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Tag: The Station

  • Hyundai antes up $1B for AV startup Motional and Elon unplugs the Tesla Supercharger team | TechCrunch

    Hyundai antes up $1B for AV startup Motional and Elon unplugs the Tesla Supercharger team | TechCrunch

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

    Before I jump into the all the news — and boy there was a lot! — I have an important update for all of you lovely readers. TechCrunch Mobility is moving to Thursdays! It will be the same newsletter filled with news and insights on the sector, but just landing in your inboxes Thursday morning. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!

    EV startup Fisker laid off more employees to “preserve cash” as bankruptcy inches ever closer; ride-hailing company Ola cut about 180 jobs and ousted its chief executive, Hemant Bakshi, merely four months after appointing him to the post; and lidar company Luminar slashed its 700-person workforce by 20% as part of a restructuring to adopt an “asset light” business model.

    Oh, and then there was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who axed the automaker’s global Supercharger network team. That perplexing decision comes just as non-Tesla EV drivers gain access to the network.

    That’s not to say the entire transportation sector was surrounded by economic storm clouds. There were brighter moments as well. Let’s go check it out!

    A little bird

    In the fallout from Tesla’s great Supercharger culling, we’ve spoken to several little birds, including those who were laid off and folks working at other automakers. As I mentioned above, Elon Musk gutted Tesla’s global Supercharger organization of about 500 people. Insiders at several different automakers — all of which are adopting Tesla’s charging tech — said they did not see this coming. “Shocked” and “stunned” were the most common phrases I heard.

    On the employee front, there was a lack of communication from human resources in the hours directly following the mass layoff. Some told me they and their fellow former co-workers had not received information about severance and that communication had stopped altogether. A few of those folks had received severance emails by Friday. All of the people I communicated with were still struggling to understand why Musk would cut the Supercharger team — an organization that is fundamental to Tesla and its EV sales. Others surmised only Elon and maybe the former head of the Supercharger team, Rebecca Tinucci, would ever know the answer.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com, Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com or Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deals!

    money the station

    It’s been a minute since we heard of an autonomous vehicle startup raising a substantial amount of money — or heck any money at all. That all changed this week when Motional scored an essential multi-million-dollar win, courtesy of Hyundai.

    Hyundai’s total commitment is $1 billion, but there are important details. Here’s how it breaks down. Hyundai invested $475 million directly into Motional as part of a broader deal that includes buying out joint venture partner Aptiv. Hyundai is spending another $448 million to buy 11% of Aptiv’s common equity interest in Motional.

    The quick backstory: Motional was formed in 2019 as a $4 billion joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv. Motional has spent the past several years plugging away at its autonomous vehicle tech, working toward a goal of launching a robotaxi service using driverless Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles in 2024. As Motional and Hyundai got closer — the companies announced plans in November to co-develop production-ready versions of the all-electric Ioniq 5 robotaxi — it seems Aptiv began to understand its own financial limitations. By January, Aptiv chairman and CEO Kevin Clark flagged that the company would reduce its ownership interest in Motional and stop allocating capital to the venture due to the high cost of commercializing a robotaxi business and the long road ahead to profits.

    The decision, while not particularly surprising to the industry insiders I spoke to, still put Motional and Hyundai in a sticky spot. Would Hyundai step up? Would outside investors step in? Hyundai answered the call.

    My question is will Motional, with the blessing of Hyundai, seek out other investors? That will all come down to how much capital Motional is burning through and whether it continues to chase the same robotaxi goals. If so, it seems the company will eventually need more capital.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    LiNova Energy, a California-based startup developing polymer cathode batteries, raised $15.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Catalus Capital, which was joined by Saft, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, Chevron Technology Ventures and a syndicate of investors.

    Rivian was awarded an eye-popping $827 million incentives package from the state of Illinois, funds that will be used to build out production lines for its next-generation EV, the R2.

    Viking Holdings, the luxury cruise operator backed by private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, raised $1.54 billion in its IPO.

    X Shore, a Swedish electric boat maker founded in 2016, raised €8.5 million in new funding from several unnamed existing backers, including founder Konrad Bergström.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Ford’s hands-free driver-assistance system, BlueCruise, after it was found to be active during two recent crashes that killed multiple people.

    The NHTSA made another big move in the sector and finalized a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard that will make automatic emergency braking, including the ability to detect and automatically brake for pedestrians, standard on all passenger cars and light trucks by September 2029. The agency said the safety standard is expected to significantly reduce rear-end and pedestrian crashes. Now, the NHTSA isn’t picking the technology automakers have to use. A number of computer vision and lidar companies have reached out to me to note how it could be beneficial to their business models.

    Autonomous vehicles

    TC contributor Tim Stevens takes us behind the scenes of the first Autonomous Racing League event in Abu Dhabi that pitted a self-driving car against a Formula 1 driver. His take? Yes, there were struggles; he also saw a lot of progress.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Remember last year when Henrik Fisker proudly debuted two prototypes designed to catapult his eponymous EV startup into the mainstream? TC reporter Sean O’Kane learned the engineering firm that helped develop those vehicles is suing Fisker for $13 million in damages. Read more to learn about this lawsuit, plus several others.

    This week’s wheels

    Image Credits: Emme Hall

    I turned the wheel over to TC contributor Emme Hall this week for a test drive of the new all-electric Acura ZDX Type S. You can read the entire review here, plus I suggest you watch her video of the hands-free advanced driver-assistance system in the vehicle. For those who want a sneak peek before committing to the longer read, here’s the gist.

    Hall expected joy and delight. Instead, it was more meh. Here’s one of the whys. The Type S weighs over 6,000 pounds. Even if the weight is evenly distributed front to rear, that’s a lot of heft to get around a turn. She liked the hefty steering, but there wasn’t much feedback happening.

    “The torque is always there on corner exit and body roll is kept in check, yet I’m not feeling the delight,” she wrote, adding that the 275/40 Continental Premium Contact 6 summer tires on the Type S offered up plenty of grip, but the low-profile sidewall combined with the harder run-flat rubber compound meant that the ride was just a touch harsh.

    Hall’s pursuit of an all-electric SUV that’s fun through the twisties continues.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • TechCrunch Mobility: Apple layoffs, an EV price reckoning and another Tesla robotaxi promise | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility: Apple layoffs, an EV price reckoning and another Tesla robotaxi promise | TechCrunch

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Automakers reported auto sales for Q1 and, welp, turns out that pricing sure does matter if you want to sell EVs. Who would have thought? A recent survey by Edmunds comes to a similar conclusion (at least for American buyers), finding a big gap between what consumers want and what is actually available on the market.

    Here’s the crux. According to the Edmunds survey, 47% say they are seeking an EV purchase below $40,000, and 22% are interested in EVs priced below the $30,000 threshold. Today, there are no new EVs priced below $30,000 and only four below the $40,000 mark. The average price of an EV in 2023 was $61,702, while all other vehicles stood at $47,450.

    This mismatch of realities is squeezing automakers as they try to move inventory by slashing prices. This downward pressure has forced automakers like Ford to delay future EV launches and put more resources toward hybrids. Even Tesla, a bellwether in the EV world, fell well below analysts’ expectations with deliveries down 20% from Q4 2023. Meanwhile, EV upstart Rivian posted tepid results.

    What’s the answer? Well, over at Tesla, it seems the solution is twofold: slash prices again and try to capture revenue through sales of its Full Self-Driving software that costs $12,000 and is currently being offered in a free one-month trial to all customers.

    OK, folks, let’s jump into the rest of the news!

    A little bird

    Founders, investors, engineers, policy wonks and others tell us things. And we’re here to pass along the verifiable information that those little birds have shared with us.

    This week, a little bird tipped us on the closure of Ghost Autonomy, which had raised upward of $220 million and recently partnered with OpenAI. A couple of calls, emails and a fresh posting on the company’s website confirmed the tip. About 100 people were affected.

    As I noted in my article, Ghost has pivoted a few times since it was founded in 2017. When I asked founder and CEO John Hayes what happened, he said the company had completed a highway driving product and was moving in urban environments through what he described as “last-mile delivery.”

    “Ultimately, the years required to bring the product to market could not be financed,” he wrote to me in an email.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Startup founders, listen up — a new fund just closed. Get your slide decks ready.

    Maniv, the Israel and now NYC-based VC firm, raised a $140 million fund with plans to stick to its early-stage investment strategy of backing startups at the intersection between mobility, transportation and energy.

    As I noted in my longer feature, the firm’s approach has evolved a bit by expanding geographically and diversifying its investor base. The firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.

    Investors in the fund are no longer dominated by automakers and Tier 1 suppliers. Instead, Maniv has opened up to a broader swath of strategic and institutional financial investors, including BNP Paribas Personal Finance and the venture arms of Shell and Enterprise Mobility.

    The Maniv III fund also includes return investors Valeo and Jaguar Land Rover venture arm InMotion Ventures. Toyota Motor Corp.’s Woven Capital, vehicle leasing company Arval, transportation infrastructure giant Ferrovial, the industrial manufacturing firm ITT Inc., fleet payments business WEX and an unnamed European insurance company also participated in the fund.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    Alsym Energy, a Massachusetts-based startup developing nonflammable battery chemistry, raised $78 million in a Series C round led by General Catalyst and Tata, the Indian conglomerate, with participation from Drads Capital, Thomvest and Thrive Capital.

    BlaBlaCar, the French carpooling and bus ticketing company, secured a €100 million revolving credit facility ($108 million at today’s exchange rate).

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    Waymo and Uber expanded on an ongoing partnership that will affect Uber Eats’ customers in the metro Phoenix area. Now when folks order a burrito or a pizza or some other treat through Uber Eats, they may have their meals delivered by a Waymo vehicle. The tie-up will begin with select merchants in Chandler, Tempe and Mesa, including restaurants like Princess Pita, Filiberto’s and BoSa Donuts.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Apple is laying off 614 employees in California after abandoning its electric car project. According to the WARN notice posted by the California EDD, most of the affected employees were working at buildings related to its canceled car project, while others were working at a facility for its next-generation screen development, Bloomberg reported.

    Canoo finally reported its Q4 and full-year earnings. Tucked inside the regulatory filing is a nugget regarding the use of CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet — just one of many expenses that illustrates the gap between spending and revenue at the EV startup. Tl;dr: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO’s private jet in 2023.

    Faraday Future narrowly avoided an eviction from its Los Angeles headquarters. The company reached an agreement with the owner of the building, Rexford Industrial, to stay at the facility as long as it meets a few conditions. If Faraday violates any of the terms, Rexford has the right to trigger a 48-hour demand for payment and can boot the startup if it doesn’t pay up. If Faraday Future makes its payments, it can stay in the building until September 2025 when the lease expires.

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a third investigation into Fisker’s Ocean SUV, this time centered on problems getting the doors to open.

    Tesla is reportedly abandoning its plan to build a lower-cost EV thought to cost around $25,000, according to Reuters, despite that vehicle’s status as a pivotal product for the company’s overall growth. Apparently, Tesla will instead focus on a planned robotaxi that is being built on the same small EV platform that was also supposed to power the lower-cost vehicle. This is where it gets a bit silly. Just hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Reuters was lying, he posted on X that the Tesla robotaxi would be revealed August 8. Go figure.

    This week’s wheels

    This week’s wheels is taking a one-week hiatus while I enjoy a bit of vacation time. But don’t worry, it’s back next week and I have a few vehicles lined up, including the Mercedes-Benz EQE 350 4Matic sedan, a Lexus LC500 hybrid and a Mercedes eSprinter. Plus, some e-bikes will soon be in the mix.

    What vehicles — including the two-wheeled variety — are you interested in reading about? I’ll put them on my list.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Fisker enters into dumpster fire territory and Tesla chases FSD revenue | TechCrunch

    Fisker enters into dumpster fire territory and Tesla chases FSD revenue | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Remember in the last edition of TechCrunch Mobility, when I wrote that the wheels were starting to come off the Fisker bus? Sheesh. Did they.

    To catch you up: Fisker issued a warning on March 18 that it was pausing production for six weeks and had just $121 million in cash and cash equivalents, $32 million of which was restricted or not immediately accessible. The company was counting on a $150 million influx of capital via convertible notes and a potential partnership with another automaker. Those hopes incinerated as fast as a gasoline-soaked rag when negotiations between Fisker and the large automaker — reported to be Nissan — fell apart and put that convertible note deal in jeopardy.

    Shares plummeted 28%, trading was halted, and in a final blow, the New York Stock Exchange said it was taking steps to remove Fisker from the exchange.

    Those are all symptoms of a bigger problem within the company, including one particularly embarrassing one that TC reporter Sean O’Kane uncovered. The tl;dr: Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete.

    Alrighty, let’s jump into the rest of it, including where bankrupt EV startup Arrival’s assets ended up, a profile on startup Ionobell hoping to increase EV range through recycled silicon battery materials, and a $1 billion boost for Lucid.

    A little bird

    Founders, investors, engineers, policy wonks and others tell us things. And we’re here to pass along the verifiable information that those little birds have shared with us.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    It ain’t easy being an executive at an EV startup these days. Just ask the folks at Fisker. (Sorry, too soon?)

    Amid all of the EV startup bankruptcies and other bleak goings-on, there was a bit of positive news. Lucid, which has had its own struggles, raised another $1 billion from its biggest financial backer, Saudi Arabia. Ayar Third Investment, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, agreed to buy $1 billion worth of Lucid’s stock, which will add to the Kingdom’s current stake of around 60% ownership.

    The $1 billion boost is a lot of money, but it doesn’t last long if you’re trying to design, manufacture, sell and service vehicles. This gives Lucid an important capital buffer; however, it does not end it’s existential crisis. The company must successfully bring its next vehicle, the Gravity SUV, to market and drum up fresh business for its existing Air sedan if it hopes to survive and scale.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    Cyvl.ai, a Boston-area startup that helps municipalities and civil engineering firms track the conditions of transportation infrastructure, raised $6 million in a round led by Companyon Ventures with participation from Argon Ventures, Aero X Ventures and Alumni Ventures. Existing investors MassVentures, Launch Capital and RiverPark Ventures also participated.

    Ember, a Scottish startup building one of the U.K.’s first all-electric intercity bus networks, raised $14 million in a Series A round led by Inven Capital. Investors 2150 and AENU also participated.

    Ionobell, a seed-stage startup that says its silicon material will be cheaper than the established competition and help boost range in EV batteries, closed an unpriced $3.9 million seed extension, TechCrunch exclusively learned. Dynamo Ventures and Trucks VC led the round.

    Iron Sheepdog, a startup that developed trucking software for brokers and contractors, raised $10 million in a Series B round led by SJF Ventures with participation from Grand Ventures, Supply Chain Ventures, and other strategic partners in the construction industry.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    Tesla is going to give every customer in the U.S. a free one-month trial of its $12,000 Full Self-Driving Beta driver-assistance system, provided they have a car with the compatible hardware. The company is also reportedly mandating, at CEO Elon Musk’s request, that prospective buyers are given a demo of the software before they purchase a new Tesla. It seems that Tesla is turning to FSD as another financial lever to pull as profits on automotive sales shrink.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Arrival sold some of its assets, including advanced manufacturing equipment, to Canoo, another struggling startup trying to build and sell electric vehicles. You can’t make this stuff up, folks!

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced new emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2027 to 2032, a regulation that will increasingly limit the amount of pollution emitted by new heavy trucks. The regulations technically don’t mandate that these non-polluting heavy trucks are electric and instead let manufacturers decide how to meet the standards, whether its through hydrogen-powered fuel cells, better fuel efficiency or another alternative fuel. However, many believe it will mean a boost in battery-electric heavy-duty trucks. Consider the potential effect for this rule: The heavy-trucks category applies to more than 100 vehicle types, including vocational vehicles such as delivery trucks, garbage haulers, public utility trucks, transit, shuttle and school buses, as well as tractor-trailer trucks.

    In-car tech

    GM has lost another executive who was part of the company’s software and digital services effort. You might recall that former Apple executive Mike Abbott, who was executive vice president of GM’s software and services, stepped down earlier this month due to health issues. Now Edward Kummer, a former president of Nordstrom Rack’s online business who joined GM in 2021 to head up its new digital business team, is gone, the Detroit News reported.

    This week’s wheels

    land rover defender 110-x

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    I rarely test out internal combustion engine vehicles, but I made an exception this week when I had the chance to spend a few hundred miles behind the wheel of a 2024 Land Rover Defender 110 X-Dynamic SE. And technically, folks, this has a six-cylinder Mild-Hybrid Electric Vehicle powertrain, so that still qualifies, right?

    My experience with Land Rover Defender has been solely in body-on-frame models that are decades old. So I was looking forward to finally getting in the modern version, which Land Rover officially brought back in 2020. The spec I drove, which was priced at just under $88,000 and included some pricey upgrades and 22-inch wheels, is probably suited for the well-heeled urban customer. But with different tires, this aluminum monocoque-structure Defender could absolutely handle off-road conditions. I played around on dirt roads — no rock crawling — and it handled just fine with no squeaks, rattles or clunks, even on washboard terrain.

    I didn’t love the advanced driver-assistance system, notably how the driver engages the adaptive cruise control. But there were lots of features I did like, including the very quiet ride, adaptive air suspension, the white paint-on-black gloss details, a functional rear door and easy-to-reach spare tire, the air-chilled cubby to keep snacks cool and an interior design that marries utilitarian function with robust, high-quality materials.

    A final word on that interior — you won’t find a massive screen here. But there are tech-related details mixed in with the buttons and knobs. My version had a wireless charger and plenty of charger ports, including one on the dash of the passenger side. And the user interface was actually fairly decent.

    One feature I liked was a drop-down menu on the media toggle that allowed me to quickly swap between Apple CarPlay and the native infotainment system that included Sirius XM radio or local stations. That might seem inconsequential, but I have been in a number of EVs lately that make it far too complicated to switch between CarPlay and the native system.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • TechCrunch Mobility: The wheels are starting to come off the Fisker EV bus | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility: The wheels are starting to come off the Fisker EV bus | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

    Before we jump into the startup and tech fray, I wanted to touch on some activity over on the hill — Capitol Hill, that is. The Biden Administration has released two new (and separate) proposed standards — via the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency — that will affect U.S. automakers and, ultimately, you. While both regulations have been softened to assuage the automotive industry, car dealers and unions, they also put in place far stricter standards than existed before.

    The DOE issued a gentler “petroleum equivalency factor,” which gives EVs a score, of sorts, under the government’s corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. The original proposal would have made it difficult for automakers to meet the CAFE standards, which would have meant billions of dollars in fines. (E&E has a nice explainer.)

    Meanwhile, the EPA released its tailpipe standards for 2027 to 2032 model year cars and light-duty trucks that will put stiffer requirements on automakers but gives them more flexibility to meet the proposed rules via a variety of powertrains. In other words, the standards are technology agnostic and can be met without shifting an entire fleet to battery electric. It’s also far less stringent than the original proposal that would have required EV sales to make up 67% of the total U.S. passenger vehicle market by 2032.

    What does this mean for EV startups? Not much since battery electric vehicles, like those made by Rivian, Tesla and Lucid, meet the clean car standard of a CO2 limit of 85 grams per mile by model year 2032 (a 50% reduction from model year 2026 standards). There are real implications to the legacy automakers, which are plowing billions into developing, building and selling EVs, but making a profit from internal combustion engine vehicles. If there’s one clear winner here, it might be plug-in hybrids.

    This week’s news also includes articles about Rivian’s partnership with Tesla, electric boat startup Candela, continued financial fallout at Fisker, a startup trying to tackle the precarious world of extended warranties, and more!

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    Last month, a little bird told us Clevon, a company that started developing autonomous delivery technology in 2018, was struggling to find new investment and was on the brink of shutting down. The company’s co-founder said at the time (in an email viewed by TechCrunch) that it was looking for buyers for its hardware and software IP and AV assets and was even taking on its workforce.

    Clevon is still plugging along, according to co-founder and CEO Sander Sebastian Agur. He wouldn’t provide a lot of detail but said the company was funded and has “entered into an exclusivity agreement for its merger by an American electric vehicle company.” The agreement is expected to be completed by the first half of June.

    The company is having to make some cost reductions in the meantime and about 17 employees are being laid off.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Uber seems to be everywhere, so it might surprise you that the company just made its first investment in an Africa-founded startup. And it’s a biggie.

    Moove, an African mobility fintech that offers vehicle financing to ride-hailing and delivery app drivers, raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Uber. Sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, Dubai-based The Latest Ventures, AfricInvest, Palm Drive Capital, Triatlum Advisors, and Future Africa also participated in the funding round. Moove is now valued at $750 million.

    Why would Uber be interested in Moove? Uber is Moove’s largest car financing and vehicle supply partner. And Moove, which has made EVs a big part of its business strategy, aligns with Uber’s commitment to a fully zero-emission fleet by 2040.

    Other deals that got my attention this week …

    Amber, a Bay Area startup founded in early 2023 that just launched an aftermarket Tesla extended warranty product, raised $3.18 million in a seed round co-led by Era and Primer Sazze, with Alcove Fund, Virta Ventures, Global Millennial Capital and Root & Shoot Ventures joining.

    Candela, the electric boat maker, raised $25 million in a round led Groupe Beneteau, with participation from EQT Ventures, Ocean Zero LLC, and Kan Dela AB.

    Pelikan Mobility, a French startup developing fleet management software for commercial EVs, raised €4 million ($4.4 million) in a seed round from Pale Blue Dot, Frst, Seedcamp and others.

    Stellantis invested an undisclosed amount into SteerLight, a French startup developing low-cost lidar designed for advanced driver assistance systems. In a separate non–car related deal, the automaker purchased 8.3 million shares of Archer Aviation stock. Stellantis said this signals its confidence in Archer’s plans to bring electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to market beginning in 2025.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Apps

    Apple was sued this week by the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged monopolistic practices. Here’s an explainer and all of our coverage to date. Tucked inside the lawsuit is a section on automotive, namely the smartphone projection feature known as Apple CarPlay. The U.S. government claims in the lawsuit that “Apple has told automakers that the next generation of Apple CarPlay will take over all of the screens, sensors, and gauges in a car, forcing users to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience if they want to use any of the features provided by CarPlay.” Some have even speculated that this explains why General Motors ditched Apple CarPlay altogether.

    We’re a bit skeptical over here. For one, automakers can choose what screen Apple CarPlay is projected to, just like it does with competitor Android Auto. And automakers still have their own underlying native software, which, by the way, is increasingly coming from Google.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Cowboy has launched an all-road electric bike to attract riders beyond European city centers.

    Fisker’s financial health is fading — and fast. The company said it had just $121 million in cash and cash equivalents as of March 15, $32 million of which is restricted or not immediately accessible. The company has paused production of its electric Ocean SUV for six weeks as it scrambles for a cash infusion.

    India has an eye-popping stat. The number of startups in India’s electric two-wheeler market has surged to more than 150, up from 54 in 2021, driven by government incentives to promote clean vehicles and cut oil imports, TechCruncher Manish Singh reports.

    Rivian customers can now request an adapter to tap into Tesla’s vast North American network of Superchargers, making it the second automaker to do so behind Ford.

    Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading investors about demand for the company’s flagship all-electric Endurance pickup truck.

    TechCrunch contributor Emme Hall took the 2025 Honda CR-V e:FCEV — a hydrogen fuel cell–powered version of the popular crossover — out for a first drive and explores why the heck this automaker would launch a car where there is hardly any infrastructure. Oh, and she discovered this vehicle has a bit of a plug-in hybrid twist.

    Flight

    DoorDash expanded its partnership with Alphabet’s Wing to bring its autonomous drone delivery pilot to the United States. It’s fairly limited for now; select users in Christiansburg, Virginia, will be able to order eligible menu items from their local Wendy’s.

    Joby Aviation, the startup developing electric air taxis, said it will deliver two aircraft to MacDill Air Force Base in 2025 as part of the eVTOL company’s AFWERX Agility Prime contract with the U.S. Air Force.

    The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to conduct its first industry-wide review of data security and privacy policies across the largest U.S. airlines. The agency says it will examine whether U.S. airline giants are properly protecting their customers’ personal information and whether airlines are “unfairly or deceptively monetizing or sharing that data with third parties.”

    In-car tech

    Nvidia held its annual GTC developer conference this past week. You can catch up on all of our GTC coverage here, including some surprises in co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote. Automotive News homed in on how Nvidia’s computing architecture is being used by companies like Cerence, SoundHound and Wayve to design user interfaces that incorporate generative AI into the car.

    This week’s wheels

    Subaru Solterra EV 2024

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    I spent some time in the 2024 Subaru Solterra, a battery electric crossover built as part of a joint project with Toyota, to experience what has changed or improved since the vehicle launched the year before. And there have been changes!

    The most obvious is the steering wheel, which is no longer a circle and now more of a squarical shape, a change made after feedback from consumers. You’ll notice the instrument cluster actually sits above the steering wheel, which takes some getting used to. The new shape helps improve visibility.

    Two other items of note, once I got the Subaru Solterra app linked up with the vehicle: The infotainment experience was OK. There were some buggy moments and there isn’t an intuitive and easy one swipe or click way to move between Apple CarPlay and the native software system. It wasn’t my best in-car software experience, but certainly not the worst, either.

    On the advanced driver assistance front, Subaru has added a traffic jam assist feature that provides hands-free steering in low-speed traffic jams up to 25 miles per hour. That is a super specific use case that many drivers might never need due to the speed limitations. Thanks to Phoenix traffic, I was able to test it. The lane change assist — another new feature that will automatically change lanes if the driver hits the indicator — I found a bit wonky to understand exactly when I could use it. (This feature only works between 55 and 85 miles per hour.)

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Rivian’s big bet, Waymo goes driverless in Austin and the Chevy Blazer EV returns | TechCrunch

    Rivian’s big bet, Waymo goes driverless in Austin and the Chevy Blazer EV returns | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

    This week, it was all about Rivian and its splashy reveal of not one, but three future EVs. I attended the event to see the vehicles up close. Perhaps, more importantly, I also went to talk to executives, investors and customers to get a better understanding of where Rivian is headed and how folks are feeling about this EV upstart that is still far from turning a profit. I even ran into former Waymo CEO and now Rivian board member John Krafcik who was in attendance and cast a positive tone about the company’s future.

    I also interviewed founder and CEO RJ Scaringe after the event. Much of our conversation centered around the R2 and a big and hopefully fruitful bet to shift production to its existing factory in Normal, Illinois instead of a yet-to-be-built plant in Georgia. Stay tuned in the next day or so for a complete rundown of the interview. I will give you one teaser: relevancy was a theme.

    Check out our coverage of the R2 reveal, the surprise R3 and R3x, how reservations are going and a fun cinematic feature found in one of the many R2 “adventure” accessories.

    This week’s news also includes articles about GM resuming sales of Chevrolet Blazer, a financial update from Turo, another EV reveal that showed a little muscle, and more!

    One more thing … I’ll be in Austin for SXSW this coming week.

    I am moderating two panels, and I hope to see your smiling faces in the audience. The first panel, at 4 p.m. March 12, is entitled How Sustainable Mobility is Transforming the Last-Mile of Delivery and will feature Shawn Xu of Lowercarbon Capital, Angali Naik of Cartken and Abby Wheeler of Uber.

    The following day, and also at 4 p.m., I will moderate a panel called Mobility at the Speed of Trust: AV Purpose, Policy, and Performance with Darran Anderson, who is director of strategy and innovation at Texas DOT, Jay Blazek Crossley of Farm&City and Katrin Lohmann, who is president of Volkswagen ADMT.

    Please say hi if you’re in town!

    A little bird

    No little birds this week — at least ones who provided verifiable information I could share. Y’all have shared lots of spicy rumors though! Please keep reaching out; no tip is too small.

    What I can share is an overview of the conversations I overheard at the Rivian R2 reveal, which was held March 7 at the South Coast Theater in Laguna Beach, California. (Rivian bought and restored the theater last year).

    Among staff, from the lowly to the higher ups, there was a mix of excitement and relief once the event was over. The mood was positive, but some employees were clearly still processing the layoffs that occurred recently. I heard from a few folks that upper execs had underestimated the buzz around the R3 and R3X — the two surprise reveals. Importantly, the R3 and R3x vehicles don’t have a production date. (At least not a public one).

    The guests I spoke to or overheard talking — a combination of media, loyal customers and investors — were overwhelming positive about what they saw. There were a few grumbles about the location of the charging port and I heard more than a few wonder if Rivian could hold on financially through 2026, when the company is expected to begin production of the R2.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Will Turo ever IPO? Fellow TechCrunch reporter Alex Wilhelm and I have a running joke about the company’s long-delayed IPO; the company first filed an S-1 to go public in early 2022, and continues to update the document quarterly in preparation for an eventual offering. Alas, the venture-backed, peer-to-peer car rental service updated the S-1 once again with its fourth-quarter and full-year financial performance.

    That suggests, as Wilhelm notes, that a public offering is still a key priority for Turo. Why else bother with the added paperwork?

    While this isn’t a deal, per se. I do think it’s worth highlighting how the company is faring, per its latest financial reporting.

    Turo saw an 18% uptick in year-over-year revenue to $879.8 million. That seems like good news until you look at Turo’s growth rate, which has dramatically declined in the last two years. Revenue growth did perk up a bit in Q4 2023 compared to the same quarter the previous year, a data point that could help it argue to public-market investors that its deceleration is not necessarily irreversible, Wilhelm wrote.

    Also, Turo is actually profitable, which is no small thing. Gross margins did devolve from 54.3% in 2022 to 51.4% in 2023 and the company posted its smallest operating profit since 2020 last year. However, Turo is still in the black and that has me betting that an IPO is coming in 2024.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    REE, an automotive technology company and makes full by-wire electric trucks and platforms, closed its public offering of 2.3 million Class A ordinary shares, raising about $14.95 million. Multiple investors participated in the round, led by M&G Investment Management, REE’s largest shareholder.

    Serve Robotics, an autonomous sidewalk delivery company, qualified to trade on the OTCQB Venture Market operated by the OTC Markets Group Inc. The company’s common shares are now trading on the OTCQB under the ticker symbol “SBOT.”

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Apps

    Uber Eats has added a live location-sharing capability to help couriers find customers in difficult-to-find locations, including public places such as campus courtyards, parks and playgrounds.

    Waze launched a few new features to help users navigate tricky roundabouts, get alerts when a speed limit is about to change and get warnings about speed bumps and sharp curves. Question for readers: Am I the only one surprised that Google hasn’t killed off Waze?

    Autonomous vehicles

    Baidu’s autonomous ride hailing platform Apollo Go is now offering 24/7 autonomous driving rides in selected areas of Wuhan, China. This is the third major operational expansion of Baidu’s robotaxi service in 2024. The company was recently approved for robotaxi pilot operation on highways to Beijing Daxing Airport.

    Waymo said it will start letting its autonomous vehicles traverse Austin without a safety operator behind the wheel, a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public.. The announcement comes less than a week after the Alphabet-owned company received a critical permit that allows it to charge for robotaxi rides in Los Angeles, San Francisco highways and the greater SF Peninsula.

    Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

    Faraday Future hit a new not-so-desirable milestone. The troubled EV company issued its first recall that covers all 11 vehicles — yes less than a dozen  — it built last year.  The recall centers around a problem with the warning light for the airbags in the company’s FF91 SUV.

    General Motors resumed sales of the Chevrolet Blazer EV — and at a cheaper price — more than two months after the automaker pulled the vehicle over software problems.

    Rad Power Bikes launched four new e-bikes and a newly engineered battery equipped with thermal resistant technology to prevent overheating or fires. The new batteries are potted with a heat-absorbing resin that protects against corrosion and overheating, according to the company. It encapsulates each battery cell, and if overheating occurs, the resin is supposed to stop the thermal event from spreading.

    Stellantis introduced two all-electric versions of the Dodge Charger packed with the kind of features muscle car fans have come to expect — right down to a system that tries to mimic the rumble of a Hemi V-8 engine. Will the performance benefits in the all-electric Dodge Charger be enough to woo customers who are emotionally attached to grumbling gas-powered version? I’m not so sure.

    Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany was forced to shut down after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid. The shutdown, which was expected to last at least a week, could cost the company an estimated $100 million.

    This week’s wheels

    Rivian R1S EV charging

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    What better way to get to the Rivian R2 event than to drive a Rivian R1S SUV? The company offered up one of the vehicles from its press fleet and I jumped at the opportunity. Why? I haven’t driven a Rivian in more than a year, I wanted to test the Rivian EV charging network and see how recent software updates have changed the vehicle experience. Plus, I wanted to spend time in the third-row R1S ahead of the company’s reveal of the R2, which is a smaller, more affordable SUV.

    Quick thoughts:
    – I applaud a recent software update that added a new vehicle icon on the upper left hand corner of the infotainment screen, and gives users quick access to some controls like opening the charge port or front truck as well as other shortcuts for car wash and pet mode.
    – I still and will always loathe the lack of a physical toggle to move the HVAC vents. This is my hill to die on.
    – The advanced driver assistance system is better, but still needs improvement. The vehicle still slightly ping pongs within the lane when the lane keeping feature is on and the torque sensor on the steering wheel is far too sensitive to my liking. I accidentally disengaged the ADAS several times. I did appreciate that the lane keeping and adaptive cruise control stayed on and did not disengage when I put my indicator on and moved into another lane. Neat!
    – The Rivian EV charger, or “adventure network” as it is branded, was easy to use and went smoothly. It was not the fastest charge; I pulled up to 120 kw. However, I was able to park and plug without the hassle of using a credit card or app. I am curious to test what the experience is like for non-Rivian owners. Unsurprisingly, I had some issues at my next stop, where I powered up the vehicle using an Electrify America charger. Two of the charging ports were not working, the app wouldn’t communicate with the charger and I ended up just using my credit card instead.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Ford preps for its next big fight, Waymo recalls its self-driving car software and layoffs come for another AV startup | TechCrunch

    Ford preps for its next big fight, Waymo recalls its self-driving car software and layoffs come for another AV startup | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week’s news includes a BMW security lapse that exposed sensitive information, blowback from a federal agency over an anti-Tesla Super Bowl ad and a new federal investigation into Fisker.

    But first, some words about my recent visit to Detroit, where I met with a few Ford executives to find out what they’re focused on for 2024 and beyond.

    It’s safe to say that Chinese EV automakers and Tesla are top of mind; and in the view of Ford execs, a low-cost EV and cutting-edge software are the best ways to thwart those threats. The company’s EV skunkworks project, which recently came to light, is charged with that task.

    Ford CFO John Lawler didn’t mince words during an interview at the company’s headquarters.

    “We have to assume that eventually they’ll be here,” Lawler said. “China has been looking for its global champion for decades. They couldn’t get there with a traditional gas vehicle; they saw the writing on the wall as early as 2010 that electric was the way to go and they have subsidized and focused on that since then.”

    Lawler said Chinese automakers are now competitive. Now armed with production capacity and “fantastic” designs, China is pushing into other regions.

    “It’s not a short stakes game; it’s long,” Lawler said. “So everybody’s thinking about the next couple of years, they’re thinking about the next 25, 30 years. They’re not gonna sweat what’s happening right now. They’ll keep building their footprint and building their brands up, keep building their technology and building out the advanced development of their vehicles, and eventually, there won’t be any stopping it.”

    China and Tesla aren’t the only concerns taking up their collective gray matter. Ford CEO Jim Farley is also intent on clawing back $2 billion in cost savings across the company’s industrial system. A big part of that is improving the quality of new vehicles — which are directly tied to warranty costs — and was a point he emphasized during a recent interview at Wolfe Research’s Global Auto and Auto Tech Conference in New York.

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    A little bird pointed us to a recent filing regarding Faraday Future that got our attention. For the unfamiliar, Faraday Future is an EV startup that went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Once upon a time, Faraday Future was about as buzzy as a startup could get. But years of internal drama, a revolving door of executives and federal investigations has the company hanging on the end of its financial threads.

    Now it appears the company is at risk of losing its LA headquarters. The company’s landlord filed a lawsuit seeking to repossess the commercial space after Faraday Future failed to pay rent. The current bill is close to $1 million.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    No deal of the week! Instead, here’s a list of deals that got my attention.

    Celadyne, a hydrogen fuel cell startup, raised $4.5 million in a seed round was co-led by Maniv and Dynamo Ventures, with major participation from EPS Ventures.

    Revel, the Brooklyn-based startup initially known for its fleet of rentable blue electric mopeds, is reportedly trying to raise $200 million in equity, Bloomberg reported. The company shutdown its shared moped business in November and is now trying to build out electric ride-hailing and EV fast-charging businesses.

    Roam, a Kenyan EV startup, has raised $24 million in a Series A round, including up to $10 million debt commitment from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Equator, an Africa-focused climate tech VC fund, led the round At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, The World We Want and One Small Planet also participated.

    Skylo Technologies, a direct-to-device satellite connectivity service provider, raised $37 million in a round co-led by Intel Capital and Innovation Endeavors and joined by BMW i Ventures, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Seraphim Space, and Next47.

    Velocys, a startup developing sustainable aviation fuel, raised $40 million from Carbon Direct Capital, Lightrock, GenZero and Kibo Investments.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    GM is expanding access to Super Cruise, with plans to let drivers use the hands-free advanced driver-assistance system on about 750,000 miles of roads in the United States and Canada. The expansion will nearly double the automaker’s Super Cruise network by 2025 and includes rural and minor highways.

    The National Transportation Safety Board ordered the Dawn Project organization to stop using its seal after it appeared in a Super Bowl ad that called for consumers to boycott Tesla.

    Autonomous vehicles

    Cruise named Steve Kenner, an autonomous vehicle industry veteran who has held top safety roles at Kodiak, Locomation, Aurora and Uber’s now-defunct self-driving division, as its first “chief safety officer.” My take: This is a position that Cruise should have had years ago. Meanwhile, Cruise lost another key employee. Carl Jenkins, head of hardware at Cruise, resigned from the company.

    May Mobility laid off 40 people, or about 13% of its staff.

    San Francisco Giants are swapping out the Cruise robotaxi uniform patch for a less controversial one that advertises Chevrolet, another GM brand.

    Waymo voluntarily recalled the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall. As reporter Sean O’Kane notes, the recall comes at a time when self-driving cars are facing intense scrutiny following a series of high-profile crashes and controversies, including this week when a crowd of people in San Francisco swarmed, vandalized and torched a Waymo robotaxi.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    EVs had a white-hot 2023 — but data in December shows sales are cooling, Automotive News reported. New EV registrations rose 52% in 2023 over the previous year, according to data from S&P Global Mobility. EVs now have 7.7% of the U.S. light-vehicle market, up from 5.7% a year earlier.

    Lucid Motors dropped the price of its luxury Air sedan by thousands of dollars. Lucid also got the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week. The regulators opened an investigation into a Lucid windshield defroster recall from January, saying it’s “concerned” the company’s over-the-air update solution doesn’t go far enough to fix the problem. Is the NHTSA starting to push back against OTAs?

    The NHTSA opened a second investigation into EV startup Fisker‘s Ocean SUV, after the agency received four complaints about the vehicle rolling away unexpectedly, including one injury. Fisker also received a noncompliance notice from the New York Stock Exchange because its stocks has closed under $1 for the past 30 days, according to a regulatory filing.

    Stellantis, the parent company of brands like Jeep and Chrysler, announced it will adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS). Stellantis is the last major Western automaker to announce compatibility with NACS.

    Ride-hailing and ride-sharing

    HopSkipDrive, the youth ride-share startup, beat two new key California emissions standards in 2023, an accomplishment the company believes will bolster its case for relying more on shared passenger vehicles to get kids and teens to and from school.

    This week’s wheels

    ford blue cruise

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    During my short trip to Michigan, I used a 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E to drive to various meetings in Dearborn and Detroit. (The press car came courtesy of Ford.)

    My primary interest was in Blue Cruise, the hands-free active driver assistance system. I had a lot of time to test it out thanks to a number of 20- to 30-mile commutes, most of which were on highways. I was testing the Blue Cruise 1.3 version, which accelerates or brakes to maintain a selected following distance from a vehicle ahead, keeps the vehicle centered in the lane and steers. When the driver hits the turn signal, the vehicle will change lanes. It also will make a suggestion to pass if traffic is slow.

    What I liked: It’s simple to engage Blue Cruise and crystal clear when the system is handling the driving. The passing is crisp and vehicle doesn’t ping pong within the lane, which is common in other systems. My one picky critique is that the word “ready” is illuminated in green in the instrument cluster right below Blue Cruise, when it is engaged (see photo). That “ready” has nothing to do with Blue Cruise and is instead meant to let the EV driver know their vehicle is ready to drive. I’m sure drivers will get used to it, but I could also see it causing some confusion.

    A feature I loved: I could take over the steering and Blue Cruise would remain engaged. I know that in some circles this is frowned upon because the driver might get confused. However, I loath how often I accidentally disengage other systems like Tesla’s Autopilot by moving the steering wheel just a skosh too much.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Uber hits a profit milestone, Ford builds an EV skunksworks and Fisker fumbles | TechCrunch

    Uber hits a profit milestone, Ford builds an EV skunksworks and Fisker fumbles | TechCrunch


    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

    This week was a busy one with Rivian officially announcing the reveal date for its next-gen EV, a Waymo robotaxi striking a bicyclist (oh and one of its robotaxis was vandalized and burned late Saturday night!), Arrival trying to sell off its UK assets, plus a few scoops on e-motorcycle startup Cake, Ford and Fisker. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so come along for a ride.

    Oh, but first, a bit of late-breaking news over the weekend.

    Joby Aviation, a company developing all-electric aircraft for commercial passenger service, announced Sunday an agreement with Dubai regulators to launch air taxi services there by early 2026. Joby, a startup that went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, said it’s targeting initial operations as early as 2025.

    It’s worth noting that under the deal, Joby has exclusive air taxi rights in Dubai for six years and some financial “mechanisms”; Joby didn’t provide further details. Joby has also signed an agreement with Skyports, a company that will design, build and operate four initial vertiport sites across Dubai.

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    We’ve had many little birds talking to us about Fisker, the EV startup that went public in 2020 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Those conversations combined with a review of internal documents, a number of lawsuits and an investigation by federal regulators came together in a riveting and troubling story by Sean O’Kane.

    What did O’Kane find? Fisker Ocean SUV customers have reported more than 100 separate loss-of-power incidents as well as a myriad of other problems, including sudden loss of braking power, problematic key fobs causing them to get locked inside or outside of the vehicle, seat sensors that don’t detect the driver’s presence and the SUV’s front hood suddenly flying up at high speeds.

    Customers also complained about the service department. After our story was published, another little bird told us that Fisker’s global service director was recently let go.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    India is one of the largest two-wheeler markets in the world. And a whole new crop of startups — like startup River — are popping up on the scene thanks to demand for zero-emission vehicles.

    River recently raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Japan’s Yamaha Motor. Existing investors Al-Futtaim Automotive, Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures, Trucks VC and Maniv Mobility also participated.

    The startup is facing a competitive market as many companies are vying for a piece of the EV pie. River is betting that it will win over Indian customers with Indie, a utility lifestyle-focused product that has been described as an “SUV” two-wheeler.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    Elroy Air, a South San Francisco-based startup developing autonomous cargo drones,  raised $48.9 million, according to a regulatory filing.

    Guided Energy, a French startup that raised $5.2 million from Sequoia Capital and Dynamo Ventures at the end of 2023, is building a software tool that will help EV fleet operators with charge management and dispatch.

    Oto, an Indian startup that built a financing software platform for two-wheeled EVs, raised $10 million in a round led by GMO Venture Partners.

    Starship Technologies, a delivery robotics startup out of Estonia, raised $90 million in funding round co-led by two previous backers: Plural and Iconical. It brings the total raised by Starship to $230 million, with previous backers including the Finnish-Japanese firm NordicNinja, the European Investment Bank, Morpheus Ventures and TDC.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    An administrative law judge with the California Public Utilities Commission held a settlement hearing regarding the October 2 incident that left a pedestrian, who had initially been hit by a human-driven car, stuck under and then dragged by a Cruise robotaxi.

    The hearing rehashed much of what Quinn Emmanuel – the law firm GM hired to investigate the October 2 incident — revealed in an independent report. But it’s worth noting that throughout the exchange, Cruise struck an extremely conciliatory tone. Craig Glidden, GM’s EVP of legal and policy who was appointed in December chief administrative officer at Cruise, was particularly ingratiating.

    At one point, he seemed to agree with paying a higher fine, which under statute would be $112,000. Here’s what he said.

    “It was regrettable. It was a mistake and Cruise is attempting to make right with the mistake. I’m not here to quibble about whether it’s $75,000 or $112,000. We want to get the matter settled because we want to move forward and we want to advance the mission of bringing driverless cars that are safer to the public and also greater accessibility to the public to the market. So we’re more than happy to be compromised in any ways that the court would see fit or the commission would see fit to get this matter behind us.”

    Waymo has the attention of regulators in California after one of its robotaxis struck a bicyclist in San Francisco. The cyclist suffered minor injuries. Waymo said its robotaxi was stopped at a four-way intersection as a large truck was driving in the opposite direction. The car then moved into the intersection and collided with the cyclist who was behind the truck.

    TechCrunch spoke to the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission — the two agencies that control permits that allow companies like Waymo to test, deploy and commercially charge for driverless rides. The CPUC said it was “gathering information from Waymo” and the DMV told me the agency “is reviewing the incident.” We’ll see if this turns into anything more.

    One more Waymo item. At around 9 p.m. Saturday evening, a crowd surrounded an empty Waymo robotaxi, began rocking it, smashing windows and ultimately lit it on fire courtesy of fireworks. FriscoLive415 shared the video on X. Pretty insane footage. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch the vehicle was not transporting any riders and no injuries have been reported. The company is “working closely with local safety officials to respond to the situation.”

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Arrival announced that its U.K. division is entering administration, the country’s version of bankruptcy.

    Electric motorcycle company Cake held talks with Harley-Davidson and other automakers in 2023 as it fought to stay alive, founder and CEO Stefan Ytterborn told TechCrunch.

    Cowboy is rolling out an on-demand service program for basic maintenance, customization and repairs, delivered at the e-bike owner’s home.

    Ford has been quietly working on a low-cost EV. The company created a skunkworks project two years ago that’s based in Irvine, California and led by ex-Tesla and Ford Advanced EV development boss Alan Clarke. Notably, the team includes engineers from Auto Motive Power (AMP), the EV power startup that the automaker acquired in November 2023. AMP founder Anil Paryani, who coincidentally overlapped with Clarke for about five years at Tesla, is also part of the skunkworks project.

    Rivian will reveal its smaller, cheaper R2 SUV on March 7. Stay tuned!

    Toyota will spend an additional $1.3 billion to prepare its Kentucky factory for production of a new three-row all-electric SUV designed for U.S. consumers

    Gig economy

    Uber hit a major milestone that a few years ago I wasn’t sure would ever be met. The ride-hailing and delivery app reported a full-year profit (driven by operating income) as a public company. And it seems that profit momentum is expected to continue into the first quarter. Uber has hit an annual profit before, but it was largely due to its investments. In 2023, the company’s profits also came from its operations.

    Reminder that Lyft will post its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings after markets close February 13.

    People

    Getaround, a company that helps vehicle owners rent out their cars, trucks and SUVs to other peers, is cutting 30% of its North American workforce as part of a restructuring. Getaround cut 10% of its staff in February 2023.

    General Motors hired battery expert and ex-Tesla executive Kurt Kelty to be the automaker’s new vice president of batteries — a brand new role for the company.

    This week’s wheels

    Image Credits: Taylor Hatmaker

    This week’s wheels might get the attention of e-bike followers. Editor Taylor Hatmaker writes this about her “zombie” Van Moof.

    My VanMoof e-bike isn’t dead, but it’s not quite alive either. I bought an X3 from VanMoof after I reviewed the bike for TechCrunch back in 2021 and came away wildly impressed. The bike was excellent; but it was also a personal revelation, empowering me —a lazy fair-weather cyclist — to bike around my city (Portland, OR) when I might otherwise use a car.

    When I bought my VanMoof, on sale at the time, I knew it was a risk. I spent the money, knowing that in the worst-case scenario my bike could turn into a $2,000 brick. That scenario arrived last year when VanMoof declared bankruptcy.

    Lavoie bought the company’s remains late last summer, providing a glimmer of hope that the notoriously fickle bikes full of bespoke components will still be serviceable in the future. In the meantime, VanMoof owners like myself scrambled to download apps like Bikey, made by Cowboy, to salvage the digital keys linking us to our bikes.

    I still have a lot of affection for my 30-pound possible-future-paperweight, which I nervously power on and connect my phone to a few times a week. It’s been pouring for months — not the kind of weather I’ll bike in any more — but I hope when Spring rolls around that my X3 shows some fresh signs of life too.



    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Motional loses a backer, another micromobility bankruptcy and a mobility startup unicorn is born | TechCrunch

    Motional loses a backer, another micromobility bankruptcy and a mobility startup unicorn is born | TechCrunch


    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

    This week, read about autonomous vehicle company Motional, why the Tesla board is likely having discussions about Elon Musk’s 2018 $56 billion pay package, a new unicorn focused on student transportation, and more.

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    Here’s a fun one for y’all. Amid all the layoffs and startup failures, there is also hiring going on.

    A little bird pointed us to one particularly interesting hire over at Elon Musk’s The Boring Company. Vignesh Swaminathan — who is also known as Mr. Barricade to his 1.8 million TikTok followers — recently took a position as a senior civil engineer. Why so noteworthy? Swaminathan is a well-known urban planner (and TikToker) who spent the better part of a decade focused on designing bikeways and pedestrian paths as CEO and president of Crossroad Labs.

    It appears that Crossroad Labs, a Cupertino, California-based civil engineering design firm, shut down in January. Swaminathan took the job at The Boring Company a couple of weeks later. We wonder if his previous urban planner and bike-focused experience will be put to work at The Boring Company?

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    A new unicorn has been born. I’m talk about Zūm, a student transportation startup that uses a mix of buses, vans and other vehicles combined with software to provide efficient and safe routes to and from school for kids.

    The startup, founded and run by Ritu Narayan, raised $140 million in a Series E funding round led by global investment firm GIC. Other investors included Climate Investment, Sequoia and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The funding pushed its valuation to $1.3 billion

    Zūm has made headway in the past several years, locking in school district customers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Nashville and Maryland. Now it’s focused on converting its fleet of vehicles to all EVs by 2027 while continuing to grow its footprint.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    BluSmart, an Indian ride-hailing startup that competes with Uber and homegrown rival Ola, raised $25 million from Switzerland-headquartered impact fund ResponsAbility in a mezzanine structure, including partial equity dilution and debt.

    OK so this isn’t so much a deal, as a dealbreaker. Cake, the Swedish electric motorcycle startup, filed for bankruptcy February 1 after failing to secure enough investment. Cake joins a growing list of micromobility companies that have run into financial trouble over the past year, most recently VanMoof, Superpedestrian and Bird.

    Kura, a UK startup that combined a school bus service with a software platform to safeguard pupils, was acquired by “smart buses” startup Zeelo.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    XPeng, Tesla’s challenger from China, is making plans to bring its advanced driving assistance tech to international markets.

    Autonomous vehicles

    Motional is the product of a joint venture between Hyundai and automotive supplier Aptiv. But that relationship is changing. Aptiv said it will no longer allocate capital toward the endeavor. We explain why.

    Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

    Arrival, the commercial EV startup, is being removed from the Nasdaq stock exchange as it speeds toward dissolution.

    Tesla was sued by 25 California counties alleging the automaker has repeatedly mishandled hazardous waste at facilities throughout the state. Two days later, the parties settled with Tesla agreeing to $1.5 million in fines and a five-year injunction that requires inspections.

    In-car tech

    Hesai, a Chinese company that makes lidar sensors, was added to the U.S. Department of Defense’s list of “Chinese Military Companies.” Hesai called the inclusion “unjust, capricious and meritless” and said that the sensors are for civilian use only. Hesai also emphasized the company doesn’t have ties of any kind to any military in any country.

    People

    Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package is unfair, a Delaware judge ruled. If the decision stands (many expect an appeal) it will void the largest compensation deal in corporate history.

    This week’s wheels

    genesis gv60-exterior-

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    I recently spent a week in this hanauma mint-colored Genesis GV60 Performance. Top takeaways? This is a slick-looking and premium (inside and out) all-electric vehicle that is fast off the line and pretty darn fun to drive, but not exactly amazing on tight mountain turns.

    The all-wheel drive vehicle (there are electric motors in the front and rear) make for generally good handling. When I pushed it, there was a bit of body roll through the turns. But let’s be honest here, most consumers don’t drive like they’re on a test track. Nor should they.

    The 77.4 kWh battery combined with the electric motors produce 429 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque. That allows the GV60 to go from 0 to 60 miles in about four seconds — certainly fast enough to be appreciated by EV aficionados. The battery range of 235 miles is low in this EV era. It’s certainly enough for the commute and daily driving needs, but some consumers may balk at spending the base price of $69,550 for an all-electric SUV with such a low range compared to its peers.





    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • What went wrong at Cruise, a pivot at Vroom and a home for Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer | TechCrunch

    What went wrong at Cruise, a pivot at Vroom and a home for Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer | TechCrunch


    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – the same weekly newsletter you’ve been reading, but with a new name and a few changes.

    As I mentioned last week, this is still your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation! This week, read about how Mercedes mistakenly exposed its source code, the latest in the Cruise-GM saga, Tesla’s EV sales warning and more.

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    Economic headwinds might be easing a bit, but companies are still getting squeezed. Autonomous vehicle and EV startups — even those that have since gone public — are trying to cut costs in hopes of extending their capital runway. Aurora Innovation, for instance, laid off about 3% of its workforce; EV company Polestar confirmed to TechCrunch it has also cut about 15% of its global workforce, Flexport is reportedly looking to axe another 20% of jobs and package delivery company Veho said that it laid off 19% of its corporate/exempt employee headcount.

    Now, a few little birds are telling us that Canoo and Faraday Future — both EV startups that went public via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies — are either reducing salaries or furloughing employees. Faraday has confirmed it has reduced salaries and furloughed employees without providing more detail. Sources tell us that Canoo is also furloughing workers.

    Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Over at the TC climate desk, reporter Harri Weber spoke to ArcTern Managing Partner Murray McCaig about its third (and recently closed) $335 million fund.

    ArcTern plans to pump this capital into climate-focused startups that can deliver super quick returns. Specifically, the Toronto-based firm is focused on startups that use proven tech in new ways. And his bet? Decarbonizing mobility. Though electric vehicle sales have slowed lately, McCaig sees this as a “blip.”

    The VC believes North America is about to reach a tipping point where EV adoption takes off like a rocket, as it has in Norway.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    Clearmotion raised an additional $4 million, bringing its Series B round to about $43 million, according to a recent Form D filing.

    Corvus Energy, an energy storage and fuel cell systems company focused on maritime, offshore and port applications, secured an undisclosed investment from Woven Capital, Toyota’s growth fund.

    Monta, an EV charging software startup based in Copenhagen, raised €80 million ($86.9 million) in Series B funding round co-led by Energize Capital, GreenPoint Partners and Denmark’s state-backed Export and Investment Fund.

    Sion Power, a Tucson, Arizona-based lithium-metal battery developer, raised $75 million from battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution, mathematician and investor Jim Simons’s Euclidean Capital and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s family office management company Hillspire LLC.

    Vroom is shutting down its online used car marketplace and shifting all of its resources and capital into two business units focused on auto financing and AI-powered analytics. About 800 employees, or 90% of its workforce, will lose their jobs as a result.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    The internal review of Cruise and the October 2 event that led to the GM subsidiary losing its permits to operate robotaxis in California finally dropped. The tl;dr via the report conducted by Quinn Emanuel: Cruise didn’t purposely mislead regulators. So what went wrong at Cruise? A lack of judgement, missteps by leadership, an “us versus them” relationship with regulators and a fixation on correcting the inaccurate media narrative that the Cruise AV, not the human-driven Nissan, had caused the accident were all contributing factors to the company’s problems.

    Cruise also revealed that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have also opened investigations into the company. Pretty much every agency you can think of is now looking into the incident, including the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Public Utilities Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

    Finally, the 195-page also included in its appendix a heavily redacted report by Exponent that looked into the technical problems on October 2, specifically why the robotaxi initiated a pullover maneuver that then dragged the pedestrian who was trapped underneath. More to come on that front. 

    Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

    Porsche took the wraps off of two variants of the Macan EV, a long-delayed project that will test whether consumers still have the drive to spring for an electric vehicle that costs more than $78,000.

    Tesla kicked off earnings season with a bit of a stinker. Yes, the company delivered a record 1.8 million EVs in 2023, but profits suffered (especially when looking at its operating income) due to its price cuts that squeezed margins as well as higher R&D expenses and the cost of bringing the Cybertruck into production. While solar deployments declined, energy storage was one of the rosier areas, with 125% growth year-over-year.

    Software and other in-car tech

    Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave “unrestricted access” to the company’s source code

    Tesla plans to spend $500 million to build one of its so-called “Dojo” supercomputers at its Buffalo, New York factory, the state’s governor Kathy Hochul announced during a Friday a news conference, just days after CEO Elon Musk called the project a “long shot.” Musk also made an interesting comment on social media that downplayed the investment, noting the company would spend far more money on Nvidia hardware in 2024.

    This week’s wheels

    ride1up e-bike 700 series

    Image Credits: Ride1Up

    This week’s wheels comes from TC editor Devin Coldewey who recently bought the Ride1up 700 Series e-bike. 

    I vacillated for a few months on buying a new e-bike, trying to find the right balance between moped-style throttle and traditional pedal assist. Ultimately, I went with the Ride1up 700 Series, which offered a sort of package deal (at a Black Friday price) that meant a minimum of fuss for a maximum of utility. Fenders, rack, lights, all in the bargain.

    While assembly was a bit involved (don’t attempt if you haven’t put a bike together before), the final product is — now that I have put some miles on it — pretty solid. Some of the ergonomics could be better and the custom rack doesn’t fit any of the panniers I wanted; however, the big solid frame and oversize wheels are reassuring on the road and the throttle is excellent for navigating both Seattle hills and Seattle drivers.

    It’s on the heavier side — 62 pounds – so I wouldn’t walk it up any stairs or hang it from an ordinary bike hook. But it’s already opening up a different “zone” in my mind for getting around the city: too far to conveniently walk, too close to justifiably drive and too hilly to pedal. Turns out that’s a lot of Seattle!

    This definitely won’t be my last ebike, but I’m pleased with it as my first. If I had to do it again, I might have opted for the lighter LTD with its torque sensing pedal assist, but hey.



    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Flexport taps Shopify for cash, behind the wheel of the Kia EV9 and where Amazon wants to invest | TechCrunch

    Flexport taps Shopify for cash, behind the wheel of the Kia EV9 and where Amazon wants to invest | TechCrunch

    TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome to TechCrunch Mobility – the same weekly newsletter you’ve been reading, but with a new name and a few changes.

    Don’t worry, this is still your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week, read about Amazon, EV startup Fisker, electric boats, a bunch of new funding deals and my time driving the all-new Kia EV9.

    Let’s go!

    A little bird

    A little bird pointed us to a new website with some electric trucks that sure do look familiar.

    Remember Lordstown Motors, the EV startup that went public via a SPAC and has since filed for bankruptcy protection? Steve Burns, who founded and was then ousted from Lordstown Motors, is back with a new EV startup called LandX Motors.

    The new LandX Motors website prominently displays the same electric Endurance pickup truck he once promised would beat Tesla, Ford and General Motors to market.

    A person familiar with the company’s plans told TechCrunch that it’s not so much about the Endurance truck, but the underlying platform, software and engineering behind it. Still, with the former Lordstown trucks playing a starring role on company’s website and video, it’s unclear just how developed this plan is.

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Supply chain logistics startup Flexport had a rather tumultuous 2023 that included founder Ryan Petersen ousting his hand-picked successor and taking back the CEO spot and then acquiring the assets of shuttered digital freight network Convoy.

    The startup is kicking off 2024 by shoring up its business with a $260 million “uncapped convertible note” from Shopify, a deal that was announced by Petersen in a series of posts on social media site X.

    As a reminder, Shopify and Flexport are already attached. Flexport acquired in 2023 Shopify’s logistics arm. The deal gave Shopify 13% equity stake in Flexport and a seat on the board.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    Electra, the Paris-based EV charging startup, raised $330 million in a Series B round led by Dutch pension fund service provider PGGM and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund. Eurazeo, RIVE Private Investment, the SNCF group through 574 Invest and Serena also participated.

    Franziska Bossart, the new head of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, spoke to me about how the $1 billion fund is evolving. Tl;dr: She’s expanding its geographic focus to Asia and Europe, and homing in on three areas, including AI.

    International Battery Company, a startup developing lithium-ion battery cells for EVs, raised $35 million in a pre-Series A round led by RTP Global.

    Land Moto, the Cleveland-based electric motorcycle startup, raised $3 million in a round led by a special purpose venture vehicle called Nunc Coepi Ventures.

    Lightship, an all-electric RV startup, raised $34 million in a Series B round co-led by Obvious Ventures and Prelude Ventures. Other new investors include Allegis Capital and global RV manufacturer THOR Industries and its investment partner TechNexus Venture Collaborative.

    Northvolt, the Swedish battery startup, secured a $5 billion debt deal to help pay for the expansion of its first gigafactory. As TC+ reporter Tim de Chant writes: “Northvolt’s $5 billion loan won’t be enough to guarantee success, but it should be enough to help ramp up its production to a targeted 60 gigawatt hours.”

    Uber shut down alcohol delivery service Drizly three years after the cab-hailing company acquired it for $1.1 billion.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    TuSimple will delist itself from the Nasdaq stock exchange as it moves forward with its plan to fully exit the U.S. market.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    BMW’s future growth depends on EVs, and it’s finally going all in, TC+ reporter Tim de Chants writes.

    Fisker’s electric Ocean SUV is under investigation by federal regulators over braking loss complaints.

    GM recalled 66 electric delivery vans made by its BrightDrop subsidiary after the front drive units in at least two of them caught fire late last year. The cause appears to be related to a manufacturing defect.

    Navier, the electric boat startup, has launched a pilot program for its hydrofoiling watercraft via a partnership with Stripe to bring passengers from San Francisco’s outskirts to the downtown area.

    Future of flight

    Wing, the drone-powered delivery company operated by Alphabet, intends to introduce a larger craft capable of delivering heavier packages to customers.

    This week’s wheels

    kia ev9 press drive

    Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

    I headed to Napa Valley to try out the Kia EV9 – an all-electric SUV with three rows that many believe will bring a whole new batch of EV customers into the market.

    Before I give some abbreviated thoughts on what I did and didn’t like, here are a few specs. The Kia EV9 comes in five trims with the cheapest — the rear-wheel drive EV9 Light — starting at $54,900. I tested the GT-Line trim, an all-wheel drive top-of-the-line version that has a range of 270 miles and starts at $73,900 (For comparison, the Rivian R1S, which is AWD, comes with standard with  260 miles of range and starts at $78,000. The Kia EV9 Light RWD trim equipped with the bigger battery has the best range of 304 miles.

    What did I like? It remained well planted on winding roads, even if I pushed the vehicle a bit. It’s also quiet, has the kind of interior details one might expect in a premium-priced SUV, the seats are comfortable and the advanced driver assistance system is easy to engage. The third row isn’t exactly spacious, but certainly better than many three-row SUVs I have been in.

    There were a few misses. I do think that Kia missed an opportunity by not giving the EV9 rear-wheel axle steering and I’m not sure if the battery range, which is between 230 miles and 304 miles depending on the trim, is enough for buyers. Finally, the layout of the interior cabin is almost there, but I’m still not sure I love the placement of the start button and gear shifter (it’s a stock tucked behind the steering wheel).

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Cruise cuts a quarter of its self-driving workforce, another e-scooter startup folds and a special year-end message | TechCrunch

    Cruise cuts a quarter of its self-driving workforce, another e-scooter startup folds and a special year-end message | TechCrunch

    The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

    Hello! And goodbye! Well, at least until 2024. The Station is going to take a little break through the end of this year. I want to thank you all for reading our weekly newsletter and reaching out to me with suggestions, tips and criticism. Yes, I even appreciate the thoughtful pushback.

    It’s been an action-packed year with new startups emerging (so many electric boat and RV companies, am I right?), a bevy of EVs hitting the road and a number of commercial milestones achieved in the autonomous vehicle industry. There were, of course, gloomy and even shocking moments too. A number of startups failed, including a bunch of mobility SPACs, and layoffs were pervasive even into this last month of the year. Two of the more stunning stories were within the autonomous vehicle industry: the founders of the defunct Argo AI coming back with a new Softbank-funded AV startup and the downfall of Cruise.

    The Cruise story continues to unfold and will likely play out well into 2024. This past week was a doozy for Cruise, albeit an expected one. The upshot: the Cruise board, and by extension the GM board, are cleaning house in an effort to salvage years of technological progress. As part of that mission, nine top leaders were dismissed and 900 workers were laid off.

    We’ll be following the Cruise story into next year. But that isn’t our only focus.

    Here at TechCrunch, our team cares about the future of transportation from new EVs and battery tech to electric and hydrogen aviation, autonomous vehicles, micromobility and in-car tech. That means more than just highlighting the next new new thing. Instead, we strive to explain why it matters and who it might affect. In other words, we’re the kind of folks who take that unlikely exit or side road to explore what others may avoid. We hope you’ll join us on the ride.

    See you in the New Year!

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com. Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Micromobbin’

    The big story in scooterville was the “seemingly” abrupt decision by Superpedestrian to shut down its U.S. operations and begin to explore the sale of its European business just 18 months after raising $125 million. I hate to say I saw this coming, but well let’s just say I wasn’t shocked by the news considering that in late November, Superpedestrian started letting go of some European executives who were in charge of global development and operations.

    Superpedestrian’s Link scooters are in about 60 cities across 11 countries, but they’ll be pulled from most markets by the end of 2023. The startup positioned itself as a safe city partner, investing in its advanced rider assistance technology by acquiring Navmatic in July 2021. What came out of that was Pedestrian Defense, Superpedestrian’s GPS-based safety system that allowed it to detect and correct unsafe rider behavior in real time. But that system competed with other camera-based computer vision systems, like those popularized by Drover AI and Luna. Lime, the only big scooter company that looks like it might survive, implemented its own version of the rider assistance tech to its scooters in July 2022, around the same time that Superpedestrian started issuing layoffs.

    Shared micromobility is a hard business to get right, as we’ve seen from the balance sheets of public companies Bird and Micromobility.com (formerly Helbiz). Bird recently got kicked off the stock market, issued a couple rounds of layoffs and is probably close to filing for bankruptcy. Micromobility.com issued not one, but two reverse stock splits this year, and its stock price is still circling the drain. And after some failed talks to get acquired, Tier Mobility also issued layoffs in November. Oh, and let’s not forget the mysterious disappearance of Bolt.

    My question now is, which one will be next to say scoot off into the great beyond?

    — Rebecca Bellan

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Just a bunch of deals this week!

    Dimensional Energy, New York-based startup developing sustainable aviation fuel from carbon dioxide emissions and water, raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Envisioning Partners. Strategic investors such as United Airlines’ sustainable flight fund, Microsoft’s climate innovation fund, RockCreek’s smart aviation futures fund, DSC Investment, Delek US and New York Ventures as well as existing investors like Elemental Excelerator and Chloe Capital also participated.

    DST, a Chinese new energy vehicle fleet management company, completed a $80 million financing round to fuel R&D investments and real-time computational analytics.

    Exponent Energy, the Indian EV charging startup, raised a $26.4 million Series B, led by Eight Road Ventures and TDK Ventures. The funds will help Exponent expand its 15-minute charging solution to five major Indian cities in FY 2024 and enter the intercity e-bus segment. The company plans to deploy 1,000 of its charging stations and have 25,000 EVs powered by Exponent by 2025.

    Lyko, a Mobility as a Service startup, raised 1.4 million euros ($1.53 million) from Habert Dassault Finance, Afrimobility (Akwa Group), angel investors and banks including Bpifrance, Crédit Mutuel, and Caisse d’Épargne.

    Metafuels, a sustainable jet fuel startup, raised $8 million in a round led by Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures.

    Vammo, the São Paulo-based startup that wants to scale electric motorcycle battery swapping in Latin America, raised $30 million in Series A round to capture the growth in popularity of motorcycles across the region. The equity and debt round was led by Monashees with participation from climate tech fund 2150 and Maniv Mobility.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    Tesla is limiting the use of its Autopilot driver-assistance software as part of a two-million-vehicle recall. Reporter Sean O’Kane explains what and why this matters.

    Autonomous vehicles

    TechCrunch reporter Rita Liao digs into the nuanced new AV regulations in China. “A close read reveals some interesting contrasts between the perspectives of Chinese and U.S. regulators regarding the nascent technology,” Liao writes.

    Waymo keeps chugging along, this week with an important expansion. Select riders can now be picked up or dropped off by the company’s robotaxis curbside at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. It’s limited to be sure, but still a milestone.

    WeRide starts testing autonomous buses in Singapore, signaling its global ambitions.

    Car sharing and other gig economy bits

    European Union lawmakers have finally reached a deal on the final shape of the Platform Worker Directive, which is designed bolster gig worker rights.

    Getaround, the startup-turned SPAC that enables car owners rent their vehicles out to their peers, filed its first earnings report. Tl;dr: a pop in revenue that suggests the company is growing, but still not enough to be profitable.

    Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

    Chevrolet invited reporters, including yours truly, to drive the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV. My thoughts? There is a lot to like about this vehicle. In spite of all of its wins, the Blazer EV, which is intended to be a volume seller, is simply too expensive for what it offers.

    Ford is slashing its production target for the all-electric F-150 Lightning to match weak demand.

    Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla, founder of venture DVx and vice chair of the Cruise board, wrote an interesting op-ed in TechCrunch debunking the recent storyline that EV demand is weakening. He argues that data shows EV sales are thriving, but warns that the U.S. must take action if it wants to stay in the global race.

    Sila, a 13-year-old company that has raised more than $900 million to date, signed a milestone deal to supply Panasonic with its Titan Silicon anode material. Production will happen at Sila’s future Moses Lake facility, where the startup recently broke ground.

    Taiwanese electric scooter maker Gogoro introduced a battery-swapping network and three smartscooters to India, marking the company’s official entry into the world’s most populous country and biggest two-wheeler market.

    Tesla’s $50,000 threat to Cybertruck resellers may be back after all.

    Uber Freight and Greenlane, a $650 million JV between Daimler Truck NA, NextEra Energy and BlackRock, are working together to accelerate the deployment and installation of public charging infrastructure for heavy duty EVs.

    The US-China tech war is escalating over EV battery dominance.

    In-car tech

    The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration want anti-drunk-driving tech in cars. Here’s what stands in the way.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Cruise’s mea culpa and everything that stood out at the LA Auto Show | TechCrunch

    Cruise’s mea culpa and everything that stood out at the LA Auto Show | TechCrunch

    The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

    The LA Auto Show was this week and while it no longer has the cache of pre-COVID days, there were still some notable news that came out of the event. TechCrunch reporter Harri Weber was on the scene helping me cover the news. One of the biggest announcements had nothing to do with a vehicle reveal. Nope, it was Amazon declaring it was now going to sell cars online, starting with Hyundai.

    Other coverage included the Lucid Gravity SUV debut and a handy roundup that covered the tech, EVs and other fun stuff that got our attention.

    Alrighty, let’s dive in!

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com

    Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Micromobbin’

    Upway, the French refurbished e-bike marketplace, has raised $30 million at an increased valuation. Normally this piece of news would go in our deals section below, but I wanted to ponder on the meaning of this up round.

    Upway is present in multiple countries in Europe and recently expanded to the U.S. It takes in used e-bikes from reputable and desirable brands, fixes them up, and sends them out to customers at a decent price. Getting this business right requires smart supply chain and logistics management, and it appears Upway is on the right path. In today’s capital markets, it’s not as easy to get new investors if you’re not proving out business sustainability.

    Zooming out to the macro environment, e-bikes aren’t going anywhere. In fact, as more people buy new bikes, the market for used ones grows. And with all the e-bike battery fires we’ve seen, a company offering safely refurbished e-bikes seems like a pretty good deal.

    — Rebecca Bellan

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Just a roundup this week!

    Divergent Technologies, a Torrance, Calif.-based startup that developed an industrial digital manufacturing system, raised $230 million in a Series D funding round led by a $100 million investment from Hexagon AB. The round also included participation from new and existing institutional and family office investors.

    Gravity, an EV infrastructure startup, raised $13 million in a seed round led by GV (Google Ventures).

    GM acquired key Tesla gigacasting supplier Tooling & Equipment International, Reuters reported.

    InDrive, the “bid-based” ride-hail platform popular in Latin America and Asia, launched a venture and merger and acquisition division named New Ventures to invest up to $100 million in startups within emerging markets over the next few years. The $100 million won’t come from a fund, exactly. The plan is to invest the money “over the next few years by making annual allocations of investment capital from our balance sheet, starting in 2024,” Andries Smit, vice president of New Ventures told TechCrunch.

    Luup, a Tokyo-based shared e-scooter startup, raised $24 million to expand its charge ports to 10,000 by 2025, up from around 4,900 today.

    Revolv, an electric commercial fleet company based in San Francisco, raised $25 million in equity project financing  from Greenbacker Capital Management.

    Shekel Mobility, a B2B auto dealers marketplace in Africa, raised more than $7 million in funding that was comprised of $3.2 million in equity and over $4 million in debt. Ventures Platform co-led the round alongside MaC Venture Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Unpopular Ventures, Maiora Capital, PageOne Lab Inc., Phoenix Investment Club, Heirloom VC, Pioneer Ventures and other angel investors. Meanwhile, Zedvance, VFD Microfinance Bank, Zenith Bank and Fluna, amongst others, provided the debt component.

    Tenet, an EV financing startup based in New York, raised $10 million in Series A funding round led by Nyca Partners. Assurant Ventures and Giant Ventures also participated.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    Texas is poised to be the next hotbed for autonomous vehicles and a likely regulatory battleground. AVs aren’t regulated in the state, but as robotaxis incidents rise, cities may turn to one weapon that California doesn’t have, TechCrunch reporter Rebecca Bellan writes.

    Meanwhile, GM has taken the wheel at its troubled AV subsidiary Cruise, going as far as inserting one of its own executives to head up the self-driving car company’s legal and policy, communications and finance teams.

    A number of Cruise employees have reported to TechCrunch that morale is at a new low point thanks to a decision by parent company GM to suspend its employee share-selling program. But wait! On Saturday, Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt sent an email to employees (which TechCrunch has seen) apologizing to employees, taking responsibility and reversing course, sort of, on the share sale. He opened with:

    “I know the news about changes to our RLO program was extemely difficult to hear, and that there were many unanswered questions. We left you with concerns about your colleagues, your careers, and your personal finances. That’s the last thing I want for anyone, and I am truly sorry.”

    Vogt went on to say that the company was working on a way to conduct a new tender offer that would mitigate potential tax obligations.

    He later wrote that “as CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what happened.”

    Earnings

    It was a slower earnings week for transportation. Still, there were a couple of noteworthy ones.

    It’s still not looking good for Bird, which closed out the quarter after getting delisted from the stock market with a $19.8 million loss. Bird’s going concern warning is very much still in effect — the company has incurred recurring losses and negative cash flows since its inception and has accumulated a deficit of $1.6 billion as of September 30, 2023.

    Revenue remains light, despite the Spin buy, at $54.3 million (down from $72.8 million in Q3 2022). Now we’re coming into winter, when cash flows will drop even more significantly. Bird closed out the quarter with $10.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, which by my calculations gives it another 9 months with its current cash burn. The company says it won’t be able to meet obligations over the next 12 months.

    Gogoro, too, is still feeling its previous stings of currency conversions. Its revenue of $91.8 million for the quarter is down 10.2% YoY. However, battery swapping service revenue of $33.6 million is up 10.4% YoY. The battery swapping giant closed Q3 with a net loss of $3.1 million, down from a net income of $56.4 million in the same quarter last year. On an adjusted basis, Gogoro reported EBITDA of $13.1 million, which is up from $9.2 million in Q3 2022.

    Fisker also had a troubling third quarter, reporting a wider-than-expected loss.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Arrival, the once buzzy EV startup that went public via a merger with a blank check company, secured a $50 million bridge loan —funds that will keep it afloat long enough to explore a potential sale.

    Cadillac debuted the Optiq, an entry-level compact crossover EV that will slot below the Lyriq

    Candela’s electric hydrofoiling ferry, which is now in production, took its first “flight” in Stockholm.

    Exxon wants to drill enough lithium out of Arkansas to power 1 million EVs per year.

    GM absorbed BrightDrop, the wholly-owned commercial EV subsidiary, a change that included ousting its CEO. Does the same fate await Cruise, another one of its subsidiaries?

    Mercedes plans to build around 30 fast-charging hubs at Buc-ee’s locations throughout the South. TC+ reporter Tim de Chant digs into why supersize convenience stores might be key to unlocking EV fast charging?

    Redwood Materials will supply Toyota with cathode material and anode copper foil for battery cells produced at the automaker’s $13.9 billion factory in North Carolina that’s slated to go into production in 2025.

    Tesla hits reverse on its previous threat to sue Cybertruck resellers. Also, an upgraded Tesla Cyberquad for kids is back on sale after safety recall.

    Future of flight

    Archer Aviation signed a memorandum of understanding with Air Chateau, a private aviation operator in UAE, at a value of around $500 million for the planned purchase of up to 100 of Archer’s Midnight eVTOLs.

    Joby Aviation and Volocopter gave the public a vivid glimpse of what the future of aviation might look like this weekend, with both companies performing brief demonstration flights of their electric aircraft in New York City.

    Zipline hit an important milestone in its U.S. operations. The Federal Aviation Administration approved Zipline for flying its autonomous drone without line of sight visual observers. Soon after the FAA lifted this requirement, Zipline flew its Platform 1 aircraft in the Salt Lake City area without the previously-required visual observers. Zipline is now flying in Utah without this requirement and will soon expand that approach across its U.S. operations, according to the company.

    In-car tech

    Feds want speed reduction tech in every new car. Are American drivers ready?

    A software update bricked Rivian infotainment systems. About 3% of its vehicles were impacted by the issue, which is being addressed with an over-the-air software update.

    Ride-hailing

    Uber is introducing new features geared toward addressing the issues of unfair deactivations that ride-hail and delivery drivers often face.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Cruise spirals and LTA’s airship breaks cover in Silicon Valley | TechCrunch

    Cruise spirals and LTA’s airship breaks cover in Silicon Valley | TechCrunch

    The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

    Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

    This week, we’ll keep things short due to the Veteran’s Day holiday; don’t worry, we still have plenty for you to catch up on.

    But first, one fun thing.

    LTA Research, the Sergey Brin-backed startup, took the wraps off its prototype electric airship — the largest aircraft in the world — right in heart of Silicon Valley. As contributor Mark Harris wrote, the airship — its snow-white steampunk profile visible from the busy 101 highway — has taken drone technology such as fly-by-wire controls, electric motors and lidar sensing, and supersized them to something longer than three Boeing 737s, potentially able to carry tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles.

    Let’s go!

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com

    Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Micromobbin’

    Ridepanda, the D2C micromobility marketplace that a couple of Bird, Lime and Scoot alumni launched in 2020, has made a significant business pivot that focuses on enterprise-level business. Now, instead of selling a range of e-bike and e-scooter models from top brands to customers across the country, Ridepanda has become an end-to-end solution for employers — like Amazon and Google — to offer employees commuter benefits.

    The key takeaways here are 1) What wasn’t working with D2C; and 2) Why they chose B2B2E. The tl;dr is that getting the supply chain and servicing set up for multiple different brands all over the U.S. was incredibly difficult, and enterprises are doing the most right now to get people back into the office and meet sustainability goals.

    Tech continues to seep into micromobility. For instance, Gogoro, the Taiwanese two-wheeler battery-swapping giant, said that its smart electric scooters can now be unlocked and turned on via a key in a rider’s Apple Wallet on their iPhone or Apple Watch. Vehicle owners will also be able to share their scooter key with other iOS users.

    — Rebecca Bellan

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Robotaxi companies Cruise and Waymo get the bulk of the attention — and lately, not the good kind. Meanwhile, another autonomous vehicle startup called May Mobility has been operating quietly in the background, which co-founder and CEO Edwin Olson told TechCrunch is by design.

    That under-the-radar approach — which is likely helped by its B2B business model — hasn’t prevented it from raising money. May Mobility raised $105 million in a Series D round led by Japan’s telecom giant NTT.  Toyota Ventures, BMW i Ventures, Trucks VC and State Farm Ventures also participated in the deal, among other investors. To date, the company’s raised around $300 million.

    Other deals that got my attention …

    EasyPark Group, a mobile paid parking company, said it intends to acquire Flowbird Group, which operates under brands Flowbird, YourParkingSpace, TPARK, Extenso Cloud, and Yellowbrick. Flowbird offers a number of services such as pay and display machines, software, and “park and charge.”

    Flitter, a Paris-based pay-by-mile insurance tech startup, raised €3.5 million ($3.75 million) in seed funding led by Swiss insurer Helvetia. The Frenchfounders fund, former Sarenza CEO Stéphane Treppoz, Optimind founder Christophe Eberlé, Voodoo co-founder Laurent Ritter and Sorare co-founder Adrien Montfort also participated.

    Getir, the Turkish instant grocery delivery startup, acquired FreshDirect, an online grocery delivery service based in New York.

    Niron Magnetics, a Minnesota-based startup developing rare earth-free permanent magnets, raised $33 million with new investments from GM Ventures and Stellantis Ventures. Previous investors Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and the University of Minnesota also participated. The company plans to use the funds to expand its pilot production facilities and scale manufacturing capacity of its “clean earth magnet.” The CEO told me the company plans to double its 60-person workforce by the end of 2023 and double it again in 2024.

    Zeekr, another Geely company, is gearing up for a U.S. IPO.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    Cruise, and its parent company GM, continue to deal with the aftermath of an October 2 incident that left a woman, who was initially hit by a human driver, stuck under and then dragged by a robotaxi. This week alone, the company paused production of its custom-built Origin vehicle, recalled its fleet of 950 vehicle equipped with autonomous vehicle software and laid off contract workers who were responsible for the maintenance and driverless operations. Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission issued an order to halt the implementation of Cruise’s permit to charge for robotaxi rides across San Francisco 24/7 as they consider the city’s request for a redo of the hearing that granted the permit.

    Ghost Autonomy said it plans to begin exploring the applications of multimodal large language models (LLMs) — AI models that can understand text as well as images — in self-driving through the OpenAI Startup Fund, which provides early access to OpenAI systems and Azure resources from Microsoft, OpenAI’s close collaborator, plus a $5 million investment. TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers found experts were skeptical and said LLMs are the wrong tool for self driving.

    Motional and Uber Eats are teaming up to autonomously deliver food from Shake Shack.

    Waymo started winter testing its robotaxis in Buffalo, New York.

    Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

    Ram introduced the 2025 Ramcharger — an electric truck that gets its EV juice from a gas-powered generator. Based on feedback from some readers, this will be a polarizing vehicle. Some people were incredibly excited and called it the perfect truck; others took offense to the EV branding.

    Polestar held its inaugural Polestar Day to showcase its vision for the future: new tech and next-generation vehicles that the Swedish EV company owned by China’s Geely Holdings hopes will spark sales and spur an era of growth. But as contributor Abigail Bassett noted, the event stood in stark contrast to its present.

    Earnings

    Lucid didn’t have the rosiest of earnings reports. The company revised its 2023 production outlook amid softening demand for luxury electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the company jumped on the Tesla charging standard bandwagon.

    Lyft reported 22.4 million active riders in the third quarter, up from 21.5 million in the second quarter and 19.6 million in the first. The growth suggests that its strategy of slashing ride-hail fares to compete with Uber has resulted in slow and steady gains for the company, but competition remains fierce. Get the full Q3 rundown here. The ride-hailing company also said it will introduce a “more affordable sort of higher-end ride” in an attempt to offer ride-hail products that customers actually want, according to CEO.

    Rivian continued to close the gap on losses, reduce costs and ramp up production in the third quarter with results that beat Wall Street expectations and suggested a rosier future, including raising its annual production guidance from 52,000 to 54,000 vehicles. The big news: Rivian and Amazon are no longer exclusive. Oh, and Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe also weighed in on subscriptions. Tl;dr: he’s eyeing software upcharges around AR and autonomy, not heated seats.

    Uber’s third-quarter earnings show a profitable ride-hail and delivery company that’s chugging along in spite of slowing growth in some sectors.

    Future of flight

    Archer Aviation partnered with India’s travel and hospitality conglomerate InterGlobe Enterprises to launch an all-electric air taxi service in the country in 2026.

    Skyryse, the aviation software startup, completed a fully autorotation emergency landing procedure in a helicopter. The milestone puts the company on the path to unveil the first production helicopter featuring it technology in the first quarter of next year.

    Kirsten Korosec

    Source link

  • Flexport gobbles up Convoy’s assets, Revel pulls the plug on mopeds and UAW sets its sights on Toyota and Tesla | TechCrunch

    Flexport gobbles up Convoy’s assets, Revel pulls the plug on mopeds and UAW sets its sights on Toyota and Tesla | TechCrunch

    The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. 

    Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

    The United Autoworkers officially clinched tentative agreements with GM and Stellantis, officially ending a six-week strike that affected the Big Three U.S. automakers and sent nearly 50,000 workers to the picket lines. UAW reached a tentative deal with Ford on October 25. Days later, the UAW reached a tentative agreement with Stellantis, the automaker that owns Jeep, Ram and Chrysler. GM followed October 30.

    The result for the UAW can only be described as a triumph. Workers will see record pay raises, the return of cost-of-living adjustments and the end to a tiered wage system — to name just a few of the bigger concessions that automakers made.

    On top of that, UAW successfully pushed the automakers to make more investments in plants. For instance, GM’s tentative agreement includes about $13 billion in investments U.S. operations, including future EV plants.

    You would be mistaken to think the UAW is now going off to revel in its victory. UAW President Shawn Fain has brought up Toyota — and the company’s decision to raise wages for its non-union workers — and Tesla several times in the past week. Once the Big Three’s bargaining agreements are ratified, expect UAW to direct its efforts towards Tesla, Toyota and all those joint venture battery factories popping up in the emerging Battery Belt.

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com

    Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Micromobbin’

    It’s the end of a short stint of electric moped sharing in the United States. — or at least in New York City and San Francisco. Revel, the company that started with around 70 shared mopeds in Brooklyn in 2018 and grew to a fleet of nearly 6,000 across multiple cities by 2021, is officially shuttering the e-moped side of the business. The company will put all its efforts into its EV ride-hail service and building out EV charging hubs.

    As we’ve come to learn together, the shared micromobility business is hard. That’s especially true with a form factor like mopeds, which requires a higher price point for riders to pay. No company has truly shown — and I’m talking with balance sheets publicly available — that the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to shared micromobility vehicles. Revel certainly found that to be the case. Ridership declined 30% YoY from summer time peaks, making the business unsustainable and pushing Revel to shut down operations.

    On a personal note, I’m disappointed. Not in Revel or Lime or any of the companies that tried to make mopeds work in the U.S., but in the situation. Mopeds are a green and exhilarating way to travel in dense urban environments, and I wish Americans would get on board already!

     — Rebecca Bellan

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Digital freight network Convoy might be a dead, but its assets will live on under supply chain logistics startup Flexport.

    Flexport is not only buying Convoy’s assets; the company also plans to restore Convoy’s trucking logistics services for customers in the coming weeks, according to a memo Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen sent to staff, and shared by Freight Waves.  Petersen said Flexport won’t acquire the business or any of its liabilities, but does plan to retain “a small group of team members from their core product and engineering team.”

    Terms off the deal haven’t been shared publicly, but Petersen said in the memo that “the purchase price relative to value is modest.” As a reminder Convoy reached a $3.8 billion valuation in April 2022 after raising $260 million in a Series E round.

    And plot twist! Convoy co-founder and CEO Dan Lewis might be one of the team members joining Flexport, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a person familiar with the agreement. Perhaps Lewis, who cut his teeth at Microsoft, Google and Amazon, will have better luck with Petersen than Flexport’s former, and recently ousted CEO Dave Clark.

    Other deals that got my attention this week …

    Ford has acquired Auto Motive Power, or AMP, to bolster its charging, battery management and power conversion tech. Financial terms were not disclosed. The secretive energy startup’s tech, talent and in Santa Fe Springs, California will now be folded into Ford.

    SkyCell, a Swiss startup, raised $57 million at a $600 million valuation to build smart containers for pharmaceutical transport. Catalyst, a division of M&G Investments, led the round and is the only investor being disclosed. The company has previously raised around $133 million, including rounds of $62 million and $35 million; backers have included insurance companies, financiers from the Middle East and specialist healthcare investors.

    Treads, the Park City, Utah-based startup that developed an AI-powered car maintenance subscription, raised $4.6 million to expand into 16 new cities by the end of 2023. The seed round was led by Mucker Capital, with participation from Kickstart Seed Fund, Peak Venture, Royal Street Ventures and Convoi Ventures.

    Windrose Technology, a Chinese electric truck maker, has reportedly started talks with banks as it eyes an initial public offering in the United States in 2024.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    ADAS

    Tesla was handed another win after a jury sided with the automaker over allegations that its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system led to a death. The case was filed by two passengers who survived a 2019 crash and alleged that Tesla knew its product was defective. Tesla argued that the crash, which resulted in the death of the driver Micah Lee, was the result of human error — the same stance it’s taken in other Autopilot lawsuits.

    Autonomous vehicles

    Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt took to Hacker News to clarify some information about the company’s remote guidance practices, following an article in the New York Times. I’ll leave the whole comment here.

    Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows.

    Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.

    The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many are resolved by the AV itself before the human even looks at things, since we often have the AV initiate proactively and before it is certain it will need help. Many sessions are quick confirmation requests (it is ok to proceed?) that are resolved in seconds. There are some that take longer and involve guiding the AV through tricky situations. Again, in aggregate this is 2-4% of time in driverless mode.

    In terms of staffing, we are intentionally over staffed given our small fleet size in order to handle localized bursts of RA demand. With a larger fleet we expect to handle bursts with a smaller ratio of RA operators to AVs. Lastly, I believe the staffing numbers quoted by nyt include several other functions involved in operating fleets of AVs beyond remote assistance (people who clean, charge, maintain, etc.) which are also something that improve significantly with scale and over time.

    JiYue, Baidu’s JV robocar brand, launched its flagship vehicle and first AI powered electric robocar, the JiYUE 01, at a brand event in Shanghai. It’s a consumer model powered by Baidu Apollo’s full suite of L4 autonomous driving solutions. The car also includes “SIMO,” Baidu’s intelligent AI vehicle concierge for voice commands and support.

    Mayor Karen Bass says Los Angeles — not a state agency — should have the power to decide how robotaxi companies expand in the city. The mayor sent an open letter to the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates commercial robotaxi operations in California, arguing that Los Angeles should hold that ultimate authority.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    Arrival set out eight years ago to make electric vehicle production “radically more efficient.” TechCrunch reporter Harri Weber looks at the last 15 months of promises and pivots that has sent the once $13 billion valuation company to a market cap of $20 million.

    GM will deliver the Chevy Equinox EV, an all-electric compact SUV aimed squarely at the mass market, to dealerships in 2024 with a battery range and sticker price that could propel its EV sales and even compete with Tesla.

    Nio, the Chinese carmaker known for its sleek, premium electric SUVs, is expected to cut “around 10%” of its job positions after weeks of discussions over the firm’s two-year operational plans, according to an internal letter viewed by TechCrunch.

    Subaru will adopt Tesla’s so-called North American Charging Standard and will incorporate the charging port in its vehicles starting in 2025.

    Toyota will invest another $8 billion into its first EV battery factory in North America. Total investment in the North Carolina-based factory, which is slated to go into production in 2025, is now $13.9 billion — quite the jump from Toyota’s initial plans to make a $1.29 billion investment in a facility that will make batteries for hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles.

    In-car tech and software

    Ford shut down VIIZR, a software-as-a-service company that along with Salesforce built an app to help tradespeople like plumbers, locksmiths and electricians to schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customers. About 40 people who worked at VIIZR were laid off. (I went into the archives to share some of Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff and Ford CEO Jim Farley’s comments to me during a Ford Pro event in January 2022)

    Volkswagen’s software unit Cariad will delay the launch of its new software architecture yet again and is laying off about 2,000 workers. These delays are prompting Porsche to turn to Google instead. The brand said future models would have Google built-in, which relies on the Android Automotive operating system to integrate Google services like Maps, Assistant and other apps directly into the vehicle.

    Ride-hailing

    Uber and Lyft agreed to pay drivers in New York a combined $328 million to settle wage-theft complaints. The settlement is a win for drivers, — and not only because it provides backpay for allegedly stolen wages. The outcome also helps drivers secure a statewide right to minimum wage and provides paid sick benefits.

    Kirsten Korosec

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  • Tesla ‘digs its own grave with the Cybertruck,’ Convoy collapses and Rivian scores a win at Rebelle | TechCrunch

    Tesla ‘digs its own grave with the Cybertruck,’ Convoy collapses and Rivian scores a win at Rebelle | TechCrunch

    Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

    Your usual host Kirsten was shredding off-road at the Rebelle Rally this week, so I’ll be taking over the newsletter. Let’s jump in with a few words about Tesla.

    Ah, but before Rebecca does . . . it’s me, Kirsten, popping in here to share a bit of what I saw and experienced at Rebelle Rally 2023, a 2,120-kilometer off-road and navigation competition. In its eighth year, the Rebelle has become a proving ground of sorts for the 65 all-women teams who participate as well as stock manufacturer vehicles. The catch? GPS and other electronic devices are strictly prohibited.

    So what am I checking out at this seemingly non-tech event? EVs and tech, of course. Oh, and green hydrogen, believe it or not.

    There were 10 vehicles out of the 65 that fell into the electrified category such as the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe. Four of those vehicles — all of them Rivian R1T pickups — were electric. And this year, one Rivian team took first place in the 4×4 class (there are two classes in the Rebelle) — the first time an all-electric vehicle was on the top podium. The first place finishers, driver Lillian Macaruso and navigator Alexandra Anderson, are both employees of Rivian. 

    OK, Rebecca, back to you. 

    Tesla reported its third-quarter earnings this week, and once again, all eyes were on the automaker’s margins amid ongoing price cuts. 

    Tesla’s shares, which are priced more as a tech stock than as an automaker’s stock, were down after Q3 earnings. Investors were clearly feeling skittish after Tesla reported a gross margin of 17.9%, down from 25.1% in the same period last year. That’s also down from Q2’s margins of 18.2%. As a result, profits fell 44% to $1.85 billion in Q3 from the same year-ago period. 

    Investors see the falling margins and Tesla’s price cuts as proof that demand is lessening for the vehicles as other EVs take market share and rising interest rates make it difficult for many buyers to afford big ticket purchases. The company also reported that solar deployments slipped 48% in Q3 from the same period last year. But the company made up for it by pulling in a 90% spike in energy storage deployments. 

    Tesla also gave some updates about its long-delayed Cybertruck. Initial deliveries are set for an event at Giga Texas on November 30. Elon Musk noted that scaling the Cybertruck will be hard and it will take 18 months before the pickup is profitable. 

    “I mean, we dug our own grave with Cybertruck,” said Musk. 

    The billionaire executive also said Giga Texas will be able to produce about 250,000 Cybertrucks a year starting in 2025. But let’s remember that Musk isn’t great at making predictions. After all, he initially said the Cybertruck would be on the market by 2021. Expect some of these numbers to be pushed out, too. 

    Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Rebecca at rebecca.techcrunch@gmail.com.

    Reminder that you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

    Micromobbin’

    This week was the trade show Micromobility America. Here are some of the best bits that came out of it:

    Bird is now doing e-bikes again? But instead of the VanMoof knockoff of previous years, Bird has partnered with TradeHubb, an e-bike supplier, and Spring, a strategic retail growth company, to launch the bike. You might recall that Bird last year ditched its retail bike offering to focus on shared rides in an attempt to reach profitability. The struggling company was also recently delisted from the stock market. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes? I tried reaching out to learn more, but no response. If you have a tip, hit me up!

    The team at Ride Review launched the Rider’s Choice Awards again, for those who want to vote. Winners will be announced January 25.

    The folks behind Micromobility America also launched the Electric Rider Alliance, a 501c6 membership organization that is set up to “create a level playing field in the transportation industry for the small electric vehicle ecosystem through standards, lobbying and governance.”

    In other news . . . 

    Bolt Mobility is introducing distance-based pricing for some of its micromobility vehicles. The aim here is to incentivize riders to slow down and ride more safely, rather than racing the clock.

    An e-scooter that looks like a Cybertruck? Check out Infinite Machine’s first product, the P1, which is on sale now.

    Meet Shane, a two-wheeled EV concept space-pod-looking thing from the creator of the original hoverboard, Shane Chen.

    Deal of the week

    money the station

    Kirsten here again! Convoy isn’t a traditional deal of the week, but its collapse sure got my attention.

    The digital freight broker told employees this past week it was shutting down due to what executives described as a “massive freight recession.” It turns out that disrupting the freight business is hard.

    The abrupt closure, which wiped out investors, comes about 18 months since the Seattle-based company raised $260 million in fresh funding that pushed its valuation to $3.8 billion.

    I went back and read an interview TechCrunch conducted with Convoy co-founder and CEO Dan Lewis. A few things he said stuck out, namely what led him to start the company in the first place. The former Amazon and Google executive, who has a background in strategy and management consulting, told TechCrunch that when he was struck by the urge to start a company, he researched the money-attracting industries of the world, and then, using AngelList, saw how many companies were trying to disrupt those industries.

    Here’s the nugget:

    His search yielded thousands of companies that were working on industries ranging from telecommunications and fashion to video games and food. Billions of dollars were going into trucking each year but fewer than 30 startups showed an interest in the field.

    “I saw a massive opportunity and few people going after it,” Lewis told TechCrunch.

    And then later, when asked if his method of deciding on a direction for a startup is still a good method, Lewis said, in short, yes. Read the whole interview from May 2022 here.

    Other deals that got our attention . . .  

    Hayden AI, an AI and geospatial analytics company, raised $53 million in a Series B funding round led by the Drawdown Fund. The company’s tech is being used by government agencies to enforce traffic violations that obstruct transit buses and capture data to help increase ridership and improve traffic efficiency.

    Laka, a European mobility insurtech company for e-bike riders, acquired Cylantro, a French e-bike insurance broker. The company also announced a €7.6 million round lead by Shift4Good alongside Ponooc, Autotech Ventures, ABN Amro Ventures, Porsche Ventures and others.

    Commercial fleet insurance startup Nirvana Insurance has raised a $57 million Series B to expand its big data platform, hire new staff and grow its business in the trucking industry. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with General Catalyst and Valor Equity Partners also participating. The round doubles Nirvana’s valuation to more than $350 million post-money.

    Supply chain logistics company Transfix raised a $40 million Series F. The company is backed by New Enterprise Associates, G Squared and Canvas Ventures.

    EV charging company Wallbox has acquired the operations and assets of German-based EV charging solutions startup ABL for €15 million. Together the plan is to deploy more than 1 million chargers globally.

    Volta Trucks filed for bankruptcy proceedings in Sweden as difficulties with suppliers proved a hindrance to raising funds. Volta said the bankruptcy in August of Proterra, an EV parts supplier, and the uncertainty over its own battery supplier means it needed to cut down the number of trucks it could produce. Volta, which is based in Sweden but has operations in the U.K., also said it would file for bankruptcy in Britain.

    Notable reads and other tidbits

    Autonomous vehicles

    Cruise, General Motors and Honda are launching a robotaxi service in Japan under a new joint venture. The service will launch with Origin vehicles in Tokyo in 2026.

    Speaking of Cruise, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into the GM subsidiary’s AV system following several incidents involving pedestrians in San Francisco. The most recent one left a woman stuck under a Cruise robotaxi after being hit by a human-driven vehicle.

    Foxconn and Nvidia are building “AI factories” to help accelerate AVs, robotics and other smart applications. The AI factories position the two against Tesla, which is building the Dojo supercomputer to do more or less the same thing — take in vast amounts of data, train it, tweak code and send it back out to self-driving cars.

    Waymo released a lightweight simulator called Waymax for the AV research community. The simulator is designed to train multiple agents to perform complex, realistic behaviors.

    Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

    BMW Group says it will adopt the NACS charging standard in the U.S. and Canada. Drivers of BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce brands will gain access to Tesla Superchargers in early 2025, and in that same year, BMW says it will implement NACS in EVs sold in the U.S. and Canada across those same brands.

    Speaking of NACS, global EV charging network ChargePoint has officially opened its AC and DC piles and is now deploying NACS connectors across its network.

    General Motors is delaying its $4 billion plan to convert the Orion Assembly plant into an EV truck factory to late 2025 amid softening EV demand and, we’re guessing, the ongoing UAW strike.

    Kia has started taking reservations for its EV9 full-sized SUV. Reservations are $750 and can be applied to the purchase of the company. This is one of the first vehicles Kia has allowed customers to reserve in advance.

    Lucid missed Wall Street delivery estimates in the third quarter by about 500 vehicles. The automaker delivered 1,457 of its luxury Air sedans, reporting flat growth year-over-year. The results sent shares down as investors worried about softening demand for Lucid’s only EV.

    California-based EV startup Pebble unveiled a prototype of its flagship all-electric travel trailer. The $100,000 EV is designed to support a digital nomad looking to get lost in the wilderness — it can live off-grid for seven days.

    Commercial EV startup REE Automotive has reported an order book that now totals $25 million for its modular battery EV platforms, dedicated to B2B customers.

    About 10,000 of Rivian’s all-electric vans are delivering packages throughout the U.S. for Amazon.

    Tesla has urged the Biden administration to adopt stricter fuel economy standards than the NHTSA has proposed. Most other automakers have already said the NHTSA’s proposal was unfeasible, so Tesla’s call on regulators to double down seems to be yet another way the EV maker can one-up its competitors.

    Toyota has also joined the NACS bandwagon. The automaker will build certain Toyota and Lexus vehicles from 2025 onward with an NACS port.

    Future of flight

    EVTOL company Archer Aviation plans to start air taxi operations in Abu Dhabi in 2026. From there, Archer says it will expand across the UAE as part of a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office.

    Miscellaneous

    The United Auto Workers strike is affecting CES. Stellantis canceled its planned presentations for the tech trade show in January, citing the cost of ongoing UAW strikes.

    Zipcar is getting hit with a fine from the NHTSA for “renting vehicles with open, unrepaired recalls.” One recall concerns 2015–2017 Ford Transit Vans, which continued to appear on Zipcar’s platform despite safety issues with the vehicles.

    People

    Autobrains hired Uri Yacovy, a former SVP at Mobileye, as its chief operating officer.

    Logistics company Flexport is laying off 20% of workers, or about 600 people, topping off a spate of staff upheavals at the company.

    Rebecca Bellan

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