A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Google has no plans to expand its partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV to create a self-driving car, the program chief at the Alphabet Inc unit said on Thursday, affirming that the technology company was still in talks with other potential partners. Earlier this month, Google and Fiat Chrysler agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker. Google said it was not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, and that the vehicles would not be offered for sale. This is just FCA and Google building 100 cars together, Google self-driving car Chief Executive John Krafcik said in an interview on the sidelines of an energy conference in Washington.
"We're still talking to a lot of different automakers," he added. "We've been very open about what the technology is and the problem we want to solve together. Solving this problem is going to require a lot of partnership." Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said after the partnership was announced that what had been agreed with Google was limited, but he suggested that the alliance could evolve. Google has no timetable for making self-driving vehicles available to the public and has logged about 1.5 million miles of test driving, Krafcik said on a panel at the conference.
"We have a responsibility to get this out there as soon as we can and really as soon as we have data that says we're better than the current system of flawed human drivers," Krafcik said, citing 33,000 annual traffic deaths and more than 2.3 million injuries. "As soon as we're better we should push the button and go." Rival technology and auto companies are accelerating their efforts to master the complex hardware and artificial intelligence systems required to allow vehicles to pilot themselves.
On Thursday, ride hailing company Uber Technologies Inc released photographs of a Ford Fusion it had outfitted with sensors to enable autonomous driving. The car is being tested in Pittsburgh, Uber said in a blog post. General Motors Co earlier this month closed its acquisition of self-driving car technology startup Cruise Automation. Another San Francisco startup company, Otto, said earlier this week it was developing systems for self-driving commercial trucks.
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