automotive-technology
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ECARX wants to own the brains behind your dashboard
Its technology rides in roughly 12 million vehicles. Now ECARX is betting on richer cockpit computers and a $266 million software deal to make more of the money behind the screen.
Urgently Put the Tow Truck on a Map - Then Learned the Map Wasn't the Business
The app made a miserable roadside ritual feel trackable. The harder lesson was that software can optimize a tow, but it cannot wish away trucks, weather, thin margins or customer concentration.
The Private Equity Firm That Refuses to Separate the P&L From the Point
One Planet Group owns the machinery that turns consumer intent into revenue, then uses the same operator’s discipline to back early-stage ideas. Its wager is unusually explicit: profit and purpose should share a balance sheet.
HARMAN International
You may know the speaker. You probably do not know the company inside the dashboard. HARMAN has spent seven decades turning sound science into a sprawling business across homes, stages and more than 50 million vehicles.
SellAnyCar.com
SellAnyCar.com is a Dubai-based automotive marketplace that buys used cars directly from consumers. Sellers get a free online valuation in seconds, bring the car to a branch for a free professional inspection, and receive a guaranteed offer within 30 minutes. Once accepted, the company pays by bank transfer, handles the paperwork and title transfer, and auctions the vehicle to a network of dealers. Founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Saygin Yalcin, it markets itself as the Middle East's first and largest car-buying service and has expanded across the UAE and into Saudi Arabia.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies (RV Tech) is a 50/50 joint venture launched in November 2024 that fuses Rivian's software and electrical-hardware know-how with Volkswagen Group's global manufacturing scale. Co-headquartered in Palo Alto, it builds the zonal electrical architecture, operating systems, in-vehicle AI, and cloud-connectivity stack that will power next-generation software-defined vehicles across Volkswagen, Audi, Scout, Rivian, and more - aiming to make every new car smarter, cheaper to build, and continuously upgradable over the air.
Luminar Technologies
Luminar Technologies is an automotive lidar and perception company founded by teenage Thiel Fellow Austin Russell. It built 1550nm lidar sensors and software designed to give passenger cars, trucks and robotaxis long-range, high-resolution sight in the dark, winning production deals with Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Polestar and partnerships with NVIDIA and Mobileye. After a 2020 SPAC debut at a roughly $3.4B valuation, mounting losses, a 2025 CEO ethics inquiry that removed Russell, and the loss of its anchor Volvo contract pushed the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025.