Headlines & Coming Up – Week of 1.15.18 CES 2018 showcased the continued close collaborations between major automakers and technology giants. General Motors wants to begin making cars with no steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedals. And a car chase ends in a passionate embrace under the romantic spotlight provided by the police helicopter. And coming up on iDriveSoCal this week – a Los Angeles electric bike maker proves you don’t have to be well funded and have a huge team to make your start-up dreams a reality. The Founder of Juicer Electric Motorbikes is making it happen on his own. Plus, the 2018 Hyundai Elantra gets a rainy day test drive from contributor Clinton “The Professor” Quan courtesy of our friends at Glendale Hyundai. All inside this episode of iDriveSoCal! ***Transcript*** Recording date – January 15, 2018 Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States – Southern California. I’m Tom Smith. Here’s what’s happening in mobility news: Another Consumer Electronics Show is in the books and this year drew tech giants and automakers closer together. Industry collaborations on various innovations included: Jaguar/Land Rover working with QualComm. Toyota/Lexus linking with Amazon Alexa. Kia getting together with Google Assistant. Hyundai syncing up with Cisco. And BMW connecting with Lyft. Cars without wheels to steer or pedals to stop and go might be in production by next year. General Motors is petitioning the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to start making them. The autonomous Chevrolet Cruise EV is based on the current Chevy Bolt model. If they receive approval they’ll be a couple years ahead of Ford who’s working on similar plans. Rest somewhat assured though, this first wave of autonomous vehicles will hit the streets with limitations including: Being geo-fenced within designated operating areas. And operating under the watchful eye of a ride-hailing service. And a couple of suspected car thieves being chased by police give up with a dramatic and passionate kiss under the police helicopter’s spot light. It happened just outside of Phoenix, Arizona when cops tried to pull over a vehicle reported stolen. The driver took-off and eventually crashed while attempting to elude cops off-road. The driver and passenger bailed out and headed in opposite directions. But then they circled back to each other, and embraced as police converged to make the arrests. The couple claimed they hadn’t stolen the vehicle but were returning it to a sick family member. And that’s what’s happening in mobility news.. Coming up this week on iDriveSoCal. When old-school original motorcycle design meets new propulsion technology the outcome is a really cool looking and eco-friendly electric bike. We sit down with the one-man-band start-up founder, of Juicer Electric, and hear how he’s made his passion a reality in the form of one custom bike at a time. David Twomey: They're something of a prestige item. People love to show them off. You get a lot of comments, and they're really channeling some of the design influences from the early era of motorcycling. I was really channeling the bikes of 1910, the board track racers as they were known, and LA was kind of the center of that in those days. And like you say, it was just at the beginning of the time when motorcycles were starting to have custom built frames around the motors instead of just attaching a m...
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