| Planes, trains and automobiles steal the spotlight today in tech news. Well, actually only automobiles – which is fitting because the North American International Auto Show is kicking off in Detroit. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for January 15, 2018. Also, take the opportunity this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to reflect on some of the truly important changes that need to be made in the world around us all, and what we can do to actually make those changes happen. 1. Pony.ai raises $112 million to build autonomous car tech One-year old car startups are raising north of $100 million to help fuel the self-driving car revolution. They're going up against companies with plenty more resources, of course, but that's still a lot. The startup is one of many, but it has some solid founding talent with experience working on Baidu's autonomous car project. This puts them in company with other startups, like Aurora, which have talent from top industry autonomous driving projects, who are now forging out on their own and commanding a lot of early respect. The question is, are we at the beginning of the cycle for the proliferation of startups like this, or the end, as more automakers are maturing their own efforts? 
2. SoftBank puts €460 million into German car dealer platform SoftBank's sizeable vision fund is another investor putting big money into car tech – but its investment today is focused on the dealership part of the equation. Modernizing dealer software and service platforms is a smart target, and this funding will certainly help it make a bigger dent in the industry. 3. Ford is putting $11 billion into electrified cars by 2022 Ford is also upping its investment in a specific area of the auto industry – electrification. The carmaker announced it's going to spend as much as $11 billion on EVs and hybrids by 2022, which is a big increase from its previous pledge for the segment. 4. Nissan's Xmotion is a future car with a future fish on board No, really. The on-board assistant is a virtual koi that floats around the car's many digital displays. This is an interesting approach to the future of vehicles that does away with most of the adrenaline highs and instead focuses on relaxation. 5. Google Assistant was pretty omnipresent at CES CES mostly sucks if you care about actually innovative, cutting edge tech, but it's good for identifying trends. Google Assistant was all over the show this year – though not organically, like Alexa was in 2017. Instead, Google paid a lot to make sure it was everywhere, which is either clever or desperate. 6. Silicon Valley is bad and sex parties aren't to blame Jon Evans has good thoughts on the hullaballoo following revelations around Silicon Valley's sex parties, and a general lack of self-perception when it comes to SV. | 
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