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Ford Motor Co. is adding to its self-driving car testing operation in Austin, Texas, saying Dec. 11 it has secured two pieces of real estate that will be central to the project.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio dislikes autonomous delivery robots and he is not shy about saying so, even as the city’s planners and trucking officials work together on ways to deliver much more freight to the nation’s largest city.

SAN FRANCISCO — Tired of San Francisco streets being used as a testing ground for the latest delivery technology and transportation apps, city leaders are now requiring businesses to get permits before trying out new high-tech ideas in public.

Another Tesla Inc. vehicle operating on the carmaker’s driver-assistance system branded as Autopilot has crashed into a parked emergency vehicle, eliciting fresh warnings about the shortcomings of automated technology on public roads.

Volvo Group Venture Capital AB announced it invested in Apex.AI, a startup software company involved in autonomous mobility, to help fund the development of a safety-certified software framework for autonomous systems.

A Silicon Valley startup has completed what appears to be the first commercial freight cross-country trip by an autonomous truck, which finished a 2,800-mile-run from Tulare, Calif., to Quakertown, Pa., for Land O’Lakes in less than three days. The trip was smooth like butter, 40,000 pounds of it.

The introduction of self-driving truck prototypes over the past five years has fueled an ongoing conversation about how this emerging technology will change the freight transportation industry in the decades ahead.

Self-driving truck developers are putting a growing number of test vehicles on the road to refine their automated driving systems and pave the way for the commercial introduction of this technology.

Hankook Tire, whose commercial products are on U.S. fleets, announced the predictive model it is developing using artificial intelligence could slash in half the time it takes to develop tire compounds.

The U.S. average retail price of diesel rose 0.4 cent to $3.07 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported Dec. 2.