TomTom's Drop Brings the D20 Stock Index Down After 5 Weeks of Gains

After five weeks of consecutive gains, a drop by TomTom led the Driverless Transportation Weekly Stock Index (D20) to take a slight step back this week, losing 0.18 points, or 0.1 percent, to close at 185.64.

With an evenly divided 10 stock price gainers and 10 stock price losers, this time the D20 was no match for the Dow, which rose 1 percent, or the S&P 500, which added 0.8 percent.

Tesla Motors (TLSA) was the D20 price-percentage gainer, adding 7.1 percent to close at $269.23. Tesla’s jump in price was likely caused by a combination of CEO Elon Musk’s access to President Trump and the NHTSA’s decision to close the investigation into a fatal accident that involved a Tesla with its Autopilot engaged.

After posting a Q4 loss with revenue down 6 percent, TomTom (TOM2) was the D20’s price-percentage loser. TomTom lost 9.6 percent last week, closing at €7.79. Without TomTom’s loss the D20 would have been easily in the black this week.

Visit the Driverless Transportation D20 Stock Index page to learn more about it and its component stocks.

Up-and-Comers:

Ford, looking to add muscle to its driverless car program, invests in Argo AI. Ford is committing to spend $1 billion on the start-up and operate it as an independent subsidiary. Argo AI was founded by the former head of Google’s car division, Waymo, and a former top engineer for Uber’s self-driving division. It appears Ford, like many of the other automotive manufacturers, felt the need to buy technology as opposed to developing it in house with the race to deliver driverless cars heating up.

Otto won Hot New Startup at the Chrunchies. The Chrunchies Awards are an annual event in its tenth year, sponsored by TechCrunch and devoted to celebrating start-up technology companies. Otto has plans to develop technology for self-driving trucks. Otto demonstrated its technology in October with an Otto-powered truck delivering 50,000 Budweiser cans to Colorado Springs from Fort Collins, Colorado.