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.

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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.

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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.

Apply to Attend Now

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

The city is now at an inflection point, with voting in the first round of a mayoral election set for June 2nd. The three most viable candidates are Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor and a former congressperson; Nithya Raman, an urban planner turned city councilperson; and Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star who’s punched his way into the conversation thanks to high name recognition and money to burn.

In today’s episode, we hear from Councilmember Raman, who currently represents District Four, stretching from the iconic Hollywood Hills to the beautiful San Fernando Valley. In her six years in office, she’s built a progressive track record, working to improve governance, build safer streets, create housing and push towards a greener economy.

Before we get to the interview, recorded at Curbivore 2026, Jonah chats with Greg and Sela about the ITS European Congress, Helsinki’s glamorous new car-free bridge, Amazon’s supply chain push, Spirit’s bankruptcy, robotaxi pricing and more. Listen in!

Thank you to everyone that joined us in NYC for our Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour. Now on to your usual industry news digest…

Oil prices just hit a four year high: $126 per barrel, which works out to about $4.30 per gallon across the U.S, $6+ in California, even more in Europe and Asia. As we’ve previously explored, this is rewiring commutes the world over.

Stateside, the pain isn’t being shared evenly. While low income commuters are taking the biggest hit in every city, the real whack to your wallet comes down to how far you have to drive. Regions like NYC, SF, Los Angeles and Chicago only see weekly VMT per capita of 175 miles or fewer; while those stuck in places like Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh and Detroit might be driving 250+ miles per week.

In many metro areas, a lack of viable public transit alternatives means drivers can’t simply hop on a bus or train to save a few bucks; it’s instead pushing many to finally explore electric vehicles. Hertz and Turo both reported a surge in EV bookings, with the latter’s jumping 47% YoY.

Many automakers are of course kicking themselves that they cancelled much of their EV lineups riiiiight before gas prices spiked, but a few OEMs have been more fortuitous with their timing. Volkswagen just released its ID. Polo, an electric hatchback coming in at around 25,000 euros ($29,000) while maintaining a respectable driving range.

While countries and cities with more robust transit are of course seeing ridership grow, even some transport operators are struggling. BlaBlaCar Bus, an intercity operator in Europe, is shutting down as higher diesel prices make its operations untenable.

Back in America, bus operators that switched to natural gas vehicles are now looking particularly shrewd, as LNG / CNG prices have stayed stable, but truckers — the backbone of the country’s freight economy — will be next in line to feel a hit to their pocketbooks. Perhaps the real question is, when will those higher rates translate into pricier goods at Amazon and Walmart?

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Uber air: Uber unveiled a slew of product updates at its latest Go-Get event, as the company keeps up its push to become an everything app. Notable new features include hotel bookings (naturally in partnership with Expedia, Dara’s old employer,) in-airport navigation, voice bookings, unified search, and “Eats for the Way” — where your Uber Black driver will arrive the rider’s choice of drink or snack waiting in the back (we’re sure the drivers are going to love the extra crumbs.)

Oro for whom? Uber also announced a big new partnership with Oro Mobility, a just-launched subsidiary of Hertz. The car renter is making a belated push into the new mobility space, doing asset management, charging, maintenance, repairs and cleaning for AVs, including Lucid + Nuro vehicles in the SF Bay. Oro is also providing Uber with managed fleet operations, where it pays drivers a flat hourly wage, plus tips, to drive its vehicles on the TNC network all shift long. Pay looks to be $14-19 per hour, depending on the market, which is a bit lower than competitors like Alto or 8Fleet.

Lyft in London: After buying up FreeNow, Lyft is continuing its European push with the acquisition of Gett’s U.K. black cab service, for $55 million. Perhaps the move is to keep the customers but ditch the drivers, as the ridehailer also just began testing Baidu Apollo Go AVs in London.

AVs inch upwards: Obi continues to track the price of various autonomous and human-driven ridehailing services, finding that Lyft and Uber pricing in SF has dropped in the past quarter, while Waymo climbed slightly. But Tesla’s not-actually-autonomous Robotaxi service saw a 34% jump, as it slowly pulls away the deep subsidies that have been underwriting the business.

Dirty, but not so secret? Dallasites have discovered that Waymo’s local charging depots are actually powered by Xos’ mobile hubs. Those are in turn recharged using gas generators. While that sentence ought to win over the reddest Texan’s heart, we’ve actually seen a number of operators deploy similar setups, meant to buy time as they wait for utility upgrades to deliver enough electricity to their sites.

Viva la Cuarta Transformación! Mexico continues its impressive mobility infrastructure upgrades, with President Sheinbaum inaugurating a new rail line connecting CDMX’s tertiary airport with the city center. Further north, Monterrey began testing its new monorail line, as its expands its rail network to six lines.

Golden state, silver state, bronze wiring: Back on the metaphorical AV train… California has rolled out a number of updated regulations: the DMV has lifted a ban that kept autonomous trucks from operating on public roadways, while misbehaving robotaxis can now be ticketed and AV operators must respond to first-responders in 30 seconds or less. Meanwhile in Vegas, Zoox is testing the expansion of its operations to cover the airport, while the LVCVA is looking to dismantle the monorail and reuse the track to extend the Tesla-powered Vegas Loop (no more tunneling for The Boring Company, eh?)

Minnesota, not so nice: MnDOT is “rethinking” Interstate 94, which connects the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While many local advocates are now debating whether that should mean capping the highway with a few parks or removing it entirely in favor of an urban boulevard, others are proposing using the existing trench to host an eight mile heavy rail subway. On one hand, sounds lovely! On the other hand, the existing LRT network gets rather embarrassingly low ridership, especially when you consider it’s already anchored by the two downtowns. If you want to connect the two cores, why not use the existing tracks that are only a mile further north, and save the big bucks needed to extend rail service to denser neighborhoods on the SW side of town?

Ride the D: LA Metro will officially cut the ribbon on phase one of the D Line Extension on May 8th; see you there? While ridership projections are already strong, the agency has some clever activations in store, meant to drum up interest and awareness by the train’s new neighbors. Angelenos, head up to Wilshire Blvd for free salsa classes, local retailers, produce, coffee, art and Ethiopian food all the way through July.

A few good links: Amazon Q1 sees net sales jump 17%. U.S. and South Korea go to war over shopping giant Coupang. DoorDash-owned Wolt now one of the 10 largest grocers in Europe. Faraday Future keeps paying founder big bucks, despite setbacks. Rivian CEO gets new $400M+ pay package, after failing to hit previous “moonshot” pay goals. DoorDash and Lyft expand partnership to Canada. Delivery Hero GMV climbs 8.8% YoY. How transit agencies can recruit and retain great workers. Micro Enterprise Home Kitchens prove a hit in Riverside County. Vancouver’s SkyTrain gets delightfully wonky with explaining how they expanded old stations to allow for larger trains. Battery techer Redwood Materials cuts 10% of staff. MOIA and Beep partner on AV shuttles in Orlando. Curb management project kicks off in Madison, WI. After fourteen years, Staten Island BRT project still stuck in “under review” purgatory — two more years and it can get a driver’s permit! Fun with Claude Code: a live map of every NYC traffic camera. Funding cutbacks and equipment troubles imperil ridership growth on SoCal’s Metrolink regional rail network. California fights over Zone Zero fire regulations. Meet BemiGo, the latest oddball autonomous delivery vehicle from China. Rocsys raises $13M for autonomous charging. Jawohl! — BMW i Ventures raises new $300M fund. Rivian and Caruso strike deal to add Adventure Network charging to malls and apartments. Philly pushes ahead with loading zone and bike lane improvements despite lawsuits. Check out all the latest Chinese EVs we won’t be getting in the States. Brightline looks to restructure debt or face bankruptcy; this doesn’t bode well for its LA-Vegas train. Go behind the scenes at Avride’s delivery bot factory. Alphabet Q1 earnings re-confirms that Waymo is providing 500k+ autonomous rides per week. DoorDash launches business catering. CA extends Cap-and-Invest comments after Senate push.

See you next week; keep an eye out for how higher gas prices are impacting Uber, DoorDash and Lyft earnings!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

If you missed last week’s event, dive into the best fits with our just-released sizzle reel.

We’ve also just released video recordings of all the panels, firesides and speeches from Curbivore 2026:

• Kicking off Curbivore ’26: Autonomy, Delivery & Mobility

• Resilient Streets, Cities & Mega Events – The Road from Today Until 2028

• Beyond the Storefront: Successfully Navigating the On-Demand Era

• Urban Autonomy in America: What’s Real & What’s Next

• Tasteful Technology: The Future of Delivery

• Nithya Raman Welcomes You to Los Angeles

• Meet Dot: DoorDash’s Accelerated Autonomous Local Commerce Solution

• Better Wheels, Smarter Apps & Higher Wages: The Future of Gig Work

• Forecasting the Future of Gig Work in an Autonomous World

• Keep On Rolling: Electrifying, Scaling & Automating The Vehicles of Tomorrow

Watch Now

BIG NEWS SHARED FROM CURBIVORE’S STAGE

As always, Curbivore saw huge news launched from our main stage.

Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, Beryl Sanders, launched Returns: a reverse logistics service that’s gone live with partners like Best Buy, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Pet Food Express, Pacsun, and Petco.

Listen in to my conversation with her, digging deep into third party delivery’s evolution from urban niche to worldwide must-have, on the latest edition of the podcast.

We also hosted the official partnership launch for Fastport Honda and Bird + Spin. The iconic micromobility operator will be incorporating those fetching equads into its field operations.

And of course, Curbivore also hosted the official launch for Ridepro Team, plus the U.S. launches of new delivery bots from Neubility and Robotis. Take a look at our fantastic photos from last week to see all the other cutting-edge mobility hardware on display.

Curbivore moves markets as well. We hosted a number of financial analysts, with Roth publishing its updated research on Lyft, Uber, Amazon, Alphabet and DoorDash.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Finally hopping off the Curbivore stage, we’ve got plenty of industry news to catch you up on…

Coco heads north: Our friends at Coco Robotics have launched their latest market, bringing 20 bots to San Jose, CA. NorCal has been a bit less delivery bot friendly than SoCal, but DoorDash also recently launched its Dot bot in Fremont. (As discussed at Curbivore last week.) Coco is also partnering up with BlindSquare, providing robust data on hazards in the pedestrian right of way to the vision impaired.

Even bigger bots: Meanwhile, indiGOtech is taking its GO Bots to Belgium, as it partners with large retailer Colruyt Group’s Collect&Go service. (Indigo purchased bot-builder Clevon last year.)

Huge fundraising hauls: Slate Auto pulled in another $650M, in a Series C led by TWG Global, in its quest to bring affordable electric pickup trucks to the masses. Mappedin raised $24.5M to better map indoor spaces. Flock Safety is reportedly raising another round, after hauling in $275M last year: there’s always money in spy cameras! Glydways closed on $170M for its closed-route autonomous shuttle system. Overall EV funding sits at $3.57 billion YTD, up a bit YoY.

Not feeling the love in Philadelphia: Uber is fighting a proposal from the City of Philadelphia to add a $1 per ride tax to ridehail trips. The funds would go towards filling gaps in school district funding; I think this one would be an easier sell if the money went towards public transit or city infrastructure. Meanwhile, as predicted, rowdy cheese steak eaters have been beating up Avride’s delivery bots.

Red state transit: Omaha, Nebraska just started laying down rails for its new streetcar system, with a route that’s unfortunately rather duplicative of its sole BRT line. The city’s lofty vision is “Imagine an Omaha where people can park their car, then take the streetcar to shops, restaurants and entertainment venues without moving their vehicle more than once.” (Emphasis mine.) Meanwhile, Atlanta just inaugurated service on its first BRT line, which unfortunately still runs in mixed traffic for much of its route. And Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to kill a voter-approved light rail project in Austin, candidly noting “Austin is the blueberry in the tomato soup, and obviously the City Council has run amok and needs to be reined in.” Yay partisanship!

A few good links: Auto Marketplace shares its top takeaways from Curbivore 2026. Atoms officially purchases Pronto. Delivery worker Sergio Gustavo Ajche joined by Mamdani and Schumer at deliverista hub ribbon-cutting; here’s how it got built quickly. Quack: Avride squashes duck in Austin… talk about fowl play. No surprise: new research shows its more dangerous to be a pedestrian in areas with low foot traffic, not high. Malfunctioning electric busses leave South Florida transit operators high and dry. Pacific Surfliner adds new commuter-friendly train service. NYC adds protected bike lanes to 72nd Street. Tesla brings its not quite autonomous robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston. Capital offense: Uber ramps up AV spending to $10 billion, while buying new stake in Delivery Hero for €270M. Flytrex launches bigger drones for larger Little Caesars pizzas. NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie works to kill Stop Super Speeders bill. U.S. urban growth slows as immigrants stay away. SpaceX and CA Coastal Commission settle lawsuit. Can outdoor boozing reinvigorate California’s shopping districts? How to reinvigorate mid-sized cities’ downtowns. Bonjour hi: four new REM stations open in Montreal on May 18. LA Metro launches RFP for water taxi between San Pedro and Long Beach (can we extend it up to Santa Monica / Venice?)

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Beryl Sanders, Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, has led that charge, scaling up Uber Eats into novel verticals with new merchant relationships. Jonah Bliss sat down with her, live at Curbivore 2026, to hear what’s next for the delivery and mobility giant, including its just-launched returns feature (reverse logistics: so hot right now!)

Also on the pod, Jonah, Greg and Sela dig into the latest robotaxi news, share what’s working for micromobility operators in LatAm and Europe, and chew over Upshift’s pivot to tele-ops. Listen in!

Then, the festivities continue all day Friday at 826 Mateo St.

While we always bring out amazing transportation + delivery technology and unforgettable street food, to me the highlight of the event is the public sector leaders who are pushing mobility forward. I'm especially excited to announce that this year we're joined by Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has been a visionary and champion for improved mobility, better urban planning and healthier small businesses across Los Angeles.

She joins other champions of the public realm — from LADOT, NYCDOT, CPUC and more — and will be addressing attendees right after lunch concludes.

Register Now - It's Your Last Chance

We still have just a couple of tickets left for our biggest and best event yet — a full day and a half of amazing demos, powerful networking and thoughtful discussions uniting autonomy, delivery, mobility and so much more.

See you soon!

-Jonah, Harry & The Curbivore Crew

You’ve got just one day left to save over $300 on admission — act fast!

This year’s event is our biggest and best yet. We kick things off on Thursday 4/16 with our famous Opening Reception at Bike Shed Moto Co, brought to you by Ridepro Team.

Then Friday the 17th is an entire day of market-moving announcements, interviews, panels, demos, exhibitions, and of course our celebrated and complimentary street food. The core theme for this year’s festivities is understanding how the rise of autonomy is impacting just about every other topic we hold near and dear: cities, mobility, delivery, local businesses, civic technology and the curb. (Harry and I break apart those topics, and give you a taste of the discussions to come, in this week’s podcast.)

This year the networking opportunities go late into the night, with Nexar’s AV Future After Party closing things off!

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MEET THE LATEST PARTNERS JOINING US 4-16/17

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Eating your own lunch? Evidently Amazon’s quick commerce solution in India is growing so popular that it’s cannibalizing the ecommerce giant’s traditional grocery delivery platform. Amazon Fresh is reportedly winding down its “same day” options in 10-15 major cities to concentrate on 10-20 minute delivery. That’ll be tough on the margins!

Chicken, Wing(s): DoorDash and Wing are expanding their aerial delivery partnership to the land of Chick-fil-A, with a new launch in the Atlanta exurb of Locust Grove. Centered around a mall (of course!), the service promises 20 minute delivery for meals that would otherwise get bogged down by highways and cul-de-sacs. We’ll be touching on autonomous delivery operations at Curbivore when Harry chats with DoorDash Labs’ Harrison Shih!

Delivery, Ace’d: Uber Eats continues to add new non-food partners to its platform, as it begins delivery services for Ace Hardware. As Ace is a co-op, the deal starts with 3,700+ of the brand’s 6k locations, but that’s likely to grow over time. Jonah chats with Beryl Sanders, Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships about the push from restaurants to markets to all of retail, next week at Curbivore.

Physical AI, so hot right now! Palo Alto-based Eclipse just raised $1.3 billion in new capital for backing “physical AI” startups, split between early stage and growth funds. Existing port cos include Mind Robotics, Wayve, Arc, Mystra, Foxglove and Redwood Materials.

Derailed: A new crunching of FTA data shows how ridership has recovered (or not) from the pandemic at various large transit agencies across the states. While other major agencies are at 80-90% of their 2019 ridership, and even SF’s local operator Muni is at about 75%, BART has only seen about half of its riders return. Hence, the state’s loan to Bay Area agencies, hopefully followed by voters approving new permanent funding.

Feds on bikes: Finally, we may get an answer to the age old quandary, “what is an ebike?” The Safe Standards for Personal E-Bike and E-Moto Device Specifications (Safe SPEEDS) Act would empower the CPSC to define and regulate electric micromobility device at a federal level, better cleaning up the division between electric bicycles and electric motorcycles, while possibly adding speed and age-related requirements as well.

Does “Tesla for X” still sell? Voltify, dubbed the Tesla for Rail, just raised $30 million from Aleph and Fortescue to transition diesel train systems to electricity while relying on micro-grids instead of costly system-wide electrification.

Remote driving in circles? Estonian remote driving tech co Elmo is partnering with SF carsharer Upshift, to bring teleoperated rental cars to the Bay Area. Vay is doing something similar in Nevada, but this whole space seems to be struggling to gain traction… not as sexy as AVs, perhaps?

Join our friends at CoMotion Miami: From autonomy and advanced air mobility to intelligent infrastructure and mega-events, CoMotion MIAMI is where the world’s decision-makers come together to chart what’s next at the #1 future mobility event.

Join us on April 28-29 at Miami Dade College for two action-packed days of pitches, keynotes, insightful panels, hands-on workshops, live demos, exhibitions, networking and unmissable after-hours gatherings. Register now with Curbivore-30 and save 30%.

A few good links: Learnings from Portland’s zero-emissions delivery zone. Zenobe keeps funding EV truck charging. China cracks down on drones. U.S. traffic deaths fall. DoorDash local commerce report shows inflation easing (let’s see what happens next quarter, once higher gas prices are baked in.) NYC launches Office of Curb Management. Swobbee opens new NYC location. Deliverect launches AI agents. India grapples with gig worker shortage (try paying them more?) Grubhub co-founder moves into roadside automotive services. Niantic Spatial unveils the Scaniverse. Return of rail service to Atlanta’s Beltline looking less and less likely.

Get your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’re just two weeks away from Curbivore 2026 — uniting the worlds of autonomy, delivery and mobility on April 16th and 17th. We kick things off with our exclusive Opening Reception (registrants: keep your eyes peeled for RSVP info) followed by a full day of programming — panels, firesides, demos, workshops, booths, networking and amazing food + drink) and a rocking after party.

Our full agenda is now live, we’ve just announced our latest amazing speakers from Sweetgreen, Lyft, RidePro, Business Insider and Wolfe Research, and we’ve got more partners joining the fun (read to the bottom for all the details.)

Join the Conversation - Register Now

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Waymo takes off: Waymo’s AV services continues to grow in leaps and bounds, with the service now providing 500,000 paid rides per week, across 10 markets. Per TechCrunch’s crunching the data, it looks like growth has hit the “hockey stick” phase.

ALSO raises even more money, also: Just eight months after it’s last $200M raise, Rivian spin-out ALSO has raised a fresh $200 million. DoorDash is joining existing investors in this round, while DD Co-Founder Stanley Tang snags a board seat. Do note his quote, “We’re excited to invest and partner with them as we look to scale autonomous delivery.” Prior, ALSO had just been talking about delivery bikes and e-quads, not autonomy; it’s also interesting to see DoorDash continue to spread its bets around, given that it’s internally developing its Dot bot (which we’ll get to see and discuss at Curbivore!)

Seattle’s overdue rail progress: Seattle just inaugurated a giant expansion of its East Link light rail line, adding seven miles of service to a now 60 mile system, linking the city’s core with the eastern ‘burbs that host Microsoft and plenty of other tech jobs. The new rail is technically the world’s first to traverse a floating bridge (across Lake Washington;) the route used to host interstate carpool lanes.

Who’s driving that driverless vehicle? California legislators are pushing ahead with rules for remote operators of autonomous vehicles, including a requirement that they be located in the U.S. and have a California driver’s license. Slightly less sensible is a requirement that each operator can mind no more than three vehicles. Certainly we don’t want them watching thousands of vehicles each, but baking in a hard number this early seems premature. Expect to hear more about this from Pat Tsen, CPUC Deputy Executive Director – Consumer Policy, Transportation and Enforcement, at Curbivore.

What IS a restaurant? Given the rough economy, you’d think that restaurant openings in Los Angeles are falling. That’s true if you think of a restaurant as place you can sit, order from a human, and enjoy your meal. But if you include “limited service” restaurants, think delivery-oriented ghost kitchens, new restos are actually at an all time high. But when one address can technically host dozens of “restaurants,” it’s tough to say what the real number is any more…

All aboard for a nice exit: Congratulations to Vesputi, a public transit ticketing startup, that just sold their company to publicly-listed Tracsis, for up to €8.2M ($9.5M.) Our fund invested in them almost five years ago, and it’s great to see the hard-working team get a nice exit.

A few good links: New research suggests ridehailing accounts for 0.4% of all U.S. person trips, AVs could up that by orders of magnitude. Australian states suspend public transit fares in effort to win over drivers stung by high gas prices. Uber buys Blacklane in continued push into high-end travel. Feds declare war on D.C.’s streets. Take a look at some disheartening charts at how badly OBBBA is hurting America’s fiscal capacity, solely in the name of cutting taxes for the 0.1%. Bay Area commuter rail service SMART ups service to almost every 30 minutes (ugh, just get on a dang clock face,) partially funded by cutting nearby bus service. NYC goes on a pothole filling blitz.

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

MEET THE LATEST PARTNERS JOINING US 4-16/17

Ride Pro Team is a membership-based platform redefining what it means to be a professional rideshare driver. We give drivers the tools, technology, and community to transition from on-demand workers to independent business owners.

AUTEC is a leading manufacturer of commercial sushi robots that equip food service businesses and academic institutions globally.

Common Good is a versatile public affairs strategy group providing comprehensive consulting services for both the public and private sector.

And we warmly welcome our latest media partners: CoMotion, LA Auto Show and the Florida Automated Vehicles Summit.

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In today’s episode, we dive deep into what she sees as the hidden dangers lurking behind many AVs: humans that are too quick to trust fallible machines, too much latency between vehicles and their remote operators, incomplete regulations and a desire to keep costs in check. (These are topics so important that we’ll be revisiting them at Curbivore in April, where we’re bringing together regulators from the CPUC, alongside AV and delivery bot leaders.)

Also on the pod, Greg, Sela and I dive into London’s novel microhub alliance, Florida’s senile new speed limits, delivery cos pushing into physical AI, high gas prices and more. Listen in!

Curbivore is just three weeks away, and we’re excited to share more of the iconic speakers joining us April 16 & 17 in Downtown Los Angeles. Hear from leaders pushing delivery robotics, micromobility, gig work, next-gen parking, and even the Olympic Games forward! Check out all our speakers, and secure your tickets now!

Register Now - Join Us April 16 & 17

MEET THE LATEST PARTNERS JOINING US IN APRIL

As a global micromobility leader, Bird is making cities safer and more livable by reducing car trips and strengthening transportation ecosystems. We’re transforming the way the world moves one ride at a time.

Everee is the real-time payroll platform built for gig platforms, delivery operators, and on-demand workforces, so you can pay workers the moment a shift ends. With built-in compliance across all 50 states and cash flow support that removes the burden of fronting payroll, Everee helps you scale your workforce without the friction of legacy pay cycles.

HUB International is the largest privately held insurance brokerage in the United States, serving more than 2 million clients across commercial insurance, employee benefits, retirement, and wealth management. Our dedicated Physical AI practice insures companies building autonomous systems reshaping how goods and people move — from sidewalk delivery robots and autonomous trucks to advanced industrial robotics and humanoid platforms. HUB's Physical AI team brings deep technical fluency, purpose-built coverage structures, and carrier relationships designed for companies operating at the frontier of autonomy and last-mile delivery.

Y Risk is the innovation brand of The Hartford, delivering creative solutions for emerging business models and helping insure tomorrow’s economy.

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Adway is redefining the future of out-of-home by turning everyday vehicles into dynamic, high-impact digital canvases. We empower fleet operators to unlock new revenue streams while giving brands a bold, mobile platform to captivate audiences in the real world.

Flex is the trade association that represents the app-based platform economy and the people who rely on it.

Sweetfin is a healthful, chef-driven, California inspired poke and plant based bowl concept that uses local produce, sustainable fish, and innovative ingredients. Our entire menu is gluten free and all of our menu items are made in-house, from scratch, daily.

Business-in-a-Box builds patented mobile stores. Our store models are branded retail solutions for businesses looking to stand out and connect with customers.

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Christensen Group’s Future of Mobility Practice delivers specialized insurance and risk management solutions for the companies redefining how people and goods move. The practice supports shared mobility platforms, micromobility fleets, last-mile delivery operators, and autonomous vehicle and fleet developers, combining deep expertise in product liability, fleet risk, and emerging transportation technologies to build tailored insurance programs for the next generation of mobility companies.

The best clients deserve the best drivers. The best drivers deserve the best pay. Chauffeur by Courial. We’re excited to announce that Chauffeur by Courial is officially bringing our all-luxury ride-hailing and advanced booking platform to Los Angeles this April.

Goodie Bag is a mobile app based marketplace offering exclusive deals on quality unsold food from local shops. We help shops reach new customers and optimimze revenue, create more affordable options for consumers, and reduce food waste!

Obi is a global real-time aggregator that compares millions of pricing and pick-up (ETA) data points providing consumers and businesses with actionable data. The free consumer app allows riders to compare taxis, black cars and major rideshare providers instantly. Riders can search by car type, or pick up ETA and always book the lowest priced vehicle or quickest pickup. With over 1,400,000 global users, Obi has partnered with dozens of rideshare and taxi providers around the world to help provide transparency in ride fares. The app provides real-time pricing data across all the major rideshares including Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Tesla, Bolt, Curb, Indrive, Yango, Ola, Empower, Didi, Careem, Freenow, Grab and many more.

Register Now - Join Us April 16 & 17

RELATED EVENTS & NEWS ROUND-UP

Open Mobility Mixer: Our friends at the Open Mobility Foundation are kicking off Curbivore with an industry mixer, open to anyone that cares about digital infrastructure, curb technology, and the future of cities. RSVP for 4/15.

HNGRY Live - Physical AI: Jonah Bliss joins Matt Newberg and leaders from Instacart and Gambit Robotics to discuss why everyone is suddenly hot for robotics and physical AI. Register for the 4/2 webinar.

Ride AI: Our friends at Ride AI reconvene on April 15, 2026, at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. Register now and score a free Waymo ride!

NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour: Our buds at Electric Avenue are organizing the Big Apple’s best and brightest on 4/21.

PIE Show: Parking Today is hosting the all-new Parking Industry Expo in Dallas, 3/30-4/2, and they’re offering Curbivore subscribers a last-minute discount to attend. If you work in parking, curb management, or mobility, this one’s worth your time. PIE is built around editorially curated content (no sales pitches), meaningful connections, and topics that matter to mobility professionals every day. Use code CURBIVORE26 at checkout for 100% off a standard registration.

CDAT: The Catering, Delivery & Tech Expo, presented by The RMDA, brings together independent restaurant delivery operators, DSPs, and industry tech providers — a highly targeted audience of decision-makers actively shaping last-mile delivery, catering, and restaurant operations. March 30-31 in Vegas.

A few good links: CTA struggles with worker assaults. Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), looks to federalize AV rules. London’s Wheely brings luxury ridehailing to NYC. Zoox expands to Austin, Miami and more of SF. InDrive revenue climbs 31%. MOIA readies for LA launch (looks like Playa Vista in the bg.) WeRide heads to Slovakia. SMART preps for Healdsburg extension. Sony / Honda kill off Afeela EV, just in time for record gas prices! LA fiiiiinally gets speeding cameras. Chicago Cubs look to fill neighborhood with more parking. SCAG talks curb space management. Boston drags feet on new bus lanes.

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Register Now - Join Us April 16 & 17

Whether AVs ramp up to five or 50% of mode share, I think the more interesting questions are actually about what comes next… what are the second order effects of the robotaxi revolution?

What will the rise of self-driving vehicles mean for the drivers that currently work in ridehailing or as cabbies? Even in the most optimistic deployment scenarios, AVs are capital intensive, so their scale will cover base demand, not peak. In that case, might TNC drivers go back to the earlier premise of gig work, and just log on for a few hours of supplemental earnings during rush hour?

What happens to urban real estate, both public and private? Why waste valuable land on car storage, if the car can take itself off-site while you’re shopping, or better yet: pick up its next passenger. Can those spots then be repurposed as outdoor dining, parks, or homes? Will they become charging depots for power-hungry vehicles, or will we have instead decided that all our spare grid capacity should be spent on AI server farms?

Will restaurants and retailers thrive in a world where self-driving trucks cut down their input costs, and sidewalk bots give them some breathing room on delivery margins? Might those gains help independent shops compete, or will well-funded chains be better able to capitalize on these advancements?

If the price of ridehailing falls, might more people eschew car ownership, opting to only pay for mobility when they use it, thus enjoying a broader array of transport options? That was more or less our conceit when we created Turo: people would use and pay for cars just when they needed them, and then opt for other mobility modes — transit, biking, etc — at other times. Suffice to say, making car usage cheaper only led to people using more cars…

While AVs scale up, some of the remaining questions are technological in nature, but I think even more are actually policy questions. If we don’t want everyone stuck in (self-driving) traffic, might more cities opt for congestion pricing? What happens to parking meter revenue in a world where nobody needs to park?

Questions like these are vital, and they’re at the heart of the conversations we’ll be having at Curbivore 2026. We’ve assembled a truly top notch cast of speakers, we’re bringing together the smartest companies building the future (meet more of them below, or skip to the bottom if you want the weekly news) and we’ve got all the technology of tomorrow right on display. Join us April 16-17 in Downtown LA.

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MEET CURBIVORE’S LATEST PARTNERS

TaskUs delivers outsourced digital services that power the companies shaping the future. By combining specialized human talent and intelligent technology, we solve complex operational challenges through a unified ecosystem of specialized services — from L&D to R&D, remote and emergency assistance, in-field and mission control operations — reducing cost-per-mile and enhancing rider experience while ensuring uncompromised safety and compliance.

Wombi offers a premium, all-inclusive e-bike subscription. Memberships include theft protection, 24/7 Rider Rescue, and the option to purchase your bike when the time is right. Ride with confidence knowing Wombi has you covered every mile of the way.

Serve is a leading autonomous robotics company operating a scaled, commercial, Level-4 fleet across 20 U.S. cities.

Voltera enables rapid AV fleet deployment through purpose-built, high-performance hubs in dense urban markets.

LAZ is a leader in tech‑enabled mobility and parking, delivering people‑first operations powered by smart technology — to help our clients build their businesses, not ours.

Mapbox is the location technology platform that powers billions of map, navigation, and search experiences worldwide. Trusted by developers and enterprises, from BMW to DoorDash, Mapbox delivers flexible, high-performance geospatial solutions that delight users, enhance operations, and transform industries.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

A (self-driving) truckload of AV news: Fresh off relaunching its Motional robotaxi service in Vegas, Uber announced its investing up to $1.25 billion into Rivian to deploy tens of thousands of autonomous R2 SUVs. Meanwhile, the DOT is getting ready to allow mass-production of steering wheel and pedal-free vehicles. On the smaller side, Ottobot is taking its delivery bots to a remote Australian mining village, in partnership with Sodexo. And Uber ATG’s former Self Driving Lead documents all the inherent flaws with his self-driving Tesla that led to its crash.

Watch me talk about AVs and ridehailing! Can’t get enough snark, I mean analysis? I’ll be speaking at Roth’s 38th annual capital markets conference on Monday at noon PT. Register for the livestream of “Rideshare At Crossroads - Autonomy, Global Expansion, and the Next Phase of Mobility.”

Out of gas… Brent oil prices briefly cracked $119 this morning, while a gallon of sweet, delicious gasoline is now averaging out to $3.88 in the United States. Prior research shows that for every 10% increase in gas prices, transit ridership grows by 1.2%, so this awful war might be the most Trump has ever done to boost public transport.

Double dash: Two-wheeled deliveries are taking off on DoorDash, with growth of deliveries via bikes and mopeds scaling four times faster than car-based orders over the past two years. Two-wheeled couriers earn 10% more per hour than their automotive counterparts, thanks to less time spent parking and stuck in traffic. DD also just added a new category that requires zero wheels — Tasks — a platform for gig workers to add photos and data to enrich menus and AI training sets.

Here comes Amazon, quickly: Amazon is looking to eat some of DoorDash, Uber Eats and Instacart’s lunch, as it launches one-hour delivery of select inventory. The new $9.99 per order service is launching in major cities as well as mid-sized ‘burgs in the Mountain West, while a 3-hour option is headed to small towns nationwide.

New York two-step: NYC Mayor Mamdani is halting the NYPD’s crackdown on bicyclists, ending criminal summons for minor traffic violations, while also upping training for bike-based delivery workers. Meanwhile, his new Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn is looking to relax permitting for outdoor dining.

Unsafe at any speed: New data from Streetlight shows that most of America’s streets are still far from safe. Pedestrian fatalities are on the rise, as metro areas — especially in the South — prioritize speed over safety.

Discondobulating: Condos should be a great way for America to combat its housing crisis. Affordable for builders and homeowners alike, while taking a naturally urban form. And yet we build far too few of them, thanks to an arcane mix of rules that favor litigation and slow planning / plot mapping.

A flagrant conflict of interest: Meanwhile, older condos are in trouble too. San Francisco recently wrote new rules that required older high-rise buildings to install fire sprinklers. Now the fire marshal who wrote the controversial rules has found himself a new job as a consultant that “helps” building condo associations comply with the $300k per unit requirements.

End of the line, once more: The Red Line — a long-planned east-west light rail line in Baltimore — appears to be on life support, with officials looking to replace the planned train with a cheaper bus rapid transit system. This line has died many previous deaths: a similar route was sketched as part of the region’s Great Society era subway system, of which only one different line was ever built; it was revived as light rail in the early 2000s, and then killed by Governor Hogan, before being revived by the current Governor.

LA’s next, next subway: LA Metro has recommended the San Vicente-Fairfax alignment for the northern extension of the K Line, aiming to hit job and population centers across Mid-Wilshire and West Hollywood. The agency also appears to sadly be kowtowing to the dumbest NIMBY complaint yet — concerns that the deeply bored tunnels would somehow disturb single family home owners above — and may in turn choose a longer than necessary route in the Wellington Square neighborhood: that would both cost more to build and make service forever slower. In happier news, here are some beautiful photos of the D Line stations that open in two months.

Cool book alert: Friend of the curb Joshua Schank’s new book — New Tricks for Old Bureaucracies — is on sale now, hitting shelves next week. Score yourself a copy!

A few good links: Singapore cabbies raise fares as gas prices jump. LA break ground on tallest modern affordable housing project West of the Mississippi (35 stories, no parking.) Detroit Airport to host Michigan’s largest Supercharger site. IIHS / Volpe push for active intelligent speed assistance on fleets. Google Maps gets Geminied. Atoms. Prosus leads $600M round into Indian ridehailer Rapido. The problem with hacker house hype culture. Iceland transitions from gas tax to road user charge. Ex-Nikola CEO and convicted fraudster Trevor Milton plots his airplane-oriented comeback. Despite federal withdrawal, CA continues investing in zero-emissions transit. Immigration is good for local economies (duh.) Sony-Honda’s eye-catching (and troubled) Afeela 1 to be California-only for the time being. Eight lessons learned from the death of the D.C. Streetcar. Amtrak rail yard sale could lead to new Chicago neighborhood + White Sox stadium. Mexican city of Uruapan inaugurates aerial cable car. Congestion pricing leads to faster NYC subway ridership growth.

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

In today’s podcast, I chatted with Michael Schneider, the organization’s Founder & CEO about how to replicate his group’s success, what it took to get measure HLA passed (including lots and lots of money, something he credits to his days as a startup founder,) why LA is still struggling to reshape its streets (hint: it’s also about money, or the lack thereof) and a few wonkier topics like charter reform.

Also on the pod: Greg, Athena and I dive into gender inequity across transport, eVTOLs taking off, World Cup transit troubles, super fast fundraising, Curbivore’s latest speakers and more. Listen in!

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PARTNER | Rideshare Prices Up 9.6%, Platform Fees Surged 33%, Driver Pay Up Just 3.6%. Here’s What’s Reshaping Gig Mobility.

Download the 2026 Annual Gig Mobility Report from Gridwise Analytics to understand how pricing, earnings, tipping, and platform economics evolved across major U.S. rideshare and delivery platforms.

Our findings include:

• Customer prices rose 9.6% while platform fees per trip surged 33.2% and driver gross pay per trip grew just 3.6%

• Rideshare tips hit a record high of $1.58 per trip while delivery tips fell to $4.16, near an all-time low

• Over 60% of consumers say they cut back on rideshare due to pricing, up 16.6% from the prior year

• Consumers are rapidly shifting to more premium ride types, with Comfort, Black, and Priority jumping 10%, 35%, and 319% respectively

• Driver bonus pay reached a three-year high of $317.65 per quarter

Download the full report to see the complete picture of where gig mobility economics stand today.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Air taxis take off, look out below! The FAA approved eight pilot programs, allowing companies like Archer, Beta, Joby and Wisk to start testing eVTOLs that have yet to receive full certification. The tests will take place in 26 states, with participation looking less political and more based off of which regions have existing aerospace economies.

Self driving, self funding? AVs are in land-grab mode in more ways than one. China’s Momenta just filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange, joining compatriot WeRide in tapping the public markets in their insatiable quest for cash. The company is likely to raise $1B+, having last raised privately last fall at a $5B valuation. This will be a nice exit for GM, which invested back in 2021.

LAXluster: LAX, everyone’s favorite airport, just voted to raise fees for ridesharing trips, which are currently $4 (on the low-ish side compared to other major airports.) Under the new plan, drop-offs in the central terminal area will eventually reach $12, while those connecting to the new SkyLink would be $6. Beyond raising revenue, the program looks to shunt traffic to the soon-to-open automated people mover, or encourage folks to take Metro.

Which way, San Jose: In 2022, San Jose, CA adopted a “transit first” policy, opting to get techies onto public transit. First the good news: mass deployment of transit signal priority (powered by Lyt) has increased bus speeds by 20%. And the bad: while that has helped transit ridership rebound a bit from its Covid nadir, the remote-work friendly region still rides busses and trains about 40% less than it did at peak.

Permit reform: San Francisco just gave the “okay” to curbside EV charging, in a boon to both EV owners and industry friends like It’s Electric. This comes as part of Mayor Lurie’s “common-sense” reform to PermitSF, which also includes expediting al fresco restaurant dining (yay,) deck repairs (okay,) and parking in driveways (boo if this means more cars encroach the sidewalk.)

Ad nauseam: It’s a mantra around these parts that the real money makers for many mobility or delivery networks are those juicy, high-margin ads. But what works at scale for the network is a bit less compelling when you break it down on a per-person level. New data out of NYC shows that the annoying seat-back TVs that blare commercials in the back of many Ubers and Lyfts only net the drivers an extra $30-35 in profit per month. Frankly, I’d pay that much just to turn the screen off.

Talk about an incentive! Just how important is the success of Waymo and Wing to Alphabet? New filings show that Sundar Pichai, the company’s CEO, could get as much as $175M in stock-related performance grants if those subsidiaries meet performance goals.

Doge’d: Economic growth has slowed across the country, but some areas are feeling it worse than others… The Washington, D.C. region is at the bottom of the list — down 1.7% YoY — due to the current administration’s hatcheting of the federal workforce. Overall, many (but not all) of the strongest growing regions are the most sprawling and low-density, further complicating any goals to re-grow CBDs and get folks back on transit.

A few good links: Uber eyes subscription pricing for drivers. VW delivers four millionth EV. Politickin’: Gov. Hochul’s pause on NY robotaxi pilot likely done to build allies for insurance reform. California cracks down on Montana license plate tax fraud. Free transit gains momentum in France. Talk about a carbon tax: illegal war with Iran pushes oil prices to $100/barrel. Zoox begins robotaxi testing on the hot asphalt of Phoenix and Dallas. Minnesota may quash AVs. Coco Robotics deploys Niantic’s spatial AI and Visual Positioning System. Public transit investments have a 5 to 1 ROI. Digital curb management providers still struggling to keep an eye on scofflaws. Ridehail drivers in LatAm struggle without safety nets. Serve Robotics partners with White Castle, sees FY25 revenue hit $2.7M. Congrats to Pritzker winner Smiljan Radić. Grubhub / Wonder partners with Dexa (fka Drone Express) to pilot aerial delivery in suburban New Jersey. Zoox to bring Las Vegas and LA robotaxis onto Uber network. With the Senate passing the ROAD to Housing Act, an economist explains why banning investors from owning single-family homes might not be so smart. How metro systems pull commuters out of cars. Swarm Aero raises $35M for drone swarms. Victoria, Australia enshrines two-days of WFH per week for all workers. Why we can’t build modular homes. Nissan, Uber and Waybe collaborate to bring robotaxis to Japan. Ford’s new AI assistant will notify fleet owners about seatbelt usage. Rivian launches more affordable R2. NYC looks to finally charge for residential on-street parking; why has this taken so long?!

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets, price jump tomorrow!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Waymo has famously taken an HD maps approach, while Tesla has been an even more vocal proponent of going mapless. Other companies have taken the no maps approach as well: Imagry, founded in Haifa and led by CEO Eran Ofir, is one of the companies betting that a lighter, perception-driven stack can make autonomy more deployable and affordable. The company’s camera-based system has been tested on buses and shuttles in Israel, Japan, Germany, and the U.S., with a focus on constrained but commercially meaningful routes. As the industry moves past the hype cycle of robotaxi demos and into the harder work of sustainable deployment, Imagry’s experience offers a useful lens into what autonomy looks like when it has to perform outside the lab — whether that future is mapped to the centimeter or not. We checked in with Eran to get his latest thoughts on the mapping debate.

Note: this interview was first published by our team at Ottomate News. We’re republishing it below for The Curbivore subscribers.

Ottomate News: To start, give us the elevator pitch for Imagry.

Eran Ofir: Imagry delivers vision-based autonomous driving solutions without HD maps, lidar, or the cloud. We are pioneering Generative Autonomy: real-time intelligence that drives machines in the physical world. Our AI-centric platform, unlike rule-based systems, learns from experience and adapts to any road, vehicle, or condition, just like a human, only better.

Already deployed across transit and fleet vehicles, Imagry is solving the scalability challenge for both public transportation and passenger cars. Our real-time, hardware-agnostic architecture integrates seamlessly with existing platforms, giving automakers and transit operators a cost-effective, production-ready autonomy solution.

The next leap in GenAI isn’t a chatbot. It’s a driver. Today we drive buses and cars. Tomorrow, we power every intelligent machine that moves.

Most AV stacks still lean on HD maps, even if they talk about “reducing” dependence. What made you confident enough to go fully mapless, and where do you see that choice giving Imagry an enduring advantage vs. players like Mobileye or Wayve who also push lower-map approaches?

Imagry has always believed in the philosophical approach that an AI autonomous driving system should completely mimic the way people think and act. We humans don’t drive with HD maps, since we see the road and understand it. It has always been our premise (since 2018) that a full, uncompromised AI solution is the only practical approach to autonomous driving. We knew this approach would eventually be viable and ultimately prevail (once edge computing in the vehicle would be capable enough, which happened approximately two years ago). Currently only Tesla, Imagry, and Wayve have such capability. This provides us with a huge advantage in project bids, as it means that our vehicles/buses can drive everywhere, and not just in a small and limited geo-fenced area dictated by the HD-map being used by the less advanced players in the market.

You’ve previously said big parts of the AV industry spent billions on flashy demos while you focused on making autonomy actually work in daily service. What did you do differently in your first real deployments—like the autonomous buses in Israel—and what surprised you most when theory met messy real-world operations?

Our approach wasn’t to do demos that would look nice but be built on weak technology. Rather, from the get-go we built the foundation of an AI system that learns by imitation. Also, we didn’t take the unsupervised approach, which is quick and dirty, but the supervised approach to AI training, which is much slower but serves as a very solid foundation for training the neural networks.

When we got on the road (in the U.S., Germany, Japan, Israel…), we learned that lab simulations have little to do with real autonomous driving on public, mixed traffic roads. We learned that keeping latency to a minimum is of paramount importance, and every small change there leads to significant different behavior. We learned that urban driving (which is our forte) is much more complex than highway driving, and we learned how difficult and sophisticated a system should be in order to be able to drive on both sides of the road (most players in the world drive only on right-hand-side or left-hand-side, but not both with the same system, as Imagry does).

Imagry is camera-only and hardware-agnostic, which may be attractive on cost—but safety regulators and OEMs love redundancy. How do you make the safety case for a vision-only system, and what are the long tail risks you worry about?

It has been proven time and again that the need for lidar and radar is not real and was only pushed by their vendors (all of whom have lost >90% of their value since coming on the scene). In the AI era, a camera-based system that sees 100m-300m and 360 degrees doesn’t need lidar or radar that anyhow don’t understand what they see and can’t understand colors and signs. We humans are not equipped with lidar and radars and yet regulators trust us to drive well! Also, given that the response time of our system is at least 3 times faster than a human, it is safer than a human driver. Tesla, XPeng, Volvo, and Imagry are already using vision-only systems, and I expect that by the end of the decade, most OEMs will adopt the vision-only approach. Cameras are continually improving. Now we also drive in dark nights using thermal cameras. We work closely with regulators globally, and they understand now that the old adage “hardware will solve it all” has become extinct; now it’s AI software that rules.

Who do you see as your main customers over the next five years: transit operators, Tier-1s, or the OEMs themselves? And what do partnerships look like in terms of integration, revenue models, data sharing and the like?

Our target customers for our autonomous buses are public transportation operators (PTOs) and municipalities, and fleets (for our roboshuttle offering). Yes, we do work with OEMs, but as partners for providing the needed pre-integrated vehicles to our customers.

You’re live or testing in multiple regions—from Israel to the U.S., Germany and Japan. What are the hidden bottlenecks to scaling from a handful of routes and vehicles to thousands—are they primarily technical, regulatory, operational, or commercial?

The main bottleneck is the regulation, specifically, the length of time required to obtain an L4 driverless permit in a country. We already see cases where the public operator is getting closer to being able to pull out the drivers, and they are preparing budgets to purchase dozens of autonomous buses for their fleets during 2026 and early 2027. It’s only a matter of time. The technology is there, but much still needs to happen in the market with respect to the integration of multiple systems (e.g., connecting to ticketing, billing, control room, etc.), in order for the autonomous vehicle to be ready for full scale in prime time. I would give it around five years until the full solution becomes standard.

Imagry talks about bio-inspired, imitation-learning-based driving. As models get larger and more “world-model-like,” how does your stack evolve—do you see a path to a single generalized “AI driver,” or will vehicular autonomy always be highly domain-specific?

Read the Full Interview at Ottomate News

Industry Dive calls Curbivore a “top” conference of 2026. Join industry leaders from across mobility, delivery and autonomy — score tickets before price jump next week!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

My World Cup runneth over: The World Cup kicks off across North America in just three months, and a number of host cities have now revealed how they plan to handle the soccering masses. Boston’s MBTA is “ready” with an upgraded station in Foxborough. Mexico City has opened a rail line connecting its new tertiary airport, while adding rolling stock to a rail line that serves Estadio Azteca. And Los Angeles Metro is launching express bus service from Union Station and a number of stations that are further afield; I’m pleased to see them using market pricing to adjust their parking lot rates accordingly ($60-120+ depending on location and time.)

Anything for a quiet life… Across the country, shopping centers are struggling with declining foot traffic as shoppers opt for online delivery. Now many REITs are fighting back, hoping to make their malls into “third places” where folks will want to linger. The thinking is that you’ll come for the green space and stick around to buy a latte or some leggings. A fair idea, but perhaps cities should also apply this thinking to their own commercial corridors: keep the streets clean and build some dang actual parks?

Grounded! Supernal, an Irvine-based air taxi startup back owned by Hyundai, just cut 80% of its staff, following earlier departures of key leaders. The company has thus far spent $6 billion in the hopes of bringing a four-seater eVTOL to market. Turns out fighting gravity is rather expensive!

The real cost of urban highways: A new project — Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts — aims to quantify not just the amount of land occupied by freeways in America’s cities, but how much that real estate is worth (and the real cost to munis by keeping that land off the books.) I will say, there are some real iffy assumptions in here, while it would certainly behoove many rust belt cities to rip out their highways, it’s not like they’ll suddenly see a wave of demand to rebuild tax-paying uses on all that real estate…

Good state bill, bad state bill: California legislators are looking to slow down the proliferation of e-motorcycles that masquerade as electric bicycles, stopping those more dangerous devices from marketing themselves as “e-bikes.” Over in Utah, benighted state lawmakers are looking to stop Salt Lake City from adding local traffic-calming measures.

Teaching the people that teach the machines: The NTSB has launched a probe into Waymo driving around an Austin school bus when the stop-arm was extended. It appears to be a human-in-the-loop failure, with a remote operator wrongly giving the car an okay to proceed. Next up, perhaps they’ll need to see why this robotaxi blocked an ambulance that was responding to a mass shooting perpetuated by someone protesting the war on Iran. (Talk about a depressing 2026 lingo bingo card…)

Any better? Last month we looked at a new site that lets people bet on local traffic conditions. Now, entrepreneurial Germans have launched DBSM BahnBet, where punters can gamble on how late any individual Deutsche Bahn train may be. Unlike “Rush Hour,” this new site uses only fictional currency, and its main goal seems to be shaming DB’s leaders into improving their on-time performance.

In which “third world” infrastructure is better than our own: Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, just inaugurated line 2C of its metro system, bringing the network to about 35 miles. Meanwhile, Santiago, Chile continues to retrofit its existing (and rapidly expanding) metro system by adding platform screen doors to busy stations.

A few good links: Food delivery price wars sink profits at China’s JD.com. NYC seeks clean-energy powered vending carts. Revel (not the EV startup) raises $150M for improved manufacturing software. Harbinger buys Phantom AI in a move that may portend more autonomous trucks. Federal court upholds NYC congestion pricing cordon. Venture funding hits new monthly record, driven by AI and AV investments. Pronto raises $25M to deliver domestic workers to your door in just 10 minutes (in India, naturally.) Olo launches customer-facing food delivery app. Judge rules troubled insurer American Transit Insurance failed to properly defend Uber. Parking glut: Arrive buys Passport (impressive work by founder Khristian Gutierrez, just two years after stepping back into the CEO role.) Virginia looks to allow self-driving vehicles by 2028. Sydney finishes tunneling for its $29B AUD, 24 km express rail line connecting its two CBDs.

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

And while these urban conditions spawn all sorts of fascinating startups that work in the Tri-state, those same companies then struggle when they try to scale up and serve other parts of the country. Equally vexing: many concepts that work well in Europe or Asia might want to use NYC as a beachhead for a U.S. launch, but are then stymied by the fact that U.S. regulations or other localization factors might be too byzantine to navigate.

NYC leaders set out to solve this problem with launch of BATWorks, teaming up with the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and Cambridge Innovation Center, effectively pairing the nation’s three biggest tech hubs outside of the SF Bay Area in a shared mission to incubate, pilot and commercialize clean technologies.

In today’s episode of Zag Talk, I sat down with Alex Mitchell, Senior Vice President of LACI BATWorks, to talk about the mission, how startups can better work with governments, and his unique background in the mobility ecosystem. Plus, Sela, Greg and I dig into the latest Waymo news, Egypt’s fast-growing delivery startup, gambling on traffic, and the Citrini report that temporarily popped the stock market. Listen in!

EVENTS | Cutting Edge Mobility Heads to Curbivore: April 16 & 17

Our annual conference focused on the future of delivery, mobility and autonomy is just around the corner: Curbivore returns to Downtown LA on April 16 & 17. We’re pleased to announce our latest partners — true innovators driving the industry forward. Meet Bot Auto, Robotis, Indigo Tech, Rideshare Carz, RoboDock and Neubility: and join them in person in April to see the technologies reshaping our streets.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Hot bot: Los Angeles-based Coco Robotics just unveiled its new Coco 2 next-gen autonomous delivery bot. The new robot’s improved hardware aims to increase the amount of time operating fully autonomously, while also allowing for operations in bike lanes and on roads. (I’ll be at Coco’s launch party tonight — expect more pics of the hardware soon!)

Most literal curb news: City of Boston introduces its Curb Lab, an initiative of the Office of Emerging Technology. City of Seattle is hiring for a Temporary Curb Technology Strategist. OMF releases Shared Learning for Smarter Curbs report. Washington State debuts the first statewide pedestrian network map, displaying sidewalks, curbs and crossings for 90% of the state’s population areas.

The future of retail is all IKEA? Ikea continues its march to retail dominance, as its launching its 11th California location, in SoCal’s Helms Bakery furniture district. This will be one of the Swedish chain’s smallest US. stores, coming in at around 40,000 feet, built into a historic building on a bustling shopping street near light rail. Greater Los Angeles has always been a place for Ikea to test new concepts, the chain also operates its largest North American location (456,000 sq. ft.) in nearby Burbank. Real heads will recall that Ikea first grew to Golden State dominance when it took over erstwhile imitator STØR, which Ikea acquired the same year as it was mocked in The Simpsons. Also worth noting is that over 35% of Ikea’s sales now come via ecommerce channels.

Oh Elon… Eight months into Tesla’s launch of “Robotaxi” service in Austin, the service has around 42 cars, with sub 20% availability, a far cry from Musk’s promise of 500+ cars and coverage for half the U.S. population. Meanwhile, Tesla just built its first steering wheel-free Cybercab, while its cars continue to try to drive people into lakes.

In happier AV news: Waymo hit 200 million autonomous miles, as it began welcoming riders in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, while also beginning tests in Chicago. Aurora Innovation’s AV trucks are about to hit the highways between AZ and TX. Wayve raised $1.2 billion, one of the largest venture rounds in British history. Newark Airport is planning to pilot autonomous buses from Oceaneering, Ohmio and Glydways.

Ride the D: LA Metro has officially announced the D Line extension is set to open on May 8th (which is juuuust slightly past its most recent promise of “winter.”) Service on the 3.9 mile section links Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire and the edge of Beverly Hills, a diverse and dense stretch of offices, residential and cultural destinations. Part of this line was originally meant to open in the ‘90s, before an explosion at a Ross Dress for Less temporarily scared voters out of tunneling near methane.

You can just hallucinate your entire vacation! Congrats to my friends at Turo on launching a partnership with OpenAI, allowing travelers to search for rental cars in ChatGPT. Like many of OpenAI’s collaborations, there’s still a bit of work to be done: a bit of testing finds that the chat bot will hallucinate availability in markets that Turo doesn’t serve, and repeatedly link to cars that are unavailable.

Big cities need fast trains: New Delhi just opened the final segment of the first line of its Namo Bharat Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS), logging an impressive 100k riders on inauguration day. The system is a rapid-metro of sorts, engineered to run at around 110 MPH, with subway system-like frequency, with stations a good three to four miles apart. Seoul is working on a similar system, which is key to making transit time-competitive in sprawling mega cities.

A few good links: Walmart to pay $100M over deceptive Spark Driver pay. Einride raises over-subscribed $113M PIPE. Does the release of new music result in more distracted driving, causing more accidents? (Yes.) CA Gov. Newsom signs legislation to loan Bay Area transit operators $590M. (Remember my podcast with Sen. Scott Wiener, who championed this bill?) Boston extends free fare pilot on three bus routes. Uber debuts Autonomous Solutions division. New report finds that 44% of LA County’s pavement is unnecessary (but disappointing to see no mention of Measure W, a recent parcel tax that discourages impermeable surfaces.) Traffic enforcement cameras help SF improve ticketing rate. ZaiNar raises $100M for AI-powered GPS alternative. NYC Court unmasks fraudulent car accident crime ring. Even in a blizzard, NYC’s courier warriors go out to deliver food (hope you tip!) Meanwhile, the storm also highlighted pedestrians’ favorite desire paths. Uber snaps up SpotHero. FedEx sues U.S. for tariff refunds. Amazon hits 100M sustainable deliveries in Europe. It’s Electric launches in D.C. Singaporean ridehailer Tada eyes growth in U.S., Africa. Trump Admin looks to kill Tremont Ave busway in the Bronx. Plano agrees to drop DART withdrawal election, after regional transit agency agrees to kick back some taxes to city (looks like the hostage takers won, expect more munis to try this…)

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

If there’s one transportation mega-trend that looks to be taking place in 2026, this is the year that autonomous vehicles become “real.” No longer are AVs consigned to the exurbs of Arizona; you’ve got robotaxis prowling the streets of dense mega-cities and low-tech towns alike. Autonomous trucks are hauling loads for marquee retailers, and sidewalk delivery bots are moving meals even in locales with incredibly strict regulatory regimes.

But the future isn’t static… and at Curbivore we pride ourselves on bringing together the newest machines reshaping the future of autonomy, delivery and mobility. Our latest 2026 partners are trucking across Texas, introducing new delivery bots never seen before on this continent, are building and financing vehicles purpose-fit for ridehailing and are even innovating new ways to charge electric fleets. Learn more below, but better yet: meet them in person on April 16-17 at Curbivore.

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Meet Our Latest Partners

Bot Auto is an autonomous trucking company based in Houston, founded in 2023 by Dr. Xiaodi Hou. Bot Auto utilizes a small fleet of trucks equipped with its AI-powered Autonomous Driving System to run freight for customers in Texas via a hub to hub, Transportation as a Service model. It currently services major customers on lanes from Houston to San Antonio and Houston to Dallas.

Leveraging its globally trusted DYNAMIXEL® smart actuators, ROBOTIS (Robot is...) powers the GAEMI delivery robot for reliable last-mile delivery across indoor and outdoor environments. Partner with us to deploy scalable delivery solutions that lower costs and improve operational efficiency.

indiGO is launching the next generation of EVs and AVs that are purpose-built for delivering people, packages and food while reducing fleet operating costs and maximizing performance. This new platform is made possible via the world's only SmartWheels innovation that combines propulsion and active suspension directly into the wheel architecture, enabling highly-efficient EVs and AVs that are roomier, lighter, and smoother than other vehicles in this class.

Rideshare Carz’s mission is to empower rideshare and delivery drivers with the tools, education, and opportunities to take control of their financial future. The company provides reliable, high-quality rental vehicles alongside expert guidance to help drivers become their own boss, maximize their earnings, and create a schedule that fits their lifestyle. Through competitive pricing, flexible rental options, and a commitment to driver success, Rideshare Carz strives to remove barriers to entry and support drivers in building a profitable and sustainable business. As the company expands its reach, it remains dedicated to fostering a community of independent entrepreneurs who thrive in the evolving gig economy.

RoboDock builds robots that automate depot operations, like charging and vehicle checks, for electric and autonomous vehicle fleets. We turn fleet depots from manual sites into self-running systems that lower operational costs and increase vehicle uptime.

Neubility is a South Korea-based robotics pioneer, specializing in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for last-mile delivery and security patrols. We provide comprehensive end-to-end solutions—spanning hardware, autonomy software, and fleet management platforms—and currently hold the record for the most robot deployments in South Korea.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Who’s ready for robotic sushi? In a world where a majority of restaurant consumption takes place off premises… do you really care who the chef is? What about for sushi, a cuisine where the chef’s precision and techniques have been prized skills for centuries? As ever more diners turn to delivery, and restaurants large and small grapple with rising costs, Autec’s sushi making robots are taking off in popularity. I recently sampled these machines’ tasty maki over at LA Sushi Co and discovered that despite the attention-grabbing headline, the story is far less simple than it seems. Read the piece at Ottomate.

Climate change comes for urban transport: As California’s been pounded by rain, LA’s delivery bots are struggling to cross water-logged streets. Across the country, bike share systems are still encased in blackened snow a month after the major storm hit northeastern cities. (H/T Justin.)

DoorDash delivers growth: DoorDash wrapped up 2025 with quarterly orders growing 32% YoY to 903 million, while Q4 revenue spiked 38%. We’ll have a full analysis Monday at Modern Delivery.

It’s so over… Does it ever feel like the whole economy is just wobbling on top of a series of increasingly convoluted prop bets? Meet Rush Hour, a new gambling app (I’m sorry… “prediction market”) that lets punters wager on local traffic conditions. Get the number of cars and trucks that will pass through an intersection per each light cycle and you could win, while society loses!

But at least micromobility has finally recovered: European scooter operator Voi posted its best year yet, cresting 116 million rides in 2025. That pushed net revenue to €178.2M ($210M) for the year, with profitable operations bringing the company to just about break even.

Bad Tesla! Tesla’s Robotaxi operations in Austin continue to misbehave, with the company logging five more accidents in the past month. While some of these are minor scrapes, they also include “collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight.” Electrek concludes that Tesla’s current driving record is 4-8X worse than your average human motorist’s.

It’s an EV / AV land grab: Uber is getting directly involved in operating charging depots for AVs, as the company plans to spend $100M to build fast-charge hubs in LA, SF and Dallas. This space is getting crowded, including competitors like Avomo, Moove, Terawatt and Voltera (some of which have also received investments from Uber.)

EV sales finally fall: While anyone could have predicted this would eventually happen, thanks to the dual punch of expiring subsidies and tariff-induced price hikes, it’s officially official. Electric vehicle sales fell year over year for the first time in the United States, with 2025 coming in 0.4% below ‘24.

From the Department of Newspeak: A fantastic environmental review document for a freeway widening would like us to know that adding lanes is actually equitable. Well, case closed! I suppose this is a great example of why progressive groups need to continue to create new terminology, so as to stay a step ahead of those that co-opt the language…

Rotational inertia? Air taxi upstart Joby is tying itself closer to Toyota, one of its largest investors, with the automaker looking to integrate its renowned manufacturing processes into the EVTOL maker. Meanwhile, its competitor Archer Aviation may be airing bafflingly vague ads during the Winter Olympics, but company execs are now saying its more lucrative prospects involve military work with Anduril.

A few good links: Facing budget crunch, San Diego’s transit agency considers hiking fares to highest in nation. Chips ahoy: Ukrainian drones deliver cookies as well as munitions. NYC street vendors celebrate regulatory reform. Toyota and Pony.ai collab on robotaxi production. Zoox heads to Columbus, Ohio. Feds resume slow disbursement of Hudson Tunnel funds. Relay pulls the plug on NYC operations. Gov. Hochul kills plan to allow robotaxis in NY State. Lobbyists are using AI-generated messages to weaponize regressive astroturfing campaigns. NYC considers free bus fare pilot during World Cup. In defense of new cities (worth noting that Irvine has some lovely bike infrastructure.) NYC to spend $1B to quadruple traffic enforcement cameras (maybe they should get a cut of those bets too…)

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew