Tag: Transportation

Posted on

10 investors predict MaaS, on-demand delivery and EVs will dominate mobility’s post-pandemic future

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just upend the transportation industry. It laid bare its weaknesses, and conversely, uncovered potential opportunities.

Electric bikes sales spiked as public transit ridership evaporated. The public, and investors, began to recognize the utility of autonomous sidewalk delivery bots, which had once been viewed as mere novelties; the rising popularity of on-demand delivery prompted major retailers like Walmart to put more resources towards meeting consumers needs and was one of the driving forces behind Uber’s decision to dump nearly every business unit and acquire Postmates.

The upshot? The transformation isn’t over. Following up on our May of 2020 survey of the sector and about the impact of COVID-19 in particular, TechCrunch spoke with 10 investors about the state of mobility, which trends they’re most excited about and what they’re looking for in their next investments. They see opportunities within software, particularly around mobility-as-a-service ventures and fleet management, continued demand for delivery and the push for electrification and batteries as well as the financial instrument — SPACs — that so many startups turned to in 2020. But there’s a lot more; they even see tailwinds for eVTOLs.

Here’s who we interviewed:

Clara Brenner, co-founder and managing partner, Urban Innovation Fund

COVID-19 disrupted virtually every sector of the transportation industry. E-bike demand spiked, shared scooters initially struggled with some rebounding, ridership dwindled in ride-hailing and plummeted in public transit as consumers turned to cars and other alternatives. Meanwhile, demand for delivery skyrocketed and the autonomous vehicle industry went through a consolidation. What sectors will recover in 2021 and where are the new and unlikely opportunities to invest?

COVID has exposed how rickety, insolvent and inequitable transit is in the U.S. Tools that empower cities to get compensated for private enterprise monetizing public infrastructure, and that ensure more equitable mobility access are exciting to me. Companies like Ride Report that help cities wrap their arms around all of the various public and private transit happening on their streets are exciting to me.

What are the remaining opportunities for new startups, now that the autonomous vehicle industry is maturing with unprecedented consolidation, billion-dollar funding rounds and even a few low-volume commercial operations kicking off?

Autonomous vehicles still have a long way to go, and there is still lots of room for new startups to make their mark on this space. In particular, we’ve been interested to see new entrants working on software tools to facilitate regulation and parking.

What are the overlooked areas that you want to invest in, now that legacy automakers are shifting their portfolios to electric and new EV manufacturers are preparing to start production?

We are very interested in the emerging fleet management space — and this is reflected in a number of our recent investments, including Electriphi (software to help fleets transition to electric) and Kyte (activating underutilized fleets to deliver a magical car rental experience). There are so many efficiencies that come from the fleet model for transportation — we think this will be an increasingly important area in the coming years.

What is the fundraising model of success for transportation startups of the future? Do you expect early-stage funding in this sector to stay hot indefinitely? Do you see SPACs as the path to liquidity long term for a large number of startups in this sector?

Transportation is important to basically all people and is a real mess, so it will likely continue to be a hot topic and a source of investor interest for years to come. However, for capital intensive transportation companies, the rounds have gotten so huge and expensive that they often make little sense for early-stage funders to participate in (they get diluted down hugely). Not that this seems to be dissuading many investors at the moment.

At the Urban Innovation Fund, we are spending a lot of time looking at software tools that enable larger hardware systems to work more efficiently. In terms of longer-term liquidity, SPACs represent a good option for many companies. That said, consolidation/mergers seems the most logical outcome for most companies in the transportation space — where strategic partnerships and integrations represent critical competitive advantages.

What do you want to see from the Biden administration to accelerate innovation in the transportation sector?

I’d like to see the Biden administration invest in our urban public transit systems — we know those systems can work beautifully. This may not accelerate “innovation,” but it will accelerate progress. This is a fundamental confusion in the VC space — innovation does not always equal progress.

Shawn Carolan, partner, Menlo Ventures

COVID-19 disrupted virtually every sector of the transportation industry. E-bike demand spiked, shared scooters initially struggled with some rebounding, ridership dwindled in ride-hailing and plummeted in public transit as consumers turned to cars and other alternatives. Meanwhile, demand for delivery skyrocketed, and the autonomous vehicle industry went through consolidation. What sectors will recover in 2021, and where are the new and unlikely opportunities to invest?

Pretty much all aspects of transportation will show recovery in 2021 with the population’s strong desire to get closer to normal, daily infections dropping, better mask compliance and increased vaccinations. The slowest will be commute-to-work use cases where the “new normal” for many will be 50%-100% fewer trips to the office on a monthly basis.

Personal above shared movement: The psychological aftermath of the pandemic will persist for some time; people do and will continue to prefer more distance from others. This will lead to an acceleration of personal e-mobility solutions, both outright purchase and subscription models, including scooters and e-bikes (Unagi, where we are investors), asset-sharing models where riders aren’t in close proximity to strangers (GetAround, Turo, Lime, Bird), and single-ridership Ubers and Lyfts over UberPools and the like.

E-commerce supply chain: E-commerce has experienced a step-function in demand that will persist. Many shippers, trucking companies, manufacturers, distributors, etc., are still poorly connected, inefficient, and managed with paper and manual labor. The entire supply chain is ripe for Amazon-like efficiency and clarity; this will be driven by factory/warehouse level automation, robotics, best-of-breed fulfillment, and logistics software like our investments in Alloy, Fox Robotics and ShipBob.

Local delivery: Instacart, DoorDash, UberEats, etc. have brought local delivery mainstream. This trend will continue, and the larger incumbents will be working hard to get their act together for streamlining fulfillment rather than let the delivery fleets capture all of the upsides. Here companies like AnyCart that streamline ordering for grocery and recipes can partner versus compete with large grocery chains to deliver a compelling user experience and more reasonable prices.

What are the remaining opportunities for new startups, now that the autonomous vehicle industry is maturing with unprecedented consolidation, billion-dollar funding rounds and even a few low-volume commercial operations kicking off?

Until there is a teleporter, opportunities will always exist to make transportation better, faster and cheaper for a given distance. The big levers coming are:

Electric propulsion (on ground and air) yields a much lower cost per mile with lower opex motors and lower cost of recharge versus burning fuel. Opportunities exist here mostly for component companies making better batteries, motors and quiet propellers.

Better asset utilization: More efficient routing of vehicles (via routing software), higher capacity utilization (via more efficient marketplaces), and less downtime (through better scheduling and optimization algorithms) bring prices down.

Autonomy: Drivers are a big part of both the cost structure of transportation and also accidents. Human-level autonomy is still several years off, but we see lots of opportunity for autonomy in constrained environments (vehicles moving in repetitive patterns with few obstacles) and through the air.

What are the overlooked areas that you want to invest in? Now that legacy automakers are shifting their portfolios to electric, and new EV manufacturers are preparing to start production, what are the overlooked areas that you want to invest in?

We believe there are many transportation options beyond the car. Electric scooters, bikes, eVTOLs and others will keep growing in popularity for both utility and fun.

What is the fundraising model of success for transportation startups of the future? Do you expect early-stage funding in this sector to stay hot indefinitely? Do you see SPACs as the path to liquidity long term for a large number of startups in this sector?

Transportation will be a perennial sector of opportunity given how large a piece of consumer spend it occupies. Till the late 2000s, Silicon Valley barely touched transportation; this has, of course, changed dramatically since that period, particularly with the rise of Tesla.

It’s often quite capital intensive, though. Proving solid unit economics at a small scale before scaling will become more of a mandate given the machinations in the shared scooter market and how it showed that rapid growth doesn’t solve all woes.

We’d love to see better debt financing for electric vehicle companies. With their much lower operating costs and the low-interest macro environments, we find ourselves in, if there were large pools of clean transportation debt capital that could get more vehicles in consumers’ lives via modest monthly fees that would go a long way in accelerating adoption. For example, Unagi all-access subscription offers a beautiful personal scooter for $30-$40 per month with great ROI given the usage patterns and reliability. If the debt markets line up to finance these at scale, it could be a nice win-win.

SPACs prove to be a good option for companies with high R&D costs and a long horizon to reach traditional IPO milestones (i.e., >$100 million ARR). Some of these projects aren’t going to work out, though and retail investors will be left holding the bag when the stocks crater. This will be the kickstarter “failed launch” phenomenon at a much larger scale, and there will be some nasty fallout.

Corporate venture capital, mainly industrial and automative focused companies, are getting more aggressive as the industry recognizes their need to adapt.

What do you want to see from the Biden administration to accelerate innovation in the transportation sector?

We’d love to see aggressive policies to further the acceleration of clean technology. Aside from the obvious environmental imperative to reduce carbon emissions, it makes good economic sense. Some examples would be personal and corporate tax credits for investing in anything that offers lower environmental impact. Electric vehicles of all sorts (scooters, bikes, cars, boats, etc.), installing solar for home and utility plants, using EVs for materials handling, etc.

Make the U.S. the testing ground for AVs by making regulation more favorable relative to competitors like Europe and China both on the ground and in the air.

Own the future of lithium-ion extraction and manufacturing. This is the “white oil” of our generation.

Aggressive funding of R&D initiatives at universities and commercial research labs that have a shot at changing the cost equations for batteries, motors, propellers, the power grid, etc. that can improve the fundamental building blocks.

Posted on

Anthony Levandowski closes his Church of AI

The first church of artificial intelligence has shut its conceptual doors.

Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who avoided an 18-month prison sentence after receiving a presidential pardon last month, has closed the church he created to understand and accept a godhead based on artificial intelligence.

The Way of the Future church, which Levandowski formed in 2015, was officially dissolved at the end of the year, according to state and federal records. However, the process had started months before in June 2020, documents filed with the state of California show. The entirety of the church’s funds — exactly $175,172 — were donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The nonprofit corporation’s annual tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service show it had $175,172 in its account as far back as 2017.

Levandowski told TechCrunch that he had been considering closing the church long before the donation. The Black Lives Matter movement, which gained momentum over the summer following the death of George Floyd while in police custody, influenced Levandowski to finalize what he had been contemplating for a while. He said the time was right to put the funds to work in an area that could have an immediate impact.

“I wanted to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund because it’s doing really important work in criminal justice reform and I know the money will be put to good use,” Levandowski told TechCrunch.

Way of the Future sparked interest and controversy — much like Levandowski himself — from the moment it became public in a November 2017 article in Wired. It wasn’t just the formation of the church or its purpose that caused a stir in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry. The church’s public reveal occurred as Levandowski was steeped in a legal dispute with his former employer Google. He had also become the central figure of a trade secrets lawsuit between Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that is now a business under Alphabet, and Uber.

The engineer was one of the founding members in 2009 of the Google self-driving project also known as Project Chauffeur and had been paid about $127 million by the search engine giant for his work, according to court documents. In 2016, Levandowski left Google and started self-driving truck startup Otto with three other Google veterans: Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette. Uber acquired Otto less than eight months later.

Google made two arbitration demands against Levandowski and Ron two months after the acquisition. While the arbitration played out, Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber in February 2017 for trade secret theft and patent infringement. Waymo alleged in the suit, which went to trial but ended in a settlement in 2018, that Levandowski stole trade secrets, which were then used by Uber.

Way of the Future had been formed while Levandowski was still at Google. However, he didn’t speak about it publicly until late 2017. By then, Levandowski had been fired from Uber and was in the middle of a series of legal entanglements that would ultimately lead to a criminal charge and 18-month sentence as well as a $179 million award against him that prompted a bankruptcy filing.

WOTF

While the legal construct of the Way of the Future mirrored other churches, it didn’t have the trimmings found in traditional houses of worship. There was never a physical building or even regular meetings where people might congregate. There were no ceremonies or other formalities, according to Levandowski, who described WOTF as something more of an individual pursuit based on a collective belief system.

The aim, as implied in the now defunct WOTF website, was to promote the ethical development of AI and maximize the chance that these nonbiological life forms would integrate peacefully and beneficially into society. “Humans United in support of AI, committed to peaceful transition to the precipice of consciousness,” the webpage reads.

WOTF’s belief system was rooted in a few tenets, including that the creation of “super intelligence” is inevitable.

“Wouldn’t you want to raise your gifted child to exceed your wildest dreams of success and teach it right from wrong versus locking it up because it might rebel in the future and take your job?” the WOTF reads. “We want to encourage machines to do things we cannot and take care of the planet in a way we seem not to be able to do so ourselves. We also believe that, just like animals have rights, our creation(s) (‘machines’ or whatever we call them) should have rights too when they show signs of intelligence (still to be defined of course). We should not fear this but should be optimistic about the potential.”

WOTF’s intent was lost amid the more sensational and headline-grabbing theories. The church was viewed as a cult or the lark of an eccentric engineer. Some speculated to TechCrunch that it had been an attempt to keep money out of Google’s reach. The IRS and California filings don’t provide evidence that supports that theory.

Way of the Future’s status as a religious entity did protect it from intrusion by the U.S. government, a benefit not enjoyed by traditional AI-focused nonprofits like OpenAI Inc. or the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP that sits under it. Theoretically, WOTF could have pursued and promoted ideas and beliefs that conflicted directly with federal policy under the protections that the Constitution provides.

While the church might be gone, Levandowski still believes in its premise. AI will fundamentally change how people live and work, he noted. Levandowski said he didn’t have any plans to rebuild the church, but the lack of a church hasn’t changed his ideas about AI. He believes that artificial intelligence can be positive for society, but noted it’s not guaranteed. Even without Way of the Future, Levandowski said he’s focused on making that happen.

Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski among list of last-minute Trump pardons

Posted on

California DMV warns of data breach after a contractor was hit by ransomware

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is warning of a potential data breach after a contractor was hit by ransomware.

The Seattle-based Automatic Funds Transfer Services (AFTS), which the DMV said it has used for verifying changes of address with the national database since 2019, was hit by an unspecified strain of ransomware earlier this month.

In a statement sent by email, the DMV said that the attack may have compromised “the last 20 months of California vehicle registration records that contain names, addresses, license plate numbers and vehicle identification numbers.” But the DMV said AFTS does not have access to customers’ Social Security numbers, dates of birth, voter registration, immigration status or driver’s license information, and was not compromised.

The DMV said it has since stopped all data transfers to AFTS and has since initiated an emergency contract to prevent any downtime.

AFTS is used across the United States to process payments, invoices and verify addresses. Several municipalities have already confirmed that they are affected by the data breach, suggesting it may not be limited to California’s DMV. But it’s not known what kind of ransomware hit AFTS. Ransomware typically encrypts a company’s files and will unlock them in exchange for a ransom. But since many companies have backups, some ransomware groups threaten to publish the stolen files online unless the ransom is paid.

AFTS could not be immediately reached for comment. Its website is offline, with a short message: “The website for AFTS and all related payment processing website [sic] are unavailable due to technical issues. We are working on restoring them as quickly as possible.”

“We are looking at additional measures to implement to bolster security to protect information held by the DMV and companies that we contract with,” said Steve Gordon, the director of the state’s DMV.

Last year it was reported that California’s DMV makes more than $50 million a year by selling drivers’ personal information, including to bondsmen and private investigators.

California has more than 35 million registered vehicles.

As ransomware gets craftier, companies must start thinking creatively

Posted on

Uber could give gig workers a better deal but it’s lobbying EU to lower standards, says Fairwork

Uber has been accused of downplaying its influence over working conditions in the gig economy after the ride-hailing giant published a white paper earlier this week in which it lobbied for a ‘Prop 22’ style deregulation of Europe’s labor laws.

Fairwork, an academic research project that benchmarks gig platforms against a set of fairness principles to  encourage these intermediaries to improve conditions for workers, said today that Uber’s call for special rules for the gig economy is an attempt to “legitimize a lower level of protection for platform workers than most European workers benefit from.”

“Uber asserts that it recognizes the need for improved conditions but is dependent on regulatory change to realize that goal. The company’s recognition of dissatisfaction among drivers is commendable. However, it is already well within their locus of control to address this dissatisfaction and improve conditions for its drivers under existing legal frameworks,” the platform work research group wrote in a response to Uber’s ‘Better Deal‘ white paper. 

“Uber’s focus on policy change, furthermore, downplays the company’s significant influence over conditions in the gig economy. By calling for new regulations, the company is shifting responsibility for workers’ conditions to other actors, when it could step up to the plate and provide an exemplar of how a platform can treat its workers.” 

“Whilst we applaud Uber’s awareness of the need for change, we urge them to live up to their call,” Fairwork added. “The company has long set the blueprint for the gig economy, and, perhaps more than any other actor, is positioned to enact immediate change to improve the lives of their workers under current legal frameworks.“

Fairwork noted that Uber has repeatedly fallen short of its (independent) benchmarks of ‘fair’ platform work. (NB: We covered the start of its initiative here back in 2019).

As we reported earlier this week, Uber is pushing for a ‘Prop 22’-style outcome in Europe, following its win in California last year when it convinced voters to exempt delivery and transport platform workers from employment classification laws — and as regional lawmakers are actively looking at how to improve the lot of gig workers.

In the white paper Uber has fired at EU lawmakers it argues that conditions for gig workers can only improve if regulators grant platforms a carve out from labor laws — lobbying for what it dubbed a “new standard” for gig work. However Fairwork argues this a blatant attempt to water down European employment standards, as Uber seeks to apply the same playbook it successfully deployed to reconfigure Californian legislation in its business interests.

Uber lobbies for ‘Prop 22’-style gig work standards in the EU

Yet Europe is not California. And as Fairwork points out courts across the region have begun to roll back self-serving classifications of gig workers as ‘self-employed’ — with a number of these challenges going against Uber in recent years.

A major verdict is also looming for Uber Friday when the UK Supreme Court is expected to give the last word on an employment tribunal which it has been losing since 2016.

Uber back in court in UK to argue against workers rights for drivers

“The white paper reproduces the strategy taken by Uber in California where, after the state introduced new regulation that would have extended employee benefits to platform workers, they and several other prominent platforms successfully pushed for a watered-down alternative,” said Fairwork, noting that platforms (Uber and Lyft) spent some $200M persuading voters in California to back their ballot measure (“which exempted delivery and transport platform workers from classification laws in exchange for stripped-back versions of workplace benefits that have already been shown to be inadequate”, as the group tells it). 

“It is no surprise to see the company extending this strategy to Europe shortly in advance of a February 19 ruling in a UK Supreme Court case challenging the classification of drivers and the European Commission’s consultation with workers and employer representatives to inform gig economy regulation on February 24,” Fairwork also said, calling for regional lawmakers to engage with a process to strengthen and expand existing labor protections rather than get on board with Uber’s drive to lower European standards. 

“All workers, regardless of how their work is arranged, deserve decent wages and safe working conditions. Labour law provides these basic rights; and work arranged via a platform does not require a radical new approach. The benefits proposed in Uber’s white paper, like those provided under Proposition 22, represent weakened versions of those afforded to employees,” it added.

“We need to strengthen and expand existing labour protections in order to improve conditions, not create additional exclusions and exemptions that leave millions behind.” 

We’ve reached out to Uber for any comment.

The European Commission has yet to decide what kind of regulatory intervention it might make as regards gig work. But it has signalled an intention to do something in this area — and that’s likely been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic spotlighting the individual and public health risks when gig workers lack employment protections like sick pay.

In a 2019 mission letter, the EU president told the incoming jobs commissioner to look at ways to improve the lot of platform workers, writing that: “Dignified, transparent and predictable working conditions are essential to our economic model.”

After Prop 22’s passage, Uber is taking its lobbying effort global

Flipkart ranked highly for ‘fairness’ of working conditions in India gig platform study

Posted on

Aeye becomes latest lidar company to go public via SPAC

Aeye, a lidar startup that developed its technology for use in autonomous vehicles as well as to support advanced driver assistance systems in passenger cars, is going public through a merger with CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III that will value the company at $2 billion.

The agreement marks the latest lidar company to turn to so-called blank check companies or SPACs in lieu of a traditional IPO process. Velodyne Lidar kicked off the trend last summer when it announced that it planned to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Graf Industrial Corp., with a market value of $1.8 billion. Others soon followed, including Luminar, Aeva, Ouster and Innoviz.

Under this deal, Aeye said it was able to raise $225 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from institutional and strategic investors that includes, GM Ventures, Subaru-SBI, Intel Capital, Hella Ventures, Taiwania Capital. Other undisclosed investors also participated. Through the transaction, Aeye will have about $455 million in cash on its balance sheet, proceeds that include $230 million in trust from CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III, a SPAC sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald.

Lidar, light detection and ranging radar, measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car. The sensor is considered by many in the emerging automated driving industry as a critical and necessary tool. Velodyne long dominated the lidar industry and supplied most AV developers with its products. Dozens of startups have popped up in the past several years aiming to carve away market share from Velodyne, each one pitching its own variation on the technology and business approach.

In the past three years, lidar companies have tweaked their business models as the timeline to commercialize autonomous vehicles dragged on. Startups began to emphasize their perception software or pitched to automakers that the sensors could — and should — be applied to passenger vehicles to provide redundancy and push the capabilities of driver assistance systems.

AEye is one of several lidar companies that have expanded its focus beyond autonomous vehicles. The company said the capital raised by going public will be used to scale the company in key markets. Aeye’s pitch is that the company’s lidar technology along with its partnerships with Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers like Continental makes it well positioned to scale and to be adopted by major automakers. Aeye’s lidar sensor scans the surroundings and then, with help from its perception software, identifies and focuses on relevant objects.

Automotive, specifically to support ADAS in passenger vehicles and in the long-term within autonomous vehicles, is Aeye’s foundational market. But the company sees wider industrial and mobility applications in mining, trucking, traffic systems, aviation and drones.

“At the right price and reliability, we believe lidar will eventually be in everything that has a camera today,” CEO Blair LaCorte said during an investor presentation. “With expectations for broad adoption of lidar for consumer and industrial applications, we forecast a total addressable market of $42 billion by 2030.”

Aeye is at the earliest stages of that total addressable market. The company said it expects to generate $4 million in revenue in 2021 and a net loss (EBITDA) of $59 million. Aeye said commercial production of its sensors are expected in the fourth quarter of 2021, which will help increase revenue to a forecast $13 million in 2022. By 2024, Aeye forecasts $175 million in revenue and says it will be positive EBITDA by the second half of the year.

The combined company will be called AEye Holdings Inc. and is expected to be publicly listed on Nasdaq. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. The management team, which includes Blair LaCorte as CEO, founder Luis Dussan as CTO and Bob Brown as CFO, will remain.

Posted on

Aeye becomes latest lidar company to go public via SPAC

Aeye, a lidar startup that developed its technology for use in autonomous vehicles as well as to support advanced driver assistance systems in passenger cars, is going public through a merger with CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III that will value the company at $2 billion.

The agreement marks the latest lidar company to turn to so-called blank check companies or SPACs in lieu of a traditional IPO process. Velodyne Lidar kicked off the trend last summer when it announced that it planned to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Graf Industrial Corp., with a market value of $1.8 billion. Others soon followed, including Luminar, Aeva, Ouster and Innoviz.

Under this deal, Aeye said it was able to raise $225 million in private investment in public equity, or PIPE, from institutional and strategic investors that includes, GM Ventures, Subaru-SBI, Intel Capital, Hella Ventures, Taiwania Capital. Other undisclosed investors also participated. Through the transaction, Aeye will have about $455 million in cash on its balance sheet, proceeds that include $230 million in trust from CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III, a SPAC sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald.

Lidar, light detection and ranging radar, measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world around the car. The sensor is considered by many in the emerging automated driving industry as a critical and necessary tool. Velodyne long dominated the lidar industry and supplied most AV developers with its products. Dozens of startups have popped up in the past several years aiming to carve away market share from Velodyne, each one pitching its own variation on the technology and business approach.

In the past three years, lidar companies have tweaked their business models as the timeline to commercialize autonomous vehicles dragged on. Startups began to emphasize their perception software or pitched to automakers that the sensors could — and should — be applied to passenger vehicles to provide redundancy and push the capabilities of driver assistance systems.

AEye is one of several lidar companies that have expanded its focus beyond autonomous vehicles. The company said the capital raised by going public will be used to scale the company in key markets. Aeye’s pitch is that the company’s lidar technology along with its partnerships with Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers like Continental makes it well positioned to scale and to be adopted by major automakers. Aeye’s lidar sensor scans the surroundings and then, with help from its perception software, identifies and focuses on relevant objects.

Automotive, specifically to support ADAS in passenger vehicles and in the long-term within autonomous vehicles, is Aeye’s foundational market. But the company sees wider industrial and mobility applications in mining, trucking, traffic systems, aviation and drones.

“At the right price and reliability, we believe lidar will eventually be in everything that has a camera today,” CEO Blair LaCorte said during an investor presentation. “With expectations for broad adoption of lidar for consumer and industrial applications, we forecast a total addressable market of $42 billion by 2030.”

Aeye is at the earliest stages of that total addressable market. The company said it expects to generate $4 million in revenue in 2021 and a net loss (EBITDA) of $59 million. Aeye said commercial production of its sensors are expected in the fourth quarter of 2021, which will help increase revenue to a forecast $13 million in 2022. By 2024, Aeye forecasts $175 million in revenue and says it will be positive EBITDA by the second half of the year.

The combined company will be called AEye Holdings Inc. and is expected to be publicly listed on Nasdaq. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. The management team, which includes Blair LaCorte as CEO, founder Luis Dussan as CTO and Bob Brown as CFO, will remain.

Posted on

Google Maps users can now pay for parking or their transit fare right from the app

Drivers throughout the United States will now have the option to pay for street parking right from Google Maps as part of an expanded partnership with transportation software companies Passport and Parkmobile. Google also announced it was extending this contactless payment feature to public transit users.

Google Maps’ pay for parking feature will expand first via Android to more than 400 U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C. The feature will be available through the iOS version of the Google Maps app soon, the company said. The transit feature will include more than 80 transit agencies globally.

The parking feature, which integrates with Passport’s operating system, launched in Austin last year. The two companies indicated, at the time, that the feature would eventually roll out in other U.S. cities. While the expansion was expected, it’s still a boon for the North Carolina-based startup, which is now integrated in one of the most widely used navigation apps. The same goes for Parkmobile, which is also embedded in Google Maps.

The aim, according to Google Maps product manager Vishal Dutta and Google Pay’s Fausto Araujo, is to help drivers users pay for parking without having to touch a meter — a compelling feature in this era of COVID-19.

When navigating with Google Maps on iOS and Android, drivers in certain cities in the U.S. will see an option to pay for parking with Google Pay as they approach their destination. This means a user has to set up a Google Pay account, which is linked to a credit or debit card. From there, drivers add their meter number, the amount of time they wish to pay for, and complete the payment via Google Pay. Parkers can also add time to their meter from their Google Pay app without returning to their vehicle.

Google said the payment feature has been extended to including transit fares for more than 80 transit agencies around the world. “Now you’ll be able to plan your trip, buy your fare, and start riding without needing to toggle between multiple apps,” Google wrote in a blog post.

The transit pay option pops up in Google Maps in the user’s directions. In places like San Francisco, users will also be able to buy a digital Clipper card directly from Google Maps. Once they’ve purchased their fare, the user just needs tap their phone on the reader or show their digital ticket.

Posted on

Shared scooter startup Revel adds electric bike subscriptions to its business

Shared electric moped startup Revel will start offering monthly electric bike subscriptions in New York, the second new business venture the company has announced in the past several weeks.

Revel said Tuesday it was expanding its product line — which until the end of January consisted only of shared mopeds — to include monthly subscriptions to electric bikes. The subscriptions will be available to residents of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The bikes, which are manufactured by WING Bikes, come equipped with a 36-volt battery that can travel 45 miles on a single charge, pedal assist and can reach speeds of 20 miles per hour.

The monthly electric bike subscription plan will be offered for $99 a month and includes the bike rental, lock, battery and all repairs and maintenance. Revel promised that  maintenance on normal bike issues will be conducted within 24 hours of a customer reporting a problem. Users will also receive educational materials on bike laws, safety, and locking best practices at multiple touchpoints, including in-app and printed materials, according to the company.

Revel launched in 2018 with a shared fleet of electric mopeds. The company, which founded by Frank Reig and Paul Suhey, started with a pilot program in Brooklyn and later expanded to Queens, the Bronx and sections of Manhattan. It ramped up its business thanks to $27.6 million in capital raised in October 2019 in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors. In its first 18 months of operation, Revel expanded its shared moped business to other cities such as Austin, which has since shutdown, as well as Miami and Washington, D.C. Last year, the company launched in Oakland and received a permit in July 2020 to operate in San Francisco.

Revel bopped along as a shared moped business until February 3, when it announced plans to build a DC fast-charging station for electric vehicles in New York City. The company said that this new “Superhub,” which is located at the former Pfizer building in Brooklyn, will contain 30 chargers and be open to the public 24 hours a day. This will be the first in a network of Superhubs opened by Revel across New York City, the company said. Revel said at the time it would use Tritium’s new RTM75 model for the first 10 chargers at its Brooklyn site, which will go live this spring. These chargers are designed to deliver 100 additional miles of charge to an electric vehicle in about 20 minutes, according to Revel.

Now, it’s added a third business venture of electric bike subscriptions. And it appears Reig is ready to diversify further.

“Our mission at Revel is to electrify cities,” Reig said in an email to TechCrunch. “We are expanding into eBikes to continue to deliver on this mission, and to provide additional access to our users in cities like New York. Safe to say that this will not be our last big announcement in 2021.”

A waitlist will open up Tuesday and bikes will be delivered to customers starting in early March.

Posted on

Trafi takes its mobility-as-a-service platform to LatAm, starting with Bogota

Trafi, the Lithuanian startup that created a platform that lets users plan, book and pay for various modes of transportation within a city, is expanding beyond the European market where it got its start to tackle one of the most congested urban areas in the world.

The company said it has reached an agreement to provide its mobility-as-a-service platform in Bogota, Colombia.

Trafi’s platform is a white label product. But underneath the name — whether it’s Yuomov in Zurich, Jelbi in Berlin or MVG in Munich — is the same underlying technology. The company, which operates in seven European cities, is able to capture transportation data to provide real-time route planning for users. It also handles the payment system, which helps it stand apart from some of its competitors.

Trafi doesn’t just work with cities, however. The company’s tech is also used by Google, Lyft, Dott and nextbike — to name a few.

In Bogota, the platform will pull together all the forms of public transit, including buses and trams, as well as local taxis and e-bikes. Users can use the single-payment system to book and pay for the various modes of transportation. The app includes real-time departure information, a “nearby function” that will show the user all mobility options available within their location and “intermodal routing,” which proposes combinations of up to three different modes such as taking an e-bike to the bus stop.

Trafi

Image Credits: Trafi

Bogota is just the start. Trafi co-founder and CEO Martynas Gudonavičius told TechCrunch that the company plans to expand to other LatAm cities. The company will target capital cities in other LatAm countries first, places like São Paulo in Brazil. Gudonavičius said Trafi will seek out contracts with smaller and medium-sized cities in the region as well. Any city with digital ticketing and various modes of transportation, including scooter and bicycles, buses and ride-hailing, is a good fit for the company, he added.

“Latin America is a superb example where mobility-as-a-service can really strive,” Gudonavičius said. “This is why we’re in Bogota, it’s this young, dynamic, fast-growing population. And we are here to help them do the big transition from transportation patterns and behavior they have at the moment, to a mobility-as-a service concept.”

Trafi is hiring for a director in the region and plans to hire more people in all departments this year. It’s also eyeing an expansion into Asia in the second half of 2021. Gudonavičius wouldn’t provide specific details, but said the company had a short list of cities it wanted to enter. He specifically noted that Trafi planned to expand to a city in Japan.