Audi’s latest cars will be able to tell you when traffic lights are going to turn green

Imagine never having to stop for a red light again – Audi’s upcoming traffic light information system won’t get you all the way there, but it will help you stop with the guesswork around when a light is going to change from red to green.

The feature will provide a countdown of exactly when a traffic light will switch from stop to go, starting a few seconds before the change, based on data provided by city infrastructure. That means it’s limited to cities where such services are available, which includes a few major metropolitan areas I the U.S. currently. The Audi system gets its data from Traffic Technology Services, an info provider that connects the dots between city infrastructure and connected vehicles.

It’s also limited in terms of vehicles affected, with 2017 models including the Audi Q7, A4 and A4 all road with firm levels that include Audi connect being the only ones that can take advantage of the feature. Plus, it’s a pay service rolled into the Connect Prime subscription offering Audi provides. But despite its limited scope and scale, it is indeed an industry first, and one that will hopefully pave the way for deeper future integrations between smart city infrastructure and connected cars.

Similar solutions are available as third-party apps for your smartphone, including EnLighten, an app that sounds audible alerts when a traffic light is about to change. Audi’s system sounds like it might be more closely tied to official city traffic light servers, however.

Audi and EnLighten offer similar motivation for making traffic light advance warning info available to drivers: to diminish driver stress. I’m still curious to see how this performs as a directly integrated OEM offering on cars, in terms of alleviating distractions and stress.

Carvana raises a $160M Series C to expand its online dealership and car vending machines nationwide

The used car industry is an interesting business. The market is huge – 45 million used cars are bought each year in the U.S. But the biggest player, CarMax, only controls about 2% of the market – but is still valued at about $12 billion by Wall Street.

So that makes the market not only ripe for disruption, but also extremely lucrative.

Carvana is a used car dealer that thinks it can gain some of this marketshare by bringing an e-commerce approach to the industry. The startup, which we’ve covered before, has brought the entire sales process online. And today the startup is announcing that is has raised a $160M series C to further expand its model across the United States.

A prospective car buyers stars on Carvana’s website, and picks out the exact car they want. The company offers cars in almost every body style and price range, and had about 5,000 available as of last night. There’s no bargaining, but the company consistently offers prices a few thousand dollars better then Kelly Blue Book’s suggested retail price (and lets you compare the two).

All financing and paperwork gets done online, and you have the choice of either having your car delivered or available for pickup at one of the company’s “car vending machines”.

What’s a car vending machine? It’s literally a big glass building that automatically dispenses a car that is preloaded by the company in the days prior to the customer picking it up. Carvana opened their first one in Nashville last year, and will use this funding to open more around the country.

Does a car vending machine sound gimmicky? Of course. But the company explained that it also has a practical purpose, besides being great for advertising. The status quo for Carvana is currently to deliver your new car to your door, which obviously costs more than having you pick it up. So by building a car vending machine in each city the company can save the money they would spend on having employees delivery it to your door.

This $160M in funding follows $140M in equity and $400M in debt previously raised by the company. While Carvana won’t disclose specific investors, they have said that the round had participation from both new and existing institutional investors.

Like previous funding rounds, growth and expansion is where Carvana is planning on spending this money. But with this new funding they are planning to expand and have readily available inventory in over 20+ markets by the end of the year, which will probably require them to shell out a ton of cash for a ton of used cars.

Plus, the company needs to build more physical locations to store (and possibly vend) cars in each of these new cities. As Ernie Garcia, founder and CEO of the company explained, they could choose to grow slower with much less capital, but Carvana (and their investors) believe that they found a solid business model, and want to ramp up and strike while the iron is hot.

Autopilot in Tesla Model X helps driver get safely to a hospital

A Missouri man might not have made it safely to the hospital without the aid of his Tesla Model X’s self-driving features (via Slate). Joshua Neally, the 37-year old Model X owner, was on the way home from his law firm after work when he was struck by a pulmonary embolism. Neally allowed the Autopilot system to take over for 20 miles of highway driving, which brought the vehicle and its driver to an off-ramp close to a hospital, where he was able to finish the trip.

Tesla’s Autopilot system may be under scrutiny after an accident in Florida earlier this year resulted in a driver death, but this is an example of where it definitely helped the operator of the vehicle. The obvious question that comes to mind is whether it would’ve been safer on the whole for Neally to pull over and call an ambulance instead of relying on his own car’s self-driving features, since Neally admits he didn’t “remember much of the drive” after his embolism began.

But whether or not Neally made the right call in continuing to drive himself, it proves the importance and necessity of offering safety features like Autopilot: In clutch situations like a medical emergency where we feel like our life is on the line, very few people can be relied upon to make the sane, logical and most conscientious choice about our actions.

Neally told Branson local NBC affiliate KY3 that he “just knew [he] had to get [to the ER]” once he began feeling the symptoms of the pulmonary embolism – in other words, he was essentially panicking and his instinct kicked in, convincing his brain the best course of action was to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Continuing to drive while under extreme physical duress might not have been the best choice, but it was the human one, and that’s what makes Autopilot’s role in getting Neally to the hospital in one piece so poignant. Plus, the fact that Neally had a choice at all is a chance outcome of the severity of the embolism: If it had been something more severe, and he wasn’t able physically to continue driving or make a decision, Autopilot would’ve engaged its failsafe mode, which decelerates the vehicle, turns on the four-way hazard lights and slowly moves the car to the roadside.

You can argue about whether or not a driver in this situation is more or less likely to continue driving rather than pull over and call an ambulance since the system is present to begin with, but you can also debate whether allowing Autopilot to drive was more or less safe than other options. What you can’t argue is that people will always make the most rational and informed decision when their life feels immediately threatened, and that’s where autonomous technologies stand to make the most impact.

ReachNow expands BMW car sharing to Portland

After launching in Seattle in April, BMW’s car sharing service ReachNow is expanding down the I-5 corridor to Portland, Oregon. In Seattle, more than 13,000 people signed up in the first month, and ReachNow was able to add 150 vehicles and expand its service area by late June. It’s likely the Portland expansion will follow the same plan, with a fleet of vehicles in the city center and expansion to farther-flung neighborhoods as demand increases.

Portland is no stranger to car sharing. Daimler’s car2go has been operating its fleet of smart fortwos (some of which are plug-in electric vehicles) here since March 2012. And Zipcar has been offering a wide variety of vehicles in Portland, from hatchbacks to pickup trucks, under various names since 1998. ReachNow has more kinds of cars than car2go but fewer than Zipcar, and they’re all from the BMW family: BMW 3 series, BMW i3 PHEVs and several Mini Cooper models.

Currently, car2go has a membership of 45,000 in Portland and a fleet of 465 vehicles. In a phone interview, Portland’s car2go general manager Ken Hills said, “Portland is a great city for car share. There’s good density, and it’s a tech-savvy town with early adopters who are really receptive.” As for adding another service to the mix in a city of 630,000 residents, Hills said, “Having a competitor will also increase awareness and options. Flexibility is a good thing, and the more awareness, the better.”

Portland is the second official city ReachNow will serve, but the pilot project in the United States was in the San Francisco area. (The service is known as DriveNow in Europe). In a phone conversation earlier this summer, ReachNow CEO Steve Banfield noted that San Francisco does not support free-floating car sharing, like ReachNow and car2go, where users can pick up a nearby car and drop it off wherever they like, as long as it’s in the service area. San Francisco does support station-based car sharing, like Zipcar, where you pick up and drop off vehicles at fixed locations. This, plus the challenge of just parking in San Francisco, made Seattle — and now Portland — a better fit for ReachNow.

In a more recent phone interview after the Portland announcement, Banfield noted that Portland’s city government is supportive of car sharing, having already welcomed car2go and Zipcar. And with a population already aware of car sharing, Portland “ticks a lot of boxes in its own right,” he said.

Banfield pointed out that car sharing is only the tip of ReachNow’s service iceberg. “We said in April that we would expand service and features as well as expand across North America.” And we can expect to see some of those new services later this fall, according to Banfield. “We’re telegraphing every punch we’re taking,” he said. “We’re trying to move really, really fast.”

There’s no official word on when Portlanders will be able to actually use ReachNow, though it seemed from our conversation like it would happen within a matter of weeks, not months. In the meantime, Portlanders (and everyone else in the country) can sign up in advance of ReachNow reaching their city for free.

Tesla misses Q2 earnings, delivers 14,402 vehicles

Tesla news has been dominating Silicon Valley over the last few weeks and today’s earnings report released after the close of the market hasn’t shaken fundamental views about the company.

The energy company born out of an automobile company reported non-GAAP Q2 revenue of $1.56 billion up from last year’s Q2 revenue of $1.2 billion. The company came close but ultimately missed analyst estimates of $1.6 billion.

Tesla closed down 0.62 percent today at $225.79. After the news was released, Tesla shares moved up almost instantly in after-hours trading after the news dropped but have been fluctuating up and down by 2 percent since.

Wall Street analysts expected an adjusted net loss of $52 cents a share but found themselves with a worse than expected loss of $1.06 per share.

Tesla delivered 14,402 new vehicles consisting of 9,764 Model S and 4,638 Model X in Q2, slightly ahead of last month’s estimates.

Tesla had originally aimed to deliver 80,000 vehicles by the end of the year. It is growing tougher by the day for the company to hit that goal. On the bright side, the company noted that almost half of Q2 production occurred in the final four weeks of the quarter.

Investors have expressed angst as Tesla has moved forward on plans to acquire SolarCity and pivot into a vertically integrated energy and transportation company.

Samsung could acquire its way into your car through Fiat

Samsung wants to make cars. Or at least, make parts of cars, in a similar supply-side capacity to the position it currently occupies in the mobile device and television world. Anew Bloomberg report suggests Samsung is in talks with Fiat Chrysler to acquire some or all of parts-making subsidiary Magneti Marelli, which provides lighting, in-car entertainment and telematics to OEMs for use in their vehicles.

The deal, which could be worth north of $3 billion according to Bloomberg’s sources, would help accelerate Samsung’s existing efforts to become a more important part of the automotive supply chain. Samsung has a dominant position in the production of memory chips, TVs and smartphones, both as a first-party consumer brand and as a supplier, but its car business isn’t nearly as well-developed.

Samsung has an internal team working on in-car infotainment tech, vehicle components and autonomous driving systems, and it invested in China’s homegrown electric auto company BYD Co., as Bloomberg notes, but it’s far from synonymous with the auto industry as a key supplier in the way it is with smartphones and other computing devices. An acquisition at this level could be a big shortcut to broader presence in the industry.

While other tech giants including Samsung’s chief rival Apple have been pegged as making big bets on cars as an important center of future high-tech industry, Samsung’s efforts on that front have been relatively low-key. It’s a safe bet that even beyond this sizeable acquisition, however, the smartphone leader is deeply considering its automotive options.

A glimpse inside Tesla's super secretive Gigafactory

Even having grown up in California, I’m realizing I’m not built for this heat.

We’re 30 minutes or so outside of Reno, but it feels like I’m on the sun. I can feel my sunscreen baking off. Why the hell did I wear black today?

It’s okay; it’s worth it. I’m out here for a glimpse inside Tesla’s Gigafactory, days before its official grand opening. I’ll be one of the first people to step inside the building outside of those who helped build it. That’s worth a slight sunburn, right?

The machine that builds the machine

Tesla needs more batteries. Between the Model S, Model X, the upcoming Model 3 and its at-home solar energy storage product, the Powerwall, just about everything they put their name on uses a battery.

But batteries like the ones Tesla needs are expensive — and heavy. Even if Tesla could find a company in another country capable of producing the volume of batteries that it needs, just getting them onto a cargo ship and shipping them stateside would make up a sizeable chunk of the bill.

Thus, the Gigafactory. A colossal, $5 billion structure smack dab in the middle of the Nevada desert, meant to help Tesla meet its battery needs.

It’s “a machine to build the machines,” as Elon Musk refers to it.

A working work in progress

We enter on one side of the building — Section A, as it’s called.

To our left, row upon row of machines, racks and robotic arms responsible for assembling Powerwalls.

To our right, separated from the factory floor by just a hip-height dividing wall, are the designers. Their project? The rest of the Gigafactory.


You see, Tesla is moving into the Gigafactory as soon as each section — of which there are currently four in progress — is complete.

They’re working from the inside out, and it’s quite a sight to see. It’s like watching a robot build itself into a bigger, badder robot. Walking through the building is like viewing a timelapse; a gradient of construction.

Section A? Up and running, designers in place.

Section B? The walls are up and painted, but much of the clockwork — like two-story tall, gymnasium-sized machines that Tesla wouldn’t disclose the purpose of — are still being assembled.

Section C? Lifts, hardhats, painters and drywallers.

Section D? Raw steel beams as far as the eye can see.

When all is said and done, the Gigafactory will have the largest footprint of any building in the world.

Secret, super secret and top secret

We’ve been invited in for an early look, but that doesn’t mean we have an all-access pass. Even in most of the areas in which we are allowed, cameras generally aren’t (I’d have brought more pictures back if I could, I promise).

For every machine we’re able to see, two are shrouded under tarps. We enter a room with one machine that nearly scrapes the roof 40 feet above us — covered, of course, in 40 feet of tarp.

“Are those tarps there because it’s not finished yet, or because the machine is secret?” I ask.

“A bit of both,” replies someone from Tesla.

“What does that one do?”

“I can’t say.”

“What part of the process is it for?”

“Battery production.” (Essentially everything in this factory is ultimately for battery production.)

“Can you tell me anything else?”

“It’s part of either the cathode or anode process” — essentially a fancier way of saying that it’s for making batteries.

“…”

“Okay! On to the next room.”

The next room has another 40-foot tall machine, still covered. They won’t tell us what this one does, either.

So what’s the reason for the secrecy?

Ultimately, the Gigafactory isn’t just big for the sake of being big. Tesla, in partnership with Panasonic, is putting $5 billion into this place to have a playground on which they can build all the things they can’t build elsewhere. They’re building new stuff here to help them drive down the costs of the batteries they need… and they don’t want anyone to know exactly how it all comes together.

“[This factory] deserves more attention from creative problem solving engineers than the product it makes,” Musk would later tell us in a Q&A. “Over time… the majority of our engineering will actually go into designing the factory as a product itself… If we take a creative engineering person and apply them to designing the factory — this machine that makes the machine — they make 5 to 10 times the headway per hour than if they’re trying to improve the products it makes.”

What’s next?

Everyone calls this thing the Gigafactory — but that’s short for its official name, “Gigafactory 1.”

As you can probably grep from that “1” tacked on to the end there, Elon doesn’t want this to be the only Gigafactory.

In a Q&A, Elon confirmed that he wants to build Gigafactories in other countries. And he wants to build Gigafactories that handle both halves of the Tesla manufacturing equation — building the batteries AND building the cars. Currently, that job is set to be split between its car plant in Fremont, CA and Gigafactory 1 in Nevada. This one is in the U.S. because that’s where it needs the most batteries; as other countries show demand, they’ll build Gigafactories there.

Apple hires founder of QNX Software Systems for automotive project

Apple is adding an experienced automotive software developer to its ranks and perhaps changing the focus of its secretive automotive division.

Bloomberg is reporting Apple hired former BlackBerry employee and co-founder of QNX Dan Dodge, who will work in the software team of Apple’s automotive project.

Dodge brings considerable experience to Apple. The company he co-founded developed the mobile operating system used by BlackBerry smartphone, and more importantly, the in-vehicle information and entertainment systems used in many Volkswagen, Daimler and Ford vehicles.

Dodge co-founded QNX in 1980, which was later sold to Harman International in 2004 and then to BlackBerry in 2010. At Apple, Dodge will reportedly work on the software team of Project Titan and report to John Wright. Project Titan is reportedly now led by long-time Apple executive Bob Mansfield, who reports directly to Tim Cook.

Bloomberg is also reporting that Project Titan, Apple’s supposed automotive project, is shifting focus to developing self-driving software and away from manufacturing a complete vehicle, though it’s unclear if the focus was really shifted. Apple has yet to publicly announce Project Titan and the original roadmap and intent was never revealed.

If true, Apple will be entering a field quickly gaining more players. Many OEMs from Tesla to Mercedes-Benz to Ford are developing their own self-driving platforms. A few startups have also taken on this challenge including Cruise, which GM purchased in March 2016, and noted iPhone hacker George Holtz’s self-driving company, Comma.ai.

2017 Chevy Volt named Northwest Green Vehicle of the Year

On July 19, members of the Northwest Automotive Press Association got together in Portland, Oregon, to drive 14 fuel-efficient and high-tech vehicles and compare them head to head. The overall winner was the 2017 Chevy Volt, which uses electricity plus a small gasoline generator engine and carries a price tag around $40,000. (No, Tesla did not send a vehicle to be tested.)

The second-generation Volt has 53 miles of all-electric range, with 420 miles of total driving range. A few journalists I talked to liked the Regen on Demand lever on the back side of the steering wheel, where you might otherwise expect a paddle shifter. It allows the driver to use regenerative braking when she wants to restore battery power. Regen braking takes some getting used to, and even then it can take some finesse to use well as both a way to stop the car and a way to get back some energy. The paddle makes that easy, and mileage freaks will become obsessed with it.

In the plug-in EV category, the 2016 VW e-Golf took the award for being fun to drive and less than $30,000. Some EVs were built to stand alone and stand out, like the Nissan Leaf (a favorite of mine in this category). VW chose to use its Golf hatchback as a platform for several variants, including the all-electric version, so if you like any other VW Golf, you’ll probably feel comfortable driving the e-Golf, which has an EPA-rated range of 83 miles. This car is likely to become very important for VW in the wake of the diesel settlement that was just approved.

The best hybrid award went to the 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid, which has an innovative drivetrain. It’s got an electric motor that drives the front wheels at low speeds for short distances. It has a second electric motor that is powered by the 2-liter gasoline engine to recharge the batteries that drive the first motor, which drives the car. And when you get onto the highway, a clutch engages to connect the gasoline engine and the first electric motor to drive the wheels at sustained high speed. This clever if complicated system returns 48 mpg for $37,000.

Saving the best (in some ways) for last, the 2017 Acura NSX took the prize for best green luxury vehicle, but let’s be honest. That hybrid system is not there to save the planet from a fiery climate-change-induced death. The two electric motors that power the front wheels are there for the power boost—and maybe to save a little fuel. Maybe. The twin-turbo V6 in the rear actually creates a ton of heat, despite all the venting, so you cannot bring your delicate chocolate sculptures home in the NSX’s tiny trunk. So calling the NSX a green car is pushing the definition of “green,” though the $200,000 price tag certainly points to luxury. But holy hell is this a fun, fast, and kind of insane car to drive.

ProGlove brings smart gloves to the factory floor

It’s not often you hear of a start-up product that emerged from a student working in a car factory.

But ProGlove’s co-founder Paul Günther’s foray into the startup world was preceded by employment at BMW. During his studies, he was in touch daily with workers on the factory floor. One thing was clear — everyone wore gloves and if these gloves could be made intelligent, they could assist the worker to make their job easier.

ProGlove develops smart gloves that enable manufacturing and logistics staff to work faster, safer and easier. Process steps can be documented handsfree and the smart glove gives instant feedback to its user.

Current applications include the hands-free scanning of goods, monitoring and training of workflow sequences, identification of tools and parts to avoid incorrect usage, and documentation of goods and processes. ProGlove has successfully closed its first funding round of $2.2 million in late May, led by Intel Capital, GETTYLAB and Bayern Kapital to support the company as it prepares to launch its smart glove system.

I met with marketing manager, Tarek Ouertani, to learn more. 

ProGlove seeing a lot of trade fair interest

The Munich-based company was founded in December 2014 after coming third in the Intel “Make It Wearable” Challenge with the goal to bring wearables in industry environment and make the worker ready for Industry 4.0.

The glove is based on Intel’s wearables development module Edison and the win came with a helpful $140,000, funds which enabled the founders to delve into hardware prototyping.  Ouertani explained that the gloves are custom-created for factories and workshops where products are assembled by hand.

Each glove connects over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and includes a rechargeable battery. Every ProGlove combines motion sensors, RFID scanning, and visual and haptic feedback to create a wearable that can be used to train new employees and automatically document a worker’s progress.

“The use of the ProGlove leads to more efficient processes and processes that lead to more quality, the main drivers of the automotive industry. A good example is when I talked to a worker on the factor floor that was building a small car component that required the assembly of 48 different parts. Each of these had to be sourced, and scanned individually before assembly. He realized that some parts were missing but didn’t know which ones. With the glove, the barcode scanning function means that workers are logging each individual component in order during assembly, meaning they are alerted if they make a mistake or leave something out.”

Ouertani noted that there had been a lot of interest in the ProGlove at industrial trade fairs, with people saying “Ooh there’s these guys with a glove so you don’t have to scan with a scanner or a bulky ring on your finger.” The glove retails at around $1,300 and includes the access point, module and charger.

It’s also being tested for online retailers where it can be in an efficient tool in logistical areas such as inbound logistics, packaging and palleting where workers need to handle goods with both hands and stopping to pick up a scanner constantly is an inefficient use of time.

Ouertani explained that the glove could also solve the issue of documentation in a range of sectors, including the health industry:

“We’re involved in a research project in health care looking at the needs of personal care attendants. They typically have 30 minutes per patient including washing, dressing and administering medication and part of this process can involve over ten minutes of documenting what they have done. Having a glove to document the steps they have completed means they get an additional ten minutes with their patient, doing their actual work rather than paperwork.”

I was curious to learn about their challenges as a European hardware startup. As Ouertani said:

“As a hardware industrial startup, you need more money in the early stages, before your product is market-ready and this can be difficult. Here in Germany, investors are not easy to convince to take a risk with hardware. By comparison, investors in the US take more risks.”

However there are distinct advantages to running a hardware start up in Germany. “We make products for the automotive industry and there are so many car factories and warehouses situated here, so it’s been great to have easy access to our sector and go visit these places to test things.”

The ProGlove is manufactured locally, which ensures quality control over each glove. And that emphasizes the need for manufacturing talent here to make the gloves not just to be customers. Ouertani noted:

 “We think that nevertheless how many automatic processes you put in, workers are still a crucial part of the industrial process. Robots cannot substitute everything and wearables devices can be the connection point between humans and systems.”

Could Blackberry have a real chance in IoT?

The world may be melting down into Brexitian chaos, but for a company like Blackberry that’s the least of its worries. After all, customers already voted themselves out of Blackberry’s ecosystem years ago, choosing to embrace Apple’s iPhone or Google’s Android phones. Brexit is just one more kick in the teeth for a company that has struggled for years to regain relevance.

And yet…there are signs of life at Blackberry.

The most important sign is the Internet of Things. While every company is pretending to have an IoT strategy these days, Blackberry actually has the raw materials necessary to build a highly relevant IoT business.

Chasing a niche is a good plan

To be honest, it has been years since I last thought about Blackberry, either as a vendor or as blog fodder. I didn’t want to use their phones and I couldn’t muster any energy to write yet another eulogy for the once powerful company.

So when I saw that Larry Dignan had penned a piece suggesting that Blackberry Radar could fuel a turnaround, I was surprised but intrigued. Larry is a smart guy. Why would he bother writing about a corporate corpse?

Blackberry Radar is an “end-to-end, Internet of Things (IoT)-based system that monitors the location of trailers and containers and delivers timely, actionable data to transportation managers via a secure, online portal.” In one sense, it’s a niche solution for the Transportation vertical. Even though Blackberry CEO John Chen rightly calls out the “there are anywhere between three million to 12 million [truck] trailers currently in the U.S. alone,” a fraction of which (14 to 20%) with telematics services attached to them, it’s still hardly something worth going long on BBRY as an investment.

Does Blackberry have the right IoT assets?

However, it’s not so much Blackberry Radar of itself that is interesting. Rather, it’s that Radar reminds us of the systems expertise that Blackberry has honed over decades.

For example, Chen went on to talk about QNX, the embedded, real-time operating system that has been around for eons, and sits at the heart of Blackberry’s connected car platform:

We’ve built and operate a secure end-to-end system to deliver over-the-air software updates to cars, to automotive, automobile. This technology is a growing imperative for automotive OEMs, with the average vehicle nowadays using about 60 million to 100 million lines of software code. Our solution will help the auto industry provide proactive maintenance update, without time consuming visit to the repair shop. This solution has been derived from our technology for updating 50 million mobile phones in over 100 countries.

If that sounds like exactly what is needed to operate a powerful, sophisticated IoT network then that’s because it is.

It Just Works

Two years ago I wrote about how a lack of standardization in IoT would make open source an imperative. While that shift toward open source is happening, it’s also true that developers and the enterprises they serve are hungry for workable platforms that can get them started faster. That’s where Blackberry comes in.

Companies have been calling out for someone to solve the Wi-Fi, real-time location tracking, bar codes, mobile and GPS-related IoT problems they have. Blackberry, because of its years building out a massive smartphone network, coupled with its QNX experience, has this in spades.

So today it’s right that Blackberry should start with an isolated market like trucking logistics. But there’s no reason that this same system, and its underlying assets, can’t power a whole host of other IoT projects in vastly different markets. Could this be the start of a Blackberry resurrection?