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I wanted to flag two items before you start reading. The first founder to return this month was Anjali Naik, co-founder and COO of Cartken.
I will be there at the festival. If there is a talk or presentation that you believe I must see or a person that I just have to meet, reach out. I am looking for any and all compelling transportation goings on, but it will be a quick trip. There are two panels I am moderating, one on sustainable mobility and the other on self-drive vehicles. The other one is focused on EV charging infrastructure and the electrification of ride sharing, corporate fleets and service fleets.
This is huge and finally we can have cars in the U.S. that don't blind people. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a final rule allowing the installation of adaptive driving beam headlights on new vehicles. The systems are in Europe.
You can email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com if you have any questions. You can send a direct message to the person at the social media site.
Azeem Azhar, one of my favorite hosts, dedicated a whole show to micromobility. On his latest show, Azhar explores the impact of technology on business and society, and he had on micromobility expert Horace Dediu. They talked about the role of software in driving the adoption of micromobility, a trend that some people questioned and even gave me a lot of flack for writing about a year ago.
There is no end to the companies trying to fuel the micromobility revolution, so catch up with just a few of them here.
The market of shared mobility aggregation is being consolidated by Cogo. The company just acquired another aggregation so that it can offer more comprehensive price comparisons for shared mobility. Users can check the price, availability and travel time from multiple operators in one search. This is something Dediu has said that big tech companies can use, so we will see how this kind of service unfolds in the long run.
Bird is increasing its fleet size in a few markets. It will be staying in Long Beach, Portland, Decatur, and adding more vehicles to other areas.
In order to expand its platform outside of Spain and into the rest of Europe, the startup raised $22.6 million.
According to its Q4 2021 earnings, the company is doubling down on its bikeshare business. Tony Ho of Segway made comments last year about some of the big rideshare guys coming back to play.
A two-wheeler with a top speed of 250 mph is being designed by Lightning Motorcycles. Niobium is found on rocket ships.
Rebecca Bellan.
This isn't a deal at all, it's a rumored one. It is worth noting because of the implications.
German media reported that Volkswagen is in talks withHuawei to acquire the latter's self driving unit for billions of euros. VW China has no comment.
The potential merger will be a powerful one. The business unit of the telecom equipment and smartphone giant started in 2019. The founding of the smart car BU spurred a lot of speculation over whether the firm would develop its own cars, though it has denied any manufacturing plans and said it wants to be a components supplier for car brands.
Other deals got my attention this week.
Carbar raised $28.9 million in a round led by Insurance Australia Group and Seven West Media.
BMW iVentures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital and 3M are some of the strategic investors in the funding round for the California startup that developed a way to replace traditional wiring harnesses in vehicles. Ford didn't join the latest round.
A lidar company that went public via a merger with a SPAC partner rang the opening bell at the stock exchange.
B Capital Group led a $10 million round for Haul, a company that developed software to connect drivers with trucking companies. Other investors included previous funders, Next Coast Venture, Hack VC, and Next Coast Capital Partners, as well as new participants, including Will Redd, the co-founder of ZipRecruiter.
Ibex Investors has a new $113 million fund. The firm is based in Denver and has offices in New York and Tel Aviv.
SpeedInvest and Norrsken VC led a seed funding round for Liefergr, a German startup that offers emissions-free last-mile delivery services.
Motorq said it raised $40 million in a Series B funding round. Existing investors also joined.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy initiative of the Department of Energy gave $4.5 million to Parallel Systems.
RideCo, a Canadian company that offers cities on-demand transit tech, closed a $15.8 million Series A round. The company raised institutional investment for the first time in seven years in its funding round.
The new engineering and development office in Los Angeles will be used to advance the company's self-driving tech. Caltech professor Yisong Yue will be the principal scientist for Argo, he brings an expertise in machine learning and a connection to the university. The new office of Argo is close to Caltech, which will allow it to tap into the university-to-startup market.
In a post on its website, Aurora said it was partnering with USXpress to design optimal deployment strategies for its technology in its commercial operations.
Aurora reported its first earnings as a publicly traded company. There were no surprises for a company that is still developing its technology. R&D spend caught my attention. Whooo weee! In the year 2020, Aurora spent $179.4 million on research and development. Aurora has a large amount of cash on hand.
Apollo Go will be launching in another city. Shenzhen will be the company's seventh city where it introduced its services, starting with the Nanshan District, which is home to companies likeHuawei and Tencent. The company will be bringing its 5th generation robotaxi to the fleet soon. The Apollo Go app will allow users to hail a car at one of 50 stations. By the end of the year, the company hopes to have more than 300 stations.
This is still a trial operation. Cangzhou will be getting a commercial service from Baidu in March. The Shenzhen service will include a human safety operator behind the wheel of an autonomously driving vehicle.
There is a Walmart store located on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community lands in Arizona.
There is an on-demand delivery service in the Bay Area. This is an expansion of its partnership with The Savemart companies, which began in 2020.
C.H. Robinson is planning to launch a pilot. C.H. Robinson's customers will be getting freight from the test fleet within the coming months. The pilot is part of a larger partnership between the two companies that aims to combine Waymo's AV technology, which is available to any carrier, with C.H. Robinson's logistics data on over 3 million trucking lanes and access to a network of nearly 200,000.
During the Super Bowl, there were electric vehicle ads. Cars.com saw an 80% increase in EV page views after all the marketing. Rebecca Bellan told me that she loved the ad because it featured Dr. Evil and crew from the Austin Powers movies, and it went well with the halftime show.
I was struck by how few of the cars in the ads are on sale. When all those people went to the internet, were they disappointed? Excited for what was to come?
Delorean is going to return as an EV. Some Texas executives who are working with Stephen Wynne want that. The parts for the remaining vehicles are supplied by Wynne. There is a video that teases the upcoming EV, but no word on when.
Fisker confirmed in an earnings call that it is still on track to start production of the Ocean SUV in November, with reservations for its first electric vehicle jumping to 31,000. There are 1,600 reservations for the Ocean, including an order from ServiceNow.
The startup founded by a formerTesla CTO is launching an electric vehicle battery recycling program in California with Ford and Volvo as initial partners. Some of the cost of retrieving, properly packaging and transporting the batteries will be covered by the two automakers.
The program is free for those who turn in batteries. All nickel metal hydride batteries will be accepted in the state, regardless of the make or model of the vehicle.
Non-Tesla owners in the Netherlands can now charge their electric vehicles at all of the Supercharger stations in the country.
In Consumer Reports' annual auto brand rankings, the company fell seven spots to No. 23 out of 32 brands. The federal safety regulators opened an investigation into the company after receiving hundreds of reports of phantom braking.
There will be 1,000 DC fast charging stalls at Walgreens stores in the US.
A non-binding Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Avolon and AirAsia to lease a minimum of 100 e VTOLs.
The proof-of-concept, transition test flight for the air taxi Prosperity I was completed by AutoFlight, an important milestone for the project.
Joby Aviation is working with ANA to bring aerial services to Japan. In order to explore ways to connect the air taxis to ground-based transportation, Toyota Motor Corporation will be partnering with the two companies. One of the company's test vehicles crashed. The NTSB is looking into it.
In a partnership with Albertsons, Doordash is launching express grocery delivery, which brings customer groceries in under 30 minutes.
Those partnerships are scored by Nvidia. This time, it is Jaguar Land Rover. The Drive Hyperion platform will be used in all of the automaker's vehicles. Features like advanced driver assistance systems and self driving will be powered by this platform.
10 new executives have been hired or promoted by the auto fintech startup. The company hired a chief compliance officer, named a chief accounting officer and promoted a former COO to the role of president.
The satirist and bestselling author P.J. O'Rourke died on February 15. Some of his work for the magazine is featured in a send off piece by Car and Driver.
Steve was partner at In-Q-Tel and is now managing director of investments at JetBlue Technology.
The chairman of the board of directors of Virgin Galactic is stepping down, CNBC reported.
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