR, intends to to be rocket to rule them all. And it’s going to look good doing it.

3. Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from its troubles in emerging markets like China, Apple is starting to face backlash from a European population that’s crying foul over the company’s perceived hypocrisy on data privacy. It’s become clear that Apple’s biggest success is now its biggest challenge in Europe.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

4. Marc Andreessen: audio will be “titanically important” and VR will be “1,000” times bigger than AR

In a recently recorded podcast Marc Andreesen gave some predictions on the future of the tech industry. Surprisingly, the all-start investor is continuing his support of the shaky VR industry saying that expanding the immersive world will require us to remove the head-mounted displays we’ve become accustomed to.

5. Fitness marketplace ClassPass acquires competitor GuavaPass

ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace, is in the midst of an expansion sprint. The company announced yesterday that it’s acquiring one it competitors, GuavaPass, for an undisclosed amount to expand into Asia. The move now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.

6. Apple shows off new smart home products from HomeKit partners

Apple gave a snapshot of its future smart home ecosystem at CES. Looks like an array of smart light switches, door cameras, electrical outlets and more are on the way and will be configurable through the Home app and Siri.

7. Parcel Guard’s smart mailbox protects your packages from porch thieves

Danby is showing off its newly launched smart mailbox called Parcel Guard at CES, which allows deliveries to be left securely at customers’ doorsteps. Turns out you won’t need a farting glitter bomb to protect your packages after all. The Parcel Guard starts at $399 and pre-orders are will be available this week.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Nvidia launches the $349 GeForce RTX 2060

Nvidia broke with tradition and put a new focus on gaming at CES. Last night the company unveiled the RTX 2060, a $349 low-end version of its new Turing-based desktop graphics cards. The RTX 2060 will be available on Jan. 15.

2. Elon Musk’s vision of spaceflight is gorgeous 

This spring SapceX intends to launch the next phase in its space exploration plans. The newly named Starship rocket, previously known as the BFR, intends to to be rocket to rule them all. And it’s going to look good doing it.

3. Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from its troubles in emerging markets like China, Apple is starting to face backlash from a European population that’s crying foul over the company’s perceived hypocrisy on data privacy. It’s become clear that Apple’s biggest success is now its biggest challenge in Europe.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

4. Marc Andreessen: audio will be “titanically important” and VR will be “1,000” times bigger than AR

In a recently recorded podcast Marc Andreesen gave some predictions on the future of the tech industry. Surprisingly, the all-start investor is continuing his support of the shaky VR industry saying that expanding the immersive world will require us to remove the head-mounted displays we’ve become accustomed to.

5. Fitness marketplace ClassPass acquires competitor GuavaPass

ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace, is in the midst of an expansion sprint. The company announced yesterday that it’s acquiring one it competitors, GuavaPass, for an undisclosed amount to expand into Asia. The move now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.

6. Apple shows off new smart home products from HomeKit partners

Apple gave a snapshot of its future smart home ecosystem at CES. Looks like an array of smart light switches, door cameras, electrical outlets and more are on the way and will be configurable through the Home app and Siri.

7. Parcel Guard’s smart mailbox protects your packages from porch thieves

Danby is showing off its newly launched smart mailbox called Parcel Guard at CES, which allows deliveries to be left securely at customers’ doorsteps. Turns out you won’t need a farting glitter bomb to protect your packages after all. The Parcel Guard starts at $399 and pre-orders are will be available this week.

This morning’s LG CES press conference was, predictably, all about TVs. Big TVs. High res TVs. Rolling TVs. The company did, however, give a little stage time to its appliance line and, per usual, allotted some lip service to its ThinQ AI offering.

The company’s definition and use of artificial intelligence seems nebulous, at best from the outside. But LG, like many others, is convinced that the future of hardware is largely software based. As of this morning, that also extends to customer service.

In one of the more interesting tidbits announced during an otherwise fairly lackluster early morning press conference, LG announced ProActive Customer Care, a new ThinQ offering. Details are pretty scant at the moment, but LG claims that the technology is capable of detecting problems with home appliances before they happen — and alerting customers accordingly.

Sounds like a handy feature if it works as advertised. Actually pulling it off, however, involves a lot of moving parts — both literal and figurative. More details are likely coming later this year — and if we’re lucky, tonight at LG’s first-ever CES keynote.