Transportation

Yassir pulls in $150M for its super app, led by Mary Meeker’s BOND • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Bond, Bond Capital, Fintech, Startups, Transportation, YassirNo Comments

Yassir, an African super app platform that offers on-demand services such as ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, and payments, has raised $150 million in Series B funding, five times what it raised in its previous priced round last November. The investment was led by BOND, the growth-stage firm that Mary Meeker spun out of Kleiner Perkins in 2018. Other investors in the growth round include DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, Quiet Capital, Stanford Alumni Ventures, and Y Combinator via its Continuity Fund, among other strategic investors. The African startup, first launched in Algeria, has now raised $193.25 million since its inception in 2017. While its valuation remains undisclosed, Yassir considers itself the most valuable startup in North Africa and one of the highest-valued startups in Africa and the Middle East, where it plans to expand in the coming months. When CEO Noureddine Tayebi started Yassir, the plan was to build a super app that included services people — in the French-speaking Maghreb region consisting of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia — had little or no access to on one platform. So far, its execution has been spot on. Not only is the company offering ride-hailing and food and grocery delivery services (via Yassir Express) in 45 cities across six countries, but this report also says that three out of five on-demand activities in Algeria, its first market, are made via the platform. This calculated growth has moved Yassir closer to its overarching plan to provide banking and payments. According to Tayebi, providing on-demand services in food and transportation was the entry point that allowed Yassir to gain users’ trust — which he argues is one reason most Africans are unbanked — for this endeavor. For perspective: Morocco, one of Yassir’s main markets, over 65% of Morocco’s population does not own a bank account, and according to a 2018 McKinsey report on growth and innovation in African retail banking, 57% of the continent’s population lack any form of a bank account. Yet, the report also highlights that 40% of Africa’s banked population prefers digital channels for transactions. Therefore, Yassir’s thesis is that providing consumers with a mobile banking solution as part of a broader suite of services will meet an essential need in the African market, where 50% of the population can access the internet. “Our business model from day one was a super add model and getting into payments. When we first started, the observation was that most people were unbanked, and the number one reason is that people don’t trust the banking systems here for various reasons,” the chief executive told ZebethMedia in an interview. “We thought we could provide on-demand services that solve immediate needs around where people spent their money. We knew if we executed well, we could have a large user base that subconsciously trusts us, which we felt was pertinent to offering payment services.” Yassir’s financial services serve its multi-sided marketplace ecosystem, which includes 8 million users (over 2.5x from last year) and 100,000 partners consisting of drivers, couriers, merchants, suppliers and wholesalers. Yassir is leveraging this network — which also includes a B2B e-commerce retail part that connects fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) suppliers with merchants — for its payments play assembled on top wallet provision and deployment of drivers and couriers as money agents. The company’s performance has been right on the money–not counting contributions from its recently launched financial services. In the interview, Tayebi mentioned that the all-in-one ecosystem app, which provides its customers with a single-point solution for managing their day-to-day activities, from traveling to work to ordering groceries and meals, has surpassed $50 million in GMV and $10 million in revenue run rates since launch. Image Credits: Yassir What’s next for the YC-backed platform with components from Uber, DoorDash, Udaan and PayPal? “First, we want to create a local tech startup success model which will be emulated by others and more so Yassir team members,” Tayebi answered. “Second, we want to empower the local talent and, more importantly, the technical talent which often leaves the region, mainly to Europe, to pursue further studies or find jobs,” added the chief executive, who, after earning a Ph.D. at Stanford and spending 15 years in Silicon Valley working at various companies, returned to Algeria in 2016 to get involved in the country’s nascent tech scene. As such, Tayebi, who founded Yassir with Mahdi Yettou, says the startup intends to invest heavily in its engineering and product teams by tripling their size, at the least. He also underscored how the funding will assist Yassir — which has offices in Algeria, Canada, France, Morocco and Tunisia — in consolidating its growth, rolling out new services in the existing markets, and expanding into new geographies across Africa and the Middle East directly or via acquisitions. “Although we like to consider ourselves as leaders in the Maghreb region, we’re just scratching the surface, and there’s still a lot of room to grow,” expressed the Silicon-Valley-based Algerian entrepreneur while noting that Yassir isn’t fazed by Uber and Bolt’s duopoly in the ride-hailing category across some of the markets it plans to expand into. His confidence stems from Yassir’s dominance in its main markets where the Uber-subsidiary Careem has struggled. Yassir is one of five Africa-focused startups to have closed a mega-round — that is, investment rounds greater than $100 million — this year. The self-described most valuable North African startup joins Flutterwave, Wasoko, Instadeep, and Sun King on the shortlist, which as of last year, included ten startups. This reduced number is a stark example of how quickly markets change and reflects ongoing global macroeconomic challenges that have seen startups lay off employees, slash valuations, or go bust. But while startups have generally faced a stricter fundraising environment this year, Tayebi claims it wasn’t the case with Yassir. “In our first few years, we had a hard time raising money because of the region we operate in, despite us executing well,” he said. “That pushed us to be frugal and conscious of unit

Ouster and Velodyne agree to merger, signaling consolidation in lidar industry • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 7, 2022Posted in Lidar, Ouster, Robotics & AI, Transportation, Velodyne, Velodyne LidarNo Comments

Ouster and Velodyne, two lidar companies, have agreed to a merger in an all-stock transaction, the companies said Monday. Both Ouster and Velodyne will maintain a 50% stake in the new company, according to the agreement that was signed on November 4. The merger comes as many in the industry, including autonomous vehicle technology company Cruise’s CEO Kyle Vogt, have been expecting another round of consolidation in the lidar space. That’s in part because there are too many lidar companies for how many OEMs are implementing the sensor for autonomous driving applications. It’s also because many of these companies, including Ouster and Velodyne, went public via special purpose acquisition (SPAC) at potentially inflated valuations that were based on projected revenue, not actual revenue. Earlier this year, Velodyne acquired AI and lidar company Bluecity.ai, and last year, Ouster acquired lidar startup Sense Photonics. AV company Aurora bought out Blackmore in 2019, and Cruise acquired Strobe in 2017. Both Velodyne and Ouster have been struggling with plummeting stock prices over the past year, and neither has been able to turn a profit yet. The companies closed out the second quarter with a net loss of $44.3 million and $28 million, respectively. Loss-generating companies can often maintain investor faith if they at least generate regular increases in revenue, which Ouster has done year-over-year. But Velodyne’s revenue doesn’t seem to have grown at all in the past year; rather it fell 41%. By merging, the companies hope to combine forces and create scale “to drive profitable and sustainable revenue growth,” according to Velodyne’s CEO Ted Tewksbury. The companies say that the merger will allow them to realize annualized cost savings of at least $75 million within the nine months after the transaction closes, as well as $335 million in combined cash for the third quarter. The merger may also be a lifeline for Velodyne, a company that has been struggling over the past year with a series of internal dramas, including the resignation of its CEO Anand Gopalan last July. (Tewskbury took over for him in November.) Velodyne never said why Gopalan resigned, but his leaving cost Velodyne $8 million in equity compensation, according to 2021’s second quarter earnings report. Prior to that, Velodyne’s founder David Hall was removed as chairman of the board and his wife, Marta Thoma Hall, lost her role as chief marketing officer following an investigation by the board into the two for “inappropriate behavior.” The legal fees for the dramas cost Velodyne $3.7 million in the first half of 2021. In May last year, Hall wrote a letter blaming the SPAC with which Velodyne merged, Graf Industrial Corp., for the company’s poor financial performance. A new path ahead The combined company’s board of directors will consist of eight members, four from Ouster’s board and four from Velodyne’s. Angus Pacala, current co-founder and CEO of Ouster, will be CEO of the new company. Tewksbury will act as executive chairman of the board. In a statement, Ouster said the merger would increase operational efficiencies, most likely by getting rid of redundancies. That usually means layoffs will follow, but the companies did not respond in time to ZebethMedia’s request for comment. With a combined commercial footprint and distribution network, the new company expects to deliver higher volumes of product at reduced costs, Ouster said. The merger, which will see Velodyne’s share exchanged for 0.8204 shares of Ouster at closing, is expected to be completed in the first half of 2023, pending shareholder approval by both companies. Ouster and Velodyne will continue to operate their businesses independently until the transaction is complete.

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

Uber withdraws petition to annul new ride-hailing regulations in Kenya • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in kenya, Transportation, UberNo Comments

Uber has applied to withdraw a petition in Kenya challenging the new ride-hailing regulations that capped commissions at 18%, and required taxi apps operating to acquire licenses. Coulson Harney, the law firm representing Uber, filed the notice of withdrawal bringing to an end its push to have the new digital ride-hailing regulations annulled. “Take notice that Uber B.V, the petitioner, gives notice and wholly withdraws its petition and the notice of motion application,” read the application, seen by ZebethMedia, and which came days after Uber lowered its commission from 25% and got a license to operate in Kenya. Estonia’s Bolt, Kenya’s Little and Rwanda-based Yego have also received approval to operate in the East Africa’s biggest economy. Uber confirmed to ZebethMedia that it had applied to withdraw the case, saying it remains committed to working closely with Kenya’s policymakers to help improve driver earnings, and ensure a great user experience. “On 03 November 2022, Uber filed an application to withdraw the constitutional petition on the new transport network regulations published by the Ministry of Transport in June. Having received a transport network license from the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has and considered several factors, we felt that the best course of action was to comply with the regulations, which includes the lowering of our service fee from 25% to 18%. We will continue to liaise with NTSA on the implementation of the regulations,” said an Uber spokesperson. The new law by Kenya’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure gives NTSA the mandate to enforce it. “We remain committed to Kenya and to creating economic opportunities for drivers and providing enhanced mobility for riders, as we have done since our launch in the market in 2015,” Uber said. Uber filed the petition in September this year urging Kenya’s high court to expunge the newly-implemented regulations, adding that some sections were unconstitutional, discriminatory, discouraging to foreign investments, and infringing on its rights and those of its riders and partners. Uber protested Kenya’s decision to cap commissions charged per ride, and plans to reevaluate pricing structures, saying the move would dent its earnings. It insisted that Kenya is a free market, where ride-hailing companies have the right to negotiate commercial agreements without external influence. It also claimed that the regulations were made and gazetted without following due process and public participation. The new law requires all platforms to have a physical presence in Kenya, and to obtain a license to operate. Uber had also faulted the condition that all ride-hailing companies must obtain a transport network license from NTSA to operate, saying that it was not a transport service but an app offering intermediation service. It said the regulations are discriminatory because only persons with Kenyan Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) were allowed to obtain the mandatory license. Ride-hailing companies in Kenya, including Bolt and Little, are also required to share drivers’ and riders’ data upon request by the authority. Uber said that this would be a contravention of the new Data Protection Act.

Formula 1’s Toto Wolff looks for fresh edge in 2023 through remote software • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Apps, Enterprise, formula 1, teamviewer, TransportationNo Comments

Toto Wolff, the 50-year-old Austrian chief executive, team principal and part-owner of the Mercedes Formula 1 team who was recently described by the New Yorker as someone who might breeze “past you in the airport, smelling good, wearing loafers and no socks,” talked openly yesterday about his team’s terrible, no-good year. Sitting with Oliver Steil, the CEO of the German company TeamViewer, a popular maker of remote support software, Wolff also described how the troubled racing team is counting, in part, on TeamViewer’s tech to give it an edge in its bid to recapture its former glory. The two were speaking at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, and Wolff was cheered when he appeared before the crowd, owing in no small part to “Drive to Survive,” the Netflix series that has made him famous. (He told the New Yorker he enjoyed this, recounting to writer Sam Knight how a young woman threw herself through the open window of his car to get her picture taken.) Wolff also immediately acknowledged the obvious. “We won the championship eight times in a row,” he said, “but that is the past.” Mercedes, he continued, “just got the physics wrong . . . and got the concept of the car not in the right place,” he said, referring to the design of its floor, which he has previously pointed to as the root of the team’s surprisingly lackluster year. (Every few years, Mercedes and the other F1 teams — there are currently 10 altogether — are forced by the body overseeing Grand Prix racing to redesign their cars.) Indeed, it’s largely because it “takes a a long time to unwind things that are built into the car,” said Wolff, that his team last year turned to TeamViewer, a 17-year-old, publicly traded company whose software can remotely access and connect any computer, tablet, laptop, mobile device, and IoT endpoint like an industrial machine — or race car — to allow the remote control, management, and monitoring of these devices. It’s a match made in heaven, suggested Steil, who said that TeamView is working closely with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team to make it more efficient, including running lab tests out of hours and supporting the trackside crew via remote engineers. “We really try to go through a system, like we have at Formula 1, like a team. We see the different parts, and we see what can we do differently if we connect in real time, in addition to what we do maybe on trackside and in the back office. We’re really working through the different parts of the organization, on testing obviously, production maintenance, wind tunnel, all these kinds of applications where we try to see where can be better . . .” Wolff chimed in separately to paint the bigger picture. “We are racing 23 times around the world, around the globe [during the racing season], and our core team is just 90 engineers [with] 2,000 back at the factory with 2000,” including 1,000 people focused on the chassis side and another 1,000 focused on the engine. “Operating in the field, or we call it surgery in the field, is not always trivial because if you open up an engine or a complicated cooling system, you want to have the resource from back at home, and TeamViewer is the only technology that allows us today in having the guy back at home look through the same borescope into the cylinder head, then [help] the mechanic on the field.” As an added and not inconsequential benefit, said both men, the partnership cuts down on emissions because it means moving fewer people around at a time when Mercedes is focusing increasingly on sustainability. In fact, Wolff said, the team has cut its emissions by nearly 90% in recent years. “It is our responsibility to show our global audience of billions of spectators that if we can do it, everyone can do it,” he said. Certainly, the appearance was a great moment for TeamViewer, whose other clients range from telecommunications companies to the fast-food franchise Wendy’s. There’s nothing like having the best team boss in the recent history of Formula 1 sing your praises. Of course, what racing fans want to know is: will its tech give Mercedes — which has yet to win a race in 2022 — enough of an edge to overcome the team’s arch-rivals, Red Bull and Ferrari? While Wolff is looking to “tomorrow,” as he said yesterday, it could take a while, even with the faster feedback loops that TeamViewer’s technology provides the team. As he recently told the outlet RacingNews365, Mercedes is still “eight to 10 months” behind Red Bull in terms of Formula 1 development after its frustrating 2022 season. “There is definitely a challenge,” he added, “but we are playing the long game, all of us.”

iPhone maker Foxconn and Saudi Arabia are going into the EV business • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in EV, Foxconn, Saudi Arabia, TransportationNo Comments

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has formed a joint venture with Foxconn to build and sell EVs, the latest move by the nation to meet its Vision 2030 goal of reducing its dependence on oil and diversifying its economy. The new company, called Ceer, will design, manufacture and sell a portfolio of EVs using BMW’s component technology, according to Thursday’s announcement. Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that makes Apple’s iPhones, is developing the electrical architecture of the vehicles, which Saudi Arabia says will lead to a “portfolio of products” in the areas of infotainment, connectivity and autonomous driving technologies. The first EVs from the Ceer brand are expected come to market in 2025. The Saudi Public Investment Fund, or PIF, said Ceer is the nation’s first EV brand and will attract more than $150 million in foreign direct investment, create up to 30,000 direct and indirect jobs. Foreign direct investment, or FDI, is a key piece of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan. The country announced last year a national investment strategy to hit more than $100 billion annually in FDI by 2030. The PIF also said the Ceer brand is projected to contribute $8 billion to the kingdom’s GDP by 2034. PIF has made a number of its own investments in EVs and other clean technology. In 2018, the PIF invested $1 billion into Lucid Motors, becoming its largest shareholder. The PIF, which owns 61% of Lucid, made an initial commitment in spring 2022 to buy 50,000 of Lucid’s EV with an option to purchase an additional 50,000 vehicles over that same 10-year time frame. Foxconn has been pushing deeper into the automotive sector, particularly around EVs. Foxconn has landed deals to produce EVs for Lordstown Motors and Fisker. It als partnered with Taiwanese automaker Yulon Group to build an electric SUV called the Model C. Foxconn chairman Liu Young-way said in October at its third annual Hon Hai Tech Day event that he wanted to replicate the company’s success in manufacturing consumer gadgets into producing EVs for automakers.

EV-maker Arrival gets delisting warning from Nasdaq • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Arrival, electric vehicles, NASDAQ, TransportationNo Comments

Commercial electric vehicle company Arrival has gotten a warning from the Nasdaq Stock Market because its stock price is trading too low. The company issued a press release Thursday saying it received a notification at the start of the week that it was not in compliance with the Nasdaq’s requirement to trade ordinary shares above $1.00 per share for 30 consecutive business days preceding the date of notification. The news comes just a couple of weeks after Arrival said it would restructure its business for the second time in six months, shifting focus away from the U.K. market to the United States, where its first EV vans were supposed to be delivered. Job cuts are expected, although Arrival has not come out with specifics on that yet. The company said it plans to further “right-size the organization and cut cash intensive activities” to extend its cash runway, which was $330 million at the end of the third quarter. Arrival has a grace period of 180 days, or until May 1, 2023, to meet the minimum bid requirement under Nasdaq’s listing rules. The company just needs to maintain a closing bid price of $1.00 per share or higher for at least 10 consecutive business days to get out of the woods. If the company can’t raise its share price by May, it may get an additional 180-day grace period if it effects a reverse stock split, or a stock merge, which consolidates the number of existing shares into fewer higher-priced shares. Arrival’s share price was $0.69 in after hours trading Thursday. The EV company went public via a $660 million special purpose acquisition deal with CIIG Merger in March last year. Arrival began trading at $22 and immediately started a slow descent to its current share price. The company has had many struggles since its debut, including production delays, a class action lawsuit against the company and wide-scale layoffs. In early October, Arrival finally got its first electric van off the production line at the company’s microfactory in Bicester, U.K. It’s not clear if Arrival will continue producing vehicles in Bicester. The company has said it plans to open a second factory in Charlotte, North Carolina next year. Arrival told ZebethMedia it would not comment at this time, but that it would have a business update on November 8.

Lyft lays off 13% of workforce as it tries to slash operating expenses • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Lyft, ride hailing, TransportationNo Comments

Lyft said Thursday it is laying off 13% of its workforce as it tries to reduce operating expenses, according to a securities filing. The ride-hailing company described the cuts as proactive step to ensure it “is set up to accelerate execution and deliver strong business results in Q4 of 2022 and in 2023.” Lyft also reiterated Thursday it is sticking with its previously stated guidance on third quarter 2022 revenues, contribution margin and adjusted EBITDA. It has targeted $1 billion in Adjusted EBITDA with more than $700 million in free cash flow for 2024. Lyft said terminating these 683 employees will cost between $27 million to $32 million in severance and benefits. The company said it expects to record a stock-based compensation charge and payroll tax expense related to restructuring in the fourth quarter and the first quarter of 2023. The notice comes a few months after Lyft established a hiring freeze, laid off about 60 people and dropped its in-house car rental service. The hiring freeze, which went into effect in August, affects all departments in the U.S. and is expected to last into next year as the ride-hail giant continues to face economic unpredictability. Lyft slow hiring in May in order to bring down costs and drive profitability as its stock continues to take a hit. Lyft’s share price has sunk more than 73% since the start of the year at the time of this writing. Lyft is scheduled to report its third quarter 2022 financial results November 7.

India metro smart cards vulnerable to ‘free top-up’ bug • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in cybersecurity, india, metro, Security, smart cards, TransportationNo Comments

A smart card bug lets anyone ride the metro for free India’s mass rapid transit systems — or metro, as it’s known locally — rely on commuter smart cards that are vulnerable to exploitation and allow anyone to effectively travel for free. Security researcher Nikhil Kumar Singh discovered a bug impacting Delhi Metro’s smart card system. The researcher told ZebethMedia that the bug exploits the top-up process that allows anyone to recharge the metro train’s smart card as many times as they want. Singh told ZebethMedia he discovered the bug after inadvertently getting a free top-up on his metro smart card using an add-value machine at a Delhi Metro station. The bug exists, Singh says, because the metro recharge system does not properly verify payments when a traveler credits their metro smart card using a station add-value machine. He said that the lack of checks means a smart card can be tricked into thinking it was topped up even when the add-value machine says that the purchase failed. A payment in this case is marked as pending, and subsequently refunded, allowing the person to effectively ride the metro for free. “I tried it on Delhi Metro’s system and was able to get a free recharge,” Singh told ZebethMedia. “I still have to initiate a recharge by paying for it using PhonePe or Paytm, but because the recharge still remains pending, it will be refunded after 30 days. That is why it is technically free,” he said. Singh shared with ZebethMedia a proof-of-concept video he recorded in February showing how a smart card can be duped into adding value to a Delhi Metro card. After better understanding the bug, the researcher reached out to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) a day later. In response, the DMRC asked Singh to share the details of the bug over email, which he did, along with a technical report and a log file demonstrating the bug in action, which ZebethMedia has seen. On March 16, Singh received a boilerplate reply, acknowledging the receipt of his email, but did not receive any further responses. Singh told ZebethMedia that the issue, which has not been fixed, exists in the smart cards themselves. Delhi Metro relies on MiFare DESFire EV1 smart cards manufactured by Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors. Other metro systems, including Bengaluru, also use the same smart card system. “If the technical infrastructure is the same in other state metro trains, then this bug will work there too,” Singh told ZebethMedia. It’s not the first time security researchers have found issues with the same brand of smart cards. Past research found similar vulnerabilities affecting the same DESFire EV1 smart cards that Delhi Metro uses, as well as other European mass transit systems. In 2020, MiFare introduced the DESFire EV3 as its contactless solution with better security. Singh suggested that the smart card bug could be fixed if the metro systems migrate to DESFire EV3 cards. Three DMRC spokespeople did not answer multiple emails seeking comment. When reached, a spokesperson for NXP (via agency) was unable to provide comment by the time of publication. Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation, the body responsible for the city’s metro service, also did not comment.

Aurora says it has enough cash to commercialize autonomous trucks by 2024 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Aurora Innovation, autonomous freight, autonomous trucks, TransportationNo Comments

Autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation released its third-quarter earnings report after the bell Wednesday. The company closed out the quarter with about $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments, which Aurora says will be enough to make it to commercial launch in mid-2024. Those statements were made just days after former competitor Argo AI shut down operations and Mobileye went public with the third most successful IPO of the year. Both moves are a sign that automakers that were once willing to invest billions into the development of AV tech without near-term profit gains are now turning their attention and resources back to near-term profit centers like advanced driver assistance systems in passenger-owned vehicles. So the question becomes, can Aurora hang on? Chief financial officer Richard Tame did say during the investor call that Aurora will need to raise more funds, but the company wouldn’t clarify to ZebethMedia if that would happen pre- or post-2024 launch. (However, in a memo leaked in September, CEO Chris Urmson wrote to Aurora’s board that there was value in finding a “path to raise $300 million in the next year to add around six months to our runway.”) Given the current economic situation and Aurora’s cash burn history, the company might be able to make it to 2024 with the funds it currently has, but only just — and only if it keeps costs in line. During the third quarter, Aurora’s loss from operations totaled $200 million, which is up from the $128 million reported during the same quarter of last year, but down from the nearly $1.2 billion in losses from the second quarter of 2022. If the startup were able to maintain a $200 million net loss starting in the fourth quarter until the first quarter of 2024, it wouldn’t need to raise more cash before commercial launch. But as a pre-revenue startup working on frontier technology, Aurora will incur tremendous costs in R&D to scale and bring its product to market. In addition, Aurora would need to somehow avoid being impacted by inflation and supply chain constraints. The upshot? Aurora will need to find efficiencies across the board. The leaked memo also outlined an array of cost-cutting and cash-generating options to Aurora’s board, including a hiring freeze, potential layoffs, spinning out assets, going private and even selling itself to high-profile tech companies. Aurora didn’t mention any of these potential realities during its earnings call, but that doesn’t mean they’re off the table. The Street responded favorably to Aurora’s attempts to assuage investors. The company’s stock is up 5.85% after market close. Aurora has prioritized commercializing autonomous freight through a series of pilot partnerships with FedEx, Paccar, Schneider, Werner and Xpress. But the company is also working with Toyota to eventually launch a subscription service for the ride-hailing market. Earlier this year, the company unveiled its test fleet of Toyota Siennas that were custom built for robotaxi operations. In the third quarter, Aurora recognized about $3 million in collaboration revenue from Toyota.