Just like with robotaxis, the technology is finally catching up to its promises. This week, Kodiak AI announced it was on track to launch driverless long-haul commercial service on public highways by the end of 2026. This comes after years of autonomous operations on closed, private facilities: its trucks have now logged 40,000+ hours of paid driverless operations, delivering over 300,000 tons of freight.

Other operators like Gatik have signed multi-year driverless freight partnerships with iconic brands like PepsiCo, hauling potato chips and America’s second favorite soda along highways in Texas, Arizona and Arkansas. Legacy OEMs are also realizing they need to jump aboard, with manufacturers like Paccar licensing AV tech from Einride.

While these robotic haulers were once largely confined to red states, updated policies have paved the road towards broader deployments. The California DMV recently lifted its ban on driverless vehicles over 10,000 pounds, leading Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI to start testing on the Golden State’s iconic roads. The Feds are getting in gear as well, with USDOT just publishing America Leads: DOT’s National Strategy for Automated Vehicles, Fiscal Years 2026-2030. Bombastic title aside, the report portends timely rulemaking for commercial vehicle operations, repairs, inspections and maintenance, updating old policies built around the assumption that every truck has a human driver.

All these changes have meant that autonomous truck cos. are pulling in something more important than mere cargo: cash! Gatik just raised $200 million, led by QIA and KDT; PlusAI is taking the SPAC route to the public markets, picking up $300M on the way; Waabi loaded up with a massive $750M earlier this year; and the rumor mill has it that another AV trucker should be announcing an impressive Series A shortly.

Despite the momentum, there are still many questions left unanswered. What will public acceptance be like, once unattended big rigs become a more common sight on the highway? Given the current backlash against data centers, it wouldn’t be a surprise if voters decide they don’t take kindly to these robots. Assuming autonomous trucking does take off, what will it mean for the tens of millions of people across the globe that make a living hauling freight? And given the current political climate, can we trust that new regulations will be crafted in impartial, evidence-based and safety-conscious manners?

These are weighty topics; and they’re exactly the types of discussions we’re getting into this October 14th at the Urban Autonomy Summit — Austin. If you care about these questions, please do apply to join us. And in the meantime, my colleague Harry has been going deep into many of these same issues on his podcast; check out some particularly relevant conversations below.

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Good chart, great rendering: Public transit ridership is up across on all of America’s largest rail networks. SF’s urban rail systems led the pack, up 14-15% YoY, while San Diego eked out just 1.4% growth. Growth in NYC has slowed as of late; expect it to pop once the IBX opens sometime next decade: the MTA just released new renderings of what will be the city’s first new end-to-end transit line in a century.

Swap it like its hot: Magna International invested $35 million into Yuma Energy, an Indian startup that operates a battery-swapping network for two and three-wheelers. While conceptually similar to Taiwan’s Gogoro, Yuma targets gig workers, as opposed to recreational riders or commuters. The company operates 400+ charging stations, and did over $10.5M in revenue last year.

An AV for everyone: May Mobility and NTT Mobility are ramping up their AV deployments in Japan, with plans to deploy Toyota’s e-Palette by year’s end. This will be the first commercial deployment of Toyota’s eye-catching autonomous shuttle on public roads, after successful tests in Tokyo, Nagoya and Hiroshima.

Oh, Elon! On the other side of the spectrum, Tesla just formally debuted its Cybercab robotaxi hardware, at an invite-only event in Austin. (See the tutorial video here.) The company is now soliciting investors that may want to own their own part of the fleet, while the NHTSA is looking into whether the new vehicles are street legal. Ever busy, The Boring Company just raised $3 billion, capitalizing off plans to build 150 km of tunnels in the United Arab Emirates.

Why can’t all new trains wear garlands? Indore Metro and Alstom celebrated the expansion of the city’s rapid transit network. Meanwhile, the New York Times has a lovely, multimedia story showcasing how New Delhi has quickly built one of the world’s biggest metro systems. But you will have to look past clunky sentences like “Unlike London, New York and Tokyo, where subways have developed alongside city infrastructure for a century or more, the Delhi Metro was constructed from scratch in an already-bustling city.” Does the reporter think nobody lived in SoHo before the trains arrived?

Ignominious records, all around… Officials in the Minneapolis region are scrounging around for an extra $224 million, as costs for a planned extension of the Blue Line light rail balloon past $2.5B. The 13.4 mile project runs almost entirely at grade, which should be cheap to build, although part of the budget seems to go towards elevating nearby roads, which is not only expensive but will make walking suck. Kansas City officials are also looking to expand their successful streetcar system, with a one mile loop coming in around $125-175M. And Chartlotte just celebrated five years of streetcar operations, alongside vague plans to add six miles to the line. The current Gold Line is not exactly a great case study: it gets about 2,000 riders a day, with trains coming every 30 minutes, while traveling slower than nearby busses.

Modern Delivery, summer break quick hits: Uber Eats adds 375+ ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer and Fairway Markets in the Northeast. DoorDash partners with Locally for specialty retail and Skims for shapewear. Instacart debuts AI shopping assistant, partners with Morrisons on deployment. Shipt adds AI assistant too. Walmart adds delivery for Papa Johns pizza. Republicans look to end SNAP payments for select restaurant meals. Macy’s raises outlook. Delaware breaks ground on new port. Two years before contract renewal, Teamsters already agitating for UPS strike. Deliveroo expands partnership with Pho. Amazon embraces perishables delivery. Walmart-backed Flipkart begins testing food delivery in Bengaluru.

A few good links: WeRide, Uber and Avomo receive Spain’s first Level 4 AV permit. Brightline adding gov’t-funded stop at Cocoa, FL. Happy 40th birthday to Portland MAX. White House-promoted Freedom Fuel network accused of selling stolen gas. (H/T Automotive Ventures.) Waymo goes live on Lyft in Nashville. ALSO admits its e-bikes are delayed. China looks to regulate humanoid IPOs. Rivian pushes for improved autonomy. Ford scuffles with Secretary Duffy over U.S. vs China manufacturing. Piston raises $15M for cardless fleet fuel payments. Beep raises $20M, led by Mobileye. Grab eyes BNPL player Atome. How ICE raids depressed urban employment. Maven Robotics raises $100M. Seattle inaugurates first infill station. Jerusalem cuts ribbon on L3 light rail line. Atlanta makes another unlikely push for rail service on its Beltline; even in advocate’s wildest dreams, they only have each line run once every 20 minutes… California Assembly kills bill that would have regulated Flock cameras. Waymo looks to raise $3B in debt. Diesel prices hit record highs. Culver City drafts local AV depot regulations, looking to avoid kerfuffle seen in nearby Santa Monica. (H/T George Kalligeros of Aseon.) You can’t kill Scott Painter’s love of offering cars directly to consumers: Autonomy pivots to offering non-EVs via subscription. SoCal officials debut Games Route Network: select roads and freeways will be closed to non-Olympics related traffic. (Can we turn those all into congestion priced roads after the games end?!)

See you in Austin!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Last week, a16z declared that ridesharing is getting more expensive, pointing to new Gridwise Analytics data showing Uber fares rising roughly 20% since early 2024, while Lyft remained comparatively flat. Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy barreled into the replies with the corporate equivalent of “well, actually”: aggregate prices, he argued, blur together the product and geography mix. Compare the same standard ride, at the same time and between the same places, and Uber tries to keep its price near Lyft’s. The apparent premium comes from customers buying more premium products and Uber expanding into suburban markets where trips run longer. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi then entered the chat to announce that “The Professor is back in the house!”

As fun as it is to watch these titans of industry catfight, Uber’s CFO makes a great point. Gridwise’s Rideshare Trend Report is measuring the rides users actually took, not a controlled basket of identical routes and quotes. Uber pricing is indeed on the rise, but that’s because riders are generally choosing “better” and longer mobility options.

Getting a Lyft upmarket

From Q2 ‘25 to Q2 ‘26, the average observed Uber fare rose 8.8%, from $22.63 to $24.62, while Lyft’s rose 6.2%: from $18.67 to $19.83. Uber’s average ride ended the quarter about 24% more expensive than one on Lyft. Its median fare also rose faster, up 10.3% versus Lyft’s 7.1%.

But those averages hide quite the array of products, from a shared ride around the corner to a private Escalade towards a distant airport. Premium products — including Black, Comfort, Priority and XL — represented 20.1% of Uber’s Q2 rides, more than twice that of Lyft’s. Uber’s premium share grew 15.5% year over year and 43.5% over two years. Lyft is moving upmarket too, but from a much lower base.

That is the report’s juiciest useful takeaway: this isn’t just a story about the same ol’ ride getting pricier; this is about the basket of rides changing. Uber has built, and persuaded more customers to choose, a larger menu of roomier and faster and fancier trips. Balaji himself says that Uber’s mix has shifted toward journeys longer than 15 km as it grows its footprints in suburban and “sparser” markets.

Mix doesn’t explain everything. Platform fees rose on both apps: Lyft’s average fee jumped 26.4% YoY to $3.11, while Uber’s rose 14% to $5.30. This makes “premiumization” look like a convenient arrangement for everyone: riders choose a nicer product, drivers receive more per trip and the platform has a larger fare from which to collect its take.

Drivers get a raise, probably…

Those higher fares aren’t just vanishing into the app store’s maw. Average driver gross pay per completed trip rose 7.6% YoY to $15.78, while base pay rose 6.9% to $12.22. Gross pay per working hour increased 7.3% to $24.41, and average quarterly gross pay reached a record $4,119, despite drivers working 2.1% fewer hours.

Those are meaningful gains, but they of course come with a few big caveats. Gridwise’s figures come before fuel, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, taxes, vehicle payments, etc. Insurance is also becoming less of a headwind. Gridwise’s estimated per-trip insurance figure fell 5.1% at Uber and 5.5% at Lyft from Q1 25-26.

More money, more waiting

The pay story comes with one little bump in the road. Trips completed per working hour slipped 0.6% to 1.68, while utilization — the share of observed working time spent on passenger trips, measured from request to drop-off — fell from 62.99% to 62.40%, the lowest level since 2021. Drivers earned more per trip and per hour, but spent a slightly larger share of their time deadheading. There could be a number of factors at play here: increasing driver supply, spatial mismatches, the aforementioned change in product mix or even the rise of robotics.

Speaking of robots

The question on everyone’s mind is, what sort of impacts are autonomous vehicles having on human ridehail drivers? Gridwise compared human-driver outcomes between Q4 2024 and Q4 2025 in five cities where robotaxis are active. The results are noisy enough to frustrate both the boosters and the doomers.

LA posted the toughest numbers for flesh-bound drivers: quarterly gross pay fell 20%, trips per hour dropped 9.7% and utilization swooned by 7.8%. San Francisco’s drivers completed 4% fewer trips per hour, yet quarterly gross pay managed to rise 5.7%. Atlanta and Austin recorded higher gross pay per trip and per hour despite fewer trips per hour, while Phoenix saw insignificant changes.

As they say, correlation is not causation. Southern California has over a hundred thousand ridehail drivers, while fewer than 1,000 robotaxis ply its roads, at least for the time being. It does not seem the specter of mass job losses at the hands of our autonomous overlords is yet upon us…

In fact, all things considered, the report paints a picture of a surprisingly healthy, but perhaps increasingly segmented, TNC market. Customers are paying more, drivers are grossing more and platforms are collecting higher fees. And Uber’s larger premium mix helps explain why its average fare sits so far above Lyft’s.

In a way, a16z and Balaji can both claim their preferred chart is “correct.” Rides are getting more expensive. But that’s because they’re getting “better.” The looming question is whether customers will keep shelling out for more and more upgrades, and what happens to drivers once even more riders get a taste of that truly upmarket robotaxi experience.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Micro-cars, macro storage: As more and more clever startups unveil sub-car scale vehicles, one familiar question has been “but where do I put my stuff?” Check out this inventive new design from Belgium-based Any, with 120 liters of internal storage, about 1/3 what you’d find in a compact car. Put another way: that’s over four cubic feet, good for about three standard carry-on rolling suitcases. Meanwhile, Liux just unveiled a new upmarket microcar.

Delivery bots get schooled: After Starship’s abrupt exit from the U.S. college market, it was open question as to which other delivery bot companies would pick up those contracts. As predicted, Avride and Robot.com are the biggest gainers, with the former adding 21 campuses and the latter signing a seven-year contract with food service co. Sodexo.

Your self-driving hackney, guv’nah! Uber and Wayve have officially gone live in the United Kingdom, taking 15 Ford Mustang Mach-Es live in London. The cars still have safety drivers on board; they may be there a while, given that TfL is behind schedule on finalizing the rules for AV deployments.

Next stop on the NATO express: Latvia has finished up major upgrades to Riga Central Stations, a key component of the transnational Rail Baltica program. That mega-project is linking Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to Poland (and thus to the rest of the E.U.) via higher-speed standard gauge rail, augmenting those countries’ older Russian-gauge networks.

Who watches the watchmen? The anti-Flock saga continues, with Midwestern flair. Grand Rapids, Michigan has ordered the city’s ALPR systems go through the Public Safety Committee review and City Commission approval process, in a move meant to improve transparency and trust.

There will be no flying cars… Surprise, surprise, Pivotal — the flying car company backed by Larry Page — just lost its CEO. As much as everyone that loved the Jetson’s wants to envision a world where we all whisk around in our own li’l flying pod, people can already barely drive when sticking to just two-dimensions. Add in fuel, noise, insurance, PUDO concerns, etc — and you can see why this is apt to remain a pipe dream.

State capacity gets the good: Paris just okayed an extension of the three year old T10 tram line. This project is more metro than streetcar, with the 3.5km long line running in a tunnel, and set to cost €730M. That’s about $390M per mile: expensive for France, but dirt cheap for America.

Modern Delivery, summer break quick hits: Instacart & Chain’s Cart Classics social media slam dunk, an interview with IC’s Director and Head of Instacart Ads Studio. DoorDash earns Alliance for Audited Media incrementality certification, after Circana partnership. World Market launches on Instacart. More feces in the food supply! California passes bill mandating price transparency on cargo ZEVs. Temu invests in local fulfillment. Chipotle heads to Asia. Popwheels completes 500,000th battery swap. Walmart furthers its restaurant delivery ambitions, as it adds Dunkin to its in-app options.

A few good links: Tesla FSD seems to really love train tracks. California Gig Workers Union expects certification. NJ looks to up wages for microtransit drivers. Minneapolis and Seattle seek curb management technology vendor. More e-bikes head to Berlin. Things are looking up at Greyhound. Thessaloniki, Greece opens metro extension. IL inaugurates Northern Illinois Transit Authority to better integrate regional transport. Waymo goes live in Denver, Tampa and SD. Trump’s aluminum tariffs to hamper domestic auto industry. Uber abruptly pulls out of Nigeria, leaving some riders and passengers in the lurch mid-ride. An eager The Curbivore reader shares their take comparing Seoul and L.A. Results from AIWaysion’s 15-month NYC curb activity pilot. Waymo’s full fleet size revealed.

See you in Austin!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Breaker, breaker robotruck, what’s your 20? With our Urban Autonomy Summit series headed to Austin in October, and Texas develops into a real hub for AV big rigs, it’s worth doing a deeper dive into some autonomous and electric trucking headlines. First up, Gatik just raised $200M, led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies; the company has grabbed about half a billion since inception — that’s approaching robotaxi money territory — with investors buoyed by its recent deal with PepsiCo. Bot Auto just announced it will exclusively use U.S.-based remote assistants, adding fodder to the policy debate around support team location and qualification. Officials from CA, OR, WA, BC and Baja have teamed up to build a long-haul electric freight corridor. But what about Baja California Sur (which I’ve always linguistically loved as it translates to lower southern California)? Einride orders 500 Tesla Semis (aren’t they supposed to be building their own e-trucks?) CEC allocates $30.2M to medium and heavy duty ZEV infrastructure.

A trainload of public transit updates: Get ready for a longer booze cruise, SMART to add new station in Geyserville. Vegas inaugurates Red Line BRT service (map here) as Boring Co. approved for expansion of Loop network. Copenhagen inaugurates its suburb-to-suburb light rail line. Monterrey, MX ups planning efforts ahead of Saltillo–Nuevo Laredo train service. This looks cool: LA Metro launches $1.9M Visionary Seed Fund Grant Program. Bay Area whiners come out against transit improvement tax. Amtrak rolls out improved train service in PA. Bay Area transit operators pushed back on Clipper 2.0 flaws for months, while Cubic dragged its heels. Private investment group unveils plan for express train to O’Hare Airport (does anyone else remember the half-billion dollar Block 37 debacle from a decade ago?) Melbourne’s new Suburban Rail Loop set to be hot topic in upcoming election. With people mover plans dead, Inglewood pushes ahead $261M transit overhaul connecting downtown to stadium district, hopefully in time for Olympics. (I looooove the painterly rendition of the ugly digital billboards the city has festooned itself with.)

Does a flying taxi qualify as part of a “car-free games”? Speaking of LA28, Archer Aviation and AEG have unveiled plans to develop a vertiport near LA Live, the entertainment district by Staples Center (no, I won’t call it Crypto.com Arena.) Other zones include SoFi Stadium, USC / Coliseum and the Burbank + Hawthorne airports. Plans to rejuvenate the infamous “graffiti towers” across the street from the arena are finally proceeding; maybe put the landing pad up there?

Pinching pennies… Used EV sales jumped 10% in July, as cash strapped commuters look for affordable ways to beat high gas prices. There are now more used electric cars on the market than used ICE vehicles. And Chinese OEMs are continuing to up their exports, as their domestic market suffers from way too much production capacity.

Willkommen, Waymo! Waymo is officially headed to Munich, targeting a public launch by the end of next year. Germany is the company’s third non-US market (after the U.K. and Japan) and its first toehold into the EU.

Good news for delivery, bad news for society… Whatever happened to Friday night with friends? Post-Covid, the social phenomenon of hanging out with your buds (or coworkers, or really anyone) on a Friday evening has essentially disappeared, with American activity on the day looking the same as it does on other weeknights.

Philly’s liberty curbs: Philadelphia rolled out its Center City commercial curb management program 15 months ago, and the program is showing real results. The Automotus-powered system has seen usage of the proper dedicated spots rise 97%, while downtown driving speeds rose from 7 to 10 MPH. The parking authority now plans to expand the 50+ camera system.

It’s a big deal! Venture funding into the mobility tech space is up 27% YoY, hitting $33.2 billion as of the end of June. But actual deal count has fallen more than 50%, as investors chase expensive late-stage deals (in AVs and robotics) while letting the early stage languish.

Quad squad: Fastport Honda’s eQuads are officially hitting the streets of Greater Los Angeles, as Amazon deepens its non-van-based operations. The choice of DC is interesting, as DLX9 is surrounded by overly wide roads, but once you cross Centinela you get into the pretty bike-friendly new urbanist neighborhood of Playa Vista.

Show me a hero… European delivery biggie Delivery Hero dropped its Q2 financial update, showing GMV up 11.3% YoY to €13.2 billion ($15.4B), rev up 17.7% to €4.0B and losses coming in at a manageable -€359M. Uber just officially published its €41.50 per share acquisition offer; expect the combined company to quickly squeeze its way to true profitability.

Modern Delivery, summer break quick hits: Uber Eats adds new tools for restaurateurs. DoorDash publishes top dogs for Labor Day, finds catering helps office attendance. Instacart partners with Petsense. Wonder adds Salt Hank’s. Chick-fil-A winds down delivery-only concept. USPS bumps rates for holidays. Dollar Tree net sales up 7%, BJ’s income climbs 15.4%, Walmart ecommerce sales climb 24%, DPC Dash revenue up 20.8%. With fresh funds from Mubadala, Arrive Logistics goes on hiring spree. Shipt adds AI tools. Deliveroo partners with Honest Burger. Wolt partners with cosmetics retailer Lyko. iFood’s effect on the Brazilian economy. Results from Prosus’ AGM. Starbucks cuts 100 employees that didn’t want to relocate to Nashville, funny that the newish CEO is allowed to work remotely… Coco Robotics and Uber Eats bring delivery bots to Finland, while Coco and Little Caesars make U.S. deal (the pizza brand partnered with Serve last year.) Flipkart hits 1.2M orders per day. Amazon’s Project Tetromino to develop fully autonomous warehouses. Airbound raises $37M to bring drone logistics to India. Hot on NYC’s heals, Chicago Teamsters push for Delivery Protection Act. Costco debuts custom cake delivery on Instacart. An incredibly Michigan headline: AAM Activation Fund backs autonomous drone deliveries for auto parts. Korea’s Baemin starts pants delivery. Wonder expand across the D.C. region. Miami Beachians mad about city undoing purple curbs (nice to see the normies care!)

A few good links: Court blocks HUD fair housing changes. Lyft pushes for hybrid bikeshare parking. AV test drivers get hurt. TN pours $9.2B into toll lanes (or as they’re calling them, “choice lanes.”) Bolt scooter data to help with accessibility. Marti revenue climbs 141%. VW reveals electric camper van config. Kia brings cheap EV3 to
US. Nevada okays 8,000 AVs from Tesla, Uber and Waymo. DoE probes Chinese lidar for security vulnerabilities. Waymo discusses custom chips. Trump’s trade war on Canada sure to hurt OEMs. XPeng Motors humanoid subsidiary Dogotix raises $900M (what’s in a name?!) Ampaire raises $19M for hybrid-electric planes. NYC finally expands street vending permits. Uber launches live stream feature so parents can watch kids’ rides. Walmart installs 100th super-fast charger. Reviewers like Yolin’s Li-ion charging cabinet. Legendary MA office park to be redeveloped as housing. Uber expands shared rides at college campuses. Ultra-low emissions zone spurs lung regrowth in children. Nayax buys parking payment platform IPS for $350M. New data on micro-transit shows their success at attracting (and not just cannibalizing) new riders depends a lot on where you build the service. NYC Mayor Mamdani okays $4B reconstruction of controversial cantilevered freeway.

See you in Austin!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

The Lone Star State has emerged as a real hot-spot for autonomous trucking — with the likes of Bot Auto, Gatik, Aurora and Kodiak AI — carrying real loads on the state’s long highways. Concurrently, cities like Austin and Dallas are now hubs for robotaxis, delivery bots and autonomous drones, thanks to players like MOIA, Avride, Tesla, Waymo, Coco Robotics, Serve Robotics, Zoox, Wing, Flytrex and Zipline.

​Thank you to Nexar, our presenting sponsor. And additional thanks to Voltera, Autolane, Terawatt, TaskUs, The Ride Platform, Gridwise, EVKON, CharterUP and Verizon, our partners helping build this rich AV ecosystem. Please reach out to join us as a speaker or partner. The Urban Autonomy Summit, presented by Nexar, brings together operators, fleet managers, investors, regulators, policymakers, researchers, media and more. Join us — October 14th in Austin.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Way mo’ Waymo: Waymo received CPUC approval to drastically scale up its operations in California; the new ODD covers parts of eighteen counties in both SoCal and NorCal.

Other AVs expand too: Uber is teaming up with Chinese OEM Pony.ai, bringing 2,000 robotaxis to four new European cities. Uber is also deepening its tie-up with Baidu’s Apollo Go, with a launch in Dubai. Meanwhile, Tesla is bringing its Cybercab hardware to Austin.

Newly served? While last week saw Serve Robotics’ tie-up with Uber go a bit sideways, this week things are looking far rosier. The Bay Area company just launched a partnership with Wonder / Grubhub, going live with 100 merchants in Chicago and 200 in LA. It’s also beefing up its integration with DoorDash, as its bots hit the streets of San Jose and Washington D.C. Also interesting: new countertop hardware for restaurants and expanded ad options.

No houses, no growth: Population growth took a huge hit in major cities across the country, with 86 of America’s 92 largest metros seeing slower growth, greater declines, or a shift from growth to decline compared to the previous year. While growth was a tad stronger in the ‘burbs than in city centers, basically the whole country is now grappling with high housing costs, plus reduced immigration inflows.

Grounded, ungrounded: Detroit startup Grounded just raised $5M for its sweet, custom vans; the company upfits for everything from medical to retail uses. While its vehicles were initially exclusively electric, the death of GM’s BrightDrop (RIP) means the co. also does gas-powered models as well. Meanwhile, ALSO just closed on a $150 million Series D, led by Prysm Capital, as it scales up its e-bike and e-quads, and seeks to build “multiple autonomous form factors.” The company has now raised a whopping $655M in the last year and a half…

Droning on: Speaking of not grounded, it seems drone startups are having a moment (likely for sad, scary geopolitical reasons.) Neros just raised $250M, tied to plans to reshore drone manufacturing in the U.S. And Terra Industries closed on $52M to bring drone infrastructure to Africa and other developing economies.

Micromobility in the macro city: Our friends at the Next Mile Coalition released their Micromobility Roadmap Tracker, finding that NYC’s new mayor is making decent progress to encourage the safe adoption of electric bikes and scooters. Of all the docs policy recommendations, perhaps most interesting would be a proposal to use city funds to buy back illegal e-motos.

Modern Delivery, summer break quick hits: Uber partners with Zipline to hit one million drone deliveries per day by 2029. Instacart adds Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, and Champs Sports. DoorDash partners with Gap, plus Barnes & Noble, Carter’s and Kohl’s. Amazon Prime Air launches first UK hub amid expanded U.S. operations, brings locker network to colleges. Extreme heat endangers more and more workers (especially couriers.)

Clean Mobility Forum 2026: Join the CMF2026 on Sept 30 & Oct 1 in Sacramento or virtually! Connect with clean mobility partners, share lessons learned, and network at this two-day hybrid event. Register with code cmfpromo26 to save 15%.

A few good links: Logistics deals falter amid Iran war. U.S. retail sales fall too. Austin light rail project back in appeals court. Watch a Chinese autonomous delivery van drive straight into a ditch. (H/T TDD.) West Seattle rail extension delayed until 2035. Trump admin looks to undo rule that mandates airlines display full fare price. Valley Plaza Mall adds paid parking for closest spots — if it can work in the urbanist mecca of Bakersfield, it can work anywhere! (H/T PRN.) SPACs are back: Fort Robotics looks to go public at $556.6M val. Physical AI funding takes off. How to cut costs on NYC’s SAS Phase 2. East River Tunnel reopens. Feds back NJ drivers looking to kill NYC congestion pricing. NJ e-bike restrictions hurt sales, do little to keep streets safe.

See you in Austin!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

A new study — Staging at the Curb: Evaluating the impacts of shared automated vehicle fleet operations under curb usage restrictions — finds that letting AVs consume curb space might actually be the optimal outcome.

Researchers modeled 1,700 shared automated vehicles serving 68,000 daily San Francisco trips. Tying together Autofleet’s commercial fleet simulator, synthetic ridehail demand from Replica and curb availability data from INRIX, they compared several operating models: continuous circling, staging only at free non-residential curbs, access to all legally available curbs and overnight staging.

A city’s restrictions can have a big impact on VMT and deadheading. In the study’s circling-only scenario, the fleet traveled 564,650 kilometers (350,857 miles) per day. Let those robotaxis stage at the curb, and VMT falls 60%, with deadheading way down as well. Other policy levers, like restricting robotaxis to free spaces in non-residential neighborhoods, or banning overnight staging, also nudge VMT upward.

Earlier research has shown that without the incentives and emotions tied to human drivers, AVs may be apt to drive slowly between paid rides, get bogged down as passengers waste time loading into the vehicle, or have otherwise unanticipated impacts on congestion. (Reilly Brennan calls this the “pauking problem.”) I chatted with the study’s illustrious group of researchers to better understand what their research found, and see how cities can best manage their streets and curbs to make the most of the coming wave of autonomous vehicles.

Jonah Bliss: Set the stage for us; what exactly is “staging” and what does it look like on an actual city street?

Michael Hyland, Susan Shaheen, Younghun Bahk, Brooke Wolfe & Adam Cohen: We say that vehicles are “staging” when they park temporarily after dropping off one rider and are waiting to be assigned to a new ride request. More colloquially, staging essentially means resting at the curb between trips. 

A staging AV would look similar to a taxi or Uber vehicle parked at the curb, except without a human driver. The AV would still be “on” and consuming some energy, but not as much energy as if it were cruising on local streets.

Give us the short version of your experiment. What kind of San Francisco robotaxi fleet did you simulate, and what different rules did you test?

We ran dozens of scenarios, but the main comparison was between fleets of AVs that (i) were not allowed to use the curb to stage, (ii) always used the curb closest to the most recent rider drop-off location to stage, and (iii) strategically relocated and staged at curbs to best serve expected future ride requests.

We simulated the second-by-second dynamics of a fleet of 1,700 robotaxis providing service on streets within the city of San Francisco. The fleet provides ridehailing service, in which a passenger would not share an AV with a stranger.

In addition to the main scenarios mentioned above, we also compared alternatives by varying whether AVs can use (i) paid or residential curb fronts, and (ii) the curb to stage at night.

Your headline finding is that preventing robotaxis from staging could increase their daily travel by roughly 60%. Where do all those extra miles come from?

Over the course of a day, there are small-to-medium-sized variations in demand that occur over relatively short periods of time (i.e., 5-30 minutes) in any passenger transportation system. As such, in a particular area of a city, a dip in the number of ride requests, especially if the dip is unexpected, will lead to in-service AVs without rides to serve. When AVs are unable to stage at the curb, they must continue circulating on nearby streets while waiting for ride requests. This behavior, commonly referred to as cruising, can substantially increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for AV fleets providing ridehailing service.

Did those results surprise you? Earlier research, like Adam Millard-Ball “The autonomous vehicle parking problem” have certainly suggested that robotaxi behavior, especially when not occupied by paid passengers, could have cascading congestion effects.

We expected the “no staging at the curb” scenario to increase VMT, but the large magnitude of the increase in VMT was surprising.

Adam’s study focused on AVs that are owned by individual households/persons rather than ones that are in a fleet-based service. However, one of the central insights from this study also applies to fleet-based AVs, as well as human-driven taxis and ridehailing vehicles. Since AVs do not need to park between trips, they may instead cruise while waiting for their next passenger. If the cost of parking or staging exceeds the cost of cruising, operators are likely to choose cruising.

Why do you anticipate that vehicles would not simply return to a depot, garage or private lot between rides? How might those alternative change the results?

On one hand, we would have liked to run scenarios where the only staging location for AVs was an off-street parking lot or depot between rides to stage, but we did not have the resources to run more simulations.

On the other hand, we do not think this strategy would have worked very well in terms of mitigating VMT. As we understand it, robotaxi companies do not own or have access to many off-street lots in the cities where they operate, particularly during the day. As a result, AVs would need to travel long distances from one passenger’s drop-off location to a depot and then from the depot to the next passenger’s pickup location.

To be clear, and this is one of the methodological contributions of our study, we implement “strategic defleeting,” also called “supply shaping,” in the simulation model. Supply shaping refers to a fleet management strategy where the manager determines the number of in-service or active vehicles at any time of day, based on the expected demand. As such, during periods of low demand, the fleet manager may have only 60% or even 20% (e.g., 3 am) of the AV fleet in service, while the remaining AVs are charging, being cleaned, or are turned off and not consuming energy in an off-street lot. By implementing supply shaping, the simulation does not have an unnecessary number of AVs cruising around accumulating VMT when demand is below the peak periods.

You also tested some moderate restrictions, such as keeping vehicles away from residential and metered curbs. What did those more measured policies tell you?

Preventing AVs from staging at metered curbs and curbs in residential areas will increase VMT (5.4% more empty VMT) and, by definition, prevent AVs from occupying curb space in these areas. 

The effect on passenger wait times was fairly small. Does that mean operators, riders and cities all have an interest in letting vehicles wait rather than circle?

Passengers, at the margin, should be indifferent or slightly prefer cruising/circling, as our model suggests cruising AVs slightly reduce wait times. We say “at the margin” because if AV fleets scale up, all riders will be worse off if the AVs are all cruising between rides and worsening congestion.

Our results indicate that AV fleet operators and cities should be aligned in terms of avoiding the scenario where AVs are cruising rather than staging at the curb. Both entities likely want to reduce VMT, and permitting AVs to stage at the curb is an effective means to reduce VMT. 

You describe robotaxis as potentially much more “productive” curb users than privately parked cars. How do you define productivity, and why is that the right comparison?

We define curb productivity as the number of people being dropped off at the curb per unit of time robotaxis spend (staging or picking up and dropping off travelers) at the curb.

Curb productivity may not be a perfect metric for comparing curb use, but it provides a useful basis for evaluation. The metric’s rationale is as follows: Cities are centers of economic, social, and cultural activity. The transportation system allows people to participate in urban activities. The curb serves as the interface between the transportation and the activity systems. Consequently, the number of people and goods crossing this interface per unit of time (i.e., curb productivity) provides a good indicator of the extent to which the transportation system facilitates urban activity. 

The curb productivity metric indicates that city buses use curb space far more productively than personal vehicles parked at the curb. Similarly, based on our modeling results and observed curbside parking data from San Francisco, robotaxis use curb space approximately eight times more productively than parked personal vehicles. 

Your model assumes operators want to avoid empty mileage. But if curb access becomes expensive while driving empty remains free, could cruising once again become the cheaper option?

Yes, that is certainly possible. Consequently, cities need to clearly define their policy objectives and identify the instruments best suited to achieve them. As we and others have noted elsewhere, the effectiveness of parking pricing as a travel demand management tool is likely to decline substantially as AVs become more prevalent. If cities aim to reduce VMT, congestion, and emissions in dense urban areas, they will likely need to price both curb occupancy and road use during periods of high demand. Such pricing policies should apply to all vehicle types, including AVs and human-driven vehicles, as well as both fleet-operated and privately owned vehicles.

Does this suggest that cities should price curb staging and zero-passenger travel together, rather than regulating parking and driving as separate activities?

Cities seeking to reduce congestion, VMT, and emissions should consider pricing curb occupancy and roadway use as complementary policy tools. Pricing only AVs–or only zero-occupancy AVs–for road use is unlikely to achieve these objectives, as all vehicles contribute to congestion. Policies that only target a single auto-based mode may encourage travelers to shift to other auto-based modes rather than reducing overall vehicle travel. A comprehensive pricing strategy that applies to all vehicles, including AVs and human-driven vehicles, as well as both fleet-operated and privately owned vehicles, is therefore more likely to achieve these policy goals. Such a strategy could also improve bus operating speeds and reduce public transit operating costs by alleviating roadway congestion.

Younghun Bahk adds: I mostly agree, but further down the road, cities could consider pricing zero-occupancy AV travel. Because zero-occupancy AVs have a different travel cost (e.g., value of travel time), planners may need to manage the number of empty AVs cruising or deliberately taking longer routes (or traveling slower) to align with the next passenger’s pickup time and location. The amount of additional pricing could be exactly the same as the travel cost difference between onboard AVs and zero-occupancy AVs.

What are some potential policy recommendations for city transportation departments looking to mitigate the impact of AVs?

Potential policy responses to AVs should focus on managing the impacts of automobile-based travel rather than regulating AVs as a distinct vehicle class. Pricing is likely the most effective tool for reducing the negative externalities of auto travel, including congestion, VMT, and emissions. If pricing is not politically feasible, cities can employ curb management strategies that recognize the higher productivity of shared and for-hire vehicles by designating curb spaces for robotaxis and human-driven taxis to efficiently pick up and drop off passengers, similar to bus stops.

At the same time, cities should avoid policies that unnecessarily restrict robotaxis from using curb space available to other vehicles. Instead, curb and roadway policies should be designed to improve the efficiency of limited urban space and advance broader goals, such as reducing congestion, improving public transit performance, and improving transportation safety outcomes.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Delivery dramaaa or just flexin’ on your AV partners? Serve Robotics released its Q2 results and while revenue climbed 9% over the past quarter, the company noted that its order volume from Uber Eats fell, causing it to slash its full year forecast more than 50%, as it contemplates ending the partnership. But then the other (self-driving) shoe dropped, as Uber announced it had sold off its entire stake in Serve, which had been initially incubated in its Postmates subsidiary. While the spat stems from disagreements over merchant integrations and arrival time reliability, I see Uber’s noisy exit as a louder signal to the broader AV ecosystem: Uber’s got integrations and investments with everyone from Waymo to Aurora to Avride to Baidu to Flytrex to Hertz to Lucid to Nuro to (ok, you get it…) and now it’s making sure they see that Uber’s the one who controls the demand and customer relationships.

Marketplace madness: Following last week’s story, we’ve seen more mobility and delivery platforms post impressive Q2s. Instacart’s GTV grew 14% to $10.3 billion, while revenue crested the one billy mark. Grab’s GMV climbed 21% to $6.5B, while revenue was up 22% to $997M, thanks to strong growth in financial services and GrabMart performance. And at Talabat, GMV was up 11% to $2.9B as revenue climbed 16% to $1.1 billion.

Gig fleet finance: Uber is investing into Galgo, a Chilean motorcycle financier. Galgo, which also operates in Mexico and Colombia, targets delivery and ridehail workers, and does about $100M in ARR. Over in India, Yulu just raised $93M, also for delivery-oriented two-wheeler rentals. (At MobilityVC, we’ve backed Leasy, which is focused on cars for gig drivers.)

A fight of amazonian scale… NYC Mayor Mamdani is looking to crack down on FedEx and Amazon’s subcontracting practices, as he unveiled the Delivery Protection Act. The bill goes after the DSP model, instead pushing the companies with the logo on the box to employee couriers directly, with the goal of improving pay and working conditions.

Birds of a feather: It’s been another week of tough news for Flock, as backlash against the camera network now seems to be a bipartisan effort. Word is also out that Flock tried to add hundreds of thousands of ridehail cameras to its network, before the partnership unravelled. In response to mounting criticisms and abuses, the company just unveiled improved misuse detection and recommendations for lowered data retention.

Billion dollar bike path: Plans to close an eight mile gap in the LA River bike path have hit a snag, as the budget has ballooned to over $1 billion. That works out to over $24,000 per foot, which is less than Spain and France have paid for actual subway projects (yes, like f’ing underground heavy rail metro systems.) While this project was always a tad bloated — with $365 million earmarked in 2016’s Measure M — the path has now suffered from round after round of community input and fancification. Ask people what they want, without subjecting them to tradeoffs, and they’ll always select a gold Ferrari. Maybe it’s time to adopt the alternate plan, which might require partial closures on approximately 20 days per year, but is far better than no path at all.

Micromobility, macro impact! NABSA just released the 2025 Shared Micromobility State of the Industry Report, finding that the world of shared scooters and bikes is in rather healthy stasis. Both trip and vehicle count climbed, despite a small decrease in the number of cities with systems, while 21% of trips were used to connect to transit.

One (Fewer) Car Challenge: LA Metro just unveiled its One Car Challenge, paying people to use one less car. This builds off a previous, successful pilot the agency did with Santa Monica, but has been expanded to include paying people to go from one to zero cars. 2,000 households could earn up to $600 over five weeks. This sounds fun: pick me, pick me!

Modern Delivery, summer break quick hits: Get your own damn bob chorba, Just Eat Takeaway.com is leaving Bulgaria. DoorDash Flavor Fest heads to Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Tampa. Instacart branches into apparel delivery with Academy Sports + Outdoors partnership, ends item price testing. Behind Grubhub’s “Eat the Fees” campaign. USPS looks to AI-powered optimizations. Yum China finalizes Pizza Hut buyout. McDonald’s profit climbs 5%. JET launches voice-powered ordering, Delivery Hero does too. Deliveroo partners with LookFantastic. Cargo trike maker Iceni Cycles folds. Grubhub settlement finally paid out.

A few good links: Orthodox Jews take to scooters (not kosher, says I.) Car insurance payouts fall. (H/T Steve Greenfield.) Zipline launches Rx delivery for Cleveland Clinic. Imagry and UNVI partner on autonomous buses. IL Gov signs ridehail unionization law. NYC considers illegal e-bike buyback program. How Zoox decided its robotaxis were safe. Dallas mulls trolley extension. Transit bus orders climb. Commuter rail systems grapple with rising insurance requirements. Marti expands ridehailing to 10 new cities. Ford expands Lincoln production in U.S. Teamsters challenge CA DMV’s AV trucking regs. Bolt launches ChatGPT ridehail integration. Lyft activates Disneyland partnership. Grab launches AI-powered TNC ordering call centers. More evidence that land value taxes are good. Archer buys Boeing’s flying-taxi and drone subsidiaries. More premium rides, higher platform fees power Uber + Lyft earnings growth. Via’s Q2 revenue climbs 27% to $136M. Uber and Hinomaru Kotsu partner on Tokyo robotaxi deployment.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

It seems like investors are thinking more about robots than restaurants, as the stock fell as much as 6.5%, amid concerns about the company’s $10 billion in AV spending plans. Uber and its partner Wayve just scored robotaxi licenses in London, while the former should have operations live in 15 cities by EOY.

Over at Lyft, bookings rose 23% to $5.5 billion, with revenue beating analysts’ expectations. Active riders hit 30.5 million, a record high, showing the company is recapturing demand after a few quarters of stagnation. Of note: approx. 30% of rides in North America were linked to a partnership (e.g. DoorDash, United) and its Nashville Waymo AV depot should be fully up and running by October.

Scaling down, Lime reported its first quarter as a public company, seeing revenue climb 24% YoY to $304 million, while the fleet size grew a similar 22%. While the company reported an Adjusted EBITDA of $84M, costs grew faster than revenue and the company isn’t truly profitable yet; either way, investors were giddy with the results.

Capping things off with a focus on delivery, DoorDash saw total orders up 27% YoY while GOV popped 36%, implying the AOV is improving nicely. About one third of that growth comes from its recent acquisition of Deliveroo. Membership is driving a lot of value creation, with DashPass members placing approx. 75% of total orders across the U.S. grocery and retail categories. Revenue beat expectations but profit came a bit short, thanks in part to investments in robotics; overall, investors were happy with that mix. DoorDash believes Dot will deliver a “high single-digit percentage of orders” in its largest test market by year’s end.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Green grids! California’s electrical grid produced over half of its capacity via solar power in May, a global first for any major network. Expect further greenification thanks to complimentary initiatives like Massachusetts expanding its vehicle-to-grid incentives and Base Power raising $1B for backyard batteries.

Big money: Moove raised $250M at a $2.1B valuation, led by Mubadala, Toyota Woven and Ion Pacific. The money will build out its AV fleet ownership and a robotic maintenance network. Meanwhile, India’s River raised $120M to scale production of its beefy mopeds. On the smaller side, Fuvex pulled in €3M for dual-use drones and Scuter raised €3.5 million (I feel like that brand name desperately needs an umlaut.)

Doubling down on Vegas: Following in Zoox’s driverless footsteps, Motional plans to also begin paid, commercial robotaxi service in Sin City by year’s end.

Rail down under: After a relatively speedy decade of construction, Auckland, New Zealand’s new City Rail Link is set to open to the public on September 13th. As the country’s largest-ever infrastructure investment, the project adds a number of new rail stations under the city center. Combined with an earlier electrification project, this transforms the region’s older rail lines into a frequent S-Bahn / RER-like suburban metro network.

Carsharing saga: Beleaguered OEM Stellantis is selling its Free2Move carshare biz to Mutares, with the price undisclosed. Car cos love to spin up new mobility businesses, throw a few somewhat related ideas at the wall for 5-10 years, and then pivot back to “let’s sell a few more trucks.” I expect the D.C. operations will be shuttered shortly. Meanwhile, Bolt is expanding its own carsharing product to Warsaw.

California Infill Summit: Can we actually get things built in California? The Council of Infill Builders is convening the people working to make sure the answer is YES. Join builders, contractors, lawyers, lenders, utilities, elected officials, planners, community organizations, sustainability professionals and students on August 19-20 at the LA Athletic Club. Register now.

A tough, but delicious business: The pandemic has changed the restaurant biz forever, more than doubling the the amount of orders handled via delivery, while decimating downtown restos that relied on the office worker lunch rush. L.A. Material breaks down how one hot new restaurant manages to make their numbers work.

MobilityVC backs Endera: Our team was delighted to announce a new investment into Endera, a manufacturer of premium specialty buses, with electric, CNG and propane-powered options.

Are we banning the right bikes? After a spate of deadly ebike crashes, NYC is looking to crack down on the proliferation electric bicycles and scooters, many of which are already illegal to sell or operate. Across the country, LA is also looking to up regulations. But as Streetsblog rightly argues, these well-intentioned bills seem more likely to punish safe and lawful ebike riders, while doing little about the rise of what are essentially electric motorcycles for kidz.

Trucks, trucks and more trucks 😢: Rivian’s quarterly profit popped 27% to $1.66B, and it achieved consolidated gross profitability, as it began delivering its smaller R2 SUV to customers. Ford finally revealed more details on its "cheap” EV, the $28,350 Fathom electric pickup. And Lucid delayed its plans to roll out a more smaller and affordable vehicle, in a bid to conserve cash.

OMF musings: The Open Mobility Foundation released MDS 2.1, expanding mode and services scope. They’re also hiring for a Communications and Engagement Manager, a Community Specification Development Manager and an Operations Manager. And join their Seattle Mixer on Aug. 26.

A few good links: Protectionism comes for physical AI. Miami Beach Commission undoes purple curb loading zones. NYC advocates for cracking down on placard abuse. Amtrak pushes ahead with problematic reorganization. Montreal explores transit expansion. As does Northern Indiana. Brussels court bans shared scooters and bikes. Amazon net sales climb 20%, as grocery sales expand, Amazon Now grows 80% in a quarter and AI spending eats into FCF. Can AVs “behave”? Arcimoto assets sold to new hold co. FRA updates HSR noise regulations. Meet the entirety of Uber’s AV investment ecosystem. Lyft’s Freenow buys Irish taxi dispatcher Lynk and Swift. Grab launches AV shuttles in Singapore. Colorado looks to launch regional rail. Daimler shutters Freightliner plant in Oregon; shame to see more West Coast manufacturing retrenchment. New research shows Uber + Lyft market entry led to an increase in both regional GDP per capita and in seasonal, temporary or otherwise intermittent employment per working age population, but not overall employment or earnings. Ontario shut off its traffic cameras (thanks Doug Ford) and surprise, surprise: dangerous driving has surged. NYCDOT seeks Transit Planner, Bus Priority Analyst and Senior Project Manager, Rapid Bus Network Development. Appeals court reinstates Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Atoms partners with Joby to build vertiports, hires ex-Uber finance chief. Homelessness on LA Metro down 57%. Hamburg picks Umovity for “AI” traffic control. Why Manna picked Tulsa for U.S. drone ops. Google Maps beefs up conversational / discovery features. Tesla and SpaceX to build $16.8B chip fab. EVgo adds Tesla Superchargers. Charged up curbs: NYC expands curbside charing pilot (use It’s Electric’s beautiful hardware, not these gangly wiry guys!) Bay Wheels rebrands to Lyft Bike (can we stop worrying these guys are going to abruptly abandon the micromobility market?) Enough with this slopulism: Massachusetts congresspeople push for free transit (the money would be better served making transit faster and more frequent!)

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

While savvy consumers lived off VC-subsidized groceries, many cities briefly suffered the consequences. In the dash to meet these ultra-fast SLAs, couriers would often ride against traffic or on sidewalks, endangering locals. In a bid to saturate neighborhoods with local depots, all sorts of properties were turned into dark warehouses, often out of compliance with neighborhood zoning.

And then, just as suddenly as they all cropped up, these q-commerce companies began to wither away, the bubble popped by central banks raising interest rates above zero-ish percent. In the U.S., this started just over four years ago, right around the time that JOKR’s COO Aspa Leka spoke at Curbivore 2022 (oops!)

In truth, it was more a retrenchment than a total extinction. Players like Getir and JOKR retrenched to Turkey, Brazil, India and the Gulf, all countries with the necessary mix of relatively wealthy urban consumers and a teeming labor pool of couriers who would work fast (and cheap) enough to make the economics stick.

In the U.S. and E.U., the business model was coopted. In Europe, delivery networks like Delivery Hero started opening its own dark stores, tapping into the existing consumer demand from their restaurant-related operations. In the U.S., we’ve seen Walmart, Amazon and regional grocery chains pick up the pieces, using their existing infrastructure to compete over 30-minute, or faster, deliveries.

And in just the past few days, a new slew of developments portends the return of even more instant deliveries: Grocers like Hy-Vee and Tesco dramatically expanded their 20-minute operations; Atoms just raised $1.7 billion, with a pitch that’s all about speed and automation; Indian mega-deliverer Blinkit is finally on the verge of profitability, and a new report highlights just how hungry consumers are for instant convenience.

Over at Modern Delivery, I’ve broken down each of these stories, highlighting how it all adds up to the raucous return of rapid delivery. This time, let’s hope cities are ready!

Modern Delivery

The Raucous Return of Rapid Delivery

Instant delivery, quick commerce, rapid and ultra-fast delivery… whatever you call it, the idea of getting your goods in 30, 20 or even 15 minutes boomed during the pandemic, and then popped just as quickly as the ZIRP era came to a close. But recently, the sector seems to have finally recovered, with Delivery Hero’s quick commerce accomplishments bolst…

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a month ago · 10 likes · Modern Delivery and Jonah Bliss

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Delivery drones take off: DoorDash continues to up its hardware ambitions, with co-founder Stanley Tang announcing the launch of DoorDash Air, an FAA Part 135 certified drone operator. This might turn up the heat a bit on existing partners Manna, Flytrex and Wing. Speaking of those latter two, Wing and Walmart are expanding their ops in Florida, while Flytrex and Nash are collaborating on an order management system to route activity to mixed fleets. For context, rewatch Stanley Tang, Wing CEO Adam Woodworth and Coco CEO Zach Rash at Curbivore 2025.

Gadzoox! Amazon-owned Zoox finally received federal regulatory approval to begin paid robotaxi deployments, after about a year of only being permitted for unpaid trial rides. The exemption caps the Zoox fleet at 2,500 vehicles for two years; Zoox says Vegas will be the first market to go paid. Meanwhile, lawmakers are pushing for new federal AV standards.

Destination unknown: Seems like a lot of tech partnerships are on the rocks this week, as Waymo and Uber consider dissolving their partnership amidst “diverging objectives” and warring policy goals. Waymo just announced plans to launch its own app in Atlanta and Austin, markets that previously required AV riders to use Uber. (Waymo pulled its fleet from Uber’s Phoenix operations in May.) Meanwhile, Lyft has partnered with Baidu’s Apollo Go, beginning tests on London streets with “dozens” of vehicles. During my recent visit to the U.K., I was surprised by just how many Chinese vehicles were on the streets, but I suppose Britain basically has no domestic automaking economy left to protect.

Speaking of protectionism… Not content with having kicked out Polestar, the U.S. Senate is adopting new legislation that would further ban Chinese-linked cars from America. One of the passed bills appears to ban Mercedes-Benz, due to an existing passive Chinese investment into the German OEM. Expect auto prices to keep rising as manufacturers are forced to find new suppliers for select components. The ban hammer has also just been extended to foreign-made humanoids and quadrupeds.

This is why your train is delayed: The APTA published a response to the USDOT’s draconian proposals for public transit funding, which include eliminating the Highway Trust Fund’s Mass Transit Account. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has refused to spend billions that congress has already allocated for transit. But at least there are plans to rename NY Penn Station after the President, phew! And in cuter news, subway service in Hong Kong has been repeatedly suspended due to monkey intrusions.

Land use, delicious land use: The drive-thru restaurant was arguably invented in Los Angeles in 1931, with burger icon In-N-Out evolving the concept towards its modern form a few years later. While the format prioritizes automotive convenience, it can have deleterious effects on nearby pedestrians and even other motorists. Now the SoCal city of Culver City is considering banning drive-thrus, joining a small list of other ‘burgs that have stood up to Big Hamburger.

The map is not the terri-yaki-tory: DoorDash has updated its fee structure, so that further away orders are likely to cost more. This will subtly improve traffic, as the old system really had no way of signaling that your burrito might be coming from 9 miles away. Overall, delivery fees have dropped meaningfully in the past year.

NYC shenanigans: Yet another rideshare startup wants to challenge the Uber-Lyft duopoly — meet Throo. While the company is looking to pick up drivers by promising a smaller take-rate, it appears to instead ask riders to pay a fixed platform fee, which will certainly make consumer uptake difficult. Meanwhile, TNC scofflaw Empower is in trouble for skirting congestion fee surcharges. And the MTA has unveiled plans to fix up problematic interlockings that routinely delay subway service, although it looks like this will reduce the number of one-seat rides from point-to-point.

The BAT signal: Our friends at LACI BATWorks have launched their Cohort 11 Pilot Applications. Backed by a $100M city investment, BATWorks offers climate tech innovators the space, infrastructure, and ecosystem support they need to prove and scale technologies, on the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Politics ain’t beanbag: An LA Superior Court judge ordered Waymo to stop overnight charging at two hubs in Santa Monica, in a victory for city officials, while the AV co. claims the city ordinance violates an earlier agreement. Remember, robotaxis don’t vote…

A few good links: Tesla builds 10 millionth EV, while India’s River rolls off 500,000th e-moped.. TK-helmed Atoms raises $1.7B, looks to have abandoned plans to buy Chinese AVer Pony AI. Dott reports €47M in Q2 net revenue. Oklahoma City voters mull commuter rail proposal. Toyota and Uber expand access to EVs for ridehailing in Europe. Waymo collects thousands in parking tickets across Austin. Ford picks Apple Maps. Upshift partners with Autzu on AV hubs. The Boring Company seeks new funding at $20B valuation; while in other boring news, tunneling for the Swiss-Italian Brenner Base Tunnel is completed. Taiwan approves HSR extension to less-populous east side. Lés nimbÿs — Swiss petrol station owners delay tram extension. Li’l car, big competition: China’s BYD enters Japan’s electrified kei car segment. Penske sells 5% more cars in Q2. A very oily mystery: China appears to have drawn down hidden petrol reserves, tempering global gas prices. It would be nice to go back to enforcing basic laws in the public realm: California restaurateurs complain that street vendors have an unfair advantage. Despite EV charger shortage, Florida plans to redeploy NEVI money for eVTOL landing pads. Spurred by Tesla issues, NHTSA considers new car door handle regs. Never trust the consultants: PwC reports on EVs and AI found to be riddled with AI-generated nonsense.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Just how substantial is it? Insurance accounts for 21% of the average Uber or Lyft fare, according to Gridwise’s analysis, compared with 14.9% for the platform fee. Driver base pay is 53.3%, with bonuses and other driver pay making up the balance. Put another way, more than one out of every five dollars that a rider spends is put towards insurance before the driver or platform gets its cut.

The good news is that coverage costs are finally starting to trend downwards. From Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, average insurance expense per ride fell 5.1% on Uber rides and 5.5% at Lyft. The two companies now move in near lockstep, suggesting this is less about platform-specific changes and more about broader dynamics in the insurance market.

Delivering A Lighter Load

Delivery workers face the same basic insurance squeeze, but on a smaller scale. An Uber Eats job carries a lower insurance expense than a passenger trip, unsurprising given that distances are generally shorter and don’t involve the risk of another human sitting in the vehicle. These expenses are actually falling faster: the average Uber Eats insurance costs dropped 8.3% from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026 and have been trending downward since 2024.

But delivery isn’t simply ridehail without the awkward small talk; its insurance geography is almost inverted. The West is still the most expensive region for rideshare coverage, while it sits in the middle of the pack for delivery insurance. Meanwhile, the Southwest and South see the highest delivery expenses for deliveries, but not for ridehailing.

Most regions also enjoyed meaningful delivery-insurance relief over the past year. Expenses fell 14.1% in the Southwest, 11.5% in the South, 9.9% in the West and 8% in the Midwest. The East Coast was the exception to the rule, with costs rising 3%.

That split matters for anyone trying to understand courier take-home pay. A modest insurance charge can still consume a meaningful piece of a relatively low-value delivery order, but we lack the data to see exactly how an average delivery order breaks down costs-wise. So while we can see that insurance expenses are shrinking; we can’t yet say how much of that relief reached couriers rather than platforms, merchants or customers.

West Coast, Best Cost Improvement

The most dramatic shift came out west, where rideshare insurance expenses plunged 20.6% year over year. There’s a fairly obvious suspect: California’s SB 371, which took effect January 1. The law reduced mandatory uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage from $1 million to $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, while leaving liability insurance minimums at the $1M threshold.

That’s a significant haircut, and the timing lines up neatly with the sharp drop between Q4 ‘25 and Q1 ‘26. While the data isn’t granular enough to see things on a state-by-state basis, California makes up such a large part of the “west” market that it would be hard to find another likely culprit.

Elsewhere, the story runs in several directions at once: rideshare insurance expense fell 6.3% in the South, but rose 15.8% in the Southwest, 7% on the East Coast and 3.5% in the Midwest. Insurance may be priced as one line on an app-generated receipt, but underneath it sits a very local mix of regulation, claims, trip types, driver pools and carrier appetite.

Those differences can even show up within a single city, not just across broad regions. In Chicago’s 20 lowest-income ZIP codes, insurance expense per gig was 37.6% higher than across the rest of the metro area, despite relatively similar trip distances. Insurance also consumed 18.3% of the customer price in those neighborhoods, compared with 12.5% elsewhere: suggesting that geography and neighborhood-level risk pricing can matter as much as mileage.

Pass the Savings (To Whom, Exactly?)

Here’s where the rubber meets the income statement. California’s law says savings from lower insurance expenditures should be passed on to workers and consumers: “it is the intent of the Legislature that this act ensures that financial savings realized as a result of any reductions in insurance expenditures for transportation network companies will be strategically reinvested to enhance the economic stability and welfare of drivers and riders.”

But so far, the early results don’t exactly scream “trickle-down.” While western insurance expense fell 20.6%, customer prices rose 3.4% and platform fees jumped 29.1%. Driver base pay increased just 1.2% — the smallest gain of any region. Some of the savings may have supported promotions, risk reserves, other operating costs or selective price cuts that disappear inside a regional average. Uber has also said it expects hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Mobility insurance-line savings in 2026 and that some will be recycled into lower ride pricing. But based on this initial snapshot, drivers have not been the obvious first stop for the windfall.

One caveat: Gridwise is analyzing the insurance expenses labeled by platforms within gig-level transaction economics. That is a valuable view of how a fare is carved up, but it isn’t the same as an audited, trip-by-trip account of what an insurer ultimately paid or what risk truly costs. Still, when a charge consumes one-fifth of the rider’s fare, and can move by double digits after a policy change, it deserves a bit of scrutiny.

The larger takeaway is that insurance isn’t a rounding error in the ever-growing industry of gig mobility; it’s one of the sector’s biggest economic levers. Ridehail carries the heavier burden, delivery follows a different regional logic and regulatory changes can bring costs down quickly. The remaining question is the one drivers and riders will care about most: when that lever shifts, who gets lifted?

Read The Full Report

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Deliverance: Delivery and foodhall heavyweight Wonder just raised a fresh $650M in funding, with investors drawn to its vision of drone-powered deliveries saturating the fast growing suburbs of Texas. Over at Ottomate, I chatted with PJ Poykayil, Wonder’s Head of Customer Delivery Operations, about what it’ll take to actually make those logistics work at scale. And for folks out there wondering how Marc Lore keeps raising these big bucks, the $9B pre-money round offers investors serious down-side protection in the planned IPO.

Tesla troubles: Tesla released its Q2 earnings, with revenue coming in at a record $28.24 billion, but profitability falling wildly as the company ramps up spending. And while the company is launching new robotaxi markets — hello Orlando and Tampa — paid mileage growth seems to have flatlined. Meanwhile, the NHTSA is looking for internal corporate documents that may acknowledge that Tesla’s semi-autonomous systems would be safer with radar and rideshare drivers keep falling asleep at the wheel while using FSD.

Turkish two step: Elsewhere in AV land, Türkiye is emerging as a real hot-spot. Tripy is looking to deploy China’s Maxus Mifa 7 electric vehicle platform, equipped with CalmCar’s L4 autonomy, to the streets of Ankara. Meanwhile, Marti has partnered with Tensor (makers of sleek but very speculative AV hardware….) to launch robotaxis across the country.

Cams grilled: Camera-based road safety enforcement continues to take off across North America, with Toronto’s TTC turning on a Gatekeeper Systems deployment to protect streetcar riders. Meanwhile, Chicago’s system is hauling in better than projected revenue, with Amazon, FedEx and UPS appearing to be the worst infractors. But road surveillance systems of all kinds could be in political peril if Flock Safety can’t get its act together: its problematic software just resulted in police stopping another auto journalist, but the company insists its product is working exactly as it should, even as other Flock employees seem to be abusing its ability to spy on adults and children alike. Concurrently, the FHWA has removed speed cameras (and bike lanes) from its list of proven road safety measures.

Other cam stars: Former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is joining Metropolis as an advisor, as the computer vision startup expands from parking into urban infrastructure, mobility, and other real-world systems. From what I’ve heard, expect to see some more interesting use cases pop up at airports!

Detour ahead: Despite its reputation for pro-transit urbanism, Europe continues to advance highway expansion projects that would be pretty much unthinkable in the more urbane parts of the United States. England’s National Highways just commissioned Europe’s largest-ever TBM to construct the Lower Thames Crossing, a new 2.6 mile, £11B ($14.7B) highway tunnel in the eastern exurbs of London. This joins projects like Berlin’s new in-city extension of the A100 that are arguably slightly more pleasantly designed than your average American freeway, but will still most certainly induce more driving.

Dead mall (sub)urbanism: The Dallas Mavericks just selected their developer, cementing plans to move the baseball team out of downtown and onto the site of the defunct Valley View Mall in North Dallas, building not just a new arena but a whole new entertainment district. Without even getting into the ridiculousness of the public financing of stadia (here’s a great blog if you’re into that sort of thing) the move will further drain the life out of Dallas’ central business district — one of the few walkable and transit-accessible parts of the region. While Dallas does seem to have some mild plans to improve sidewalks near the new stadium, the surrounding land use is inherently difficult to retrofit for urbanism. It’s ironic, but perhaps not unexpected, to see this sort of stadium-centered new urbanism move from being a tool meant to reinvigorate downtowns (see Columbus’ Arena District for a city-led model, LA Live for a sports team-led model, or even the development of the Mavs’ current home) to another tool for pushing out auto-oriented sprawl (also well exemplified by the Braves’ recent move to “The Battery.”)

Le covoiturage convergence: France’s Karos just finished consolidation of the country’s daily carpooling services, buying up the division of BlaBlarCar that’s focused on short-distance commutes. BlaBlaCar will focus its coverage on long-distance carpooling, making it a one-stop shop for travelers looking to criss-cross countries by bus, train or shared car.

Join my team! Calling all self-starters: MobilityVC seeks a Ventures & Advisory Associate.

A few good links: Milwaukee transit flirts with death spiral as 25% service cuts loom. Talk about power hungry — Valar Atomics eyes $1B round. FRA study identifies Penn Station capacity upgrades, includes limited through-running. Interview with Uber Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal. Hyundai buys remainder of Boston Dynamics from Softbank. Bingo E2 launch party set for 7/28 in Nairobi. Tyred raises £2.5M for ebike subscriptions and mobile repairs in UK. Ship crews offered huge bonuses to transit Hormuz as attacks flare. Saddled by low salaries and high costs, Miami is now the country’s second least affordable metro area. DC fast charger availability improves. NYC cabs now available on Curb and Lyft; Curb Flow goes live in North Carolina. Atlanta considers dynamic curb management. You love to see it: NYC Mayor Mamdani promises small-business regulatory and permit reform. Archer and Anduril partner on military eVTOL. Amazon Now adds fresh offerings in Brazil. More evidence that even high-end housing construction helps renters across all income levels. Aurora debuts second-gen driverless truck. Avride delivery bots stuck in the rain as Jersey City hit by deluge. Wheely fights NYC rule requiring detailed customer trip pattern disclosures. Veo goes live in Salt Lake City. Voi quarterly revenue climbs 47% YoY to €68.8M.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Last night I attended the launch party for Chip, a new vehicle made by the excellent hardware minds of Ilan Penn and Jameson Detweiler. As you can see in the launch video, they’ve checked just about every box an urbanist could want out of a vehicle: it’s cute and communicative, energy efficient, features remote driving and most importantly it’s small and affordable (retailing for about $15k.)

While the marketing leans into beachy use cases — throw on your surf board or bike and head to the boardwalk! — these neighborhood electric vehicles really should be perfect for anyone who just does in-city driving: it’s street legal on any road with a 35 mph or less speed limit. If you’re not hopping on the highway to grab coffee, pickup groceries or meet up with friends, why exactly do you need to get into a huge SUV?

The “NEV” category has existed for almost 30 years, and anyone that’s spent some time on a golf course community has likely seen folks puttering around in their GEMs on the neighboring streets. But lately there’s been a renewed interest in the segment; just last week, Stellantis announced its stylish Fiat Topolino will finally be heading stateside, while others like Infinite Machine are pushing souped up electric mopeds.

Getting Americans out of their oversized and overpriced cars isn’t going to be easy, but making the alternatives unique and stylish will certainly help convince consumers that there’s merit to going small. The more we can do to help enforce road safety rules — remember when we actually went after people that texted while driving or blew through stop lights? — the more we can get other road users comfortable in these vehicles as well. A big part of the reason that quadricycles are so much popular in Europe isn’t just that the cities are “old” but that they still actually enforce traffic laws…

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Yeehaw! We’re excited to announce that the next edition of our Urban Autonomy Summit is headed to Austin on October 14th. Texas has emerged as a hot-spot for AV logistics, so we’re looking forward to deep conversations on everything from robo-trucking to drone deliveries. Reach out if you’d like to speak or sponsor.

Speaking of robotaxis… MOIA took its autonomous shuttle service live in Hamburg. Germany has been pretty slow on AV uptake, so this is a win not just for VW, but for other ecosystem players like MobilityVC-backed Motor AI. Coco’s autonomous delivery bots expanded to D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood; some competitors are just across the river in Arlington. Tesla claims to be building a wheelchair-accessible robotaxi. And Uber’s getting into the regulatory capture game, as it lobbies D.C.’s city government to require that any AV operators maintain a hybrid fleet also composed of human drivers.

Goal! With the World Cup wrapping up, we should give three cheers to all the transit agencies that impressively handled the visitors flocking to stadiums and the locals headed to fan zones. In LA, it’s served as a nice test run of sorts for the ‘28 Olympics, with Metro and other local agencies coming out looking well prepared. LA Metro saw ridership jump 9% YoY in June, and that’s not even counting riders on its special stadium-serving busses.

Uber Eats Delivery Hero: After a long courtship, Uber has officially unveiled its $14.8 billion offer for Delivery Hero; if approved, the deal will effectively double Uber’s global footprint. Uber Eats is also beefing up its offerings at home, having just signed new partnerships with GameStop and Foot Locker. Competitor DoorDash just launched an integration with Shopify, aimed at letting local retailers offer easy delivery.

Squeezed: Everee has a new report out looking at gig worker pay. While drivers are worried about EVs eating into their earnings, their more immediate concerns are around high gas prices. 69% of drivers say rising fuel costs have significantly or moderately reduced their earnings in the past three months, while over a quarter spend 25% or more of their weekly paycheck on gas.

Keep Austin weird(ly bad at building transit!) Austin Transit Partnership, the beleaguered semi-public agency trying to build light rail in Austin, just can’t get out of its own way. It just signed a contract to pay a whopping $16.8 million per light rail vehicle, more than double what Cleveland is paying (and even that one seemed expensive!) I caught up with Jack Craver, who runs the Austin Politics Newsletter, who notes:

“It’s been heartbreaking to watch such a promising transit plan get eaten up by cost disease. It’s hard to know to what extent the problem is due to factors outside of ATP’s control, but it’s very hard to be optimistic about Austin’s transportation future when it takes this much money to build such a puny piece of infrastructure.”

Good street, okay street, bad street: Lisbon is working with ETH Zurich and Bolt to allow its citizens to “trial” new street designs, before the Portuguese capital permanently reallocates road space for non-auto users. Meanwhile, Vital City is making the case that NYC should take ownership of its sidewalks (a nice idea in practice, but this is a big part of why LA’s sidewalks are such a mess.) And speaking of LA, the city just agreed to pay out $20M to the family of someone killed at a missing crosswalk. (Perhaps its time the state reins in nuclear verdicts against the public sector.)

Birds of a feather… Flock Safety’s camera network wrongly tracked an automotive journalist, resulting in a dangerous police raid. Meanwhile, the LAPD is ending its contract with the company, citing “serious concerns” about the how the camera operator handles civil liberties and privacy.

Taking off: A new BloombergNEF report looks at how important airports have become for ridehail services, which is why robotaxi cos will most certainly want access to those juicy curbs. While SFO, LAX and JFK each had nearly 10 million trips, it sure looks like the latter two have some room to jack up their PUDO fees…

A few good links: Wonder raises $650M at $9B pre-money valuation. Miami set to cut bus routes, further defer potential rail extensions. EV chargers growing fast in the South. Singapore completes Circle Line. Manna picks Tulsa as U.S. drone hub. Bipartisan housing law goes into effect. Waze adds AI-powered features, motorcycle functions. Lyft names Senthil Padmanabhan as CTO. Germany wants to hold micromobility companies liable for damages caused by users. Michigan’s MIX Summit returns on 9/17. St. Louis Metrolink to ask voters if money earmarked for light rail can be redeployed towards BRT. Lucid Motors denies bankruptcy rumors. Sheryl Sandberg and DVx invest in Self Inspection. BP shutters corporate venture arm, as it retreats from cleantech. Jacksonville’s sorta-self-driving shuttle service NAVI is on the rocks, while the transit operator’s CEO heads to a new gig in Dallas. Greylock raises $1.5B early stage fund. Women-only taxis take off in Finland. Everyone agrees spaced-based data centers are not happening. NYC’s new Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crew aims to help make tech pilots permanent. Win-win: Manhattan to lose parking spaces as city installs more trash bins. LA People Mover construction consortium sues city; why oh why did the airport award some of these same contractors its dumb roadway project. Bolt adds London-based Hiyacar’s p2p carsharing to its app. Bliq approved for AV testing in Finland.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Smaller players are getting on the action too. Matternet is in the process of going public, raising a $33M private placement as it heads towards open trading. The company’s stayed relatively capital efficient - having previously raised only about $80M — while notching a partnership with UPS, and became the first company with an FAA type-certified drone delivery system, initially focused on healthcare before expanding into food and retail.

At the center is founder and CEO Andreas Raptopoulos, who’s been building toward this moment since 2011, back when drones were limited to military uses or hobbyist tinkering. In the conversation below — first published on Ottomate — we unpack Matternet’s evolution from humanitarian logistics to urban delivery platform, why he rejects the hub-and-spoke model, how the economics work, and what it might take for drones to move from novelty to utility.

Jonah Bliss: Let’s start at a high level, what’s the Matternet story?

Andreas Raptopoulos: In 2010, I came across what was happening in the DIY drone space. I came into the space with a question, “has something changed in the technology landscape that would allow us to build a different kind of flying vehicle?”

As I started thinking through what was happening, I realized there was a DIY drone movement building up. People were taking sensors popularized through smartphones, computers, GPS units, and creating these tiny quadcopters that could aviate and navigate by themselves.

When I saw that, I thought: this is going to change how the world does transportation—for goods and eventually for people.

That led me to start Matternet in 2011. We were among the first companies to talk about drones as a civilian tool. Back then, drones were mostly associated with the military.

We started by asking: where could this have immediate impact? These systems weren’t permitted in the U.S. or Europe yet—but there were places in the world with no transportation infrastructure at all. So we focused on those.

We did projects in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2012, then Bhutan and Papua New Guinea in 2014, and later Malawi. We worked with organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF.

The idea was leapfrogging: in places without roads, could you skip straight to aerial transport—like how cellular skipped landlines?

For the first few years, up until 2014, we focused entirely on humanitarian work. I gave a talk in 2013—“If there are no roads, there’s a drone for that”—and that really became how people understood what we were doing.

But eventually, I realized humanitarian funding wouldn’t be enough. It was clear we’d need something like $100M+ to build the full technology stack. So we pivoted to commercial use cases.

We entered Switzerland in 2015 and started working with regulators and Swiss Post to figure out how to safely operate drones over cities.

We knew that about 80% of last-mile delivery happens in urban and suburban areas. And something like 85–86% of Amazon shipments are under 2 kg.

So the question became: how do we build a system that regulators and the public trust in those environments?

In 2017, we became the first company approved to fly over cities in Switzerland. We focused first on healthcare—transporting diagnostics, lab samples, and medicines between facilities.

If you look at a system like UCSF, there are dozens of locations moving samples and materials all day. If you can reduce that to 5–10 minutes, it changes efficiency and patient outcomes significantly.

We’ve always been told BVLOS is just around the corner…

Yeah, exactly. And now it finally is here.

We partnered with UPS in 2019 and launched the first commercial drone delivery service in the U.S. A lot of people were doing pilots at the time—but this was a real operation.

Our philosophy is different from most. We don’t want to be UPS—we want to be Apple or Tesla. We want to build the machines and systems that others operate.

So with UPS, we provided the full stack: the drones, the ground infrastructure, and the software. They operated the system.

Then COVID hit, and BVLOS timelines slipped.

But in 2022, we became the first—and still the only—company with a drone delivery system type-certified by the FAA. That process took four and a half years.

About 14 months ago, we launched our first home delivery product. Up until then, we were only doing B2B healthcare. Now we’re expanding into food and retail.

Can you talk a bit about the unit economics, especially outside of healthcare?

In healthcare, we already have positive unit economics. Customers are willing to pay $20+ per delivery, depending on the market.

For food delivery, the target is different. We believe we can get costs well below $5 per delivery, while customers are willing to pay $6–$8.

To get there, a few things matter:

• You need volume—around 100 deliveries per day per location

• You can’t have people on-site operating drones

• You need low-cost, high-utilization aircraft

Think of it in terms of cost per flight hour. If an aircraft costs $20,000 and runs for 10,000 hours, that’s $2 per hour. If you can do 5–8 deliveries per hour, you’re looking at around $0.40 per delivery just for the aircraft.

Then you layer in batteries, real estate, supervision, and maintenance.

What does supervision look like?

The drones are autonomous. The operator isn’t piloting—they’re supervising.

Today, we’re at about 3 drones per operator in commercial operations, 20:1 in testing, and we’re targeting 50:1 or even 100:1. That’s a big lever for reducing costs.

What about the customer experience? Do people need a yard?

Single-family homes are easiest—front or backyard delivery using tether drop.

In apartment buildings, we usually use a designated drop location. The customer comes down to retrieve it. It’s a slight step back in convenience, but faster and cheaper. We’re also exploring locker-based systems.

It seems like part of the model is actually shifting work to the customer.

Exactly. That’s an under-appreciated piece.

Amazon tried ground robots where customers had to come outside—it didn’t work well. But in food delivery, the customer is usually present anyway.

With drones, we have an advantage because we can access private space—like yards—where ground robots can’t go.

How do you compare to competitors like Amazon, Wing, or Zipline?

Amazon isn’t really a direct competitor for us—we don’t see them in deals.

The main players we encounter are Wing and Zipline.

Our differentiation is that we don’t believe in the hub model. We don’t think you should have a separate leg from merchant to drone hub. That hurts both economics and experience. We integrate directly at the merchant.

What about regulation?

We’ve hit an inflection point in the U.S. BVLOS is effectively here—we’re already operating under it. The FAA’s Part 108 rule should formalize it soon.

There are still open questions—security protocols, traffic management—but overall, regulation is no longer the main blocker.

What does this look like by 2030?

I’d estimate 3 to 5 million drone deliveries per day in the U.S.

For consumers, that means:

• Faster delivery—maybe 5 minutes from prep

• Lower costs—around $5

• Better quality—food arrives fresh

For cities, it means fewer cars, less congestion, and lower emissions. The key is that these systems need to be almost invisible—you shouldn’t hear or notice them unless you’re using them.

Anything else we should know?

It’s just an incredibly exciting moment. This is something I’ve been working toward for over a decade. Our long-term vision is global: someone in a remote area could order a system, plug it in, connect it to the network, and instantly have access to aerial logistics.

What we’re building now—in food and retail—is what enables that future.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Happy birthday, America! No, not Independence Day… we just passed an equally momentous anniversary: the Federal-Aid Highway Act turned 70. Signed by Eisenhower on June 29, 1956, today the federal highway network spans 41,000+ miles and carries about a quarter of nationwide auto traffic. And it had, uhh, zero negative externalities! ;)

Robo-blitz scaling? Waymo is expanding from 11 cities to 15, as it turns on fully driver-free service in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa and Denver. The AV co. also began autonomous testing of its Hyundai Ioniq 5s, as it looks to augment its fleet of Jags. Tesla’s Robotaxi service is also expanding, at a rather modest pace. While many headlines are calling this a launch in Miami — conjuring up mental images of beachy high-rises and bustling activity — the actual service area is the low-rise suburbs around West Miami and Coral Terrace, which look like this. And Apptopia has taken a look at the App Store market share of the major AV players, finding that Zoox is biting into Waymo’s marketshare.

Seeing green… With the Feds having torpedoed EV subsidies, California is reviving state-level incentives, albeit in slightly different form from the old CVRP system. The state just allocated $135M in subsidies, $3.5k off new EVs and $1.75k off used ones, with the state paying half at the point of purchase, and participating automakers chipping in the other half. The deal is only good for cars with an MSRP of under $50k, unless the OEM is HQed in the Golden State. It’s nice to see the state getting a bit more creative with using its budget to negotiate with the automakers its subsidizing: we shoveled way too much money at Tesla, Toyota, and GM only to see them backstab the state in various forms. That said, I would maybe expand the program to include international OEMs with their U.S. HQs in California. The CPUC also just approved $20,300 rebates, plus $1,700 in annual charging incentives, for low and moderate income ridehail drivers.

Moto bene! Here’s your chance to buy a cute, tiny car: Stellantis is going to import its pint-sized Fiat Topolino into the U.S. Priced at $13,995, the quadricycle / NEV maxes out at 25 MPH, but what it lacks in range (and airbags) it more than makes up for in cuteness. But if this vehicle looks too darn big for you, head to Switzerland, where the itty bitty Microlino is now available via carsharing.

Bikesharing ambitions lyfted: Lyft announced the planned acquisition of Serveo’s Spanish bikeshare business. This means Lyft Urban Solutions, which runs programs like NYC’s Citi Bike and Madrid’s BiciMad, will take over operations in Barcelona, Bilbao, Valladolid, Zaragoza and more. Hopefully this will put to bed the rumor that Lyft is hoping to exit the bikeshare space, a bit of FUD that’s been used to slow down contract negotiations in markets like LA.

For my fellow cartographic freaks… The Transport Politic’s Yonah Freemark just released an excellent new suite of tools, in his never-ending quest to help visualize transit usage across this fair land. Click around and enjoy looking at modeshare by census tract, VRM by metro area, transit ridership over time, etc.

Good muckraking: LAX’s people mover is now three plus years late, and seemingly zillions over-budget. A new investigative video makes a convincing case that the problem lies with the construction consortium — Fluor, Balfourt Beatty, Flatiron West, Dragados — abusing a flawed contract resolution system, as well as a potential biased single-person project neutral. Shame!

Better transport for NYC: Two must-read reports just came out in the Big Apple. The first — Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service — looks to speed up bus service, both by improving local buses and launching true BRT lines. The second — Central Business District Tolling Program: Parking Study — looks at how the city’s congestion cordon has impacted street parking. There was a slight bump in parking utilization near the toll boundaries, but no real rise in “park and ride” behavior near further out stations. Parking spots look to be over-utilized when they’re free, so the city should increase metering and for the love of god finally introduce paid permit districts.

Other countries get the goods: Rennes, France — population 230,890 — plans to improve its metro system frequency to one train every sixty seconds. Meanwhile Peru just finished tunneling for Lima’s second metro line. And Tehran just inaugurated a new station on Line 7, obviously they had nothing else to deal with lately…

Shout out to two cute projects: Meet Vleyr, which is applying the gig work economy to the very NYC-centric issue of moving cars around on alternate-side parking days. And kudos to Greg Rogers on launching Mobility Mayor, a sandbox meant to test the impact of various AV policies in D.C.

A few good links: America has fewer and fewer places to relax and socialize. Southeast Asian mobility and delivery super-app Gojek founder sentenced to ten years in prison. California homicide rate hits historic lows, similar to nationwide trends. China passes new laws to protect gig workers. Cleantech funding holds steady. London freezes bus fares. Street vendors speak out against violence. Autolane launches AV delivery infrastructure. Peak Energy begins construction on sodium-ion battery factory, in Sacramento. Amazon completes millionth delivery via electric cargo bike in Belgium. Bidbus has used car dealers compete for your beater. NYC and LA prepare for flying taxis (file under: speculative.) Sarla finishes first eVTOL flight campaign.

And lastly, thank you to London and New York for coming out to celebrate the mobility community last month!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

From ridehailing, to food and prescription delivery, app-based platforms are now an everyday part of American life. Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults have used an app-based platform as a customer. More than half used one during the past three months, nearly a quarter use platforms more than five times during a typical month, and two-thirds say the services are valuable to their daily lives (up from 63% in 2023.)

While usage may still be on the rise, adoption isn’t universal. Higher-income city dwellers are far more likely to turn to mobility and delivery apps than their poorer, rural counterparts. Sixty-four percent of those making $100k or more reported usage in the past three months, as compared to just 46% for those making under $50k. And there’s very much a lingering digital divide between the old and young: while 57% of those aged 33-45 used the apps in the past quarter, only 44% of those 65 and up did so as well.

These differences become even more pronounced for super-users, the folks using app-based platforms more than five times per month. While 23% of Americans are using these services on a weekly basis, those aged 18 to 34 are three times as likely to do so as those aged 65 and up. With the federal government drastically cutting back on SNAP benefits, which up until recently had been a growing market for grocery delivery platforms, don’t be surprised if lower-income usage falls further in the years to come.

From Side Hustle to Recurring Income

While consumer adoption is slowing, the gig workforce continues to accelerate. The share of adults who have ever earned through a platform increased from 36% in 2023 to 43% today, while the currently active share rose from 23% to 28%.

For most, this is still very much “gig” work, as over two-thirds put in 15 hours or fewer per week on the platforms, and 63% also hold a traditional W-2 job. But 22% of platform workers get the majority of their income from these apps: that’s many millions of Americans.

The Haves, the Have-Nots and the Multi-Appers

In a country growing ever more polarized, support for gig work was surprisingly consistent across political lines: Democrats and Republicans alike both supported and opposed worker reclassification at near-identical rates.

Where we do see a big difference is in which states see the most app-based platform workers. Uptake is highest in the South, alongside states like California and New York. In general, these are the states with the lowest average incomes, or highest costs of living, suggesting more workers are turning to apps to make ends meet.

Interestingly, as these platforms become a part of everyday life, the income appears to be becoming less of an emergency lifeline and more of a routine supplement. In 2023, 54% of app-based platform workers reported the income was ”very helpful” for dealing with inflation; by 2026 that number fell to just 42%. And while workers are relying on these apps to make ends meet, they aren’t loyal to any one platform: 77% reported they multi-app, meaning they turn to a mix of platforms for work.

It’s an app-based world, and we’re all just living (and working) in it.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

The honeymoon is over… Uber and Waymo’s partnership seemed contentious from the start: were they partners or competitors? The wheels started to fall off a few weeks back, when Uber’s CTO started tweeting about “scary” Waymo moments, followed by the two sides taking jabs about whose service better emphasized “equity.” Now it’s officially over, in Phoenix at least: less than three years after putting Waymo rides in the Uber app, Dara & Co no longer list the Arizona capital as an autonomous market. Uber appears to be readying a new partner for the region, while Waymo says it has reintegrated the “pilot” vehicles into its fleet.

Lime green: Micromobility stalwart Lime finally went public, raising $167M in the process. As previously discussed, most the funds will go towards paying down debts. The company is aaaalmost profitable, and saw a nice 9% jump on opening day, valuing the group at around $1.66B. It fell a tad today, sitting at a cool $25 per share.

More money: Meanwhile, Bolt has claimed its first annual net profit, claiming €920,000 ($1.05M) in net income on €2.27B (up 14% YoY) in revenue. The private Estonian company offers a mix of ridehailing, food delivery, carsharing, and micromobility services across Europe, LatAm, Africa, and Southeast Asia. And in China, AV player Momenta readied for a Hong Kong IPO, seeking to raise up to HK$5.89 billion ($751M).

Feeling bloated? The ever increasing size of cars isn’t just an issue for pedestrian safety, it’s also a simple geometry problem. When each car is a bit bigger, your average city block can fit fewer of them for parking or driving. New research shows that cars have been growing an average of 1.2 centimeters (half an inch) per year, resulting in about 100,000 fewer parking spaces in cities like London and Berlin by 2040. Given how much every driver loves an easy parking spot, most car buyers are perversely making their own problems worse. Another new piece of research draws a similar conclusion, finding that the proliferation of autonomous vehicles is eating into usable curb space. As usual, the easiest solution would be charge the market clearing price for these negative externalities…

Adjö and 再见: And just like that, the American car market got a bit more insular… the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has denied Polestar the right to sell new vehicles, starting with model year 2027. The administration decided the Geely-owned automaker had run afoul of the Connected-Car Rule, but in typical opaque fashion has not clarified why their other subsidiaries — Volvo and Zeekr (maker of Waymo’s new Ojai) are still cleared for business.

Ride on… The Outdoorsy Group has officially rebranded as The Ride Platform. While the company got its start as a P2P marketplace for RVs, it’s since expanded into a car rental marketplace (Ride), a fleet management stack (Wheelbase), and an AV insurer (Roamly FSD). Along the way, the company just celebrated hitting $4 billion in GTV.

The geography of jobs: The BLS just released its latest payroll data, showing that 38 of America’s 50 largest metro areas have now recovered from Covid-era job losses. The fastest growing regions have been Austin (up 23.8%), Raleigh, Dallas, Nashville and Salt Lake City, while places like SF, Milwaukee, Portland, Boston and Cleveland still haven’t regained all the jobs they lost. Combine that with the fact that office construction has hit its lowest levels since 2011, and I’d say that we’re unlikely to see much new growth in public transit ridership nationwide…

It’s cool to pool! French carpooling platform BlaBlaCar is on an expansion spree, as it doubles its geographic footprint to serve 41 countries. The company plans to up its service in Europe, LatAm and Southeast Asia, while launching its initial foray into Africa. BlaBlaCar execs credit AI for letting them expand faster, speeding up software and language localization build outs. Last year, the company served 40,000 commuters per day in France and grew 47% in India to 19M passengers.

Pod shop: Aseon Labs just raised $10M, in a seed round led by Crane Venture Partners and with participation by Y Combinator and mobility heavyhitters from the likes of Uber, Turo, Nuro and Zimride. The company hopes to build and deploy robotic pods that can be placed in underutilized urban parking spots, letting AV fleets perform charging and cleaning in a more decentralized fashion. Personally, I think it would be a bit simpler to pay the clerk at the convenience store to plug in the charger and brush off the crumbs, but you gotta say the word ROBOTS!!!! to raise money these days.

The beautiful game? Streetlight has taken a look at congestion data around America’s World Cup stadia, finding that travel times crept up 7X near New York / New Jersey’s Met Life Stadium, while travelers near LA / Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium took over an hour to go five miles. Meanwhile, the APTA has the latest roundup on how transit agencies are using the games to boost ridership. It does look like there are some nice tourism spillover effects happening: the Kansas City streetcar logged record ridership (39k trips in one day), despite being nowhere near the stadium.

A few good links: Enjoy the darkness — LA property owners reject confusing street light measure. Chicago’s infamously privatized parking meters sold to new ownership group. Slowly rebounding transit ridership in SF looks to be lower-income than in the pre-Covid days. Beat the heat: different metro cars in China are set to different temperatures, so you can pick the carriage you find comfiest. CaoCao and May Mobility partner to bring robotaxis to Europe, while Waymo registers its first German entity. CA lawmakers sign deal to increase ridehail safety measures, reduce medical liens, looking to avert dueling ballot measures. Car subscription platform Autonomy nabs new CEO, while Germany’s Finn hits unicorn status. Not so green: LA’s massive warehouse fire likely caused by unpermitted solar array. Acodyne raises €2.5M for autonomous cargo drones. LA upzones transit adjacent parcels, but leaves single family homes untouched (this is why state bills like SB79 are so important!) Santa Barbara votes to keep its main shopping street closed to cars. UAE launches first regional train service (powered by diesel, of course!) Russia closes border rail crossings with Finland, Estonia, Latvia. Joby and Toyota launch air taxi manufacturing JV. CMA CGM buys FedEx Supply Chain unit. New Taipei inaugurates 9 mile MRT Sanying Line. Wonder and Zipline partner on Dallas-area drones. Nexar merges with Nauto. Uber reorganizes data labeling biz. Who owns the sidewalk? Issues with IFP’s transit abundance project. Miami-Dade nears deal for commuter line on Brightline tracks. LA adds new peak-hour bus lanes. MA proposes requirement that ridehail fleet renters only offer EVs. When the going gets tough… Bosch CEO steps down. North Carolina legislature approves bill to eliminate parking minimums statewide. NHTSA readies new standards for robotaxis, eliminating vestigial human driving components. Charging accessibility overtakes costs as biggest barrier to EV adoption for ridehail drivers. State of California pushes four days per week RTO. New Gridwise data shows delivery and ridehailing insurance costs falling, with significant regional variation.

And lastly, thank you to London and New York for coming out to celebrate the mobility community!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Earlier this month we gathered some of the industry’s top minds to discuss the implications of AVs at scale, including execs from two autonomous vehicle brands — Motional and May Mobility — with particularly close links to automakers. Throw in industry experts from Wall Street Journal and Automotive News, plus execs from the likes of Nexar, TaskUs, Voltera, Rocsys, Terawatt and more, and I think we had some particularly insightful conversations. Catch all the recordings below.

A New Vision: Improved Technology for Safer Streets & Highways

Perception technologies are continuously improving, paving a route to not just smarter vehicles, but safer streets and highways. What are the hardware, AI and policy breakthroughs driving adoption forward? This panel explores the promising improvements coming for all road users.

• Jon Miller — Chief Business Officer, Nexar

• Jordan Prickett — WW AI & Automation Partnerships, IBM

• Nick Allen — Director of Business Development, TaskUs

• Henry Greenidge — Senior Policy Advisor & Counsel, DoorDash Labs

• Kathryn Snorrason — Deputy Chief Mobility Officer, State of Michigan (Moderator)

Charged Up Infrastructure: Electrification's Capital Moment

As vehicles electrify and autonomy scales, the biggest mobility story may no longer be the cars themselves — but the infrastructure beneath them. From grid capacity and megawatt charging to robotics, depot development, and industrial policy, electrification is becoming a once-in-a-generation capital and infrastructure transformation. This panel brings together leaders across charging, energy, and public policy to discuss who will finance, build, and control the backbone of the next transportation economy — and why states like Michigan could play a defining role in shaping it.

• John McLean — Head of Market Development, Voltera

• Alessandra Carreon — Chief Climate Officer, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy

• Erin Galiger — Director, North American Markets, Rocsys

• Lindsay VanHulle — Deputy Editor, Automotive News (Moderator)

Owned vs On-Demand: Which Way for AVs?

Will autonomous vehicles be something we own, or something we summon? While robotaxis promise lower costs and higher utilization, consumers have long valued the freedom, privacy, and convenience of personal vehicle ownership. This panel explores the competing visions for autonomy's future, examining the economics, technology, policy, and consumer behavior that will determine whether AVs become a shared mobility service, a personal product, or something in between.

• Peter Cohen — GM of AV + Rideshare, Terawatt

• Tom Tang — Chief People and Customer Operations Officer, May Mobility

• Alan Hall — Director, Communications & Marketing, Motional

• Patrick George — Detroit Bureau Chief, Wall Street Journal (Moderator)

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

NYC Happy Hour — Tonight: If you live in the Tri-State and work in mobility or delivery, you’d better join us tonight at Threes Brewing for our NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour. Co-hosted by the fantastic Louis Pappas of Electric Avenue, we’re bringing together the worlds of micromobility, curb management, last-mile delivery, EVs, AVs, batteries, bots, and everything in between, a half mile from Atlantic-Barclays. Register now!

Not just delivery bots… Robot.com, née Kiwibot, debuted its R-Noid semi-humanoid. With 7 degrees-of-freedom arms capable of carrying 9 lbs each, the machine is geared towards industrial, logistics, healthcare, food services, lodging, and experiential work.

Juicy! Micromobility stalwart Lime is nearing its IPO, having now priced it around a $1.5 - 1.7 billion valuation. Most of the proceeds will go down to paying down debt, while Uber is considering upping its stake. Per the S-1A, it looks like a few execs will sell ~10% of their shares as part of the offering.

New Zoox: Amazon’s AV subsidiary Zoox has unveiled a refined version of their purpose-built robotaxi. No they haven’t added back mirrors or a steering wheel, but the latest version has a tweaked interior for added rider comfort, plus changes to the exterior meant to improve communications with other drivers and pedestrians. Zoox is still awaiting an NHTSA exemption to begin commercial deployment of its non-standard vehicles.

World Cupdates: Soccer continues to be played, and fans continue to make it to and fro their stadia in one piece. Seattle saw record daily ridership of 280,000 and is adding capacity after riders reported long lines after a late night game. Lime’s local operations also hit a ridership record: 83k. San Jose’s VTA also set a ridership record of nearly 40,000. Vancouver is seeing ridership spike even on non-game days (up 5.15%.) And visitors to Atlanta have deemed their experience “probably as good as what America could have done.” NYC is also interestingly is festooned with info about game-related travel restrictions.

How does your state stack up? Brookings Institute analyzed electric vehicle readiness across the country, judging states by their consumer incentives, environmental standards, charging infrastructure, market access and gov’t procurement. California — home to over 1.25M EVs — topped the ranks, while South Dakota — EV population: 1,676 — brought up the rear.

A few good links: Lyft sets a minimum multi-sensor system standard for AV deployments. Samsara debuts new AirTag-like shipping label to combat logistics theft. Agility Robotics plans SPAC. NTSB probes fatal Tesla crash. Bay Area transit ridership slowly rebounds. Can we turn all of LA’s overly wide boulevards (which used to host streetcar tracks) into new parks? Japanese TNC Go makes stock market debut, raising $553M. Irish drone startup Manna pulls out of home country after regulators hold up permit. Turkish Competition Board approves Uber’s acquisition of Getir’s delivery arm. An architectural review of LA’s new D Line stations notes that while the underground portions dazzle, the street level-design falls short. Hundreds of ~5 year old startup unicorns (including a handful in the mobility sector) are slowly limping towards the graveyard. Uber Eats adds Kiehl’s, FedEx Office, Blick Art Materials, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Choice Pet. Kansas City to put facial recognition cameras on busses, yuck. On China’s move from phones to cars. Ninja nears bid for Delivery Hero. Slate’s affordable and adorable EV pickup truck reveals $25k price point. Fastport Honda reveals sick new website (and speaking slick, I greatly enjoyed kicking the tires on Minimal’s eQuad while in London.) Rare bipartisan bill to boost housing affordability looks DOA after Trump threatens veto.

See you at Threes Brewing!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

While that played out, the stronger players clawed their way to profitability. From ridehailing to food delivery, to micromobility and beyond, there are finally impressive transportation businesses growing in both footprint and profitability. That’s why, for this season of Zag Talk’s final episode, I sat down with Florent Roulet. He’s Managing Director at Stifel’s Global Technology Group, where he puts together transactions across the mobility tech landscape, including interesting deals like Getaround’s recent merger with GoMore.

He and I talk about how the new mobility landscape has matured, why he thinks that today’s best startups have the “luxury of optionality” whereby they are fully in control of their destinies and what’s next for the sector. Wrapping things up: Greg, Athena and I also get into SpaceX’s IPO, ponder the fate of Mexico’s cheap new EV and revisit the biggest developments of the year thus far. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Hello London & New York: I’ll be in London and NYC the next few weeks. I’m at MOVE London right now — holler if you are as well! Startups and investors, we’ve got a few spots left at MobilityVC’s June 19 MobilityCafe in Shoreditch. Apply to attend. And for everybody in the curb-community — policymakers, regulators, startups, media, investors, tinkerers, corporate types, etc — please join us, alongside our friends at Electric Avenue, for June 25th’s NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour, in Brooklyn.

Driving the narrative: Waymo launched its first national ad campaign, emphasizing its safety record as it enters ever more cities across the U.S. In an additional sign of product maturity, the company also launched a premium membership tier — Premier — offering quicker pickups, 10% discounts and flexible cancellations for $29.99/mo.

Don’t forget the other guys: Stellantis and Wayve are deepening their partnership, bringing L4 robotaxis to Uber’s network across the globe. (This was a fun announcement from the stage of MOVE London.) Meanwhile, Uber’s deal with Lucid and Nuro is getting more concrete, with those robotaxis set to hit the highways of Houston in 2027, where they’ll compete head-to-head with Waymo. And surprise, surprise: Tesla is in trouble with European regulators, as it’s evidently been misrepresenting safety data.

Bad sunbelt, bad! Smart Growth America released its 2026 regional rankings of pedestrian safety across the country. While the situation has improved a bit in the past three years, fatalities are still waaaay up since 2009: is it the smartphones or the giant cars? Our apologies to the poor peds in Memphis, TN — the country’s deadliest metro.

Tudo bem? Think the food delivery wars are tough in America? Check out the situation in Brazil, where iFood, Keeta, 99Food and Uber Eats are all jockeying for pole position. Those are parts of European, Chinese, Chinese and American conglomerates respectively, giving this battle an interesting geopolitical flair.

If you build it, they will ride: LA Metro officially opened its three new D Line stations on May 8th (see earlier reporting) and already the transit agency and riders alike are reaping the benefits. Systemwide ridership is up 9.5% YoY, with weekend ridership showing particularly strong gains.

Goal! The World Cup has finally kicked off, and it seems like… everything has been going just fine, transportation-wise? In LA, a quarter of stadium-goers seem to be using the shuttle busses, while across the country, visitors are posting heartwarming appreciation of our li’l trains to social media…

What about putting those batteries… in more cars? Following a similar move by Ford, GM announced it’s going to start working in the grid-scale energy storage space, combining its own sodium ion battery know-how with the infrastructural capabilities of Peak Energy. Back on the car side of things, GM just rolled out Energy Pass, offering unified EV charging and payments across Tesla Supercharger, IONNA, Electrify America, and soon, ChargePoint and EVgo.

Press plug: Thank you to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority for letting me share my thoughts about the future of ecommerce and delivery in the Garden State, for the latest edition of InTransition.

A few good links: LA Metro picks Moovit for unified mobility app. MobilityVC port co HyLight presents their hydrogen inspection blimp on the iconic Champs-Élysées in Paris!. AutoFlight brings eVTOLs to Indonesia. DoorDash-owned SevenRooms launches Channel Connect to help restaurants integrate multiple reservation platforms. TNCs sue NYC over driver retention law. XDOF launches robotic training platform. Lyft Flexdrive’s Waymo fleet ops go live in Nashville. BeepThroat — great name — investigates why Atlanta’s plan for transit on the Beltline has instead become a contract for Beep AV shuttles.

See you in London or NYC!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Thank you to everyone that joined us Tuesday for the Urban Autonomy Summit Detroit. We’ll post video recordings shortly!

Far too many bike shops treat two-wheelers like they’re high-end sporting equipment: sleek and expensive pieces of hardware that are meant to be stored in the closet when not out bounding trails. As electric bicycling takes off, brands are finding they need new pathways to get consumers to treat these machines like something that can replace a car: take it to work, use it to run errands, and feel confident that when something goes wrong, it’ll be easy to fix.

Dan Carr, Co-Founder and CEO of Wombi, has been working to fix that, as he’s scaled his company across Australia, before taking it stateside. In today’s episode of Zag Talk, I sat down with him in his Culver City bike-shop and HQ, and we get into what it takes to build the financial and operational layers to offer bikes on a subscription basis, how biking compares in the U.S. versus down under, how the bike industry has recovered these past few years, and the current fundraising environment. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Dan since he first started kicking the tires on a U.S. launch, so it was a real delight that our team at MobilityVC could participate in his most recent funding round.

Also on the pod, Greg and I chat about Walmart’s expansion into 30-minute delivery (I inadvertently predicted that they would soon start offering food delivery, I swear we recorded this a day before that news went live) and tear into Matternet and SpaceX’s public listings, while Sela reports on the latest developments at Micromobility Europe. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Taking the curb to financial capitals: I’ll be in London and NYC the next few weeks. Startups and investors, we’ve got a few spots left at MobilityVC’s June 19 MobilityCafe in Shoreditch, hot off the heels of MOVE London. Apply to attend. And for everybody in the curb-community — policymakers, regulators, startups, media, investors, tinkerers, corporate types, etc — please join us, alongside our friends at Electric Avenue, for June 25th’s NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour, in Brooklyn.

Own goal: The World Cup is finally kicking off today, meaning we can finally put an end to those breathless “how will the international visitors ever make it to our suburban stadiums?!” think pieces. The New York Times has the most fun take in the series, as two reporters attempt to walk to New Jersey’s Meadowlands sports complex. As the crow flies, it’s less than five miles from Manhattan. But even America’s most iconic cities quickly peter out into sidewalk-free blobs just a few miles from the CBD. (This is less true, of course, in West Coast cities, which tend to have a far less distinct boundary between “city” and “suburb.”)

I guess they didn’t graduate… In a surprising turn of events, Starship Robotics is pulling out of the college campus market, which had long been its main turf in the States. While company founders are calling it a pivot to concentrate on grocery delivery, a market that the company already claims 20% penetration in countries like Finland, the abruptness is unusual: Starship was launching on new campuses as recently as late April. Expect Robot.com (Kiwi) and Avride to pick up many of these contracts, but the real question is if they’ll be able to negotiate any better terms with the likes of Grubhub and Sodexo.

Cars por la gente: Mexico is looking to move its way up the automotive value chain, revealing the Olinia. Built and largely designed / engineered in Mexico, the six-seater can only go 62 miles, but costs just $9k. That makes Ford’s $30k pickup, which is starting to pop up around Long Beach, a tad less impressive.

Slow train: NYC has finally broken ground on Phase Two of the Second Avenue Subway project, looking to extend the two-track train from 96th Street to Harlem. The NYT has some great photos, set in the tunnels the city dug back in the 1970s, before its half-century pause on the project. And over in London, officials are looking to extend the DLR across the Thames.

We’re rebuilding the gas station from first principles… You’ve seen Rivian’s Adventure Network and Rove ReChage by Gelson’s; now Starbucks is getting into the EV charging game. Meet the first SBUX co-located with a fast-charging hub, located on a car dealership lot in Orange County. (H/T HNGRY.)

Am I the only one that doesn’t need to constantly talk to my phone? DoorDash unveiled a slew of AI-powered app improvements, including conversation-based recommendations. Think “filling dinner for a family of 4.” Gopuff just rolled out some similar capabilities.

Wider wings: Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery subsidiary, is making good on its plans to take its partnership with Walmart to 270 locations across the country. While earlier launches have covered low-density and low-regulation environments, this next phase includes tricker locales like Philadelphia, the SF Bay Area and San Diego.

Bringing downtown back up: Gensler has surveyed downtown-goers across the globe, looking at what would make locals more likely to spend time in their CBDs. Respondents aren’t just looking for mixed-uses and cultural districts, they’re specifically hoping to see downtowns go green and light on cars.

All hail the Curbivore vote? Congratulations to two friends of the curb on advancing from the primaries to the general election. State Senator Scott Wiener will advance as he looks to take retiring Rep. Pelosi’s seat: catch our chat about housing growth and state capacity from last October. And Councilmember Nithya Raman edged out Spencer Pratt, to face off against Mayor Bass in the fall: rewatch her speech from Curbivore 2026.

A few good links: NY legislature looks to force MTA to use two-person train crews in perpetuity. Harry talks to Bliq’s CEO about deploying AVs in Europe. Vingroup enters Indian ridehail market. CargoX raises $250M for autonomous deliveries, helmed by former Talabat CEO. SPACs are so back: Factorial raises $100M as the solid-state battery startup goes public. Meanwhile, Donut Labs’ supposed solid-state battery tech looks to likely be fraudulent. UP-NS rail merger receives heightened scrutiny. Evotrex raises $30M for hybrid-electric RVs. Who will pay for the revamped NY Penn Station? Standard Bots raises $200M. That’s nothing… Bezos-helmed Prometheus raises $12 billion, at a $41 billion valuation. How to speed up the bus. Illinois ridehail workers unionize. Photos of New Yorkers struggling to park over the decades. Edmonton takes rail ops in-house, looks to rebuild state capacity. NYCDOT to improve bike connections to Brooklyn Bridge. Lime rolls out new vehicles to service World Cup host cities: anecdotally, I’ve seen lots of their new hardware around LA.

See you in London or NYC!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’re bringing together top regulators, investors, media, startups, OEMs and AV innovators — including May Mobility, Motional, Ford, Terawatt, Voltera, Michigan DOT, Rocsys, Nexar, IBM, TaskUs, Automotive News, DoorDash Labs, City of Detroit, WSJ and many more. We’ll have three must-attend panel discussions: “A New Vision: Improved Technology for Safer Streets & Highways,” “Charged Up Infrastructure: Electrification’s Capital Moment,” and “Owned vs On-Demand: Which Way for AVs?” followed by great food, drinks and networking.

Apply to Attend Now

PARTNER | Why It Doesn’t Have to Be Humans vs. Machines

A new report makes the case for a hybrid autonomous vehicle network that gives cities time to plan, protects workers from sudden displacement, and keeps service available beyond the wealthiest zip codes.

Learn More

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

I guess today we’ll zig, not zag: Today’s Zag Talk podcast episode is temporarily delayed due to unforeseen technical issues. We’ll be publishing it shortly: please subscribe via Spotify or Apple Podcasts to ensure you get instant access.

Curb is the word… More great news write-ups continue to come out of our Curbivore 2026 conference. Over at GovTech, Skip Descant looks at how LADOT and its private sector partners are using the LA28 games to jumpstart new transportation and smart city technologies. And at Marketplace, Julia Pickar talked to our partners at Starship Technologies to learn how the rise of delivery bots is creating a whole new career pathway for engineering-minded college students.

Avride is catching up fast: Autonomous vehicle startup Avride is quickly racking up miles and metrics. Its robotaxi deployment in Texas just hit 60,000 rides and 1.3M autonomous miles, meaning they have the second biggest fleet in Texas. On the delivery bot side, they now have 500 PDDs cruising the mean streets of Austin, Dallas, Jersey City, Columbus, Tucson, Philadelphia, Salisbury and Tokyo; that’s almost 2/3s the amount that Serve Robotics reported in its Q1.

Clean Slate: Slate Auto is building a stripped-down and compact electric pickup truck, aiming for a sub $30k price. Now they’ve revealed that they won’t try to recoup some margin by spying on drivers and selling the data, something that plenty of OEMs have gotten slaps on the wrists for recently. The truck supposedly has 600 parts and components, but no fancy screens or sensors to monitor you. Meanwhile, auto retailer Carvana is considering investing in the upstart automaker, building off its push into new car sales.

Big apple bus biz: Perhaps running a discount skin care brand doesn’t qualify you to try your hand at transit operations? Makeup maker The Ordinary found that out the hard way, as the City of New York shut down its free shuttle bus service, meant to link Domino Park and Prospect Park without forcing straphangers to schlep on the G train. Meanwhile, NYCDOT is setting up temporary bus lanes for the World Cup, while the city’s microhub pilot has taken 3,000 truck trips off the road. Transit Tech Lab announced 18 companies that will pilot their tools with local transport operators. And a terrible, fatal collision on the Queensboro Bridge, between a bike and an illegally-fast scooter — the bicycle was literally torn in half — reminds us that regulators need to do more to crack down on unlicensed micromobility vehicles.

Heck yea, H.R. 9041! Democrat Rep. Mike Thompson and Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan just introduced the America Bikes Act to fund more biking infrastructure, incentivize bicycle manufacturing in the U.S., and improve bike safety. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure approved the BUILD America 250 Act, which would reauthorize $580B in surface transportation funding.

What the Flock: Last week we got into the camera data shenanigans over at BusPatrol. Now cities are squawking at Flock, over concerns that the ALPR cameras may also be sharing their data with federal immigration enforcement. Municipalities like Dayton, OH are unsure if they can remove the cameras without changing existing contracts, so in the meantime they’re just covering the cams with black bags.

Not all transit is created equal… What good is a bus line if it only comes once per hour? New Urban Institute data compares how much transit access residents of various urban areas have, and where those regions have been building homes. Some places like South Florida or Metro Detroit have decent bus coverage, but lack frequency and high-quality rail options, leading to low ridership. Of course, factors beyond transit service — office centrality, parking abundance, road tolls, etc — can have a huge impact on how much locals use transit.

PNW problems: Portland’s ridership numbers might be headed downward, as TriMet is cutting 10% of its service in the face of structural budget deficits. Up in Seattle, the rail network is still expanding, but not as much as previously planned: faced with rising costs, Sound Transit has indefinitely delayed an extension towards Ballard. Things aren’t much better on the opposite side of the country: rail operator Brightline is fielding bankruptcy loan offers.

Run through: In happier transit news, Works in Progress looks at the transformative power of through-running, where linking different stub-ends of old commuter networks can create modern, regional rail. While this is old hat in most of Europe and Asia, the U.S. has been stubbornly slow to adopt the practice, with a few exceptions. Philly’s had it since the 80s, LA is currently building it, new plans for NY Penn may finally bring a limited version to the Big Apple and Boston has been mulling it for decades.

A few good links: Waymo’s Ojai welcomes first riders. Grubhub adds integrations with Eater, Beli, Alexa+ and Bilt. NY Mayor Mamdani looks to boost QueensWay over QueensLink for disused rail trestle. NY State okays TIFs to fund Second Ave Subway, IBX; no mention of cost reforms. D.C. Council looks to update local ridehailing regulations. London grinds to a halt as Tube strike hits second day (Londoners, I’ll be in your fair town in two weeks: let’s meet up!) Gigascale raises $250M venture fund to back climate, physical economy startups. Speedbird Aero’s drones fly over São Paulo. Harbinger Motors eyes IPO. Africa’s Spiro raises $215M for its electric motorcycles + battery swapping network. NYT kicks the tires (spins the blades?) on Joby’s eVTOL service to JFK. Serve Robotics begins laundry deliveries with NoScrubs. British Columbia ratifies Uber / Lyft’s first Canadian driver union. JSK heads to MTA — yay! Baltimore Penn Station expansion paused. HUD shows homelessness up 27% from 2013, as it transitions away from “housing first” model. Transit payment giant Cubic suffers black eye after their failure to pay AT&T bill causes BART fare outage. Houston starts Smart Loading Zones pilot, with Automotus. Uber to deploy 500 data-collection vehicles.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Aspex had been pushing for Delivery Hero to sell off its different brands and regional operations: the 3PD’s sprawling empire includes Foodora, Foodpanda, Glovo, PedidosYa, Talabat, Baedal Minjok and Yemeksepeti. While DoorDash had reportedly expressed interest in Delivery Hero’s Middle Eastern operations, Uber evidently wants the whole thing. After quietly amassing shares over the past few weeks, Uber just bought out Aspex Management’s big block of stock, boosting its stake to 36.8% at a price of nearly €40 per share.

Bulking Up

Both Uber and DoorDash have been on a consolidation spree over the past few year. In February, Uber bought Turkey’s Getir for $435 million. DoorDash has had an even bigger appetite, spending billions to buy both Wolt and Deliveroo. Thanks to these acquisitions, these delivery players are now handling a massive number of transactions. In Q1, DoorDash handled $31.6 billion in orders, Uber Eats did $25.6 billion and Delivery Hero handled €12.5 billion ($14.56B). In Q1 of 2025, right before going private, Just Eat Takeaway.com’s GTV was €4.72 billion (approximately $5.1 billion at the time). Suffice to say, if Uber Eats swallows Delivery Hero, it’ll claim the “biggest delivery platform” crown, outside of China.

The Crown Jewels

Delivery Hero’s family of brands operate in 65 countries, but many of those operations, especially in Latin America and Europe, have fallen behind, treading water with just the second or third best market share. The two biggest notable exceptions are in Korea and the Gulf.

In South Korea, Baedal Minjok / Woowa Brothers is the country’s number one food delivery app. And while growth has slowed amid saturation, this is a huge, and highly profitable market. This subsidiary alone is worth around $5.8 billion.

In the Middle East, Delivery Hero owns Talabat (UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq) and HungerStation in Saudi Arabia. Delivery Hero publicly listed ~20% of Talabat recently, and we can see that it’s growing like gangbusters: GMV is up 18% YoY and revenue climbed 22%.

Regulatory Questions

With Uber looking to go all in, the biggest question remaining is whether regulators will approve the deal. Taiwanese regulators previously blocked Uber’s $950M attempted purchase of Foodpanda, citing anti-competitive concerns. Delivery Hero had previously tried to sell of the entire Foodpanda unit, but that deal fell apart as well.

In fact, regulatory concerns are the entire reason that Delivery Hero is for sale. Dutch-South African investment group Prosus held a huge stake in DH for years, but last year decided to buy out Just Eat Takeaway.com. European regulators, fearing the combined entity would hold too much pricing power, pushed Prosus to sell down its Delivery Hero shares.

Uber + Delivery Hero would have a commanding position in a number of Asian and European markets. Will regulators think that’s too big to fly, or will they see it as a fair counterbalance to DoorDash + Wolt + Deliveroo? Stay tuned…

Urban Autonomy Summit Detroit: Speakers Revealed!

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Logging on: More and more Americans are turning to gig work, lured in both by these apps’ popularity and perhaps increasing economic precarity. Daily active users (DAUs) across the DoorDash-Dasher, Uber-Driver, Instacart Shopper, Lyft Driver, Shipt and Gopuff Driver apps are up 19% YoY, with most users falling into the 36-45 age bracket.

Left wondering… Marc Lore, who helms delivery and food-hall upstart Wonder, previously stated he was eying a 2028 IPO. But with the capital markets evidently frothy for money-losing startups (SpaceX, every random AI co), the NYC-based company — already valued around $7 billion — is now looking to go public next year.

The death of the dealership? The classic, if not exactly beloved, model of buying a car involved haggling with your local dealers; that’s been under pressure as more automakers ape Tesla’s direct sales model. Now Carvana, best known for its glassy towers of used cars, is looking to shake things up further. It’s gobbled up a series of Stellantis dealerships, using them as hubs to fulfill online orders from out-of-town car shoppers. (H/T Automotive Ventures.)

I guess they truly are down under… Evidently things move a bit slower in Australia, with local big-box retailers suddenly appearing worried that Amazon is going to eat their lunch. Amazon currently only controls 10% of the Australian ecommerce market, allowing local retailers to charge rates that would make American revolt. Local brands like JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Bing Lee and The Good Guys are now worried about the Amazon Effect; the fact that their used to be an American electronics chain also called The Good Guys, which succumbed to Amazon two decades ago, should tell us how this story is likely to play out…

First AND last mile, in this economy?! Los Angeles is making good progress on its Mid-City Greenways project, adding bicycle infrastructure like traffic diverters, bike boxes and specialized signals to a number of leafy residential streets in the heart of the city. Attentive readers may realize that this essentially connects the city’s brand new D Line metro stations with older subway stops in Hollywood, offering commuters a pleasant way to employment and retail hubs along Beverly, Melrose and Santa Monica Boulevards. This’ll surely be a boon to Lime and Bird ridership; perhaps Metro could also sprinkle in a few bikeshare stations along the way?

Re-volt? EV infrastructure providers Voltera and Revel are merging (feel free to borrow my new brand name…) The combined company operates 1,000 charging stalls and is making a push into the hot AV depot space. EQT will be the combined entity’s majority owner, with Blackrock’s Global Infrastructure Partners maintaining a smaller position.

Amalgamated brotherhood of high-mileage Prius owners: Massachusetts officially recognized the country’s first ridehail driver union, with 70,000+ Uber and Lyft drivers across the Bay State forming the App Drivers Union. MA voters approved drivers’ right to form a union in 2024; the SEIU-affiliate can now negotiate with the TNCs over wage and benefits.

Who watches the watchmen? BusPatrol has quickly taken off across the country, offering school districts “free” cameras, attached to school buses, to enforce traffic safety laws. Ticket revenue then repays BusPatrol’s investment. Now BusPatrol is under fire for activating ALPR on those cameras, and opening the data up to broader law enforcement. In an era where the Feds have been rampantly abusing law enforcement powers, this sure does poison the well of improving traffic safety…

A few good links: Truckers warm to Tesla’s electric semi. How Medellín built its metro in the midst of a civil war. Uber’s CA. ballot initiative looks to reduce accident lawyer fees. Aboard raises $13M for electric recreational trailers, led by Ondine Capital and Llama Ventures. Bellevue, greater Seattle’s “second downtown”, looks to start charging for on-street parking. Seattle DOT seeks Senior Curbspace Planner. Vision impaired riders love robotaxis. Date correction: Join our pals at It’s Electric and Slate for a product preview in Koreatown, this Saturday. LA County and NYC launch Bi-Coastal Fleet Accord. Problematic oil projects in China reveal holes in carbon credit system. Chinese-owned Volvo receives permission to continue selling connected cars in U.S. Travel platform WeRoad raises $58M, led by Airbnb. House passes 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Measuring the economic and population shock caused by the Trump Admin’s assault on high-skill immigration.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’ve already tracked what a big impact these rising costs are having on everyday commuters, long-haul truckers and even transport operators. And recent Q1 earnings reports showed that ridehail and delivery companies alike are starting to see a mild impact on their margins, as they pay out tens of millions of dollars in gas rebates. But what about gig workers? Our partners at Gridwise Analytics have a new report — How Rising Fuel Prices are Impacting the Gig Mobility Industry — showing just how much these surging costs are weighing on everyday delivery and ridehail workers.

As of last month, 17.4% of ridehail workers’ pay is going straight to their gas budgets, up from 13.2% at the start of the quarter. For delivery workers, who generally travel shorter distances, that number has spiked to 15.6%. (Note: this doesn’t factor in maintenance, depreciation or any other related expenses.)

Rising expenses would be manageable if fares were climbing, but so far the apps have been shielding consumers from most inflationary pressure. Ridehail pay has ticked up to $24.07 per hour, but remains below the highs seen in 2021-2023. Delivery pay, sitting at $15.22 per hour, is up 10% from last summer, but also remains below earlier highs.

While the platforms are offering some relief to workers in the form of higher gas rebates, uptake so far seems limited: Gridwise found that only 17.4% of Uber Eats workers had used the program in its first week, while DoorDash’s $5 to $15 incentive system had reached around 40% of workers. Lyft, meanwhile, has offered some relief to workers by cutting its median platform fees by 13%.

All in all, the average ridehail worker driving 500 miles per week faces roughly $24 in additional weekly gas costs, taking a substantial bite out of their earnings: last year the average weekly gross earnings for a driver was $522 at Uber and $325 at Lyft. Add that up and some drivers are taking home 7% less thanks to higher gas prices. As the war drags on, expect to see more structural shifts: workers dropping out of this particular labor pool, deliveries shifted to bikes or bots, and consumers eventually footing more of the bill. Get more insights in the full report, published by our partners at Gridwise Analytics.

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ZAG TALK PODCAST

In the latest edition of the Zag Talk podcast, Jonah Bliss sits down with our partners at the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, discussing their new report that contends that the coming AV revolution will not only upend car ownership, but have a deflationary effect on overall transportation spending. Jonah, Ani Kelkar and Darius Scurtu dive into the second-order effects as well, like what that could mean for congestion and land use, as well. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Transit expansions across the globe: Sydney looks to expand light rail to its east side, in a $3B bid to improve access to new homes. Malaysia approves $2.5B elevated rail system for Johor Bahru. Turku, Finland okays first tramway. Saudi Arabia seeks bidders for $16.5B transport system in Mecca. And check out how much Moscow’s transit system will expand by 2050 (or should that money be spent on war reparations?)

KC, mo’ rail… Kansas City just inaugurated an expansion of its streetcar, extending it 0.7 miles to the riverfront. Most Ray LaHood-era streetcars have been boondoggles, but this one gets decent ridership. On a less decent front, the local public transport authority is looking to cut 1/4 of its bus routes due to a funding shortfall.

Carbnb: Airbnb is muscling its way into the car rental business, as part of a larger push into ancillary services that also includes grocery delivery and airport pickups. Those latter two are in partnership with Instacart and Welcome Pickups, so I’m surprised they decided to step on Turo’s toes, instead of collaborating on that product as well.

We’re all delivery businesses now… Walmart released its Q1 earnings, showing revenue up 7.3% and profit hitting $5.33 billion. But more interesting were the levers of that growth: global eCommerce sales grew 26%, membership fee revenue grew 17.4%, ads were up 37% and store-fulfilled delivery jumped 45%.

Happy 250th, Uncle Sam! The House released the BUILD America 250 Act, the latest version of the IIJA, allocating $674 billion in core reauthorization, with $240B in authorized and direct funding for transportation services and infrastructure. $110B goes to roads / bridges, $102B goes to railroads (in what would be Amtrak’s largest investment ever,) $25B to aviation and $17B to ports.

“One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” The Feds have released plans for the reconstruction of Penn Station. The $8B+ update keeps the basketball stadium above, while refreshing the exterior with a “classical look” 🙄 and raising some interior ceilings. More importantly, the plan allows for “at least limited” through-running of NJT and LIRR commuter trains, an important step towards creating a modern regional rail network.

State capacity rules everything around me, scream: Los Angeles is asking state officials for a six year extension on $100M in grant funding from 2022-23, lest the city be forced to return the funds. These would fund a number of street, sidewalk and bike lane improvements across the city, but the municipality lacks the staffing to get the projects done in time.

Ad astra, you assholes! With SpaceX’s monstrous IPO looming, aerospace investments couldn’t be hotter. More interesting is this new research paper, looking at how the commercialization of space in the 1990s changed the economic rationale for different space-based products and services (cube-sats, satellite internet, etc) but did not change the industry centers most tied to the aerospace economy. (California, Texas, Ohio, DMV, Alabama.)

Charged up for good: Our friends at Women Who Charge are looking for industry professionals to "lean in" and support the next generation of clean transit and energy leaders. If you’re based in Colorado, please take a look at this 501c3.

A few good links: Congrats to our friends at Bingo on unveiling their new micro EV purpose-built for ridehail drivers in developing economies. LIRR strike ends after compromise on pay raises. Join our pals at It’s Electric and Slate for a product preview in Koreatown, this Sat. There’s always money for war: Anduril raises $5 billion at a $61B val, with an emphasis on new manufacturing capacity. Buffalo, NY launches smart curb pilot. Venture funding is concentrating into $500M+ mega-deals. Siemens Mobility buys MERMEC. OEMs look to new verticals as car profits shrink. Archer and Joby duke it out in the skies with competing lawsuits. Fragile raises nearly $100M for hardware subscriptions (MobilityVC has had the pleasure to work with this ace team as they scale up an amazing business.) Nefarious Midwestern realtors try to block open access to listings. India’s Scapia raises $63M for travel booking and mobile payments. Whizz and DoorDash scale up subsidized e-bikes for couriers. Stellantis chooses Wayve for AV integrations. InDrive and GoCab partner to add supply in Chile and Morocco. Flytrex opens drone manufacturing facility near Dallas. Chicago’s infamous privatized parking meters are up for sale again.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

In today’s podcast, Jonah Bliss chats with Ani and Darius, as they get into why they think this is the moment that robotaxis truly take off. And the three of them dive into the tricky downstream effects that could come along for the ride: would cheaper mobility just mean endless congestion? Are voters and policymakers ready for these sorts of massive changes?

Also in the episode, Jonah, Greg and Athena analyze Q1’s financial reports, assess Lime’s pending IPO, discuss all the latest American transport trends headed to Europe and celebrate riding the D. Listen in!

It’s no surprise that the United States builds less public transit than peer nations. What little we do build tends to either fall into two categories: light rail or suburban expansions of existing heavy rail lines deeper (and thus cheaper) into the ‘burbs. In fact, by my calculations: since Los Angeles ended its last spurt of heavy rail building in the year 2000, the entire country has opened just six new urban, underground metro stations: two in Puerto Rico and four in New York.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with extending an L to the airport, and some of the light rail projects in Seattle, Boston, LA and SF have been high quality, but tunneling a new heavy rail line, through a dense urban core, represents a commitment to livability and multi-modal urbanism that’s all too rare in America these days.

Why Wilshire

Wilshire Boulevard has long been LA’s “linear downtown,” serving as a continuous agglomeration of density in an otherwise poly-centric region. And yet even when Los Angeles had the world’s largest electric streetcar network, Wilshire stood out for its lack of direct service: when the land was deeded to the city, at-grade rail was forbidden.

In the century-plus since, policymakers have looked to right that wrong. Transit plans from the 1920s, 50s and 60s all sketched out a Wilshire subway, but it wasn’t until the 80s that funding was secured. Starting downtown, the project got about 1/4 of the way to the beach, before political opponents, galvanized by a methane explosion, rerouted the line (now called the B) to the north. Last week’s project gets us about halfway done, while next year another four stations come online, bringing the city about 75% of the way to its vision of a “subway to the sea.”

All the while, the corridor has continued to grow and densify. Its eastern side — Koreatown and Westlake — are the densest neighborhoods in the country outside of NYC. The entire route connects multiple high-rise-heavy job centers: Downtown, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City, Westwood. And the just-opened stations are anchored by a cultural district that includes not only dozens of museums and galleries, but LACMA’s acclaimed and brand new campus. (Evidently, to some less trained eyes, Pritzker-winner Peter Zumthor’s design looks like a mere blob.) Urbanism, especially in Los Angeles, comes in all sorts of delightfully unexpected shapes and forms.

New Mobility, New Mentalities

The value of this new rail isn’t just the tunnels and stations, it’s the way it makes the existing mobility network that much richer and more effective. Imagine you live in Mt. Washington, a hilly neighborhood northeast of Downtown, and work in Beverly Hills. That’s a drive that could take as long as an hour and a half during the afternoon rush, now flattened to an easy 17 minutes on the A line and 15 minutes riding the D.

Even for commuters who don’t live within an easy walk of a rail station, having a regional backbone of high-quality transit unlocks an entire world of rich new mobility solutions for the first and last mile. Ride your bike, take a Waymo or Uber, hop on a shared scooter or public bikeshare, use an electric shuttle…

When you invest in the infrastructure that makes new mobility truly work, the possibilities are endless.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Seeing green: Micromobility heavyweight Lime just filed for an IPO, revealing that last year it lost $59M on $887M in revenue. While it's targeting a $2 billion valuation, the company needs fresh cash to pay off hundreds of millions in debt that’s due by year’s end. Industry watchers may recall that Lime touted positive free cash flow in FY24, but it sounds like that was based on clever asset financing that’s now about to come due. Meanwhile, the company is angling to expand deeper into NYC.

A capitol idea! Amazon is expanding its e-cargo bike pilot to D.C., deploying 15 equads with the participation of both DSPs and DDOT. While the NYC deployment uses hardware from Mubea and Scoobic (see my earlier review) this one looks to be using Fastport Honda vehicles (see my other earlier review.) In non-pedaling news, Amazon Now is bringing 30 minute or better deliveries to Atlanta, DFW, Philly, Seattle, Austin, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Oklahoma City and more.

Sounds bumpy… Caltrans is studying the concept of running high-speed buses on California’s highways. I-80, I-5, U.S. 101 and SR-99 are all being researched for buses that could theoretically go as fast as 140 miles per hour, once a zillion other concerns are satisfied.

More, more MOIA: Hopefully you saw them at Curbivore 2026 first, but now MOIA’s robotaxis have begun on-street testing in LA. The VW subsidiary also just announced a partnership with Beep to scale up to 5,000 vehicles in shared ride formats, starting around Orlando.

No Seattle freeze? As the Emerald City and ridehailing / delivery apps continue to duke it out over pay and labor standards, Seattle has released a new set of data, making the case that demand has stabilized even as worker pay has increased. (See background on Pay UP and Fare Share.)

Just keep yankin’ on levers to see what else you can break… With the war on Iran and gas prices showing no signs of abating, President Trump has proposed suspending the federal gas tax. How might we pay for any transportation improvements? Well don’t worry, the administration also wants to end all funding for multimodal transportation and rail improvements. Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has been on a seven month “road trip” to film a reality TV show, which was funded by the organizations (Boeing, Shell, Toyota, etc) that he purportedly regulates. Here’s the pitch deck, if you’d like to see how cheap a legal bribe is these days.

Beautiful buses: While transit agencies like NJT continue to take heat for their high game-day fares (now reduced to a cool $98,) LA Metro is offering rides for $1.75 (but it’s the parking that will cost you!) The agency just revealed its multi-county, high-frequency bus network for World Cup Enhanced Service. Expect something similar for the Olympics (which we discussed at Curbivore 2026.)

Driven by 2028 — Transatlantic Sustainable Mobility Forum: Hosted by the German American Chamber of Commerce, this morning forum brings together German mobility innovators and LA stakeholders to tackle a defining question: how to move millions of people, goods, and services across a sprawling city ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. The program includes keynotes, pitches from cutting-edge German companies and a panel on logistics and last mile for LA 2028, and features MobilityVC’s Sam Baker. Register for the May 19 event in DTLA.

A few good links: Hertz’s revenue pops 11%. LA Metro scores $150M in federal funds for Vermont BRT. Brightline teeters near insolvency. After years of solar investments, Spain now has one of Europe’s cheapest power markets (all hail the Spanish century!) Uber and Santander partner on €1 billion fleet financing initiative. NHTSA probes Avride. Grab Q1 revenue soars 24% YoY. Donkey Republic revenue climbs 9.9%. Kodiak AI stock slides after it raises $100M at a deep discount. New analysis of transit ridership show that Baltimore, Atlanta and Pittsburgh have had the worst post-pandemic recoveries. GM axes 10% of its IT department as it retools around AI skillsets. San Diego looks to limit state-mandated transit-oriented upzoning to just 16% of eligible land. Waymo recall reveals that AV fleet size now sits at 3,791. For the venture fund fundies: Yale Budget Lab proposes closing carried interest loophole. Maryland lays final piece of track for Purple Line. Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raises $400M. SF unveils new parking apps. What happens to Latrobe, PA’s airport with its only airline, Spirit, now out of business?

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

U.S. auto sales have been more or less flat for decades, as cars last longer, while Detroit’s profitability has been buoyed by Americans’ appetite for big, tricked-out trucks. Domestic auto production, meanwhile, has fared far worse, falling continuously since the 1990s. This inflection isn’t limited to just America, automakers as varied as Nissan and Volvo are seeing sales drop, while auto production share everywhere outside of China has fallen in the past few years.

So, what does it mean once you throw the rapid rise of robotaxis into this quick burning tire fire? The past 15 years have seen a tremendous explosion in new mobility options — ridehailing, carsharing, micromobility, you name it — but not only has VMT continued to creep up in America, so too has the number of cars per household… what’s different now?

A few new variables have changed the equation. Gas prices have jumped 50%, making commuting untenable for many drivers, while those who can afford a new car have far fewer economical EV options than they did a year ago. Combine that with recent Morgan Stanley research that suggests the cost per mile to operate an autonomous taxi may soon fall below that of car ownership, and it’s quite possible that consumers will soon find AVs are the most affordable way to get to their destinations.

This of course could be catastrophic for legacy OEMs, as well as the cities that still rely on auto manufacturing as the backbone of their economies. With so much at stake, we’re convening our next Urban Autonomy Summit in Detroit, on June 9th. Join us for an afternoon of pivotal discussions as we convene AV players, automakers and regulators alike, to figure out whether the future of autonomy is owned or on-demand.

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CURBIVORE CONFERENCE COVERAGE

A not so autonomous Olympics? Analysis and coverage from last month’s Curbivore continues to hit the wire, with Forbes’ Brad Templeton drilling down on our “Resilient Streets, Cities & Mega Events – The Road from Today Until 2028” panel (full recording here.) While he’s impressed with the kit-of-parts approach that blends together public transit, ridehailing, micromobility and repurposed parking lots, he’s disappointed that LA28 might not be a launchpad for autonomous mobility or broader congestion priced cordons.

But there is a robotic future for deliveries… Maybe it’s a case of AV give and take, as IGD Director of Retail Futures Stewart Samuel’s takeaway from Curbivore is that if the economics of grocery and restaurant delivery are ever going to make sense at scale, it’s going to require the mass adoption of autonomous systems.

And what of our cities: Does it even matter if vehicles are autonomous or human driven, if our roads aren’t repaved, our streetlights don’t work and local services languish? In the latest episode of Zag Talk, we hear from Nithya Raman, an urban planner turned councilmember who’s now running for mayor; she shared her vision for a city that works at Curbivore 2026. Listen in.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Uber growth: Uber released its Q1 2026 results, showing that the mobility and delivery economy is still hot. Trips were up 20% YoY, gross bookings climbed 25% and revenue jumped 14%, with the delivery business outpacing mobility across every metric. The company’s AV diversification play seems to be working, with autonomous trips up 10X YoY, while delivery expansions across Europe and APAC appear to be paying off. Meanwhile, Lyft’s gross bookings and revenue climbed 19% and 14%, respectively

Still dashing: DoorDash’s results were strong too, with total orders up 27% YoY, gross order value rising 37% and revenue jumping 33%. The company also just published its 2025 U.S. Economic Impact Report, showing how important the marketplace has become to over 600,000 merchants and 8M+ couriers.

Ride the D! Los Angeles’ eagerly anticipated D Line opens three new stations tomorrow (May 8), inaugurating 3.9 miles of additional subway service, with another 5.2 miles set to open next year. There’ll be civic celebrations at each station, and I hope to see my fellow mobility heads there in the late afternoon.

Lucid dreaming: Back to cars for a moment, as upstart automaker Lucid Motors is having a rocky go of things. The company just retracted its earlier guidance and now has no clue how many cars it’ll build this year, amid a Q1 that saw revenue rise but losses growing even faster. At least its AV plans are still on track, with its tech partner Nuro receiving CA DMV permits to begin testing.

Cam wars: Both Lyft and Uber are making a push into vision data, looking to equip their drivers with cameras that’ll better map streets and highways for AV partner vehicles. Lyft is calling their solution FleetView, while Uber’s is an initiative of their new AV Labs project; both concepts seem to be sniffing at market leader Nexar. When asked for comment, CEO Zach Greenberger responded, “Both announcements point at the same conclusion: real-world data and real-world operations are now table stakes for autonomous deployment. That’s the thesis Nexar has been operating on since 2015. We’re at 350,000 connected cameras, more than 100 million miles a month, and 94% U.S. road coverage today. The AV programs training on real-world data right now, including NVIDIA and Waymo, aren’t waiting for that capability to come online elsewhere.”

Bound for a rebound: The FTA has released Q1 data of its own, tracking how America’s largest transit operators are continuing to recover from the pandemic. NYC, DC, LA and Seattle are doing well, while regions like SF and Atlanta continue to struggle.

Slow train: New research shows that even in some cities most mentally associated with transit — think Berlin or NYC — residents have quicker access to more destinations by car, especially out in the ‘burbs. Shout out to Paris and Zurich for holding it down for subway riders.

Around and around: European p2p carsharing players Getaround and GoMore have merged, with the combined entity offering service to five million users in 11 countries. Its fleet of 70,000 shared vehicles is about 15-20% the size of market leader Turo. Stifel served as the exclusive financial advisor for the transaction.

So much for opsec… Autonomous military ATV startup Scout AI took TechCrunch reporters to see its new hardware in action. Despite asking folks “not to name” the Central California military base, the company released accompanying media assets that clearly show it operating near Camp Roberts, by Nacimiento, CA. Durr!

Ever the optimist! AV enthusiast Grayson Brulte and Bot Auto’s Robert Brown test rode Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi network near Houston. Despite the route linking two Tesla service centers, the car still had a number of alarming issues: it repeatedly missed the same turn, it made an illegal U-turn and its attempts to connect to a tele-ops assistant seemed unsuccessful.

A few good links: Joby Q1 rev hits $24.3M. Jeff Bezos’ rep steps down from Slate Auto board. Marc Lore doubles down on AI-designed restaurants pitch. VA tightens ridehailing safety requirements. Would crowd-funding the purchase of a bankrupt airline even work if you got all the money you needed? Permitted backyard dining transforms LA’s vaunted food scene. Despite growing capacity, America’s electrical grid is still falling short. Toyota to build hydrogen truck fueling center in SoCal. NYCDOT seeks secure bike parking location suggestions (looks like no love for Staten Island). Uber Eats adds Ulta Beauty. Biking across Cape Town reveals apartheid’s infrastructural legacy. D.C. mulls local AV legislation. Has citizen enforcement of illegally idling vehicles in NYC gone too far? Vancouver, BC permits Serve’s delivery bots. Cities need to properly price their curbs before AVs gobble up all the “free” space. After fourteen months in power, the Trump admin has yet to release funding for a single new public transit project. India mints first aerospace unicorn. It’s Electric expands curbside charging to Philadelphia. (Great marketing pics!) Aspen, CO releases Smart Zone pilot data. Texas transit two-step: TEXRail breaking ground on Medical District expansion, while Highland Park votes to leave DART. Rising gas prices impacting delivery workers more than ridehail drivers.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew