Transportation

Fisker bumps up production for all-electric Ocean SUV • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in electric vehicles, fisker, Fisker Ocean, Foxconn, magna, TransportationNo Comments

Fisker is raising its manufacturing forecast two weeks before its first electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV, enters production. The automaker plans to produce 42,400 Ocean SUVs by the end of 2023, up from an initial forecast of 40,000, due to strong demand in the U.S. and Europe. The company said it has received 62,000 reservations for the $37,499 Ocean and expects 80,000 orders by the end of the year, compared with an initial target of 50,000. That means that not everyone who has reserved an Ocean will receive one in 2023. “For us, I don’t see it as a bad thing because that means we’re fully booked out, which is great,” CEO Henrik Fisker told ZebethMedia. Many of those reservations came in August, shortly ahead of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which eliminates the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs built abroad. “It was a Friday when it looked like Congress would pass the bill, and I immediately got together with three executives and we said, ‘Hey, what can we do?’” Fisker said. The company scrambled to launch a redesigned website by Monday afternoon and put out a press release notifying customers they had a week to reserve the Ocean before losing eligibility for the tax credit. “We acted quickly and enabled Ocean reservation holders to enter into a binding contract to potentially retain eligibility for the old federal EV tax credit,” Fisker said. “In less than a week, we sold out our U.S. allotment of Ocean Sport and Ultra trim levels.” The Ocean will enter production in Graz, Austria, on November 17, the same day slated for the launch of its 3D configurator as well as updates to its mobile phone app and website. Fisker will deliver a fleet of 15 SUVs to partner Magna in December. Fisker said it is in discussions with potential partners to boost capacity mid-2024 by adding a U.S. production site. The automaker, which went public through a SPAC deal in 2020, reported a widening net loss of $149.3 million, or a .49 loss per share, for the quarter ended September 30. That compares with a net loss of $109.8 million, or a .37 loss per share, for the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for the third quarter was $14 million, slightly less than the $15 million it posted for the same period last year. During its quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, the automaker outlined its quarterly production plan for 2023. Fisker plans to build “more than 300” Ocean units by the end of the first quarter, 8,000 units in the second quarter, 15,000 in the third, and the balance of the remaining 42,400 units in the fourth. Fisker also said it is on track to start production of its second vehicle, the Fisker PEAR crossover, in 2024 with partner Foxconn at the former Lordstown Motors plant in Ohio. Foxconn purchased the site, originally a General Motors factory, from struggling EV startup Lordstown Motors in May. The company said it has received more than 5,000 reservations for the sub-$30,000 PEAR, an acronym for “Personal Electric Automotive Revolution.” A third model, a luxury GT sports car known internally as Project Ronin, is still in development, Fisker said.

George Hotz, aka ‘geohot,’ is leaving Comma.ai for a lofty AI project • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in automated driving, Comma.ai, George Hotz, TransportationNo Comments

Four years ago, Comma.ai founder George Hotz turned to his board — of which he is the only member — and fired himself as CEO. At the time, the goal for the famed iPhone and Playstation 3 hacker, known as geohot, was to build out a new research division to focus on behavioral models that can drive cars. Now, Hotz says he is taking “some time away” from the driver assistance system startup that promises to bring Tesla Autopilot like functionality to your car. Although he will remain its sole board member and president. Hotz hasn’t been involved in the much of the day-to-day leaderships task for some time, he told ZebethMedia. That has fallen to COO Alex Matzner and CTO Harald Schäfer. The company hasn’t had a CEO since 2019 when Riccardo Biasini held that role. (Biasini left the CEO post in 2019 and remained at Comma to work on its open pilot software until February 2020.) Hotz has been what Matzner described an observer and occasional hard problem solver. Comma.ai, which developed and now sells a $1,999 driver assistance system devkit that is compatible on more than 200 vehicles, isn’t going anyway, Hotz told ZebethMedia. The focus now is turning the devkit, which runs on Comma’s open source software called openpilot, into a productized consumer product. “I’m good at things when it’s wartime,” Hotz told ZebethMedia in a recent interview. “I’m not so good at hands-on ok, let’s patiently scale this up. ‘Do you want to deal with a supply chain that’s capable of making 100,000 devices a year?’ Like, not really.” And that’s one of the goals: annual sales of 100,000 Comma 3 units. The startup quietly raised $10 million from individuals last year and moved into a 20,000 square-foot facility in San Diego. (Comma’s first $8.1 million in funding was taken in two rounds from Silicon Valley VC a16z.) It is now “aggressively hiring” and on track to launch some major end-to-end machine learning updates to openpilot later this month, Matzner told ZebethMedia in a recent email. Comma.ai initially launched with a plan to sell a $999 aftermarket self-driving car kit that would give certain vehicle models highway-driving assistance abilities similar to Tesla’s Autopilot feature. Hotz canceled those plans in October 2016 after receiving a letter from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. Five weeks later, Comma.ai released its self-driving software to the world. All of the code, as well as plans for the hardware, was posted on GitHub. The company continued to develop an ecosystem of hardware products all aimed at bringing semi-autonomous driving capabilities to cars. Those efforts have culminated into the Comma 3, which is priced between $1,999 and $2,499 depending on the storage size. The car harness, which connects the devkit to the vehicle, is another $200. The Comma 3 is far easier to use than its earlier iterations. It requires some patience to install and set up, but no longer requires any technical expertise anymore, Hotz said. Now, it’s up to the company to take the Comma 3 and make into a “productized” and scalable consumer product, he added. What’s next? Hotz is already deep into his next project, which he calls Tiny Corporation. His aim is to write a new framework for machine learning that is faster and less complex than PyTorch. Instead of training the ML model in the cloud and shipping it to the edge, Hotz wants to build tools that allow ML models to be trained at the edge. “The current Pytorch and TensorFlow are not going to cut it for training the edge,” he said. AI-related fields including automated driving are turning more to deep neural networks — a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence algorithms that allow a computer to learn by using a series of connected networks to identify patterns in data. sort of, how a brain works. But as Hotz notes, “we’re all pretty new to this neural network stuff.” Andrej Karpathy, a deep learning and computer vision expert and former director of AI at Tesla, has referred to this stage as programming 2.0, or Software 2.0, in which programming is done by example and humans are really only writing the general scaffolding. In other words, software that writes itself. “You shouldn’t be building a (AI) chip until you can build software that outperforms or at least performs the same as Pytorch on Nvidia,” Hotz said. “As the build up to building AI chips, first let’s build the software.”

Ford, VW seeking buyer for Argo AI’s lidar unit • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Argo AI, autonomous vehicles, Ford, Lidar, Transportation, volkswagenNo Comments

Ford and Volkswagen are trying to squeeze any remaining value out of Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle startup the two automakers invested billons in before abruptly shutting it down last week. One of the primary items on the block: Argo Lidar, an 80-person team and the lidar tech they developed, according to sources familiar with the unwinding of the company. Argo AI was barely a year old when it acquired Princeton, New Jersey-based lidar startup Princeton Lightwave in October 2017. The acquisition, backed by Ford, was hailed years later as helping to provide a key piece of technology in Argo’s full self-driving system. Lidar, the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world, is considered by most in the industry a critical sensor required to safely deploy autonomous vehicles at a commercial scale. The team, which is still based in Princeton, developed medium and long-range lidar sensors. Argo has said the long-range lidar has the ability to see 400 meters away with high-resolution photorealistic quality and the ability to detect dark and distant objects with low reflectivity. Back in May 2021, Argo CEO and co-founder Bryan Salesky told ZebethMedia that the lidar sensor was developed to be cost-effective and manufactured at scale, two factors that matter for any company trying to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology. Argo Lidar point cloud. LG Innotek, a South Korean electronics components manufacturer, began manufacturing the lidar units for Argo this year. Sources say there has been interest from companies in other verticals — meaning outside of the AV world — in buying Argo Lidar’s sensors. Whether any of these interested parties will jump at buying the entire lidar team is unclear. Meanwhile, some of Argo’s 2,000 global workforce are getting offers from Ford and VW. Combined the two automakers invested $3.6 billion in Argo — $2 billion in cash and $1.6 billion in value when it took over VW’s Autonomous Intelligent Driving subsidiary and it became its own entity called Argo AI GmbH. VW plans to absorb the Munich-based Argo AI GmbH, an office of more than people, many of them who previously were part of AID, back into the company. VW is also offering jobs to about 100 former Argo employees based in the United States, a move that suggests the automaker is keen to set up some operations stateside. “Several hundred” employees will be offered positions at Ford, according to sources.

XPeng to begin autonomous driving public road tests in Guangzhou • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, robotaxi, Robotics & AI, TransportationNo Comments

XPeng received a permit Monday to begin testing its G9 electric SUV as an autonomous vehicle on public roads in Guangzhou. The company will begin testing a small fleet as soon as possible with a human safety operator in the driver’s seat. This is a milestone for XPeng as it aims to use its vehicles for robotaxi operations in the future. The G9 is the first mass-produced vehicle to qualify for such tests in China, Xpeng claims. The company is pursuing an approach of using EVs off the shelf for dual purposes — autonomous applications and individual sales — to lower the cost of production and make its vehicles more commercially viable. This is especially salient in the wake of Argo AI’s shutdown, with Ford and Volkswagen pulling their investments in the company in order to prioritize nearer term bets like in-house built advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The news follows XPeng’s announcement at its annual 1024 Tech Day that the G9 passed a government-led autonomous driving closed field test, which made it eligible for approval of further testing. Most, if not all, current autonomous vehicle operators rely on existing vehicle models that have been retrofitted with hardware and software suites to drive autonomously. In the U.S., Waymo uses Jaguar I-Paces and Cruise uses Chevrolet Bolts. XPeng’s G9, which was unveiled in September as a passenger vehicle, will be tested for robotaxi applications without any hardware modifications — higher-end versions of the G9 will be built with Nvidia’s Drive Orin chips and rely on 31 sensors, including a front-view camera and dual lidar sensors. That means the vehicle that’s being tested for robotaxi operations is the same vehicle that will be sold to private passengers. The only difference will be in the software. By early next year, G9s purchased by individuals in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai will have the option of downloading XNGP software, which is XPeng’s “full scenario” ADAS that promises to automate highway driving, city driving and parking tasks. The G9s XPeng will use for autonomous vehicle testing will be given an upgrade that allows them to perform Level 4 autonomy. Level 4 autonomy means the vehicle can drive itself without requiring a human safety operator to take over as long as it’s in certain conditions, like a geofenced area or time of day. XPeng will integrate data from both private passenger vehicles and autonomous test vehicles to continue to operate both systems in parallel, a spokesperson said. The company aims to test its vehicle for robotaxi applications over the next two to three years as it develops its next generation vehicle, with the goal of launching that by 2025 as one of the options, according to Xinzhou Wu, XPeng’s VP of autonomous driving. “Hopefully the software will be in good shape by then so we can at least see a limited scenario similar to what Cruise is doing now,” Wu told ZebethMedia. Wu said that while the new vehicle will have a full sensor suite, it probably won’t come in the form of a purpose-built AV — XPeng for now is sticking with a strategy of using the same mass-produced vehicle for passenger vehicle sales as it does for robotaxi operations. XPeng also doesn’t intend to run its own robotaxi operation in the future. The company envisions itself as more of a provider of the software, and possibly the hardware, stack for other ride-hail focused companies.

Evolito, with an axial-flux motor lighter than Tesla’s, starts ramping up its team • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Hardware, Startups, TransportationNo Comments

Last year YASA, a British electric motor startup with a revolutionary “axial-flux” motor, was acquired by Mercedes-Benz to develop ultra-high-performance electric motors for Mercedes’s AMG.EA electric-only platform. YASA’s axial-flux electric motors had previously garnered a reputation for efficiency, high power density, small size, and low weight. However, the team behind YASA did something quite clever. While Mercedes acquired that automotive rights, they passed on the rights to an aerospace version of the engine. That was taken up by a new entity, complete with YASA’s founders, called Evolito, to develop an electric motor it described as ultra-high-performance, low-weight and best for future EV aircraft. Evolito’s lead investors are Waypoint Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE). YASA’s ‘axial-flux’ motors makes them one-third the weight of other electric motors, more efficient, and with 3x higher power densities than even Tesla’s, according to the company. It’s now emerged that former YASA CEO Dr. Chris Harris will lead Evolito on its path to commercialize electric flight. Chris Harris, Evolito Harris joined YASA in 2012, scaling the company from 20 employees to more than 300, following 15 years’ leading other high-growth businesses in the UK, Europe and US. He stepped down from his CEO role at YASA in September 2022, but will remain a Non-Executive Director at the wholly-owned Mercedes-Benz subsidiary. A director of Evolito since the company’s spin-out and incorporation, he now becomes Evolito CEO effective immediately. Evolito acquired UK battery company Electroflight in July 2022, which means it can also offer aerospace OEM & eVTOL customers fully-electric powertrain solutions. In a statement, Harris said: “Electric flight requires ultra high-power density, super low-weight electric powertrains. Evolito provides best-in-class powertrain solutions for OEMs, leveraging next-generation axial-flux electric motor technology that’s already proven in automotive.”

Volocopter raises $182M to bring air taxi closer to certification • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in TransportationNo Comments

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. Volocopter is currently in full swing testing its two-seater VoloCity air taxi based on the requirements set by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The fresh funds will flow into the company’s testing regime to help bring it closer to Special Condition for small category VTOL aircraft certification, and by extension, commercialization. Volocopter hopes to certify its aircraft by the second half of 2023 and launch initial revenue-generating rides by 2024, the company said. So far, the EASA has granted Volocopter Design Organisation Approval in 2019 and Production Organisation Approval in 2021 — two prerequisites for obtaining type certification for the VoloCity and launching commercially. The additional funds to Volocopter’s Series E will also help prep the urban air mobility ecosystem — including infrastructure, integration with other mobility forms and raising public awareness — so when the VoloCity is certified, Volocopter can begin offering rides immediately, according to a spokesperson. “First commercial operations will be a small number of Volocopters flying on specific routes (maybe one or two) with paying customers,” Helena Treeck, Volocopter’s head of PR, told ZebethMedia via email. “From there, the network of routes will continuously grow to offer more and more routes and flights on connections, where we can really add value (beyond the fantastic view) to our customers, like time savings and predictability of services.” The VoloCity took its first crewed public test flight out of Rome’s Fiumicino Airport earlier this month, where the startup also demoed its VoloIQ digital platform that Volocopter says supports everything from customer bookings to managing flight operations. That might make Rome Volocopter’s first choice for market launch, but also on the table are cities like Singapore, Paris and Neom, a smart city being built north of the Red Sea in the Tabuk Province of Saudi Arabia. Neom came in on this round as a lead investor, alongside GLy Capital Management of Hong Kong, a Geely-backed private equity firm that focuses on smart cars, electrification and intelligent cities. Neom and Volocopter formed a joint venture company last December to integrate the VoloCity air taxi and the VoloDrone, the startup’s heavy load-lifting electric drone, into Neon’s connected mobility systems. The city has already placed an order of 15 Volocopter aircraft to begin initial flight operations within the next one to two years. Volocopter has also formed a JV with Geely Holding to bring urban air mobility to China. The JV signed an agreement last year to purchase 150 Volocopter aircraft, and Geely is expected to assist with production.

Uber tests push notifications, a feature literally no one wants • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Apps, Privacy, Transportation, UberNo Comments

Uber recently launched its new advertising division and in-app ads. Apparently, those ads aren’t staying within the app. Instead, ads from other companies are being sent out as push notifications, much to the chagrin of some Uber users. Over the weekend, people turned to Twitter to complain about the notifications, sharing screenshots of ads, including one particularly popular one from Peloton that Uber had sent out. One of the primary complaints: notifications are being sent out when users aren’t engaging with the app. When Uber first announced its in-app ad “experience,” the company didn’t mention the potentially intrusive implications. Uber told ZebethMedia this “was a limited test and users can always manage their mobile notification settings under Privacy and then Notifications in the app.” The company did not respond in time to follow up questions from ZebethMedia, including how many users are included in the test, whether it is tracking data on how many users turn off ad push notifications, how long the test is scheduled to last and whether Uber would fully implement push notification ads in the future. Uber’s in-app ads feature a single brand for the entire trip. The so-called “journey ads” lets brands show a user different ads at three points of a trip: while waiting for a car, while riding and upon reaching the destination. Brands are able to “personalize” ads to each user based on their travel history and geographic destinations. It’s also not clear if Uber used the same type of data for its push notification ads.

TuSimple CEO and co-founder fired by board over ties to Chinese startup Hydron • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in investigation, self-driving trucks, Transportation, TuSimple, xiaodi houNo Comments

TuSimple co-founder Xiaodi Hou was fired from his CEO, president and CTO posts by the autonomous trucking company’s board, according to a securities filing Monday. Hou, who co-founded TuSimple in 2015 with Mo Chen, was also removed from his position as chairman of the board and member of the board’s government security committee. The firing came a day after The Wall Street Journal published a report citing unnamed sources that TuSimple was facing concurrent probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Securities and Exchange Commission and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). The investigation is apparently focused on TuSimple’s relationship with Hydron, a hydrogen-powered trucking company led by TuSimple co-founder Chen and backed by Chinese investors. Hydron’s website lists its headquarters as Canada. It is incorporated in China, Hong Kong and Delaware. Shares of TuSimple plummeted more than 45% in trading Monday. The board said in the filing that based on information obtained in an ongoing investigation by its audit committee, employees spent paid hours working on matters for Hydron in 2021. That work had an estimated value of less than $300,000 and was not presented to, or approved by, the audit committee, according to the board. The board also believes that during 2022 the company shared confidential information with Hydron and its partners as part of an evaluation of Hydron as a potential OEM partner. Some insiders told ZebethMedia that the firing seemed more political and about Hou’s management style than news of an investigation. Sources, who asked not to be named, said they were unaware of any investigations. Hou defended himself in a post on LinkedIn, stating the board voted to remove him without cause. “My motivation has always been and continues to be chasing that visionary dream,” Hou wrote. “The painful truth is that on Oct. 30, the Board voted to remove me as CEO and Chairman of the Board without Cause. Unfortunately, the Board’s processes and conclusions have been questionable at best. As the facts come to light, I am confident that my decisions as CEO and Chairman, and our vision for TuSimple, will be vindicated.” CFIUS had investigated TuSimple in the past, largely over concerns of an investment by Sun Dream, an affiliate of Sina Corporation, which runs China’s biggest microblogging platform Sina Weibo. Sun Dream is TuSimple’s largest shareholder, with 20% Class A shares. Charles Chao and Bonnie Yi Zhang, respectively the CEO and CFO of Weibo, were both members of TuSimple’s board. In February, TuSimple entered into a national security agreement with CFIUS, agreeing to limit access to certain data, adopt a technology control plan, appoint a security officer and director, establish a government security committee of the board and periodically meet with and report to certain CFIUS monitoring agencies. Chao and Zhang also agreed not to stand for reelection as part of the agreement. TuSimple also set out to sell off its Asia operations. That unit has yet to be sold. Ersin Yumer, TuSimple’s executive VP of operations, will be interim CEO and president while an executive search is conducted, according to the filing. TuSimple’s lead independent director Brad Buss will now be chairman. The board said it is also actively engaged in the search to add new independent members. These actions have been taken in connection with an ongoing investigation led by the audit committee of the board that led the board to conclude that a change of chief executive officer was necessary.

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

Invygo raises $10M to make long-term car subscription a breeze • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in car rental, car subscription, Saudi Arabia, Startups, Transportation, UAENo Comments

Invygo, a startup operating in UAE and Saudi Arabia, has raised $10 million in its Series A funding led by MEVP as it works to scale its car rental service in the region. The Middle East-based startup, founded by Eslam Ahmed Hussein and Pulkit Ganjoo in 2019, has raised $14.3 million to date. Al Rajhi Partners, Arab Bank, Amana Capital and Palm Drive Capital and existing backers Signal Peak Ventures and Knollwood Investment Advisory also participated in the new round. Car subscription offerings Invygo offers three kinds of rental services. The short-term rental allows individuals to rent a car for one, three, six, or nine months. The long-term leasing enables renting of a car for 12, 24 or 36 months. And then there is the subscribe-to-own model — which offers brand-new or semi-used — cars on a 24 or 36-month rental period with a start fee that’s much less than the traditional down payment offered at the dealership, the startup says. Users looking for a short-term rental can go to the website, look at the available cars, and book a rental. On the platform, the company provides car details like model number, year of the make, and kilometers the car has clocked. They can also filter the results by car type, fuel type, transmission type, and color. Image Credits: Invygo Invygo also offers a range of value adds such as doorstep delivery, replacement of car, maintenance, regular insurance, and a round-the-clock helpline. At the end of the leasing period in the subscribe-to-own model, the customer can pay whatever amount is left to own the car — this amount is specified while making the booking — to purchase the vehicle outright. Founders said that it is working with different financial institutions to provide different options like loans to pay off the last bit of the ballooning amount. “We’ve split the full payment of the car into three. Normally, you have a massive downpayment of around 20% and then your monthly installments with no way to get out of that commitment. Our starting fee is around 5% and you have the option to cancel your plan at any time without any penalty,” Ganjoo said in a call with ZebethMedia. Invygo takes a cut from the subscription price, but the company didn’t specify how much. It is not profitable yet, the startup said. Roughly 200 cars are available for subscription in Saudi Arabia and 100 in UAE on the platform on a typical day. The startup works with partners including local car rental services and dealerships to source the cars, it said. Growing subscribe-to-own service Ahmed Hussein said that the Invygo’s focus right now is to grow the subscribe-to-own program that it launched in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. “Currently, subscribe-to-own represents 10% of our overall business. Over time we are aiming to grow it to represent 50% of our business. In Saudi Arabia in particular, we anticipate subscribe-to-own will become 70% of our business there as people want to own an asset and have it in their name, “he said. The most attractive part about the subscribe-to-own plan is that customers are not obliged to pay a balloon payment to own the car, the startup said. They can cancel the plan at any time without any penalty. What’s more, it is creating an alternative credit score for people based on driver behavior and payment patterns. The startup is using this score to provide financing for the remaining payments themselves or through a network of banks. Competition and the road ahead There are a few startups in the region that provide competitive monthly rental options. There is Ekar, which last raised $17.5 in its series B funding in 2019, and Swapp, which has partnered with Uber-owned Careem to offer flexible car rentals on the super app. Invygo believes that its offering is different as they are focusing more on long-term subscriptions and potential ownership of the car. The founders think that their competitors are traditional institutes that provide car financing. “What we do is to provide you financing in a more accessible way without making any commitment,” they said. In the next 12 months, Invygo wants to expand its subscriber base in both markets. It also wants to keep an eye out for expansion in markets like Qatar, Egypt, or Pakistan if it sees a substantial opportunity.