The Station

TuSimple co-founders clapback, consolidation continues and Waymo reaches two milestones • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 14, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, The Station, Transportation, TuSimpleNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? 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 coming week I will be heading to Los Angeles to check out the LA Auto Show as well as a few EV and AV related events. Maybe I’ll see some of you there! Let’s get right to it. Got a news tip or inside information about a topic we covered? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. Or 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’ Taur, a scooter company we wrote about in February, has launched its virtual showroom, a very cool interactive website that allows prospective scooter buyers to virtually test out different aspects of the scooter, from how to set up the foot platforms and activate the throttle to how to turn on the lights and charge the battery. I recently got the opportunity to try out one of Taur’s front-facing scooters, and I’ll admit it’s a very cool ride. The scooter doesn’t have a traditional board for your feet to balance on, but rather has a foot deck that lets riders face forward while riding. I found that this gave me greater visibility of my peripherals — having my left foot in front of my right on a traditional kick scooter meant I could see to my right quite well, but had less range of motion to look over my left shoulder. Whereas, facing forward on a Taur scooter meant I had equal range of motion to look over each shoulder. Perhaps the most interesting part of the ride was that it didn’t even feel like I was riding a scooter. It almost felt like I was riding a moped or a bike (maybe something to do with being front facing?) I kept mistakenly calling it “a great bike” — a term co-founder Carson Brown and head of marketing Ed Turner said they were also hearing from others. It might be more accurate to say that the movement of riding Taur’s scooter was similar to the movement of skiing, where you turn by pushing your weight off each foot, rather than by angling the handlebars. This gave me a better feeling of control and a sense that I could do some serious shredding on this thing. The fat tires certainly made for a bouncy experience. I rode the scooter over uneven roads in a parking lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and once I got used to the jostling, I felt safe enough to brave the meanest of potholes. Taur is focusing on launching in Los Angeles this year and will be running pop ups there over the next few months. The startup has almost 1,000 units to ship to LA this year to fulfill pre-orders and general sales. In other news … Amazon and other retailers are facing criticism for selling devices that allow e-bikes to be upgraded to illegal speeds for as little as $100. Bird is apparently launching in Qatar, which is weird because the company recently said it was exiting several dozen cities around the world, including in the Middle East. Honda is developing and testing a range of micromobility vehicles equipped with “cooperative intelligence,” a technology that combines cameras, voice recognition, AI and standard controls to enable more “human-like” cooperation between people and the vehicles. The vehicles would be able to generate a 3D map of their surroundings in real time. Revel is taking its e-mopeds out of Washington D.C. The company said it wanted to focus its attention on growing out its electric ridehail and EV charging businesses. You’re reading an abbreviated version of Micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week The wave of consolidation that has affected the autonomous vehicle industry has extended to lidar companies as well. For example, take this week’s merger of Ouster and Velodyne — two lidar companies that separately went public via special purpose acquisition companies. Under this all-stock transaction, both Ouster and Velodyne will maintain a 50% stake in the new company. Why are lidar companies sucked up into this wave of consolidation? Too many lidar companies are competing for a sliver of business from OEMs. (That whole supply-demand problem). Scaling up is also an expensive endeavor. Velodyne and Ouster have each snapped up lidar companies prior to this merger. Velodyne acquired in 2022 Bluecity.ai, and last year, Ouster bought lidar startup Sense Photonics. What lidar company is next? Other deals that got my attention this week … Acerta Analytics, an advanced analytics company that helps automakers and suppliers improve quality in manufacturing processes and support early defect detection, raised $10.4 million CAD. The Series B round was led by BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation and Thrive Venture Funds with participation from existing investors OMERS Ventures and StandUp Ventures. Elon Musk nearly $4 billion worth of Tesla shares. Foxconn increased its investment in EV startup Lordstown Motors by buying $170 million in common stock and newly created preferred shares. Once the deal is complete, Foxconn will hold all of Lordstown’s outstanding preferred stock and 18.3% of its common stock on a pro forma basis. Foxconn will also have the right to two board seats. Kyte, the rental car delivery startup founded in 2019, raised $60 million in Series B round led by InterAlpen Partners, whose founder, Stephen George is joining Kyte’s Board. Other new investors include Valor Equity Partners, Anthemis, Citi Ventures, and Hearst

Trouble brews at Arrival, TuSimple ousts its CEO and Cruise expands in San Francisco • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Arrival, The Station, TransportationNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? 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. Too much news, so let’s just jump in. Please email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec Micromobbin’ So much of the conversation surrounding shared micromobility in cities has a negative valence. Coverage often focuses scooter crashes, the devices parked haphazardly on the sidewalk and the congestion of too many scooter operators. But these fail to point out the environmental and economic benefits micromobility bring to cities. For example, Lime recently gave its scooter data to German research institute Fraunhofer ISI, and the organization found that shared e-scooters help reduce carbon emissions within city transportation networks. The researchers surveyed Lime riders in spring 2022 across Stockholm, Paris, Melbourne, Berlin, Seattle and Dusseldorf and found that in each city, if shared scooters and bikes hadn’t been available, a significant number of riders would have taken their most recent trips via car, taxi or ride-hail. The researchers also looked at a lifecycle analysis of Lime’s latest Gen4 e-bikes and e-scooters to measure the service’s carbon footprint from cradle to grave and found that shared micromobility reduces more carbon emissions that it emits. I also mentioned the economic impact from shared micromobility. Two separate reports from Voi and Neuron show that the availability of e-scooters and e-bikes has improved accessibility to high streets and main shopping areas, which have been suffering since the pandemic, and had a positive impact on spending in several cities. The Voi study, which was done by economic consultancy firm Volterra, focused on certain cities in the UK and found an expected increase in retail and food and beverage spend to total £37 million, which would otherwise have been spent online or at out-of-town retail parks. This boost is expected to help support up to 1,400 jobs. Furthermore, the study found that e-scooter operations could lead to a £1.2bn boost for the studied trial areas struggling high streets if introduced permanently as a result of increased food and beverage purchases alone. Neuron’s study looked at the impact of e-scooters on Brisbane, Australia and found that 66.4% of trips resulted in a purchase. Of these, 42.2% of riders made a food and beverage purchase, 32.5% bought something in retail, and 17.9% visited a gym, movie or event. The average spend for each rider trip was $61.05. In 2021 to 2022, Neuron estimates its service contributed $116.6 million in direct, indirect and enabled economic activity towards Brisbane’s economy. Queensland Economic Advocacy Solutions supported these findings and found Neuron’s estimated economic contribution to Brisbane’s economy could rise to $160.5 million by 2026 to 2027. You’re reading an abbreviated version of Micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week This week we’re just compiling a list of deals that got my attention this week. Let’s jump in: Aventon received backing from Sequoia China, bringing the e-bike maker’s post-money valuation up to $590, from $200 million eight months ago. Miles Mobility, a German startup, acquired UMI Urban Mobility International GmbH from Volkswagen Passenger Cars and with it the WeShare car-sharing business. Neither party disclosed the financial terms of the deal. Miles said it plans to integrate WeShare’s 2,000 VW-brand electric vehicles into its fleet. It also plans to order more than 10,000 all-electric vehicles from the Audi, Seat/Cupra and Volkswagen Passenger Cars brands, which are scheduled for delivery in 2023. Newtrul, which describes itself as the Expedia for freight booking, raised $5.3 million in a round led by SignalFire and Flex Capital as well as previously unannounced investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Crowley, Oren Zaslansky, CEO of Flock Freight, John Larkin, and Brad Hollister. Volocopter, a German startup building electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, has secured $182 million for the second signing of its Series E round. That’s on top of the $170 million Volocopter raised for the same round in March at a $1.87 billion post-money valuation. Want more deals? A whole list of them were in the subscription version this week. Subscribe for free here. Notable reads and other tidbits Autonomous vehicles Argo AI’s lidar unit, an 80-person team and the lidar tech they developed, is being shopped around by Ford and VW. The two automakers, which plowed $3.6 billion into Argo AI and then abruptly pulled support and shut it down, are looking to squeeze any remaining value out of the AV company. Aurora said in its Q3 earnings it will have enough money to continue to develop its autonomous vehicle technology until its commercial launch in mid-2024 — an effort to assuage shareholders amid a tightening capital market and a week after competitor Argo AI suddenly shut down. But wait! Aurora said it will have to go raise capital; the company didn’t share when that will need to happen. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt tweeted that its driverless robotaxi service is expanding to most of San Francisco. This expanded area is only available to employees for now. Waymo also expanded its robotaxi service in downtown Phoenix to now include pickups and drop-offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. (Technically, it’s to the 44th Street Sky Train station, which is the outermost stop on the airport train and brings people directly to terminals) Waymo’s airport rides, which are only open to the “trusted tester” program for now, will initially use a human safety operator. XPeng received a permit to begin testing its G9 electric SUV as an autonomous vehicle on public roads in Guangzhou. The company will begin testing a small fleet

Mobileye cruises into the public market and inside the Argo AI collapse • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Argo AI, Mobileye, The Station, TransportationNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? 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. Welp, that was a week! My head is still spinning over here what with Mobileye going public, Argo shutting down and Elon Musk taking the reins at Twitter. Yes, there’s a transportation angle to Twitter beyond the less-than-happy reaction of Tesla shareholders. (GM temporarily paused paid advertising on Twitter, following Musk’s takeover.) Let’s just jump right in, shall we? Please email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec Micromobbin’ The California state legislature recently passed AB 371, the so-called “Kill Bikeshare Bill,” which puts extreme insurance requirements on shared micromobility companies beyond what’s required of private car owners or rental car companies. It makes the companies liable for the behavior of anyone using their service, and will likely lead to many companies pulling out. Citi Bike has a “Bike Angel” program that incentivizes people (with money!) to rebalance e-bike inventories at docking stations across NYC. San Francisco is restricting shared e-scooters from parking in certain tourist zones, specifically a large stretch of the Embarcadero and a popular street in Fisherman’s Wharf. The move comes as the SFMTA is under pressure to issue more hardline enforcement of sidewalk riding. Tesla Cyberquad for Kids, a $1,900 mini ATV made by Radio Flyer, is being recalled due to safety concerns. About 5,000 units have been sold. You’re reading an abbreviated version of micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Inside the Argo AI shutdown Image Credits: Argo AI The sudden shuttering of autonomous vehicle company Argo AI was received like a bucket of ice cold water being dumped on one’s head. Sure, the autonomous vehicle industry is still frontier tech that is years, even decades, away from becoming a product used daily by most consumers. Profits, hell even revenue, are distant goals. And yet, Argo’s demise did feel unexpected, largely because it had deep-pocketed backers like Ford and VW ($2 billion in cash and $1.6 billion in value of taking over VW’s Autonomous Intelligent Driving subsidiary), several high-profile partners with active pilot programs, a large workforce of top talent and a presence in multiple cities. The work culture wasn’t toxic, based on accounts from numerous insiders at different levels of the startup. It was a company widely respected and considered one of a handful of companies poised with the talent, backing and tech to actually pull off the commercialization of AVs. So why did Argo die? Did the founders or its backers make some fatal flaw along the way? Or is it a larger systemic problem with the technology itself? As I learn more about this (and I continue to dig), it seems it is a combination of a few factors, including Ford and VW deciding to prioritize near-term profits gleaned from advanced deriver assistance systems over a still-in-the-works technology that neither company had actually figured out a business model for. (or at least one guaranteed to be profitable) Argo apparently was able to find some new backers (Ford said in its earnings call that Argo couldn’t find fresh outside investment.) But finding capital wasn’t the only problem. The terms of any new investor would have to be agreed upon by Ford and VW. I have received varying accounts on the health of that relationship. ZebethMedia editor Darrell Etherington makes the argument that this proves self-driving cars are not coming anytime soon. Cruise co-founder and Kyle Vogt responded with some light trolling on Twitter. Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson also piped up with an AV-industry-is-not-doomed message. “This is not a signal that a future with self-driving technology isn’t real or imminent. In fact, it’s quite the opposite,” he wrote, noting Waymo’s expansion of a robotaxi fleet to LA and Cruise charging for driverless rides in San Francisco. Urmson also provided an update on Aurora’s focus on self-driving trucks. I don’t believe the AV industry is dead. I do see — and have for two years now — consolidation, tightening capital markets and a shift in priorities from automakers, which were once some of the biggest cheerleaders and backers of AVs. That makes a tough rough even bumpier. And for now, that shuts out a lot of startups. It would be a bit simplistic to say “it’s the profits, stupid.” But that’s not entirely isn’t wrong either. What do you, dear reader, think? Deal of the week On the day the Argo AI news dropped, Mobileye made its official debut. The success of the IPO — the third largest this year — was seen by many as a validation of Ford and VW’s decision to shutdown Argo. The takeaway was that advanced driver assistance systems, not AV tech, is the real future (at least in terms of revenue and profits). Mobileye was able to price 41 million shares at $21 and above its initial range, raising $861 million. General Atlantic agreed to buy an additional $100 million of shares in a private placement. Investors seemed ready to pile in and helped shares pop and close nearly 30% above the IPO price. I spoke to Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua on the big day. (Look for a longer piece this week.) A couple of quick takeaways from Dr. Shashua: “Things have changed and became more and more nuanced. You know, five years ago we’d be talking about driving assist and then robotaxis as kind of two separate domains. We gradually built a product portfolio that bridges the spectrum between driving assist and robotaxis.” That

Arrival restructures (again), Bird shrinks and highlights from Disrupt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Lyft, Rivian, The Station, TransportationNo Comments

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? 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. Wow, what a week over here at ZebethMedia! Our annual tech bonanza (I can’t even call it a conference) was a flurry of activity. Our expo floor was packed, the roundtables were oversubscribed and the two stages showcased some of the most interesting people in tech. The event culminated as it always does: naming the Startup Battlefield winner. That process started with the Startup Battlefield 200, handpicked companies (from thousands of applications) that were vetted and chosen to exhibit on the expo floor. From here, 20 startups were selected to compete in Startup Battlefield, where founders pitched before judges for a chance to win $100,000 and the coveted Battlefield Cup. We winnowed it down to five finalists: Advanced Ionics, AppMap, Intropic Materials, Minerva Lithium and Swap Robotics. The judges who reviewed the final five were Mar Hershenson (Pear VC), Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), ZebethMedia editor in chief Matthew Panzarino, David Tisch (BoxGroup) and Richard Wong (Accel). In the end, the crown went to Minerva Lithium, a company co-founded by Sheeba Dawood and Hemali Rathnayake that wants to change the way we extract lithium. Minerva has come up with a coordinated polymer framework that extracts critical materials from salt water in just three days and without all the harmful effects on the environment. Minerva can not only extract lithium, which it can sell at battery-grade to battery makers, it can also capture other minerals and possibly purify the leftover water for drinking purposes. Congrats to Minerva Lithium! Oh, before I forget: we’ve opened up pre-registration for 2-for-1 tickets so sign up and we’ll let you know when you can secure your seat at next year’s event. You can always email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec Rivian and Lyft at Disrupt RJ Scaringe, CEO at Rivian, and Kirsten Korosec from ZebethMedia at ZebethMedia Disrupt in San Francisco on October 19, 2022. Image Credit: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia During Disrupt, I interviewed Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and Lyft co-founder and president Jon Zimmer. Both interviews provided some interesting insights on the challenges of founding and growing a company. There was even a little news in there. Here are some highlights from both. Lyft, Jon Zimmer On past challenges:• It wasn’t Covid, but the sustained and early fight with Uber that Zimmer believes was the hardest challenge that company has faced to date.On autonomous vehicles:“I think it’s too early to pick you know, one winner and so today, it’s about having multiple partners. Ten years from now? It’s too hard to predict.”On Tesla FSD and whether Lyft should tell drivers not to use while shuttling riders:“We do not have have a policy currently. You know, we think that the regulatory bodies are best, you know, when it comes to that level of safety.”On the Biden Administration proposal:“The recent Biden Administration proposal that you’re talking about basically just returns things to the way they were in the Obama administration where all our drivers were independent contractors. Typically, we are governed at a state level. Federal Government is important and matters for all industries, but it’s really interpreted at the state level, of which I would argue we’ve made significant progress over the last few years, California being one example.” Rivian, RJ Scaringe On the future product front:• More than half of Rivian’s 15,000 employees are working on future product pipeline, including the R2 platform, which will focus on smaller and cheaper vehicles• Yes, there will be 400-mile “Max Pack.” Scaringe didn’t provide a timeline.• Micromobility, specifically an e-bike will be part of the lineup On the recall:• A “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month.• “It was really powerful for us to respond so quickly, and I think what we saw from customers — of course, there’s frustration on anything like this — but that we were trying to do the best possible job we could. We were authentic about it. We didn’t we didn’t sugarcoat it. We said we’re gonna go fix this. And so it actually has been really quite positive.”On the supply chain:• Think the semiconductor chip shortage was bad? Scaringe said that shortage is “an appetizer to the degree of the sort of supply chain constraint we’re likely to see across the battery supply chain over the next 15 years.” Woof. (that’s my reaction)• “The battery supply chain as we know it for lithium-ion batteries, whether you’re looking at lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate was built largely around consumer electronics and so it’s very small. It’s not a huge supply chain. And so it has to grow by 20x or on the order of 20x over the next 10 to 15 years. And so the level of investment needed to go build that is is staggering. And moreover, I think the level of risk concentration given that it hasn’t been built in the United States is a real thing.” Micromobbin’ The big micromobbin’ news this week fell squarely into the gloomy category. I’m talking about Bird and its plans to exit several markets across the world, including Germany, Sweden, Norway and “several dozen additional, primarily small to mid-sized markets” across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Deliveroo is partnering with Volt to trial the use of e-bikes for food delivery in the UK. You’re reading an abbreviated version of micromobbin’. Subscribe for free to the newsletter and you’ll get a lot more. Deal of the week ZebethMedia Disrupt kept me pretty busy, but a few