Autonomous Delivery Machines Invade the Southeast

Lime eyes IPO, top active transportation cities, Austin rail fail

Good news folks, they’ve trained robots to say “yeehaw, y’all!” And if that’s not actually true, it should be, as the past week saw a spate of robotic and autonomous options launch across America’s southern states.

Starting in Texas, DoorDash has teamed up with Flytrex to offer drone delivery in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. While DoorDash already works with Wing, this is Flytrex’s first time integrating with a 3PD, adding in longer service hours and bigger carrying capacity to DoorDash’s arsenal.

As was the case with Wing + DoorDash in Charlotte, this new drone zone — Little Elm and Denton, Texas — is absolute sprawlsville, which seems to be consistently emerging as the type of development pattern where aerial delivery works best.

Look ma, no sidewalks!

On the land-based side of automation, Serve Robotics is teaming up with Uber Eats to bring the former’s sidewalk bots to the Atlanta neighborhoods of Midtown, Old Fourth Ward and Downtown. While these neighborhoods are a good deal denser than the outer edges of DFW exurbia, they do have one thing in common that’s also a point in favor for automated delivery: mind-meltingly hot summers. Summers in Hotlanta regularly hit the mid-90s or 100s with very high humidity. Just this past week a heat advisory warned people to avoid prolonged outdoor activity, the sort of thing you might need a human delivery worker to do.

Speaking of humans, they’re getting in on the AV action too: Waymo just went live, also in partnership with Uber, also in Atlanta, starting in the city’s core neighborhoods. And over in Phoenix (okay, technically that’s the Southwest…) the Alphabet-backed robotaxier is experimenting with teen accounts, letting those aged 14-17 ride when linked to a parent’s profile.

Back in Texas, Tesla’s Cybercab roll-out has been a bit erratic, with autonomous Teslas entering oncoming traffic lanes and making abrupt stops. Note to automakers: AVs behaving badly is exactly what will lead to upset civilians demanding the end to self-driving cars. Heck, even Texas is belatedly starting to regulate autonomous vehicles.

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Has the IPO window finally reopened? Micromobility heavyweight Lime is reportedly eyeing an IPO; although the company has toyed with going public for a few years, the success of recent listings like Circle, CoreWeave and MNTN suggests investors are regaining their appetites, and having a brand well known by consumers is likely to help. Should Lime go public, it would be a nice liquidity event for Uber, which bought in during a 2020 valuation nadir of about $510 million.

Startup ups and downs: Parkade raised a $10 million Series A, to help buildings better manage and price their parking inventory. In the U.K., Zeelo raised $23M for route planning and efficiency tools for private busses and shuttles. The round was led by Blue Earth Capital. And Estonia’s autonomous delivery bot maker Clevon has shut down, with its assets acquired by our friends at indiGO Technologies.

Congestion pricing works! New data from NYC see shows that since congestion pricing went into effect, traffic into Manhattan is down 28%, while driving speeds are up. And drivers aren’t simply causing more traffic in neighboring towns: time lost in traffic jams across the outer boroughs, New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County is down 11.8% too.

See my 2023 deep dive on congestion pricing.

Budget battles won: California has reached its final budget agreement, restoring $1.1B in GGRF dollars to public transit, while also offering $750 million in loans to beleaguered Bay Area transit agencies. Much love to State Senator Scott Wiener for fighting for these. Looks like a loan to Los Angeles, to cover fire related expenses, is still up in the air. And at the federal level, a judge has ruled that the Trump administration can’t tie state transport dollars to requirements that they assist with its aggressive anti-immigrant agenda.

Slow progress is still progress: A new survey of Uber drivers shows that for the first time, charging access, more so than the cost of EVs, is now the main reason some ridehail drivers haven’t switched to electric cars. 230,000 Uber drivers now use EVs, up 60% YoY.

What are we even doing here? Austin Transit Partnership has released its final design and construction contract for the Texas capital. Even though much of the plan has been cut back — a downtown tunnel has been swapped out for more slow, street-running sections — the project is still estimated to cost $7.1 billion for not quite 10 miles of rail. That’s a good 2X or so what a civilized country like France can build proper subway lines for.

The system won’t be very big, but at least it will be slow!

SNAPped: With the Feds threatening to cut food stamp funding to pay for more regressive tax cuts, not only will needy Americans get hurt, so will a number of food retailers (both physical stores and delivery brands.) The biggest recipient of SNAP spending is Walmart, capturing 25% of benefit dollars, followed by Kroger (8%), Costco (6%), Amazon (5%), and Sam’s Club (4%).

See our earlier piece imploring the 3PDs to stand up for food stamp users and an interview with Ofek Lavain, CEO of EBT payment processor Forage.

Who’s cruising the curbs? A new survey shows hot spots for active transportation — aka the walking and biking that can make for a lively curb city. While ped-friendly areas like Manhattan, SF, DC and Philly should come as no surprise, beach cities (Orange County, CA) and college towns (Boulder, CO; Orange, NC) also make the cut.

A few good links: Meet the startups that stole the show at Micromobility Europe. Watch out Scale AI: Uber expands gig-powered data labeling service. Travis Kalanick wants to buy Pony AI’s U.S. subsidiary.

Until next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew