Pinnacle loans top $1 billion
Pinnacle Bank topped $1 billion in loans in Chattanooga last year, up 34.9 percent from the previous year, Pinnacle Financial Partners said in a financial report Wednesday.
Pinnacle, which acquired the former CapitalMark Bank in Chattanooga in 2015, said it increased the number of revenue producers at its banks in Chattanooga from 34 to 39 last year and increased its core deposits in Chattanooga during 2017 by 27 percent to $710 million.
The Nashville-based Pinnacle Bank is the second biggest bank headquartered in Tennessee, behind only First Tennessee Bank.
Cold boosts TVA power use
Frigid temperatures boosted electricity use Wednesday across the Tennessee Valley to one of the highest winter peaks for TVA, but the closing of most schools and some businesses kept the peak below what had been forecasted.
TVA said consumers across its seven-state region consumed an estimated 31,640 megawatts of electricity at 10 a.m. Wednesday when the temperatures across major cities in the Tennessee Valley averaged 12 degrees Fahrenheit. Most homes and businesses in TVA’s region in the Southeast use electricity for heat.
The peak Wednesday was the 11th highest for the winter in TVA’s 85-year history.
On Jan. 2, TVA’s power peak rose to 31,740 megawatts when temperatures in the Tennessee Valley averged only 9 degrees.
TVA’s all-time power demand record is 33,482 megawatts on Aug. 16, 2007.
Driverless Uber planned for 2019
Uber plans to carry passengers in autonomous vehicles without human backup drivers in about the same time frame as competitors, which expect to be on the road at the latest sometime next year, the service’s autonomous vehicle chief said Wednesday.
Advanced Technology Group leader Eric Meyhofer wouldn’t give a specific start date but he said Uber won’t deploy the driverless cars without human backups unless they are proved safe.
“Once we can check that box, which we call passing the robot driver’s license test, that’s when we can remove the vehicle operator,” Meyhofer said in an interview at an auto industry investors conference Detroit. “We’re going aggressively too.”
Waymo, the name of the autonomous car unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, currently is testing on public roads in the Phoenix area without human backups and plans to carry passengers soon. General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation has promised to start sometime next year in an unspecified location.