Welcome backoh Mobility TechCrunch — your central hub for news and ideas about the future of transportation.
Before we move on to all the news, and boy was there a lot! — I have an important update for all of you, dear readers. TechCrunch Mobility moves to Thursdays! It will be the same newsletter packed with industry news and insights, but arriving in your inboxes on Thursday morning. Sign up here for free – just click on TechCrunch Mobility!
start-up of electric vehicles fisker laid off more employees “preserve cash” as bankruptcy looms ever closer; ride sharing company wave cut around 180 jobs and ousted its CEO, Hemant Bakshi, just four months after appointing him to the position; and lidar company luminary cut its workforce by 700 people by 20% as part of a restructuring to adopt an “asset-light” business model.
Oh, and then there was tesla CEO Elon Muskthat fired the automaker Supercharger Global Network Team. That puzzling decision comes just as non-Tesla electric vehicle drivers gain access to the grid.
That’s not to say the entire transportation sector was surrounded by economic storm clouds. There were brighter moments, too. Let’s check it out!
a little bird
Following Tesla’s large selection of Superchargers, we have spoken to several little birds, including those who were laid off and people who work at other automakers. As I mentioned before, Elon Musk gutted Tesla’s global Supercharger organization of about 500 people. Experts at several different automakers, all of which are adopting Tesla’s charging technology, said they didn’t see this coming. “Shocked” and “stunned” were the most common phrases I heard.
On the employee front, there was a lack of communication from human resources in the hours immediately following the mass layoff. Some told me that they and their former co-workers had not received information about severance and that communication had completely broken down. Some of those people had received compensation emails on Friday. Everyone I contacted was still struggling to understand why Musk would cut the Supercharger team, an organization that is critical to Tesla and its electric vehicle sales. Others assumed that only Elon and perhaps the former head of the Supercharger team, Rebecca TinucciI would ever know the answer.
Do you have a suggestion for us? Email Kirsten Korosec in kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com, Sean O’Kane in sean.okane@techcrunch.com either Rebeca Bellan in rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, Click here to contact uswhich includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging applications.
Offers!
It’s been a minute since we heard about an autonomous vehicle startup that raised a substantial amount of money, or heck, some money. That all changed this week when Engine scored a major multimillion-dollar victory, courtesy of hyundai.
total hyundai the commitment is one billion dollars, but there are important details. This is how it breaks down. Hyundai invested $475 million directly in Motional as part of a broader deal that includes the purchase of its joint venture partner Aptiv. Hyundai is spending another $448 million to buy 11% of Aptiv’s common equity stake in Motional.
Brief backstory: Motional was formed in 2019 as a $4 billion joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv. Motional has spent the last few years working on its autonomous vehicle technology, working toward the goal of launching a robotaxi service using driverless Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles in 2024. As Motional and Hyundai grew closer, the companies announced plans in November to co-develop production-ready versions of the all-electric Ioniq 5 robotaxi – it seems Aptiv has started to understand its own financial limitations. In January, Aptiv President and CEO Kevin Clark said the company reduce your ownership interest in Motional and stop allocating capital to the company due to the high cost of marketing a robotaxi business and the long road ahead to profits.
The decision, while not particularly surprising to the industry experts I spoke to, still put Motional and Hyundai in a difficult situation. Would Hyundai take a step forward? Would outside investors intervene? Hyundai answered the call.
My question is: Will Motional, with Hyundai’s blessing, look for other investors? That will all come down to how much capital Motional is burning and whether it continues to pursue the same robotaxi goals. If so, it seems that the company will end up needing more capital.
Other offers that caught my attention…
LiNova Energya California-based startup developing polymer cathode batteries, raised $15.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Catalus Capital, joined by Saft, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, Chevron Technology Ventures and a investors union.
rivian received a surprising award $827 million incentive package from the state of Illinois, funds that will be used to build production lines for its next generation electric vehicle, the R2.
Viking holdingsthe luxury cruise operator backed by private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, raised 1.54 billion dollars in its IPO.
X Shorea Swedish electric boat manufacturer founded in 2016, raised 8.5 million euros in new funding from several anonymous existing backers, including founder Konrad Bergström.
Notable readings and other tidbits
ADA
He National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation in ford hands-free driver assistance system, BlueCruise, after it was found to be active during two recent crashes that killed several people.
NHTSA took another big step in the sector and finalized a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard which will cause automatic emergency braking, including the ability to Automatically detect and brake for pedestrians, standard on all passenger cars and light trucks by September 2029. The agency said the safety standard is expected to significantly reduce rear-end and pedestrian crashes. Now, NHTSA doesn’t choose the technology automakers must use. Several computer vision and lidar companies have contacted me about how it could be beneficial for their business models.
autonomous vehicles
CT Contributor Tim Stevens takes us behind the scenes of the first Autonomous Racing League event in Abu Dhabi that pitted an autonomous car against a Formula 1 driver. Your opinion? Yes, there were fights; He also saw a lot of progress.
Electric vehicles, charging and batteries.
Remember last year when Henrik Fisker Did he proudly unveil two prototypes designed to catapult his eponymous electric vehicle startup into the mainstream? TC reporter Sean O’Kane has learned that the engineering firm that helped develop those vehicles is suing Fisker for $13 million in damages. Read more to know this demand, in addition to several others.
This week’s wheels
Image credits: Emme Hall
I turned the tables on the TC contributor Emme Hall this week for a test drive of the new all-electric Acura ZDX Type S. You can read the full review hereI also suggest you watch his video of the vehicle’s advanced hands-free driver assistance system. For those who want to take a look before committing to a longer read, here’s the gist.
Hall expected joy and delight. Instead, he was more normal. Here is one of the whys. The Type S weighs over 6,000 pounds. Even if the weight is evenly distributed from front to back, it is a lot of weight to take into a corner. She liked the strong direction, but there wasn’t much feedback.
“The torque is always there coming out of corners and body roll is kept under control, but I don’t feel the pleasure,” he wrote, adding that the Type S’s 275/40 Continental Premium Contact 6 summer tires offered plenty of grip. , but the low-profile sidewall combined with the harder, non-slip rubber compound meant the ride was just a little harsh.
Hall’s search for an all-electric SUV that’s fun around the corners continues.