Author: azeeadmin

Alibaba’s long-term ambition to grow its business in the US is taking another step forward. To increase sales to US small businesses, the company has partnered with Kabbage, the Softbank-backed unicorn that provides loans to SMBs using big data and machine learning to determine eligibility faster than a traditional bank lender, to provide up to $150,000 of financing at the point of sale on Alibaba.com as part of a new program called Pay Later.

The move comes on the heels of an interesting, if slightly older, piece of news: Alibaba quietly made an acquisition in the US last year to further its interests in the country as it continues to face-off with homegrown competition, with Amazon leading the charge.

In September 2018, with very little fanfare, Alibaba acquired a startup called OpenSky for an undisclosed amount to build out its business in North America.

Alibaba had originally taken a stake in OpenSky in 2015 as a part of a deal it struck for the startup to take over several sites it had tried to establish in the US, without much success.

Now, OpenSky runs Alibaba’s B2B business in North America (branded as Alibaba B2B and headed up by John Caplan, who had been the founder of OpenSky), and it is also the company’s main consumer face in the US, under the OpenSky brand, operating as a marketplace for various third-party merchants, and controlling a selection of the brands that Alibaba had offloaded back in 2015.

“Quietly” is the operative word with this acquisition. It seems the only announcement of the M&A was a post on LinkedIn, with the only media coverage being an edited version of the release on a small publishing blog. Meanwhile, there appears to be no reference whatsoever on OpenSky.com indicating Alibaba’s ownership of it.

While Alibaba is the undisputed king of commerce in Asia, its decision to work with Kabbage for financing in the US — despite loans giant Ant Financial being an affiliate of Alibaba’s — underscores the giant’s current softly, softly approach in North America in the wake of some setbacks.

After failing to create much of a stir — and then offloading — its group of US consumer-focused sites, in 2017 company made a big effort, led by CEO Jack Ma, to woo US businesses to do more on Alibaba, starting with a big event in Detroit and a promise to President Trump that doing business on his site would lead to 1 million new jobs.

Now Ma says that won’t be possible because of the ongoing trade war between the US and China. Meanwhile, its affiliate Alipay’s attempted acquisition of Dallas-based MoneyGram for $1.2 billion got blocked by the US government, citing national security concerns. And its ambitions to go head to head with AWS by way of Alibaba Cloud have also been scaled back.

But while the US has remained an elusive market, it’s nonetheless a huge one where Alibaba wants to be. Considering both the Kabbage deal and the OpenSky acquisition, it seems that Alibaba has decided to take a less direct approach to growth in the US, tapping US-built businesses to do it.

For Alibaba, offering a way to finance purchases is an essential component of courting small and medium businesses, who may not always have a large amount of working capital at hand to reinvest in equipment and other business services. The high $150,000 limit is a signal that this is not about buying small office supplies but making larger purchasing commitments.

“We recognized an opportunity to give our customers a convenient financing solution that allows them to improve their cash flow at competitive rates, so they can have the cash they need to grow their businesses,” said Caplan in a statement. “We are delighted to be partnering with Kabbage to empower our SMB customers to source at greater volumes, or improve their cash flow to invest in other areas of their businesses.”

On the part of Kabbage, appearing as a option at the point of sale is an obvious next step for a loans company, as it helps Kabbage connect directly with businesses looking access to cash (one of the key reasons for loans being to buy goods for a business to run). The loans are constructed to be repaid over six months with interest rates starting at 1.25 percent.

Point of sale financing services like Pay Later aim to compete against other options that SMBs have when they are making larger purchases. In the case of Alibaba, other options include paying by credit cards, money transfers, and e-checking. Pay Later will be the only one of these that is free to use (in that Alibaba itself won’t charge a transaction fee) after March of this year. It’s also potentially one of the faster options for completing the transaction if you don’t have immediate access to cash.

“When you are at the point of sale, you’re not going to stick around 48 hours waiting for a loan approval,” said Kabbage CEO and co-founder Rob Frohwein about the service.

Frohwein added that it had been working on a pilot of the service since the middle of last year and that Kabbage is Alibaba’s only partner for the service.

We asked and he confirmed Alibaba has not invested in Kabbage as part of the deal — both have a common investor in the form of Softbank — and that they are not disclosing any financial terms of the arrangement. He also confirmed that Kabbage is likely to seek further equity funding in the near future.

If you’re down in ///joins.slides.predict you may want to visit ///history.writing.closets or, if you’ve got a little money to spend, try the Bananas Foster at ///cattle.excuse.luggage. Either way, don’t forget to stop by ///plotting.nest.reshape before you fly out.

If things go what3words way, that’s how you’ll be sending out addresses in the future. Founded by musician Chris Sheldrick and Cambridge mathematician Mohan Ganesalingam, the company has cut the world into three meter boxes that are identified by three words. Totonno’s Pizza in Brooklyn is at ///cats.lots.dame while the White House is at ///kicks.mirror.tops. Because there are only three words, you can easily find spots that have no addresses and without using cumbersome latitude and longitude coordinates.

The team created this system after finding that travelers found it almost impossible to find some out-of-the-way places. Tokyo, for example, is notoriously difficult to traverse via address while other situations – renting a Yurt in Alaska, for example – require constantly updated addresses that do not lend themselves to GPS coordinates. Instead, you can tell your driver to take you to ///else.impulse.broom and be done with it.

The team has raised £40 million and is currently working on systems to add their mapping API to industrial and travel partners. You can browse the map here.

“I organized live music events around the world. Often in rural places. HeIfound equipment, musicians and guests got lost. We tried to give coordinates but they were impossible to remember and communicate accurately,” said Sheldrick. “This is the only address solution designed for voice, and the only system using words and not alphanumeric codes.”

Obviously this will take some getting used to. The three words might get mispronounced, leading to some fun problems, but in general it might be good to way to get around the world in a post-modern way. After all, some of the spot names sound like poetry and if you don’t like it you can always just go to ///drills.dandelions.bounds.

Volkswagen will spend $800 million to expand a U.S. factory that will produce the automaker’s next generation of electric vehicles.

The factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. will be the company’s North American base for manufacturing electric vehicles, VW CEO Dr. Herbert Diess said during a presentation at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday. The expansion is expected to create 1,000 jobs at the plant.

VW’s Chattanooga expansion is just a piece of the automaker’s broader plan to move away from diesel in the wake of the emissions cheating scandal that erupted in 2015. Globally, VW Group plans to commit almost $50 billion through 2023 toward the development and production of electric vehicles and digital services. The Volkswagen brand (so not including its Audi or Porsche brands) alone has forecasted selling 150,000 EVs by 2020 worldwide, increasing that number to 1 million by 2025.

The company is also building a European facility in Zwickau, Germany set to begin EV production in 2019 and adding EV-production at facilities in Anting and Foshan, in China, in 2020, and in the German cities of Emden and Hanover by 2022.

The Tennessee factory (along with the other new facilities) will produce EVs using Volkswagen’s modular electric toolkit chassis, or MEB, that was introduced by the company in 2016.  The MEB is a flexible modular system—really a matrix of common parts—for producing electric vehicles that VW says it make it more efficient and cost effective.

Electric vehicle production at the Tennessee site will begin in 2022. However, Volkswagen of America says it will offer the first EV based on the MEB platform to customers in 2020.

This EV will be a series-production version of the ID. CROZZ SUV concept that was first shown at the North American International Auto Show last year. This vehicle will have the interior space of a midsize SUV in the footprint of a compact SUV. Volkswagen of America will also offer a multi-purpose EV based off the ID. BUZZ concept.

Volkswagen builds the midsize Atlas SUV and the Passat sedan at the Chattanooga factory, which opened in 2011. A five-seat version of the Atlas, the Atlas Cross Sport, is slated to begin production in Chattanooga later this year.

“Volkswagen is continuing to invest in the US to broaden its manufacturing and R&D footprint,” Diess said. “Projects like the electric car production announced today and changes in our sourcing decisions are in line with the current direction of trade policy including the USMCA.”

Facebook wants to make it easier for users share events and coordinate with friends before the event’s start. The company this morning said it will test a new feature that lets users share those events they’re interested in attending to their Story, then make plans to meet up with friends who also plan to attend.

The test will involve a new option to “Share to Your Story” that appears when you visit an event’s page on Facebook. If shared, friends will see a tappable sticker within your Story that includes the event details, and lets friends respond that they’re also “interested” right from the Story itself.

Friends can also tap on the sticker in the Story to visit the event page.

In addition, the new feature will offer a list of friends who plan to attend the event, so you can easily create a group chat with those users.

While the feature is available to all in the test markets, it seems particularly targeted towards younger users.

It arrives at a time when Facebook has been losing its younger users at an even faster pace than previously expected. According to a 2018 report from eMarketer, for instance, last year was the first time when less than half of U.S. internet users ages 12 to 17 would use Facebook at least once a month.

Instead, Facebook’s monthly user growth was coming from older demographics, the report said. It predicted Facebook would lose 2 million users age 24 and younger during the year.

Those users would be migrating to other social networks, including Instagram and Snapchat.

A separate report from Pew Research Center released in fall 2018 confirmed this trend, saying that 44 percent of younger users (ages 18 to 29) had deleted the Facebook app from their phone over the past year.

Meanwhile, the younger demographic has begun to organize events on Instagram, a report from The Atlantic recently noted.

Teens are creating private Instagram accounts for their events. The account will include the date and handles of the organizers, in some cases. If the account follows you, it’s your invite. If you send a follow request and are approved, you’re also invited.

Of course, Instagram wasn’t designed for events the way that Facebook is, but it can be popular because the party account can remain private and anonymous – helpful for staying under the radar of snooping parents, for instance.

With the Stories feature, the company now hopes that a different way to share and track events on Facebook itself will offer a similar ability to rally friends that appeals to younger users.

To use the new feature, you’ll go the Events page, click “Share” below the date and time of the event, then tap “Share to Story.” Friends tap “interested” to say they may attend, and you’ll be able to see these responses. To kick off the group chat, tap on the circle next to the friends in the list.

The test is rolling out now to users in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil, Facebook says.

 

This weekend, I finished reading Oliver Morton’s The Planet Remade (thanks to reader Eliot Peper for recommending it). Morton has a multitude of goals with the book, but there were two I think are deeply valuable. First, geoengineering is a plausible approach to solving our climate problems this century, and second, engineering the climate generates tough policy challenges, but also opportunities to make the planet more equitable.

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First and foremost: the book is mind-expanding in the best way possible. Morton confronts an extremely contentious issue with judicious facts and supreme insight gleaned over many years of studying geoengineering. Whether you are a dedicated acolyte of cloud seeding and veils or a committed opponent to any tampering of earth’s environment, he has developed a book that forces us to think about our actions and ultimately what the consequences of those choices are.

Frankly, those choices offer stark consequences. Morton describes the challenge of climate this century:

The world’s population is expected to grow from seven billion today to more or less ten billion by 2100. By that time the number of people enjoying rich-world energy privileges should also reach ten billion. So the challenge is to achieve for an extra eight billion people in the twenty-first century what was achieved for two billion in the twentieth century. Meeting that challenge implies a lot more energy usage.

Morton is a staunch environmentalist and deeply concerned about environmental justice and the inequities of the planet. But he is also a “climate realist” — he understands that our current solutions to climate change are not really solutions at all, since they either lack the scale required to solve the problem, or will continue to exacerbate existing inequities between different people of this planet.

For example, take emissions-free nuclear power, which is brought up as a panacea to our fossil fuel-driven economy. Morton writes:

If the world had the capacity to deliver one of the largest nuclear power plants ever built once a week, week in and week out, it would take 20 years to replace the current stock of coal-fired plants (at present, the world builds about three or four nuclear power plants a year, and retires old ones almost as quickly).

Sure, nuclear power plants are a literal solution, but most definitely not a pragmatic one since the scale required is just not there.

He also spends significant time deconstructing recent climate negotiations, finding that the focus on carbon has been something of a red herring (many other emissions are far worse than carbon and less directly connected to the modern industrial economy). Instead, they have been driven by the alignment of different environmentally-concerned parties:

Carbon dioxide suited scientists because it seemed like a straightforward measure of the problem. It suited greens because it was a pretty good proxy for the industrial society against which their movement was a reaction. The international negotiations that set up the UNFCCC showed that it suited developing countries because it was primarily a developed-country issue; at the time of Rio, the vast majority of all the industrial emissions since the the eighteenth century had come from Europe and America.

Carbon is of course a problem, but it has become a tagline, a brand, a cri de coeur of the international climate movement. Yet the challenges facing the planet are so much deeper than just carbon.

To avoid that narrow focus, Morton argues for a complete reframing of the climate debate toward solutions that can actually repair the climate, and even improve it for diverse populations around the world.

Now, the term “geoengineering” brings with it a bag of Hollywood-induced imagery of nuclear winters and globe-spanning hurricanes. Morton addresses those risks across his chapters, noting that geoengineering can indeed go wrong.

Even so, he convincingly argues that there are geoengineering techniques designed around key climate processes that can be high leverage, reversible, testable, and that have the scale required to actually solve climate challenges in a sustainable way. These processes aren’t speculation — we (mostly) understand the science today, and have pathways toward the technology required to execute a strategy.

The real challenge — as it always is — are humans and their governments. Morton notes that climate change has a huge deleterious impact on nations such as Maldives, but that it can also benefit certain regions by transitioning them from colder to more temperate climates.

That means that any geoengineering solution is going to face the prospect of creating winners and losers. Any international agreement is going to have to contend with those politics, and design mechanisms to ameliorate their effects.

Much as Morton calls for a planet remade, he sees an opportunity for geoengineering to trigger reflection among governments on their own interests:

Much better, rather than treating geoengineering as a technocratic way of avoiding politics, to use it as a way of reinventing politics. Exploring the potential of geoengineering could spur and shape the development of a new way of making planetary decisions. The aim should not be the development of a thermostat alone; it should be the development of a new hand to use it.

Environmentalists may balk at the idea of allowing humans to have their hands on any part of the earth system. But we are here, all seven billion of us, and we already have our brutal hands on the system. The question is whether we can start to use our hands in a far more productive way that can make the earth sustainable for centuries to come. As Morton notes, “The planet has been remade, is being remade, will be remade.” Geoengineering technologies offer solutions, if we can agree in how to use them.

Share your feedback on your startup’s attorney

My colleague Eric Eldon and I are reaching out to startup founders and execs about their experiences with their attorneys. Our goal is to identify the leading lights of the industry and help spark discussions around best practices. If you have an attorney you thought did a fantastic job for your startup, let us know using this short Google Forms survey and also spread the word. We will share the results and more in the coming weeks.

Stray Thoughts (aka, what I am reading)

Short summaries and analysis of important news stories

Why Gutenberg can still recognize the book

Craig Mod wrote a compelling piece in Wired on the future of the book, and why today’s books essentially look the same as when the printing press was first invented. Despite the prognosticators expecting books to have moving pictures, interactivity, and dynamic narratives, almost nothing in that direction has actually occurred as readers continue to enjoy the traditional format. Instead, where the real innovation has taken place is on the business side, where new models from crowdfunding to email subscriptions have transformed the economics of book publishing.

Automattic’s Newspack to drive revenue for smaller publishers

While content management systems have been around for decades, almost none of these systems are designed to create revenues for their users out of the box. WordPress doesn’t have any subscription features or advertising networks built-in, which means that sites that want to make money have to spend a lot of dollars just to get setup and started.

So the announcement this morning that Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, is going to offer a new platform combining content management with revenue called Newspack is both interesting and definitely needed. It’s a proper extension of their existing platform, and a reminder for product managers that the sustainability of their customers is critical for long-term success.

Huawei sales executive arrested in Poland

We have been following Huawei’s travails in the West for some time. One major point of contention is whether the company spies on behalf of the Chinese government. Western governments have argued that it does, but as China has repeatedly noted, they have never provided any proof.

On Friday in Poland, a Huawei executive was arrested for alleged espionage, which could provide the first public evidence of collusion between Huawei and Beijing. The company subsequently fired the executive and claimed that his actions were unrelated to the company. Poland has since called on NATO countries to remove Huawei equipment from their telecommunications infrastructure. Huawei equipment is widely installed in Europe and European governments have so far evaded calls by the U.S. to boycott the company. As the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world, Huawei’s response could have vast repercussions for the deployment of 5G networks.

PG&E – oh boy

Silicon Valley’s (and much of California’s) gas and electric utility is going bankrupt following massive liability claims against the utility due to its equipment sparking wildfires over the past few years. California may lead the world in innovation, but it seems to always be on the precipice of disaster when it comes to infrastructure.

What’s next & obsessions

• I am reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• Arman and I are interested in societal resilience startups that are targeting areas like water security, housing, infrastructure, climate change, disaster response, etc. Reach out if you have ideas or companies here.

In 2017, Apple announced the Qi-compatible AirPower Mat, a device that would charge multiple devices at once simply by placing them on the mat.

That product has been seriously delayed due to reported interference and overheating issues, with a whole year going by without hearing much about the availability of the product. In fact, Apple’s total silence on the matter led some to believe it may have been canceled altogether.

Today, however, a new rumor has breathed life back into hopes for an AirPower Mat.

Hong Kong website ChargerLAB tweeted that a credible source in the supply chain said Luxshare Precision (the same manufacturer that builds AirPods and USB-C cables) has started production on the AirPower charging pad.

MacRumors took a look at the tweet and used Google Translate to translate the WeChat screenshot included in the tweet, saying that the conversation is consistent with the information in the tweet.

ChargerLAB went on to tweet that another manufacturer, Pegatron, would start production on January 21st alongside Luxshare Precision. A report from June said that Pegatron would also be involved in manufacturing, so these tweets at least line up with what we’ve already heard.

Respected Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in October that the AirPower Mat could be released in first quarter 2019.

That said, this is just a rumor being passed along the Twitter grapevine for now.

One Man's Trash from We Are Films on Vimeo.

Peter Kokis makes robots or, more correctly, he turns into robots. This Brooklyn artists takes parts from different things – slicers, juicers, and the like – and sticks them together to make some amazing costumes. He then wanders the streets of Brooklyn looking like an escaped Transformer.

His studio site, Brooklyn Robotworks, features many of his creations including an alien-looking robot and an exosuit that looks like something out of Gears of War.

“I look at the shape of objects and see their potential to portray something,” he wrote. “Virtually everything can be changed to suit my needs: re-shaped, cut-down, painted…altered in my ‘foundry’, to be seen as something else.”

This cute video shows Kokis’ foundry – actually his kitchen table – up close and explores the dedication of an artist who likes to make cool stuff to make people happy – a mission that applies to us all.

Ahead of Spotify’s entry into the Indian market, the streaming service this morning announced a global content deal with a leading Indian film and music company, T-Series, which gives it access to T-Series’ entire Indian song catalog. This includes Bollywood and regional movie soundtracks, plus other non-film albums and emerging artist content, the company says.

In total the catalog boasts over 160,000 songs, and is available to Spotify listeners as of today.

The deal has been rumored to be in the works for some time, as Spotify has been negotiating with top Indian labels like T-Series as well as Times Music, Eros Music, and Zee Music to expand its catalog of local content before a launch in India.

In November, T-Series managing director Bhushan Kumar confirmed a deal with Spotify was in its final stages.

“We are bullish about India’s most popular music company tying up with the world’s most popular music streaming service,” Kumar said today, in a statement. “We are confident that together we will be able to reach new markets and spread the love for Indian music far and wide.”

Deals with labels aren’t the only way Spotify is prepping for its Indian debut. This past summer, it launched an Indian music hub on its service called Desi, which now counts over 930,000 followers and includes its own playlist, Desi Hits.

The Indian market won’t be simple for Spotify to win, as it will go up against local players including Gaana, which has over 80 million users, in addition to Saavn, Wynk, and global music services provided by Apple, Amazon and Google.

But gaining a foothold is key to Spotify’s continued international growth, due to the market’s sheer size.

Spotify has grown to over 200 million monthly users worldwide today, ahead of its launch in India, but is not profitable. (Except for that brief moment it had, thanks to a tax benefit.)

Despite not yet operating India, Spotify says over 4 million users are now regularly listening to Indian music on the service. There are also an estimated 30 million Indians living overseas, including in markets where Spotify operates, like the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, the U.K, and Germany, says Spotify.

The company is expected to launch in India in the first half of 2019, and that timeframe hasn’t changed, we understand.

“One of the ways Spotify has helped revolutionise music discovery is through its ability to connect millions of fans with the best music and artists from all over the world in a way that just wasn’t possible before streaming,” said Paul Smith, Director, Head of International Licensing at Spotify, in a statement. “Today’s deal with T-Series significantly strengthens our Indian music catalogue, bringing Bollywood to more than 200 million Spotify users worldwide. Having T-Series on Spotify is hugely significant and shows our commitment towards providing the very best music for our users,” he added.

 

 

The world wowed a few years ago when a very clever startup from Bristol, UK, came up with 3D printed bionic limbs for amputees. Uniquely, the limbs were lightweight, cheap to make and could even be made into Iron Man-style arms to enthuse amputee children.

They went on to sign a deal with the huge UK National Health Service to bring new technologies to amputees, announced at a Techcrunch Crunch Disrupt.

Today Open Bionics has successfully raised $5.9 million from investors including F1’s Williams Advanced Engineering Group.

Their Series A round was led by Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund joined by Ananda Impact Ventures, and Downing Ventures, who continued to support the company with follow-on funding from their seed round.

The funding marks another success for the Bristol Robotics Lab, arguably the largest in the world, which plays host to other robotics startups such as Reach Robotics which closed $7.5M Series A for its augmented reality bots last year.

Open Bionics says it has achieved a price point that means their multi-grip bionic hand is the only advanced device that’s affordable enough to be covered by national healthcare systems in major western markets such as the UK, France, Germany and the USA.

The company launched private sales in May 2018 with its ‘Hero Arm’ which is now the best-selling multi-grip bionic hand in the UK and is also now selling in France and Spain with goals to serve more European countries this year. The bionic hands are small enough to fit children as young as 9 years old.

The Hero Arm allows amputees to choose between different finger speeds and movements enabling the wearer to pick up small objects like marbles with a fine pinch to carrying shopping baskets with a full hand grasp.

Samantha Payne and Joel Gibbard, named by The Europas startup awards as the ‘hottest founders’ in Europe, founded the ‘tech for good’ company in 2014.
Payne, co founder and COO said: “This funding enables us to serve multiple international markets and we’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver bionic hands to amputees and people with limb differences in the USA later this year. We’re exceptionally excited to receive this support from such high calibre investors who not only offer financial backing but incredible experience in commercialisation, measuring impact, and engineering high-performance hardware.”

Gibbard, co-founder and CEO said: “This investment provides crucial capital to help Open Bionics deliver on its vision of making advanced prostheses available to a much wider audience of limb-different users. We look forward to offering the Hero Arm in multiple international markets and continuing the development of great products that solve challenges within mobility and independence.”

Last year Open Bionics received support from Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, and the Dalai Lama.

Matthew Burke, Head of Technology Ventures, Williams Advanced Engineering, said: “Williams Advanced Engineering is excited to work with the team at Open Bionics and share our expertise in product development systems. Alongside the Fund’s investment, Open Bionics will benefit from the engineering and technology experience at Williams and the investment management and growth experience of Foresight’s team of investment professionals. Together this aims to be an ideal combination to deliver for the sector, its customers and the wider UK economy.”

Johannes Weber, founder of Ananda Impact Ventures said: “I have been in Kosovo as a NATO soldier in 1999 and during my deployment had to deal with many cases of limb differences. Since then I have always wanted to become more active in the field. At Ananda we are really excited to be supporting Open Bionics and seeing its products changing society’s perceptions around limb difference and drastically changing user’s self image.”

Ford is adding a hybrid Explorer to the mix, the first time the popular SUV has been offered with any kind of electrification.

The automaker unveiled Monday the Explorer hybrid as well as a new Explorer ST at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The reveal followed the debut last week of the 2020 Explorer, a re-crafted model that has a new platform and is loaded with technology. The final assembly for the entire Explorer lineup will be at the Ford Chicago Assembly plant. The Explorer hybrid will be manufactured at the Lima engine plant in Ohio.

The new Explorer hybrid, which will hit dealerships in summer, features a 3.3-liter hybrid powertrain that Ford projects will produce 318 horsepower combined. The company said it’s targeting a range of more than 500 miles between gas station fill-ups in the rear-wheel-drive model.

The hybrid SUV has new10-speed modular hybrid transmission and  liquid-cooled, lithium-ion battery built into the Explorer chassis below the second-row seats. This new configuration preserves cargo and passenger space, unlike previous hybrid vehicles, Ford said.

“Lost cargo space in hybrids is a thing of the past for Ford customers,” said Bill Gubing, Explorer chief engineer.

Ford’s unveiling follows a strategic roadmap developed last year that will place an emphasis on SUVs and hybrids. Or hybrid SUVs.

Ford estimated in March that SUVs could represent half of the U.S. retail market by 2020. The company said at the time that it planned to bring high-performance SUVs to the market, including five with hybrid powertrains and one fully battery electric model.