>> i'm emily chang in san francisco and this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, the debate over your data. how tech giants like amazon and google are expanding their information empires as they grow into our homes. plus, activision is planning to dramatically slash costs after reporting fourth-quarter results that missed estimates and delivering a disappointing forecast. can the videogame maker turn around amidst competition from fortnite?

russia is planning to sever itself temporarily from the global internet to prepare the country to deal with a digital attack that would leave it cut off. is this the future of global cyber defense? first, to the top story. president trump struck a conciliatory note on trial trade -- china trade talks, saying he would let an upcoming tariff deadline slide. the president said he could let the deadline slide for a little while if the side are near a deal, though he is not inclined to do so. he told his cabinet that there are no plans yet for him to meet president xi jinping next month, meantime u.s. officials are in beijing for talks starting thursday. bloomberg news is standing by in washington with more. what did the president have to say? >> the president said he was talking to reporters after a cabinet meeting and was asked whether the deadline for trade

dispute to be resolved between the u.s. and china was a hard one for march 1, which was the date we expect more tariffs to be levied against china. he said it's not a hard deadline. he's willing to fudge it a little bit if they are getting close to a deal, which is brand-new information. march 1 atike midnight, there will be a next hammer that goes down against china. it seemed the economy over there was slowing enough that chinese officials were concerned over tariffs. it looks like he's willing to make some concessions in order to get that deal. emily: there are still no plans for the president's to meet, so how close are they really to a potential deal? saleha: they can always pick up the phone, the two leaders, and talk out the details, but the policymaking process so far has

not been, from what we can see traditional one. , a there's no documentation draft agreements going back and forth. there is no paperwork we have heard about to show they have concrete proposals, where one side is willing to make concessions yet. at the same time, we have donald trump who is hoping investors will continue to invest in the u.s., buoy stock prices. he is also having to contend with heading into an election cycle. he's hoping to get reelected. democratic candidates are raising their hand one by one to run against him. he wants to make sure rural america, who elected this president and sent him to washington, vote for him again. and at the same time, farmers in the midwest are seeing bankruptcies rise in large part due to the trade tariffs with china. emily: this is the second conciliatory note we have seen from the president in the last week. the other one being on a potential deal to avoid another government shutdown. why do you think the president seems to be in the mood to compromise?

saleha: i think he is heading into a period where this is 100% a trump economy. we are going to start seeing the data from the irs on how the tax cuts are really panning out for the average american voter. he's also hearing what the other side, democratic candidates, would like to do with their own economic agenda should they be elected. he's just trying to show the world he has boosted the u.s. economic growth and he can keep it going. at the same time, he has to contend with warnings of recessions, recessionary fears coming either from a slowdown in europe, china, or brexit. he's trying to prove his agenda which has a lot to do with trade is working. emily: saleha mohsin for us in washington. we will continue to follow developments in those talks as they commence later this week. now, as tech giants like amazon

and google work to place their smart speakers at the center of the interconnected home, both are expanding the amount of data they gather about us, the people who use their voice software to control these gadgets. it is stirring up more privacy concerns. joining us now to discuss is a startup studio ceo that invests in next-generation internet companies. also with us, bloomberg tech's mandate, who wrote a piece exploring these issues. they're collecting more data about us. just yesterday, we covered amazon buying the wi-fi systems maker ero. how does that fit into the broader strategy? >> amazon sees an opportunity with the echo smart speaker and its ring doorbell purchase last year to be a force to be reckoned with in home technologies, whether that it shopping with your voice, controlling other gadgets, televisions, thermostats.

they madeess purchase yesterday of a company in san francisco is the next step in that evolution. emily: john, do you see more pros or cons with amazon and google living with us? john: i mean, i think in 2019, the way -- when you look at the tech landscape, you can see tech with all of the promise of doing good and changing society, and giving us wonderful tools to enable us to do things is also starting to encroach upon our lives. i think that the idea of having an open channel for these tech companies into the data stream of my home -- matt will talk about some of the passive data collection taking place, it is not good. i don't think it's good for consumers, i don't think it's good for our country, or good for innovation. and for startups. emily: on one hand, when you put it that way, it's terrifying. you wonder if consumers

actually understand what is happening. talk to us about that passive data collection, and what these companies are collecting about us that we may not even realize. amazon, seen as the leader in smartphones, and -- smart speakers, and and google started talking to the smart device maker partners about increasing the amount of data they transmit back to the central hole of the. what's both companies are trying to require now would mandate that any time a smart lightbulb is toggled, if you flip the switch, that the company gets a record of that. their point is they want to use this to improve the user experience, to make these new features based on the knowledge

of what is going on in your home. john: what's key is that it is not with the user doing anything. to the smart speaker? matt: that's correct. it's not necessarily when you invoke alexa or the google assistant. it's any time the device status changes. emily: matt, how can consumers protect themselves? matt: on this technology, there is not a whole lot of granularity in user control. both amazon and google offer options to go back in and delete data that the companies have accumulated. they both have websites where you can make that happen, but in terms of stopping the devices from informing the companies in the first place, there is not really a way to do that other than unplugging them. emily: what you think the social -- what do you think the social repercussions of this are, john? john: in the short term, we have seen a few incidences of fairly scary and weird hacks that have taken place where people hack into other people's smart homes and started people speaking to baby monitors or adjusting the thermostats. we seem -- we have seen software upgrades go haywire and reset people's thermostats and frozen pipes.

we've seen small, isolated incidents. i think over time, as you start to see the entire home get connected -- in particular, the point matt is making which is key is these companies are trying to turn these devices into the central hub that passively collects all of the data for the home. if that hub gets hacked or the company is to use it for advertising data or other data, they are free to do that and you could see the entire home being at the request of a single -- at the bequest of a single technology provider. consumers are not understanding that is what they are buying in the first place. emily: matt, what are other companies saying about this? i presume amazon would say unless you say alexa and you turn it on, it's not collecting this data about you. matt: on the contrary. they are. even if you don't invoke alexa. made as i talked

to them about this, they said we value consumer privacy, which is something a lot of the tech companies say, and they do not use this for advertising, they say, at this time. what you do with your devices will not be used for advertising. google, which didn't comments to us for this story, has not made a similar promise. it is not clear what they are doing with it. john: i think there are two important points. we saw this with facebook going through the cambridge analytic issue and beyond. are they using it for third-party advertising data or using it to inform internal data sets? that is important. i think some of the companies are glossing over that. i think they use this and are using the data for internal data sets, which gives them the ability to more finely grain target customers for a whole bunch of services. that is the first point.

the second point, related to data, is that we have all of these amazing services today. companies are giving us these for free, software services. quarter, companies are managing to get more and more margin out of -- profit out of their products and that is happening because they are monetary easing the data -- data.rizing the we have a handful of companies becoming massive data collectors in all quarters of our life. it is a problem and it is not good for society or users or from technology or for startups. emily: now, while i have you, john, i want to talk about another advertising market and that is podcasting. you were an early investor in companies bought by spotify. people who listen to podcasts love them, but it is silly

mission -- still a niche market. john: the podcast market is related to smart speakers because it is a voice interface, but what we have seen in the oft five years is emergence a new wave of inno and development coming into the podcast market. the podcast market really around 2000. it was a small niche market but five years ago, we at beta works saw a handful of things that were a healthy mix of intuition and data, where we saw on the data side that people's phones were getting better, bluetooth was more stable and people come acting -- connecting to their cars and using their cars. average, two hours a day they are not connected to a digital interface and the auditory podcast interface is rich inl, the,

storytelling, both fictional and nonfictional. we are seeing a significant growth there in the acquisition in the last week of these two companies. two of the biggest acquisitions to date in the space, i think it is the beginning of a whole new wave of media and of interaction in the online space. emily: fascinating. borthwic, thank you. also matt day. over the terminal. amazon and general motors are planning to invest in an electric truck maker according to reuters. we will continue to update you on this story. last week, we told you about amazon investing in the self driving tech startup aurora.

interesting moves amazon seems to be making in autonomous driving technology. industryy videogame slump continues with blizzard. how the fortnight frenzy is crushing sales. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: activision gave a disappointing forecast and plans across thests company. a tumultuous stretch for the industry after both electronic arts and take two interactive artist disappointing earnings last week. joining us, matt canter man who covers internet and gaming. what are these costs across the board? >> they will centralize a lot of function. sales and marketing, they will

start doing that from the corporate level for the different studios as well as geographically. activision is expanding its footprint in new genres and pushing hard into new geographies, mainly into asia. they are taking a multiple -- more holistic approach into marketing. down effortsling on the key franchises like the world of warcraft and call of duties and shifting resources off of projects that were in incubation that are not living up to expectations. about your to us impressions of these results in the context of ea and take two having disappointing results. games like fortnite are taking off. parts of the industry are healthy. ou are seeing fo rtnite-itis. the rise of in game spending is driven by people spending time in the game.

call of are not playing duty, world of warcraft and so you talked about on the early portion of the call how fortnite 's in game -- in game monetization was weaker than expected. you are seeing the stock up in after-hours. the stock had been down 50% since october, so expectations had been -- set extremely low and are resetting expectations back to work will think they can build from. they are at a good point now where, we know last year was bad. how can we build up from here? emily: i have this chart on my bloomberg showing the monthly active users for activision. generally on the decline, slight rise over the last quarter. what is activision in terms of their production -- what are they doing about this? to thegain, it goes back marketing efforts but at the end of the day, they have to make better games. they have to launch new content

at a faster cadence and part of the restructuring is to fix all of that. things like candy crush and overwatch, they need to invest more and release new content at a faster clip to keep people engaged. revenue tends to follow in the gaming industry. emily: is there a mobile opportunity take an explict care? matt: absolutelymatt:. they confirmed it is coming this year. call of duty mobile a partnership with tencent and diablo mobile, both based out of china. those are coming this year and it is hard to see how big they get. they will start small and build over time. longer-term, bringing the key franchises this company has -- think of war craft, call of duty, to mobile, is a big opportunity considering their mobile robin in -- revenue is very small. emily: the will follow-up on these activision results as they cross. bloomberg's matthew kanterman thank you.

we will explain how a female started start up is valued at over a billion dollars. who is behind it? @technologyck us out on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a 27-year-old female ceo is now running tech's latest unicorn. she started at fashion platform called the lingo based in singapore in 2014. she raised 220 $6 million from -- 226 billion -- $226 million from investors and the company has a valuation nearing $1 billion. to discuss is rebecca greenfield covering diversity for bloomberg. rebecca, women ran companies are just 2% funding from venture capitalists. just 2% of funding. how rare is a female founded unicorn? rebecca: it is very rare. there are very few companies run by women that debt this high -- get the high valuation. it's hard for someone to raise money in silicon valley and that has to do with there are so many few female vc's. women just have a hard time convincing men their companies will be successful. emily: what does the lingo do and how does this compare to other fashion e-commerce offerings? rebecca: it's like many of the women-founded tech companies. it's a fashion startup, in asia, so there's a lot of the female tech run companies based in asia. i think that -- it is a fashion startup. what is the progress --

you cover diversity -- what is the progress we are seeing worldwide when it comes to female entrepreneurs? the numbers are so abysmal and, presumably, it will take time to move the needle, but are we seeing change? rebecca: i think there is some change. i recently wrote a story talking to a bunch of women in tech about how they view sheryl sandberg and funding came up from one woman who had to raise money for her company in 2010. she said it was so impossible to raise money and there were no and now, nine years later, she is trying to raise money for another company she is founding and having a much easier time. there are more female vc's and more of an acceptance that women can run companies. still, the numbers are tiny. 2% of companies with all-female founding teams are getting funding. that's the figure.

more money is going to women who are on teams with men. it is not like no women are getting money. i think there is noticeable progress, but it's definitely slow. emily: elizabeth holmes, one of the more recently prominent female entrepreneurs who crashed and burned, spectacularly. there was a lot of optimism for her. do you think the fact that she did not succeed has hurt in -- female entrepreneurship? rebecca: in that story i was reporting on sheryl sandberg, the same question came up, is sheryl sandberg -- the negative press against sheryl sandberg hurting women? one of the women i talked to mentioned elizabeth holmes and said it is not good for women when other women fail. that is so unfortunate because these women, because there are so few of them, they act as a stand-in for all women. so when they fall, some people might say that is what women do, women are going to fail.

and i think that is the fear of many women. i don't know how you measure that, but it's something women worry about. researchers have found this happens when there is a small amount of minority of any kind. they tend to be a stand-in for all people for better or for worse. emily: good to hear about the good stories of female founders who are paving the way for the rest. rebecca greenfield, thank you for bringing that one to us. coming up, google has said it is not getting into china right now, but some shareholders are not satisfied with that answer. we will discuss. later in the show, russia unplugs from the internet. could an alleged cybersecurity test be a pretext for a crackdown? we will discuss. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: this is "bloomberg technology" global link where we join "bloomberg daybreak: australia" and bring you the latest in global tech news. i'm emily chang in san francisco, with shery ahn in new york and haidi stroud-watts in sydney. let's get a look at the global tech stories of the day. haidi? what have you got? haidi: emily, investment in turkish startups fell 46%, $59 million in 2018. down from the country's record high of $111 million the year before. the news comes from monitoring groups -- that puts turkey in 21st place among european countries. attracting such investments last year. the u.k. holds the top spot with more than $8 billion of inflows.

a key partner for tencent is signaling more weakness in the chinese videogame market. chinese sales dropping by double digits. last quarter, the revenue fell 22%. the chinese gaming market is slowly recovering from last year's government ban on new titles. that market is the world's largest, generating more than $30 billion in sales. billionaire alibaba co-founder joseph tsai, who already owns a stake in the nba's brooklyn nets, has his sights set on a new startup sports league. he led a funding round for the premier lacrosse league. terms of the deal weren't disclosed. he played lacrosse at yale university and says he is encouraged by the sport's growing popularity. those are the top global tech stories we are watching. shery: haidi, thank you. back in december, google ceo sundar pichai spoke to members of congress about his company -- reports of his company planning a search engine in

china. >> right now, we have no plans to launch in china. we don't have a search product there. our core mission is to provide users access to information and getting access to information is an important human right. we're always compelled across the world to try hard to provide that information. shery: that answer was not good enough for one shareholder, azzad asset management. it sent the company a letter saying "in light of the chinese government's censorship and surveillance practice, we are concerned a google search product could further enable ongoing human rights violation. with that in mind, we are filing a shareholder resolution seeking a human rights impact assessment for a possible google search product in china." to discuss, we have bloomberg tech's gerrit de vynck who covers alphabet in new york. project dragonfly, back on the table. what does this mean? will we get a vote? gerrit: we will probably get a

vote, but to be honest, it will not go anywhere. this investment firm has a small position in google. more what this is about is them raising this issue again and again. this is something that is not going to go away for google. the company has said we are not doing it -- you saw the clip from the ceo. their current line is that they have no current plan, but that by someadicted reporting that the company was very far along and they could have almost launched this when it was found out and put on hold. emily: sundar pichai says they have no plans to launch in china right now. another who said they have no plan to launch in china right now. what exactly is google doing with respect to china right now? gerrit: google obviously does employ quite a few people in china. the android operating system is the most popular operating system for chinese smartphone users. chinese smartphone users use a ton of apps. they are downloaded through the android play store.

the company does have a stake in the country. what we're waiting for is google to say ok, we are putting this thing to bed. project dragonfly, whatever you want to call it, is not going to go forward. the company, although they say they have no plans, they have not come out and said what a lot of the internal activists and external activists want and to say we are not going to build a search engine if it includes censorship. shery: how important would the china business be for google? gerrit: china, if not the most important technology market for the future, it is definitely one of the most important markets. there is definitely a sense that google missed out on a lot of the growth that is happening there. you look at apple. a huge portion of their growth comes from china, but that backfired when the chinese economy retracted late last year. google has that presence when it comes to android, but not the core search business. emily: the google cofounder sergei brin was one of the chief

proponents of google pulling out of china all those years ago. do we know where sergei brin and larry page stand on china? gerrit: they both have been careful to stay on the background on this. i heard they have answered questions at internal meetings at google. they haven't come out strongly. i think there is a sense they want to let the current official leadership of google take the lead on this one. sort of hold it. it is true, they were the ones that were concerned about the company's presence, the influence the chinese government was trying to have on google in china back when the company originally pulled out. at this point, they are not having any strong opinions. they still do have that controlling vote. if they wanted this proposal by azzad asset management to pass, they could make it pass. shery: how does this play into google's other controversies such as the handling of sexual misconduct by executives?

could this talk on project dragonfly continue to affect its image? gerrit: it does. it stays in the news and more and more people read about google. as the narrative of the company is beset by these problems, even though the underlying business seems to be going well, if this stays out in the news and there is continued criticism, it might make it more difficult for google to hire people. they may lose some of the top talent that has worked at google for years, thinking it is a company that is different from other companies, that has values beyond continuing to make money. most google employees are not out on the streets waving signs, but it is something you can tell that google employees care about and think about. emily: google employees were out on the streets waving signs around google's handling around sexual misconduct and there were some movements to agitate around this china issue. are employees organizing about this? gerrit: they are still

organizing and to be clear, there was huge turnout when it came to the specific walkout which was in response to massive payouts to specific executive andy rubin when there came accusations of sexual harassment while he was in a position of power. when it comes to the china issue, there is a lot of people at google concerned about this. a lot of this engaging with the media, engaging with activist groups is coming from this core group of people at google that do care deeply about this and they are reaching out to their fellow employees and trying to keep the fire going, try to keep them organized. emily: gerrit, thank you for your great reporting on this issue. bloomberg tech's gerrit de vynck in new york. we have much more ahead. stick with us. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: facebook is teaming up

with third-party fact-checking organizations ahead of several african elections. the social network will work with local groups in south africa, nigeria, kenya, cameroon and senegal to determine if content is false. this also includes the company's whatsapp messaging service. facebook added they have trained political parties and candidates on security practices. meantime, russia is planning to disconnect from the internet. yes. that means the entire country. temporarily. legislators are creating moves to create a sovereign internet so traffic goes through mostly domestic portals. moscow says this is an attempt to test the country's cyber defenses. how well would it be equipped if the country was entirely cut off? but, critics have a different view, saying this risks ending the kremlin extensive power to censor the west. joining me to discuss is ryan kalember, the senior vice president for cybersecurity

strategy for proofpoint, a cyber security firm that services more than half of fortune 500 companies. what does this mean? ryan: russia is looking at extremely aggressive options to control pretty much every piece of information that goes over the internet in their country. emily: would this look like china's internet? ryan: that seems to be the implication. they are looking to test their own version of the great firewall not only to censor things they have been centering, -- censoring, but have control over what communication channels are viable, preventing people whatsapp, facebook, etc. emily: what kind of firewall do they have in place? ryan: for many years, they have had lots of different systems in their country's isp's. ofy had a reasonable amount collecting ability. they could see pretty much everything that was going on. in recent years, they have developed capabilities to actually block things. through the legal system, they have also started to ban things like storing russian people's data in other countries. just last month, they reached out to facebook and twitter and

said you are not storing russian citizens' data in russia, you are violating law. emily: what are the actual mechanics of this? presumably, it can be done. ryan: it absolutely can be done and many countries do it. china is the most obvious example. in the middle east, there are many different countries that, for whatever reason, they might be choosing to censor pornography, or speech they consider subversive. setting up ways to get the isp's which are effectively the only way out of that country from an internet perspective to block what they choose to block. emily: google and facebook operate in russia, they don't in china. what will this mean for them? ryan: it will be a challenge. i think back to a couple of years ago. maybe even a couple of months ago. telegram was blocked because it was using a domain -- the messaging service -- a domain fronting service hosted on google to basically operate beyond these censorship restrictions. that was found out and google

actually adapted to what the russian government wanted, blocking this domain fronting activity, so an unauthorized service could not be conducted in the country. i think this will have grave implications for any organization that does not want basically full russian control of the data across the services. emily: you raise an interesting point because we were just talking about google's exploratory plans in china and sundar pichai made the point they actually do have different rules in different countries they abide by. china is the one we all know about. does google bend to government demands elsewhere in the same way it might in china if it operated there? ryan: almost every company has to. we choose not to do business in russia and china because as a cybersecurity company, it would be virtually impossible for us to conduct our mission of protecting our customers were we to comply with the laws in those countries. this has a really long history. the fight that at&t conducted against tapping phones decades

and decades ago, there is a lot of resemblance to a lot of these challenges going on now and with governments that are little more heavy-handed, those challenges look a lot different. emily: with the russians still -- would the russians still potentially be able to meddle in other countries' elections if they were cut off in this way? ryan: any good cyber attack is not staged from your own ip server, anything that can retrace back to you. it is staged from another location entirely. this really wouldn't hamper their offensive capabilities. emily: how does this fit into the bigger geopolitical issue at play right now? ryan: this is a fairly aggressive move. it is a very interesting thing for them to be able to test because it lets them know that one of the key tools that, say nato or the united states may choose to use against them can be blunted or at least tolerated by the russian infrastructure. that is a really interesting piece of knowledge that the west does not really have in this conflict. emily: what would this mean for users inside russia and what do we know about how they feel

about things like this? ryan: really good question. the long history of subversive speech in russia being conducted across new apps being brought out, ads that pop up, it is fairly fascinating but it is gradually being forked down into things that the russian state can control. if russia really cared about facebook and twitter, they would not be pressuring them and -- the russian social network, which the russian government would prefer everyone use because they could surveil everything that is happening. emily: what are the biggest cyber threats you are looking at around the world right now? ryan: for most organizations, the biggest cyber threat will still be the theft of money. we sometimes forget this because it is a massive geopolitical issue and things like misinformation and election interference dominate the headlines, but that is still -- that still powers everything from a cybercrime perspective.

of course, you have state actors like north korea, pretty much acting like a cyber criminal enterprise. the big scary things tend to be around either broad internet of things or critical infrastructure, like power grids, which we do know are being explored in adversarial and defense sense by every government worth its salt. with a proper cyber capability, and it's yet to be proven that the ukraine example, which is probably the closest thing we have seen to a real nightmare from a cybersecurity perspective is actually viable outside a very small country with one power grid. emily: all right fascinating. , lots to watch. ryan kalember of proofpoint. thank you so much. good to have you back here. ryan: good to be here. emily: coming up, amazon's auto play. the tech giant is in talks to buy an electric car startup, partnering with general motors. we will bring you the latest details next. plus, canada's answer to tesla may not be what you expect. we will take an all-electric

three-wheeler for a ride on the streets of vancouver. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: amazon and general motors are in talks to invest in the electric pickup maker rivian -- not buy, invest. this is according to sources the say the deal is expected to value rivian between $1 billion and $2 billion. the investment would be a major boost for the company as it aims to be the first automaker with an electric pick up on the market. joining us from detroit to discuss is bloomberg's david welch. david what? david: yeah, it is a big

question. you think about general motors, why would they do this? they already make pickup trucks. they are very good at it. they already have an electric vehicle. why do they need a startup like rivian? what is amazon doing here? general motors will come out with 20 ev's by 2023. most of those vehicles are going to be invested in the chinese market, so there probably was not an electric pickup truck in the near future. maybe eventually. rivian wants to have their truck ready and think they will have it ready by 2020. for gm, this is a way to in gm's warchest, without spending too much money, get a pickup truck they can get to market a lot faster. maybe get some engineering talent they would not have. amazon, this is a way to get cheap, clean, electric delivery trucks to them pretty quickly so they can use them to get packages all over the place. emily: last week, we covered amazon's investment in aurora, a self-driving tech startup that is building software and

hardware for different automakers. that said, we had the ceo of rivian on the show last year. if i remember correctly, they would not even show us a picture of the car. it was very secretive, still in development. how much has rivian actually accomplished? david: they actually have shown a truck. they have a prototype. they have been talking about when they will have this thing ready which is 2020. they raised quite a bit of money. it is a legitimate startup. they have some real talent there. they are outside detroit so they are hiring people who know how to make actual vehicles, as well as. it is a pretty legitimate company. i liken this as when general motors brought cruise automation. gm already had a self-driving car initiative going on. they were already making vehicles that were trying to drive themselves, but they found in sanautomation francisco was already strapping a system on two other company's vehicles and moving the vehicles without drivers. this is a case where they found somebody who's got some talent and got a program in the works

and they could accelerate their own development by investing in it. emily: clearly, there are a lot of acquisitions or potential acquisitions, investment, competition happening in this space. what else are you watching? david: right now, we are hearing a lot of chatter about big car companies and big tech firms. most of the big car companies are trying to buy self-driving car startups, or invest, battery startups. tesla recently bought into a company that makes super capacitors which allows the automotive batteries to be charged faster and go further. even tesla is buying into technology companies. some of it is just taking a flyer on some small companies that might have some good science. in other cases, it is a way to get somebody's hardware. and accelerate your own development. it is a pretty good marriage. you think about it, you've got startups that are working solely on one project, and you have someone with deep pockets that can come along, give them the

cash they need to get to thesh t are going to get a company that has a pickup truck, and prototype. you not only get money from gm and amazon, you get maybe gm's manufacturing capabilities. once the truck is ready, you have the ready-made customer who has invested in you who wants to use the trucks to deliver. you already have maybe pre-booked sales. you could see it working out that way. emily: and a new electric empire. david welch, thank you so much for giving us context. meantime, you have probably never seen a vehicle like the one we are going to show you next, but if a publicly-traded canadian company has its way, it won't be long until you see a lot of them. bloomberg's ed ludlow reports from vancouver. ed: all-electric like a tesla. priced like a ford fiesta. and one of the weirdest looking

vehicles you've ever seen. introducing the solo. >> a clean energy electric vehicle for one person was an opportunity that was too great not to seize. three-wheel ev costs $15,500 and being handled in vancouver. the company has 23,000 solo preorders. it will mass-produce an updated model in china. >> the vehicle concept was to always have a vehicle that could be assembled quickly, efficiently, and in under three hours. ed: the solo has 100 miles of range and charges in three hours. it is designed with the specific group in mind. the company says 83% of north american commuters drive to work alone each day. the question is whether those commuters would be prepared to drive to work in something like this, that you could just fit in. the company's optimism is not

backed up by the numbers. >> seven out of 10 of what the consumer is buying is a truck at this point. the idea of a single-seater i think limits you to a specific user. ed: there are areas bloomberg intelligence sees as more promising. electro mechanica is looking at car sharing. and 7-eleven and dhl already testing for deliveries. >> you don't need two seats for a delivery vehicle. you have one employee. i is the extra seat there? ed: investors still need convincing. shares have fallen since last august. the ceo says the solo will be profitable. >> 25% growth profit is built into the design of the car and that is absolutely fine. ed: the company hopes to deliver 5000 china produced solos in 2019 and a further 20,000 in 2020. longer-term, production could be brought back home. general motors announced in october it was closing its

offshore site after more than 100 years in canada. the ceo says the companies interested in the site. they are eyeing more passengers for the sporty two-seater, but can it handle the challenge of billions of dollars worth of preorders? ed ludlow, bloomberg news, vancouver. emily: our very own ed ludlow from vancouver. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are live streaming on twitter. check us out @technology and follow our global breaking news network tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

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