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What a crazy week for transportation news! It was a flurry of news that seemed to touch every sector and issue in transportation, including tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, an escalation Tesla strike in Sweden, a federal investigation of Waymoa crowded EV IPO, executive shuffle in the Passageand one Uber shuttle service developed for passengers in India and Egypt that has been adapted for American concertgoers.
Let’s go!
A little bird
We heard from a few birds this week.
First, here’s a deep cut for all you self-driving vehicle nerds out there. I remember Roborace, the self-driving car racing series that never was? As you may recall, it died in 2022, but founder Denis Sverdlov (who also founded the now-defunct startup EV Arrival) had talked about trying to revive it if more capital was secured. It seems those dreams have died. A little bird spotted that the domain roborace.com is for sale.
In the meantime, we’re still talking birdies about self-driving vehicle company Motional. As you may recall, the autonomous vehicle startup received a $475 million direct investment from Hyundai. That money came with some strings attached, namely a belt-tightening that included a halt to all commercial operations. Our latest scoop, thanks to several insiders, is that more than 550 employees, or about 40% of its workforce, have been laid off by Motional. While many of these were in commercial operations, the cuts affected other divisions, including product, security, cybersecurity and legal teams.
Do you have a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com, Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com, or Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. Or see these instructions to learn how to contact us through encrypted messaging apps or SecureDrop.
Agreements!
A trade war with China may be heating up and EV demand may be declining, but it’s apparently not enough to discourage Zeekr investors!
Zeekr Intelligent Technology Holding, the Chinese EV brand under China’s Geely Holdings, sold 21 million shares at $21 a share to raise $441 million, up from earlier plans to sell 17.5 million shares between $18 and $21. Shares jumped 38% on Zeekr’s first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, giving it a $7 billion valuation — and the capital it needs to expand outside of China in 2024.
The shares have settled down a bit since then, but Zeekr still maintains a $6.6 billion market cap. That’s a surprising amount of stability considering President Joe Biden released the plans increase in tariffs on Chinese EV imports from 25% to 100% in 2024.
Other offers that caught my eye…
Kyle Vogt, the founder and former CEO of Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on housework called The Bot Company. Reminder: Vogt resigned from Cruise in November just weeks after one of the company’s robot taxis hit and ran over a pedestrian. But investors still seem willing to back Vogt and his ideas. Sidebar: Party.ai founder and gunner George Hotch he didn’t look too pleased.
Vogt, who founded Bot Company with former Tesla AI technology team leader Paril Jain and a former Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek, raised $150 million from former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman, the Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison and Quiet Capital.
Li Industriesa Pineville, North Carolina, lithium-ion battery recycling startup; raised $36 million in a Series B The funding round is co-led by Bosch Ventures, Khosla Ventures and LG Tech Ventures. Other new investors included Formosa Smart Energy Tech Corp., Anglo American Decarbonization Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures coming in as new investors. Previous backers Shell Ventures and Myriad Ventures also joined.
Magic Lanethe Amsterdam-based startup that developed software development kits to bring mapping, location, and navigation to transportation, micromobility, and vehicle applications; raised 3 million euros ($3.26 million). The round was led by No Such Ventures.
Orange chargera startup that sells homeowners a 240-volt smart plug among other products, has raised $6.5 million in a seed round led by Munich Re Ventures and Climactic with participation from Baukunst, Crow Holdings, Lincoln Property Ventures and Spacecadet Ventures.
Uber agreed to buy Foodpanda — the Taiwanese unit of Delivery Hero — for $950 million in cash. As part of the deal, Uber will take a stake in Delivery Hero through the purchase of $300 million in newly issued common stock.
Notable reads and other items
Autonomous vehicles
Cruise has been reported they reached a settlement between $8 million and $12 million with the pedestrian who was hit and then carried away by one of his robots. TechCrunch confirmed this range.
Meanwhile, Cruise is ramping up robotaxi testing in Phoenix with “supervised” autonomous driving.
WaymoThe company’s autonomous vehicle software is under investigation after federal regulators received 22 reports of the robotaxi crashing or potentially violating traffic safety laws by driving in the wrong lane or in construction zones.
Electric vehicles, charging & batteries
Fisher has the attention of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration once again. The federal agency has opened a fourth investigation into the Fisker Ocean SUV, this time to investigate multiple claims of “inadvertent automatic emergency braking.”
Tesla he’s not done cutting jobs. CEO Elon Musk said in April that the company would lay off more than 10% of its 140,000-strong workforce. We have seen several waves since then suggesting that the cuts have exceeded that initial target. There were reports that Musk wanted to cut 20% of the workforce. The latest is 601 workers at Tesla’s California facility, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN).
By the way, remember when Musk axed the entire Supercharger team? Journalist Tim DeSand gave an inside look at the Tesla Supercharger team, including that it was indeed profitable. Since his article was published, Musk has reportedly started hiring back some of that team.
This week’s wheels
The 2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter it’s more than just a giant all-electric cargo truck. Although as you can see in this photo, it is a big-un. I only had a few days behind the wheel, but it was enough to learn that it maneuvers easily in traffic — despite its size. The truck has plenty of tech inside and starts at $71,866.
There are too many to list, so here are just a few highlights. First, range from the 113-kilowatt-hour battery (per the European WLTP cycle) is claimed to be 273 miles, which is significantly longer than the 159-mile range in the Ford E-transit truck.
The interior layout puts function first and the infotainment system clearly displays the information a commercial driver might need and can be accessed by voice or from the steering wheel. There are also EV-specific features, including a navigation setting that calculates an optimized route, including real-time charging stops, depending on current traffic conditions and route topography.
While the towing capacity is less than its diesel counterpart, the EV van had many advantages, most notably its drivability.
A note about the regenerative braking which took some getting used to. There are five selectable recovery levels to choose from (D-, D, D+, D++ and ‘D Auto’), all of which can be adjusted with the paddles on either side of the steering wheel. D Auto is conceptually great. This setting automatically determines when to brake based on traffic conditions and adjusts accordingly. I found it easy to use, but would slam on the brakes unexpectedly if a vehicle, far in front of me, entered my lane.
