Transportation

Helbiz’s Wheels acquisition fails to impress investors • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in helbiz wheels acquisition, shared micromobility, TransportationNo Comments

Helbiz’s deal to buy Wheels has officially gone through, and with it some promises from the shared micromobility operator to its investors that the tie up will double its annual revenue and help it reach profitability. Helbiz is hardly the only shared micromobility operator battling to achieve profitability. It’s a situation that most companies in this volatile industry are in today. Helbiz has arguably a tougher road ahead. The company has been facing down a delisting from the Nasdaq for trading way below the $1.00 per share minimum. Bird, the only other publicly traded micromobility company, is facing a similar delisting risk. Helbiz appears to be using the Wheels acquisition as a lifeline. However, Wall Street — at least based on the Helbiz share price — isn’t impressed with the company’s promise to deliver “over $25 million in revenue for the full year of 2022,” tap into Wheels’ user base of 5 million riders and expand into new markets like Los Angeles. Investors seem to be taking a negative view. Helbiz shares fell 8.10% on Tuesday to close at $0.28. The share price has fallen some 65% since it initially made its acquisition announcement. But that drop is nothing compared to freefall it has experienced since its opening debut in August 2021 of $10.20. In order to regain Nasdaq compliance, Helbiz has to find a way to increase its stock price 257% for a minimum of 10 consecutive trading days prior to January 16, 2023. Why investors didn’t take the bait? Perhaps it’s the company’s dwindling cash reserves, as of the company’s second quarter earnings report, its ambitious positive gross profit margin target or its restructuring plans. Helbiz CFO Giulio Profumo said the combined company expects to achieve positive gross profit margin within the next nine months and to achieve profitability at the operating level within the next 24 months. It seems Helbiz is counting on restructuring to help it reach that target. “We intend to restructure the combined company to accelerate our path to profitability by a combination of higher margin from the Wheels business, operational savings from redundancies across both companies, and reductions in the cost of revenue,” Profumo said. We’ve seen that kind of language before — Bird made similar comments were made before laying off 23% of its staff and exiting dozens of markets across the world, as did Tier before laying off 10% of Spin’s workforce. Around the time Helbiz signed its intent to acquire Wheels, Wheels furloughed a handful of employees. Since then, the company has laid off many of those employees, according to one source familiar with the matter, but a Helbiz spokesperson told ZebethMedia some of the furloughed Wheels employees have been brought back. He also said that nothing has been planned in terms of layoffs yet. “There are gaps that each company fills in the other and we will use that for efficiency and cost saving,” said Matt Rosenberg, Helbiz’s North America head of communications.

Lyft relaunches monthly subscription plan at half the price • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Apps, ride-hailing apps, TransportationNo Comments

Ride-hail giant Lyft has relaunched Lyft Pink, its monthly subscription plan, at half of its previous price. At $9.99 per month or $99 per year, the new membership offers perks like free priority pickups and a discount of “at least” 5% on Preferred, Lux and XL rides, the company said Tuesday. Members will also receive three free cancellations per month, a free monthly bike or scooter unlock, free Sixt car rental upgrades, roadside assistance for your own car up to four times per year and Grubhub+ discounts. Previously, Lyft Pink provided members with discounts on all rides. The company said, on average, members saved $29 per month on rides, excluding the cost of membership. So really they saved $19 on rides on average. Lyft is also pushing a higher tier or membership for riders who like to get on bikes and scooters. The Lyft Pink All Access plan, at $199 per year, has all the perks of Lyft Pink with unlimited 45-minute pedal bike rides, free unlimited e-bike and scooter unlocks, discounted e-bike or scooter minutes in participating cities, and three bike or scooter guest passes per year, according to Lyft. Top drivers enrolled in Lyft Rewards, the ride-hail company’s rewards program for drivers, will now also have access to a free monthly Lyft Pink membership, the company said. In advance of third-quarter earnings, Lyft is putting in work to get more riders on board and increase its margins. The company last week raised the service fee it collects from riders to combat the rise in insurance fees.

New Zealand Uber drivers win case declaring them employees • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Apps, gig economy, labor, New Zealand, Transportation, UberNo Comments

A group of Uber drivers in New Zealand won a landmark case Tuesday against the ride-hail company which will force Uber to treat them as employees, rather than independent contractors. New Zealand’s employment court decision only applies to four drivers who were part of a class action lawsuit filed last July, but the ruling may have wider implications for drivers across the country keen on qualifying for worker rights and protections. The move in New Zealand comes just a couple of weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor proposed widespread changes to how gig workers should be classified. Specifically, the proposed ruling seeks to classify gig workers as employees if they are economically dependent on the company for which they work. The formal decision in New Zealand was made in respect to the individual drivers in the case. The court doesn’t have jurisdiction to make broader declarations of employment status for all Uber drivers, according to chief employment court judge Christina Inglis. That means all other Uber drivers don’t immediately become employees; however, Inglis did say the decision “may well have broader impact” because of the “apparent uniformity in the way in which the companies operate, and the framework under which drivers are engaged.” In the ruling, the Employment Court said that even though a worker’s contract might define them as an independent contractor, that definition depends more on the “substance of the relationship and how it operated in practice.” “The Court accepted that some of the usual indicators of a traditional employment relationship were missing,” reads the ruling. “However, it was found that significant control was exerted on drivers in other ways, including via incentive schemes that reward consistency and quality and withdrawal of rewards for breaches of Uber’s Guidelines or for slips in quality levels, measured by user ratings.” The court found that Uber had sole discretion to control prices, service requirements, guidelines, terms and conditions, marketing, relationships with riders and more. “Uber was able to exercise significant control because of the subordinate position each of the plaintiff drivers was in and which its operating model was designed to facilitate and did facilitate,” according to the ruling. Two unions, First Union and E tū, took up the case last year on behalf of more than 20 drivers. Their goal was to override a legal precedent set in the Employment Court in 2020 that ruled a driver was not an employee. Labor rights activists argued there, as in the U.S. and everywhere else, that because an Uber driver’s rate is set by Uber, the company controls wages, which puts it in employer territory. At the time, the judge ruled that the driver actually had control over their wages because they could be paid less or improve the profitability of their business through adopting cheaper business costs. Tuesday’s ruling will grant the drivers in the case sick leave, holiday pay, minimum wage, guaranteed hours, KiwiSaver contributions, the right to challenge an unfair dismissal and the right to unionize, according to New Zealand’s labor laws. First Union is now accepting Uber drivers to join as members for a discounted fee of $3.05 per week and would move to initiate collective bargaining. The union says Uber drivers may be owed backpay for lost wages, holiday pay and other entitlements. “This is a landmark legal decision not just for Aotearoa but also internationally,” said Anita Rosentreter, First Union strategic project coordinator, in a statement. Uber did not respond in time to ZebethMedia for a comment, but a spokesperson for the company told The Guardian that the company would be appealing the decision, and that it was “too soon to speculate” how the court ruling would affect the company’s operations in New Zealand more broadly. The decision in New Zealand is the latest in a string of international cases where workers have fought for employment rights from gig economy companies. Last December, the U.K. High Court dealt a massive blow to Uber by declaring the business was unlawful and by classifying gig workers as “workers,” a new classification that allows for the flexibility of independent contract work and the rights of employee status. Last year, an analysis from the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network, a membership organization of trade union and workers’ rights lawyers, showed gig companies like Uber and Deliveroo had faced at least 40 major legal challenges in 20 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, South Korea and across Europe.

China’s XPeng wants to launch robotaxi network using G9 SUV • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in robotaxi, Robotics & AI, Transportation, Xpeng, xpeng tech day 2022No Comments

Chinese luxury EV startup XPeng is moving forward on its plans to launch a robotaxi business. The company’s latest G9 SUV became China’s first mass-produced commercial vehicle to pass a government-led autonomous driving closed-field test, the company said Monday at its fourth annual 1024 Tech Day. When XPeng unveiled the G9 in September, the company said it would come equipped with XPeng’s new advanced driver assist system (ADAS), the XNGP, which combines XPeng’s Highway Navigated Guided Pilot (NGP) and City NGP to automate certain driving functions in both highway and urban driving scenarios. Now, XPeng says the XNGP is good enough to lay the groundwork for a robotaxi network, and the G9 can help that network scale, according to XPeng’s vice president of autonomous driving, Dr. Xinzhou Wu. “Obtaining the road test permit by our mass-produced commercial vehicles — with no retrofit — is a major achievement,” said Wu at XPeng’s Tech Day. “Our platform-based robotaxi development aims to generate significant cost benefits, and ensure product quality, safety and user experience.” Image Credits: XPeng XPeng attributes its advances in autonomy to its next-generation visual perception architecture, XNet, which adopts an in-house developed deep neural network that delivers visual recognition with “human-like decision-making capabilities, drawing from multiple cameras’ data,” according to the company. XPeng says the neural network technology overrides manual processing logic to constantly self-improve. XNet is backed by Fuyao, a Chinese supercomputing center for autonomous driving, and supported by Alibaba Cloud’s intelligent computing platform, XPeng said. This helps XNet reach a supercomputing capability of 600 PFLOPS, which the company says increases the training efficiency of its AV stack by over 600 times. This is a bold claim, one that posits model training can be reduced to 11 hours, rather than the 276 days it took previously. XPeng says the upgrades to its AV stack have allowed the company to establish an entirely closed-loop autonomous driving data system — from data collection and labeling to training and deployment — that has been able to resolve over 1,000 edge cases each year and reduce the incident rate for Highway NGP by 95%. The robotaxis will also feature XPeng’s new AI-powered voice assistant, according to He Xiaopeng, co-founder and CEO of XPeng. The voice system incorporates Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) multi-zone technology to recognize commands from every passenger in the cabin and understand various instructions across multiple streams of conversations. XPeng says its voice assist tech doesn’t need an internet connection or an activation command (like “Hey Siri”), and is good enough to be accurate 96% of the time and operate in less than one second. XPeng will make the new voice assist technology standard on all new vehicles in China, the company said. XPeng’s robot pony and eVTOLs Image Credits: XPeng At XPeng’s Tech Day, the company also provided updates to its robot pony and flying car. Let’s start with the pony. It’s certainly cuter-looking than Tesla’s humanoid robot, but no less fantastical to imagine going to market anytime soon. Regardless, XPeng shared some design upgrades to support “mutlidegree-of-freedom” motion and locomotion capabilities that might get it closer to moving more naturally. This will help the robot adapt better to “complex indoor and outdoor terrain conditions such as stairs, steep slopes and gravel roads,” according to XPeng. Image Credits: XPeng XPeng also revealed an upgraded design for its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying car, which is being developed by affiliate XPeng Aeroht. When XPeng first unveiled its flying car concept, it had a horizontal dual-rotor structure. This year’s design features a new distributed multi-rotor configuration. The test vehicle successfully completed its maiden flight and multiple single-motor failure tests, XPeng said Monday. XPeng also provided some more information of how a driver would go from controlling a car to a flying car — in flight mode, the car will be piloted using the steering wheel and the gear lever will be used to control movement forward and backward, make turns, ascend, hover and descend, the company claims.

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

Uber pilots electric cab offering in India • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in EV, india, Transportation, UberNo Comments

Uber has started offering electric vehicles to customers in certain parts of the Delhi-NCR region and says it will be expanding its efforts over the coming months. The electric cabs are currently only available for pre-scheduled trips. “As the leading mobility app in India, we are committed to supporting the Indian government’s emission goals. Expect to see more electric vehicles — be they two, three or four-wheeled — across Indian cities in the coming months,” the spokeswoman said in a statement emailed to ZebethMedia in response to a query. The company did not share how many EV cabs were operational on its platform in India, but insisted that it is working with multiple fleet partners, OEMs and charging infra providers “to gradually build the EV business in a sustainable manner.” Uber’s move comes as India pushes ride-hailing firms to electrify a significant portions of their fleets over the next few years. Reuters reported in 2019 that the Indian government had ordered Uber and its arch-rival Ola to convert 5% of their fleet by 2022 and make it 40% by April 2026. The push came amid New Delhi’s pledge to reduce dependency on oil imports and cut air pollution to meet its commitment to 2015 Paris climate change treaty. The electric cabs are available through the Reserve feature on the app, allowing customers to choose a pick-up time for the ride up to 30 days in advance. Users can cancel their scheduled trips 60 minutes before their trip for no charge, according to description on the app. Image Credits: ZebethMedia Both the federal government and various state governments in India have started to offer incentives to customers and vendors in recent years to increase the adoption of EVs. The state government in Delhi, for instance, says it has installed 1,000 EV charging points across the city. It also introduced the Delhi EV policy in August 2020, as part of which it gives subsidies for installing charging stations. The city is aiming to get 18,000 EV charging points in the next three years. Ola — which counts SoftBank, Temasek Holdings, Hyundai Motor and Kia among its investors — also has a separate electric mobility unit to build EVs. The company initially introduced its EV scooters in the market and says it has plans to expand that business to include an electric car in 2024. Ola has also tried to enter the market of EV cabs in India. In 2018, it launched a program called “Mission: Electric” to bring electric cabs, electric auto rickshaws, electric buses, rooftop solar installations, charging stations and battery swapping experiments in the country. Other than Uber and Ola, Gujarat-based BluSmart Electric Mobility is also in the race for EV cabs in the South Asian market. The company, which raised $25 million from BP Ventures earlier this year and is eyeing to raise $250 million, has an all-electric fleet as a significant difference over the existing two giants. It also claims to have completed over 2.5 million all-electric trips and has over 900,000 app downloads since its launch in 2019. BluSmart’s reach is, however, currently limited to Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru. Uber has been offering EVs in the U.S. and Europe for some time. The San Francisco, California-headquartered company runs an Uber Green program to offer EVs on its fleet and aims to become a zero-emission platform by 2040. It has also set aside $800 million to encourage drivers on its platform to start using EVs by 2025.

GM takes another full-size pickup electric with the 400-mile range GMC Sierra EV • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in GM, gmc, TransportationNo Comments

General Motors unveiled Thursday an all-electric GMC Sierra Denali pickup truck, the latest model in the automaker’s march towards a global annual sales target of 1 million electric vehicles by 2025. The GMC Sierra Denali EV isn’t the first electric truck or SUV on GM’s new Ultium platform. It’s actually the brand’s third battery-electric truck, following the pickup and SUV versions of the GMC Hummer. But considering the internal combustion version of the Sierra is GMC’s best-selling model, it could be a standout for the brand. While the GMC Sierra EV shares the name and some of the looks of its ICE counterpart, this is not just retrofit. “It’s not like we’re really taking for the truck and putting a battery in it,” Tom Namovich, GMC Sierra product manager told ZebethMedia. “Once again, we’re taking the Ultium technology, the integrated cab and box construction much like the Hummer pickup and carrying that on further with additional purposeful technology in the vehicle.” The full-size pickup is slated to compete with the Ford F-150 Lightning. GMC will kick off the model with a high-end Denali Edition 1 version, which will arrive in early 2024 starting at $107,000. The Sierra Denali will come in two trims — AT4 and Elevation trims — for the 2025 model year. GMC said it will announce other versions of the pickup closer to production starting around $50,000. The F-150 Lightning, which launched in April, starts at $47,000 and tops out at nearly $100,000 for the “Platinum Extended Range” version. The specs The Sierra Denali Edition 1 EV delivers an estimated 754 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque when it’s in Max Power mode.It can travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a relatively speedy 4.5 seconds and will have an estimated range of 400 miles. It will also be able tow up to 9,500 pounds; it’s unclear what the range will be when towing at capacity. The Sierra EV will also come with an onboard power station feature with up to 10.2 kW of power that turns the truck into a mobile power source for a variety of situations. The company said that the pickup can power a home’s “essential necessities” for 21 days when configured with a bi-directional charger and offerings from GM Energy’s new Ultium Home line. All trims of the Sierra EV will have an 800-volt architecture capable of fast charging up to 350 kilowatts. That means about 100 miles of range can be added to the battery in about 10 minutes when using certain fast chargers. Just like its Hummer EV cousin, the Sierra EV will have four-wheel steering and “crab walk” capability, Namovich said, adding that the company has also further refined the regen braking on-demand feature. Inside the Denali Edition 1 is a 16.8-inch touchscreen. The infotainment system will be powered by Google’s Android Automotive operating system, which comes with all the embedded Google services like Assistant. The Denali Edition will also come standard with GM’s hands-fee advanced driver assistance system called Super Cruise.

Uils wants to lend LatAm’s rideshare drivers cash based on their driving record • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Fintech, LATAM, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Transportation, UilsNo Comments

When Uils launched in 2021, it was a car rental service for rideshare drivers. But after the founders realized that many rideshare drivers don’t have access to credit, particularly in Latin America, the Buenos Aires-based company pivoted to fintech, offering financial services to drivers through a behavioral scoring engine based entirely on a person’s driving history. Rideshare vehicle lending is a crowded market. Both Uber and Lyft host marketplaces where approved vehicle rental companies can show their wares; Uber has piloted a short-term credit program offering up to $500 to drivers. One of the largest ridesharing companies in China, Didi, started offering loans to drivers in 2019. Meanwhile, lenders like Giggle Finance have long extended credit lines for ridesharing vehicle purchases, maintenance and upkeep. But Costanzo argues Uils (pronounced “wheels”), which is one of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt, stands apart in its ability to give a “360-degree” view of drivers in the mobility gig economy. “Being integrated with all the mobility applications available in Latin America, we have a total vision of the driver’s work activities, being able to determine a credit offer that is more adjusted to reality,” he told ZebethMedia in an interview. To use Uils, drivers download an app, fill out an application, and connect the app to the ridesharing platforms for which they drive via an API (e.g., Uber). Uils analyzes their history using a machine learning model to determine whether they qualify for a “micro” or consumer loan, considering various factors. The interest rates range from 0% for the micro loans (for a weekly subscription of $1 to $2) to 145% for the consumer loans. That’s quite a wide range — and sounds sky-high — but Costanzo says it’s reflective of the equally high inflation rate in Argentina, the country where Uils first launched. “The app has an embedded banking account where drivers collect their earnings from mobility apps,” Costanzo explained. “In that same account, they receive loan funds and pay their installments every week. We have a collection process that runs every 15 seconds so as soon as the mobility app sends the money, we will collect the pending installments before the driver notices … The rent-to-own loans are a leasing, so technically we can get the car back as soon as the driver goes into delinquency, therefore there is a tendency to 0% default.” It’s a relatively new idea in the lending domain, although services that track driver behavior to offer discounts and benefits have been around for some time. For example, Zendrive collects data about driving habits and awards drivers for making safe decisions. Root Insurance calculates car insurance premiums based on driving patterns, and Avinew rewards customers for using autonomous safety features. But there are obvious surveillance — and bias — implications. It’s unlikely every driver would be comfortable with the idea of sharing driving histories with Uils, particularly given that the company uses that data to create a risk profile of them. And where algorithms are involved, there’s always the possibility that flaws in the model could lead some drivers to be treated unfairly or poorly. Consider traffic in a driver’s area that forces them to make frequent, sudden stops that under normal circumstances might be considered reckless. There’s another risk to consider: the challenge of paying back loans in a downtrending economy, especially as interest rates climb and inflation impacts the price of fuel. An April poll from The Rideshare Guy, a ridesharing blog and forum, found that nearly half of rideshare workers quit or starting driving less that month because of spikes in gas prices. Image Credits: Uils For its part, Uils says that it requires customers to reauthorize the connections between the app and ridesharing platforms every month, so that tracking doesn’t continue indefinitely. (The company does require customers verify their identity to receive loans, however.) Uils is keeping the details of its algorithm close to the chest, save for revealing 70% of users who’ve applied for loans through the platform have received them. The company also isn’t saying exactly how many of those users have failed to make payments, if any. “The scoring engine has more than 200 data points for each driver. We have variables like their work schedule, how many trips per day, how many apps do they use, how many cars they have used, among others,” Costanzo said. “After processing the driving history, we will get a score from one to 1,000. Based on our current lending policies, that score will let us know what is the maximum that a driver can receive as a loan.” After that, Uils has the second layer that’s based on earnings. Depending on how much money the driver makes, they’re able to allocate up to 30% to loan repayment. But opaqueness aside, Uils’ terms and approach might be less onerous than, for example, those around rentals from Lyft or Uber — which some drivers say make achieving a profit nearly impossible. A 2019 investigative piece found that Lyft paid drivers participating in its Express Drive rental program less per mile than drivers who used cars leased through dealerships. The program imposed restrictions on drivers as well, prohibiting them from making money using their vehicles to work for other services. Costanzo stresses, again, that these are drivers without access to traditional credit — making their financial situations particularly precarious. “The biggest competitive advantage is that we apply a matching fund strategy around the installments amount,” Costanzo said. “Drivers will pay the same amount that he pays to rent the car in the informal market, offering a frictionless solution. On top of that, we are the only fintech in Latin America that offers major consumer loans and rent-to-own loans without consulting credit bureaus or asking for a credit card or any other guarantees.” Image Credits: Uils Uils is currently raising its second round funding round — totaling $1 million — through a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE), which grants the investors the right to purchase

EV maker Arrival cutting jobs again in pivot away from UK to the US • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Arrival, SPAC, TransportationNo Comments

Commercial EV company Arrival is restructuring its business for the second time in six months as it tries to squeeze the most out of its remaining capital. The company said in a regulatory filing posted Thursday that it is shifting its focus towards the to the United States and away from the UK market, where it is headquartered and the first EV vans were supposed to be delivered. Arrival, which went from stealthy electric vehicle startup to a publicly traded company via a SPAC merger, said it will now put the bulk of its remaining resources towards producing a “family of van products” for the U.S. market. It will also put funds towards related technologies such as core components, composite materials, mobile robotics and what it describes as software-defined factories. The move is going to cause considerable pain across the company, namely job cuts. The company said it plans to further “right-size the organization and cut cash intensive activities” to extend its cash runway, which at the end of third quarter, was $330 million. The company didn’t provide specific details on how many jobs it plans to cut. The language the company uses in its regulatory filing suggests it will be significant. Arrival said the restructuring is “expected to have a sizable impact on the company’s global workforce, predominantly in the UK.” The company said it will provide more information at its third-quarter earnings call November 8. Arrival said it will also try to raise more capital to fund the commercialization of these vehicle programs in the U.S. and is “exploring all funding and strategic opportunities” needed to bring the vans designed for the country into production at the company’s second microfactory in Charlotte, North Carolina. Arrival isn’t leaving the UK altogether. The company said it will continue to produce a small number of vans at its Bicester microfactory to support trials with customers. The major factors in the Company’s decision to shift focus to developing its US business included the tax credit recently announced as part of the Inflation Reduction Act – expected to offer between $7,500 to $40,000 for commercial vehicles, the large addressable market size, and substantially better margins. In June, Arrival said it would slash costs and cut as much as 30% of its workforce in an attempt to protect the business from a challenging economic environment while meeting its production targets. At the time, Arrival said the plan would allow the company to meet its targets through late 2023 using the $513 million of cash it has on hand. In August, Arrival lowered its delivery plans from 400 vehicles to 20 and postponed development of its battery-electric buses to focus on vans. Now it appears those cuts were not enough. Arrival had planned to use its existing cash on hand of $513 million plus funds available through a $300 million “At the Market Platform” to deliver the first vehicles to UK customers this year, invest in hard tooling and launch the Charlotte microfactory next year. However, the company’s low share price, which today closed at $0.72, coupled with daily trading volumes meant the ATM was an unreliable source of capital.

Lyft co-founder says autonomous vehicles won’t replace drivers for at least a decade • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, Disrupt 2022, John Zimmer, Lyft, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, TransportationNo Comments

Human drivers on the Lyft platform aren’t going to be replaced by autonomous vehicles anytime soon, company co-founder and president John Zimmer told the audience today at ZebethMedia Disrupt. “I can’t imagine anytime in the next decade-plus where we would need any less drivers,” he said. While Zimmer envisions autonomous vehicles handling some percentage of rides — anywhere from 1% to 10%, he said — the reality is that trips taken using Lyft represent a tiny fraction of all miles traveled. “What we do in our industry represents maybe 1% of vehicle miles traveled,” he said. “There’s much more room for growth of our overall business.” Over the past decade, more than 112 million Lyft riders have taken over 3 billion rides, and 5 million drivers — “3% of the U.S. workforce,” Zimmer said — had earned tens of billions of dollars. In his talk with transportation editor Kirsten Korosec, Zimmer was hesitant to commit to a timeline on which he thinks autonomous vehicles will enter into broader commercial service. “I always think it’s just a couple years away,” he said, “but it’s super hard to predict. It’s this last percent of a technical problem, and then you have to get the cost down for autonomous vehicles. So it will happen. I strongly believe it’s not a matter of if, but obviously when.” Should it happen, Zimmer thinks that the initial rollout is likely to occur on platforms like Lyft. The best way to commercialize autonomous vehicles, he said, is on a “hybrid network.” Though autonomous vehicles have progressed in their capabilities, they’re still unable to handle every condition they’ll encounter on the roads. Even if they are able to safely navigate 10% of trips, that’s not a sufficient number to bring riders on board en masse. “Imagine being on AT&T or Verizon and making one out of 10 calls. That would not be a good network to be on. Being on the Lyft network, you’ll be able to get ten out of 10 rides. One might be an autonomous vehicle with one of our partners, nine are going to be from our driver community. And so I think what we do is super important and can flex as that technology is ready.” Lyft’s autonomous vehicle strategy has changed significantly in the last year or so. In April 2021, the company sold its self-driving unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet subsidiary for $550 million, saving the company $100 million annually in operating expenses. In place of that, Zimmer said the company has been prioritizing partnerships over internal development. “I think it’s too early to pick one winner,” he said. “Today, it’s about having multiple partners. Ten years from now? Too hard to predict.” While the Lyft network may not have fully autonomous vehicles anytime soon, many of its drivers today are potentially augmented by Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems, known as ADAS, including Tesla’s Autopilot and possibly its Full Self Driving software. While these systems can help drivers in some ways, in some cases, over reliance on them has created perilous, even deadly, situations. When Korosec asked him asked whether Lyft had considered prohibiting the use of Level 2 ADAS like Autopilot or FSD, Zimmer said that Lyft “think[s] that the regulatory bodies are our best regulators when it comes to that level of safety.” Of course, in its terms of service, Lyft already regulates its drivers in some respects, including saying that drivers cannot “engage in reckless behavior while driving” or “operate a vehicle that is unsafe to drive.” When pressed, Zimmer said that Lyft would “continue to assess” its policy regarding driver use of Level 2 autonomous assistants. “Obviously, driver and rider safety is our top priority. And so to your point, it’s something that will continue to be looked at.”