On this week’s episode of Zag Talk, I’m joined by Steve Greenfield, General Partner at Automotive Ventures. Steve knows the mobility industry inside and out, having jumped from Manheim, Autotrader and TrueCar to investing in promising startups like Axion Ray, JOCO, Recurrent and SparkCharge.
Steve shares his thoughts on where the industry is headed, but also what he’s found makes for a great entrepreneur, including honesty, integrity, EQ as well as IQ, and the feeling that “you want people that have, somewhere along their journey, found something secret” that they now feel compelled to build or solve.
Also on the pod, Greg and I break down Moove’s $1.2B deal, pontificate on the Department of Sustainable Delivery, and also talk about Also; plus, the Zag team heads to the European AV Summit. Listen in!
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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
D.C. does curbs: Like most American cities, the District of Columbia hadn’t thought much about its curbs and parking spaces for the past century or so. But with the rise of food delivery and ecommerce, the District is finally taking action to free up and right-price its precious curbs. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) introduced legislation that would allow for a license plate-based billing system, while the city is also encouraging a shift to smaller and greener delivery vehicles. I discussed the proposal with The Washington Post and then — just to keep things fair and balanced — did so again with Fox 5 DC.
Lucid + Uber + Nuro = Lubero? Uber is getting even deeper into AVs, launching a strategic partnership with and investment into Lucid and Nuro. The transportation giant plans to deploy 20,000+ Lucid SUVs, equipped with Nuro’s L4 autonomy stack, exclusively available via the Uber app. Perhaps Travis K will quit his bellyaching for a few days now…
Transit Ws: Seattle Link hits its third consecutive month of 100k+ average daily ridership. Caltrain ridership up 75% YoY, thanks to more frequent service. NYC looks to retool ferry service, including adding a unique skip-stop service along the East River.
Startup Ws: German AV software startup Motor AI raises $20M, with an emphasis on safety and public transit compatibility (do note that this is one of our portfolio companies.) INSHUR closes on $35M for AV-focused insurance coverage. Juno raises $4M for corporate travel expense management. Rivian’s secretive micromobility spinout Also raises another $200M (what is this, 2021?!) And after many false starts, Via has confidentially filed for an IPO.
Off-road AVs, so hot right now! Pronto, helmed by AV wunderkind Anthony Levandowski, just acquired SafeAI, which also focuses on off-road uses like mining and construction. Meanwhile, a bunch of ex-Waymo engineers have raised $80M for Bedrock Robotics, with a similar focus.
Perhaps the regulatory state isn’t completely gone… Jonathan Morrison, President Trump’s nominee for Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, doesn’t look ready to fully take his hands off the wheel, saying “The technical and policy challenges surrounding these new technologies must be addressed. Failure to do so will result in products that the public will not accept and the agency will not tolerate.”
LA adds “greenways”: The City of LA (which looks to be doing this project in-house, nice!) is adding bike/pedestrian-protection and traffic-calming measures to a number of streets connecting Mid-Wilshire with Hollywood, and linking up with an existing project in the City of West Hollywood. Anyone that’s biked in LA knows that North-South routes are a mixed bag: on one hand you can usually make it work on a calm, residential street with light traffic, on the other hand the route signage is non-existent and you’ll usually end up accidentally hitting a major boulevard with no cross-signal. This project should be a big help!
Everything is political… NYC has been planning to add bus lanes to busy 34th Street in Manhattan for decades now; the project was supposed to finally kick off recently, but local politicos think Mayor Adams is intentionally stalling the project. Now Democratic mayoral nominee Mamdani is making completing the project part of his campaign. Meanwhile, the ex-Governor cum primary-loser cum election-spoiler Cuomo is out in the streets pretending to jumpstart car batteries. Street design looks to be a mayoral election issue up in Boston as well, with a number of pretenders to the throne blasting incumbent Wu over her administration’s strong support for multi-modal streets.
Don’t touch that dial! In a rare show if bipartisan legislating, Congress looks likely to pass the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, mandating that all car radios include a tuner for AM station. Some OEMs have removed AM support as of late, claiming the high-voltage electrical system of newer cars interferes with reception. That does seem a bit disingenuous though, as some EV makers like Hyundai have managed to keep the band. Both sides of this debate seem to be obfuscating their real purposes: while politicos claim their support is about emergency broadcasting and farm reports, the real pressure seems to be coming from the Christian broadcasters that occupy many of the AM stations.
Van-a-gone? The ID. Buzz, VW’s new electric van, is off to a slow start. While Volkswagen hoped it would be a halo vehicle for its electric resurgence, American consumers are evidently put off by its high price tag and overly European design choices. Plus its paltry, sub-250 mile range means that you can’t yet actually take this thing on a long roadtrip through the woods, which sorta defeats the whole purpose? VW may have fond memories of the Type 2 minibus selling 50,000+ units per year during the height of the hippie era, but do recall that later models like the Vanagon only sold around 5k per year in the U.S. Perhaps execs need to take their John Lennon-esque rose colored glasses off…
A snapshot from a more optimistic era: Check out this BBC footage from 1980, just four years after Washington, D.C.’s Great Society era subway system opened. The commentator marvels at its high tech, automated operations, (“computers!”) cleanliness and punctuality. 😢
A few good links: LA hits milestone of 150 new bus shelters installed, while aerial gondola gets a boost from new state legislation. U.S. military drones ain’t looking so hot. Uber partners with LA28 Olympics / Paralympics. China’s EV OEMs look for new markets as they get crushed by domestic price wars. Tesla loses top N. America sales exec amid sales slump; but hey, at least the company is finally entering India and its new restaurant is almost open… NY Port Authority awards $1.87B bus terminal contract to change order king Tutor Perini. Waymo hits 100 million miles. Make way for the Dutch intersection. Meet the lovable dork who designed the viral “which line are you?” personality quiz. Intense rains fills NYC subways with even more fetid water than usual; highways too. Rivian resumes work on Georgia factory. WeWork’s India subsidiary eyes IPO. Circle K abandons 7-Eleven buyout.
Please note — I’ll be publishing on a reduced schedule for the next few weeks, as I take some time off over the summer. But you can still get your fix over at Modern Delivery!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew
