Welcome again to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for information and insights on the way forward for transportation. Join right here without cost — simply click on TechCrunch Mobility!
This week I’m publishing an abbreviated model of the e-newsletter due to the 4th of July vacation. When you’re driving, flying, or taking the prepare for the U.S. vacation — which AAA initiatives 72.2 million individuals will journey a minimum of 50 miles or extra — keep protected on the market. The entire e-newsletter returns subsequent week.
I’ve one necessary announcement earlier than I sprinkle in a bit of reports. TechCrunch Mobility is transferring to the Beehiiv publishing platform in a number of weeks. Beehiiv gives a lot of cool options — like polls! — to assist me higher have interaction with you, the reader. It’s a win for you and me.The e-newsletter emails will proceed to come back from newsletters@techcrunch.com. To make sure you don’t miss a single one, please add the above deal with to your contacts and transfer it to your major inbox. This tells your web service supplier that you just love TechCrunch and need to see this text.
Somewhat chicken
Picture Credit:Bryce Durbin
You could recall final week, a New York Occasions article reported that Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick is working with buyers to purchase the U.S. arm of Chinese language autonomous automobile firm Pony AI, and Uber may even assist make it occur.A number of little birds inform me Kalanick ally and Uber ATG veteran Eric Meyhofer is concerned. We’re poking round to study extra. Within the meantime, here’s a little historical past lesson. Meyhofer was with the Nationwide Robotics Engineering Middle at Carnegie Mellon College earlier than formally transferring over to Uber in 2015. He ultimately turned CEO of Uber ATG, the self-driving unit that was later offered off to Aurora. Meyhofer has been related to Kalanick’s CloudKitchens enterprise through a restaurant automation and robotics enterprise known as Lab37, which was initially reported by the Spoon again in 2023.
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Notable reads and different tidbits
Picture Credit:Bryce Durbin
Autonomous automobiles
A catchy new time period was coined throughout a current recording of the Autonocast, the podcast I co-host with Alex Roy and Ed Niedermeyer (full credit score goes to Roy). The time period is MVAT, or minimal viable autonomy theater — when corporations deploy the minimal viable autonomy product adequate to perpetuate a story of progress.
One attainable instance: Tesla let a Mannequin Y SUV drive roughly 15 miles from its manufacturing facility to the condo complicated the place the automotive’s new proprietor lives, finishing what CEO Elon Musk known as the primary “autonomous supply” of a buyer automotive. If it is a one-off, aka an illustration, then it’s an MVAT.
This isn’t simply to choose on Tesla, by the way in which. Many different corporations have posted flashy movies to showcase the capabilities of their respective automated driving know-how. However it was a much more widespread apply in 2015 — as AVs have been capturing as much as the highest of the hype cycle.
Electrical automobiles, batteries, & charging
The second quarter has ended and which means gross sales and manufacturing numbers! Whereas many automakers concern month-to-month reviews, a few of the EV corporations we monitor solely present quarterly numbers.
The electrical Hummer is nearly outselling the F-150 Lightning
Lucid gross sales inch ahead as EV maker pushes to ramp Gravity manufacturing
Rivian receives the following $1B from Volkswagen as gross sales struggles proceed
Tesla faces second straight 12 months of falling gross sales after one other dangerous quarter
In the meantime, Republican legislators handed a reconciliation act that, amongst different issues, unwinds a lot of the Inflation Discount Act, together with that photo voltaic, wind, and clear hydrogen will all lose incentives underneath the brand new invoice. EV tax credit are additionally eradicated for brand spanking new and used electrical automobiles and the set up of house EV-charging gear.
The tip of the EV tax credit score is already rippling by way of the business, together with corporations that don’t even have an EV but to promote. Slate Auto, the Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup, was planning to promote a pickup truck for lower than $20,000 with the EV tax credit score utilized. However the language on its web site has modified to mirror the invoice’s passage.
Additionally a bit of reports from the world of electrical RVs and vans … Pebble, the California-based startup we’ve written about earlier than, has began buyer deliveries of its flagship all-electric journey trailer. And Grounded, the startup based by former SpaceX engineers and based mostly in Detroit, delivered its new electrical van, known as the G3, to its first buyer.
Safety
The FBI and cybersecurity companies are warning that the prolific hacking group referred to as Scattered Spider is now focusing on airways and the transportation sector.
Qantas, the Australian airline large, stated it skilled a knowledge breach that compromised the non-public info of a minimum of 6 million passengers.
