Salesforce Teams With Siemens on Workplace Environment; Facebook Grabs Ready at Dawn Studios; NVIDIA Partners with Mercedes on Next Gen Car Computer; Tesla Roadster Concept-Beyond Ludicrous Speed

Salesforce and Siemens are partnering on a new workplace tech suite to facilitate a more touch-less office environment, for when more workers return to offices…at least those who don’t just say “I’ll work from home from now on and will quit otherwise!” Zdnet.com reports that they will combine Salesforce’s Work.com products with Siemens’ smart infrastructure services, including its Comfy and Enlightened IoT apps. Key products will include mobile boarding passes for employee to access office buildings and elevators, and an occupancy management system that allows employees to reserve conference rooms and desks through the Comfy app. Also- occupancy and location data provided by Enlightened and aggregated in Comfy will allow for opt in contact tracing.

Facebook has snapped up a VR studio behind ‘Lone Echo.’ According to techcrunch.com, the social media platform has acquired Ready at Dawn Studios. The Lone Echo games have been one of the most successful series one Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets. Facebook says they will bring the entire team from Ready at Dawn on board. They will continue to work independently from their Irvine office in Southern California and in Portland, Oregon.

Just this week, Mercedes and BMW dissolved their partnership on self-driving tech…which both seem to think will take longer than originally planned. Yesterday, Mercedes and NVIDIA announced that they are partnering on cooking up a “revolutionary in-vehicle computing system” for the automakers next generation of luxury automobiles in 2024. Engadget.com says the brain is touted in and NVIDIA press blurb as “the most sophisticated and advanced computing architecture ever deployed in an automobile.” It will allow for Level 2 and 3 driving autonomy…which exceeds Tesla’s current Autopilot. It will also allow Level 4 parking autonomy. This will allow the car to pretty well park itself in a stall without any help from the driver. Another plus: the platform will automate driving of regular routes from address to address. For the Apple-esque one more thing— it will be upgradable continuously via over the air updates!

Way back in 2017, Elon Musk revealed the still to be released Tesla Roadster, and claimed that it would do 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, and have a 620 mile range. Now, electrek.co reports that a CGI artist named Steve Popovsky has built a render showing what the roadster would look like with the Space X cold thrusters…making 0-60 in 1.1 seconds. It almost makes ‘ludicrous speed’ look like you’re tromping the brake! Hit this link for the video and check it out! https://electrek.co/2020/06/23/tesla-roadster-concept-video-acceleration-spacex-thruster/