Forbes Favorites 2020: The Year’s Best Transportation Stories

From a wave of stock listings by electric vehicle and laser sensor startups to bold plans for high-speed trains, robotic trucks and robotaxis, 2020 was an exciting year in the ongoing evolution of transportation. Here are five of the year’s best stories.

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Meet The Fiskers, The Billionaire Power Couple Taking On Tesla

Henrik Fisker, Fisker Inc.’s CEO, and Geeta Gupta-Fisker, the company’s CFO and Henrik’s wife, cofounded their Los Angeles-based electric vehicle company to deliver affordable, stylish models—and have become billionaires almost two years before deliveries start. They’ve got funding, a production partner and a compelling $37,500 battery-powered SUV.

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Luminar’s Austin Russell Is The World’s Newest—And Youngest—Self-Made Billionaire

A 25-year-old wunderkind who started his company after dropping out of Stanford as a teenager is officially a billionaire, with his company that makes sensors for self-driving cars having gone public. His laser lidar sensors that help vehicles “see” are in demand by carmakers including Volvo, Daimler and Audi.

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Let Elon Musk Go Giga: A U.K. Upstart Says Microfactories Are The Profitable Way To Build Electric Vehicles

London-based Arrival is preparing to build battery-powered vans and buses at flexible, $50 million “microfactories.” It’s lined up orders worth half a billion dollars and is backed by BlackRock, Hyundai and UPS, but it has to prove that smartphone-inspired manufacturing beats big auto plants.

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Inside A Wall Street Tycoon’s Plan To Get Americans Off The Highway—And On His Trains

Billionaire Wes Eden is convinced he can bring private passenger rail service back to the U.S., with ambitious plans for high-speed trains in Florida and connecting Las Vegas and Los Angeles. What’s more, he thinks it could be a highly profitable venture by the mid-2020s.

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Diesel Engine Giant Cummins Plans A Hydrogen Future, With Trains Coming Before Trucks

Clean hydrogen is moving into the transportation mainstream. Cummins, a giant in diesel engines for heavy-duty trucks, is gearing up to become a major producer of zero-emission hydrogen power systems, after big moves by Hyundai, Daimler, Toyota and others.

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