Trucks | FoT: Bonnet, HumanForest, Tangram

FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital 

Notable:

It's hybrids vs EVs as the key strategy and volume battle of the next decade, which means Toyota vs Tesla (link). 'The biggest pot of new customers for Tesla comes from Toyota, according to Strategic Vision, which surveys new buyers. Nationwide, 8% of Tesla’s buyers came from Toyota vehicles...Tesla is stealing sales from Toyota left and right—but they are having to drastically reduce their pricing to keep this up...Toyota on the other hand has kept pricing the same and has allowed dealers to mark up their products.'

GM's Cruise reportedly plans relaunch focused on one city, likely not SF (link). When last week's executive announcements were made after Kyle Vogt's resignation, there was no new CEO named -- yet two Presidents were, making Cruise more like Waymo with its rare and confounding twin leadership structure. I originally thought the lack of CEO nomination was a bad sign, but after reflecting on it over the past week I think it's a positive signal for Cruise, assuming a new CEO is named within the coming 30-40 days. Second to Vogt, the next best candidate to lead Cruise as CEO would be Mary Barra herself: it would be the most dramatic signal that GM and its board are committed to Cruise for the long term, and would almost immediately open up the AV firm to a wider set of capital partners. Other names that are relevant to watch here are Jon McNeill (former Tesla and Lyft exec, named to the GM board just 12 months ago) and Mike Abbott (now leading GM software, formerly at Apple).

Tangram Vision launches its new 3D depth sensor (link). The sensor has the most resolution (1.6MP), the most AI compute (8 TOPS), and the widest field of view (136°) of any depth sensor out there, and met its campaign goal in just four hours. Here's a link to its Kickstarter page (link).

Ambarella CEO: Chinese OEMs working on 18-24 month timeline, everyone else on 48 (link). Related: why Americans can't yet buy cheap Chinese EVs (link). 'China is on its way to becoming the world’s largest auto exporter this year, replacing Japan. It builds roughly 2/3 of all EVs globally and the biggest Chinese EV maker, BYD, made 1.9 million vehicles last year, more than Tesla’s TSLA 1.4 million, according to the companies.'

Nvidia sued after engineer accidentally shares data from previous job during video call (link). "On March 8, 2022, one of these videoconference meetings was scheduled. Mr. Moniruzzaman, now employed by Nvidia, attended the videoconference call… and shared his computer screen during the call. When he minimized the PowerPoint presentation he had been sharing, however, he revealed one of Valeo’s verbatim source code files open on his computer. So brazen was Mr. Moniruzzaman’s theft, the file path on his screen still read “ValeoDocs.” Valeo participants on the videoconference call immediately recognized the source code and took a screenshot before Mr. Moniruzzaman was alerted of his error. By then it was too late to cover his tracks."

M&A in autonomy is on the rise, you just have to look at structured environments like agriculture (link).

The UK published their strategy doc 'to achieve a globally competitive battery supply chain by 2030' (link).

An update on Tesla's home-grown insurance business (link).

Profile of Northvolt's Peter Carlsson, who last week announced the company validated a sodium-ion battery for energy density of more than 160 watt-hours per kilogram (link). 'While talking to the Financial Times about sodium-ion batteries, he was not afraid to contradict his scientists about the technology. He argued that if Northvolt could scale the technology and build the supply chains successfully, energy storage could end up with an order book of more than $55bn, equal to its current automotive orders from the likes of BMW, VW and Scania.'

Looking back on Waze's rise from $1M in revenue to $400M and establishment of the 'fourth screen' (link). Waze remains one of my favorite potential carve-out acquisitions, particularly in light of Google consolidating its Maps team with Waze last year (link) and with over 150 million active users it would give lift to an auto company's recurring software dreams at a low user acquisition cost.

Video: drifting the Appalachian mountains (link). Video: riding the 'Railyard' mountain biking park in Rogers, Arkansas (link). Video: F/A-18 afterburner night launch (link). Video: heads-up display and audio from STS-125 shuttle landing landing (link).

M&A / Deals / Changes:

British ebike startup HumanForest raises $5.7M (link). Led by Güil Mobility Ventures.

Joby Aviation receives $9.8M California manufacturing grant (link).

Indian EV motorbike startup EMotorad raises $20M (link). Via Mark F. Led by Panthera Growth Partners.

Kinterra Capital closes $565M fund to back battery metal investments (link).

EV charging app Bonnet acquired by UK energy giant OVO (link).

A rare IPO winner: Mobileye is up 75% from its IPO offering in 2022 (link). 'To be sure, the stock isn’t cheap. Wall Street estimates call for 2023 revenue of about $2.1 billion, with adjusted profit of 71 cents a share, giving the stock a valuation of 50 times projected earnings and 14 times forward sales.'

Cruise co-founder and Chief Product Officer Dan Kan resigns, one day after Vogt's resignation (link).

Board Changes:

Allstate Insurance: Maria Morris joins board (link).

New Stuff:

Tesla launches congestion pricing for its charging network (link). 'Tesla says it will charge drivers an additional $1 per minute to juice their electric-vehicle batteries beyond 90%, but only when stations are busy.'

Bixi Bikes launches studded tires for winter season in Montreal (link). Via Mark G.

Tesla goes into discount mode again: all new cars in inventory, up to $6300 each (link).

Possible Lucid pickup truck seen in clay model form (link).

Motional and Hyundai to jointly build IONIQ 5 robotaxi in Singapore (link). Via Brian B.

Former Uber AV executive and Otto founder Anthony Levandowski plans to re-launch his church of AI (link).

VW's Scout EV brand picks Magna Steyr for production partner (link).

Patents & Patent Applications:

Ford's patent application shows in-vehicle learning for machine learning models (link).

Rivian's patent application for an active rear diffuser (link).

Featured Jobs:

Director of Electromagnetic Engineering at Auriga Space in Long Beach, CA USA (link).

MobilityJobs is the No.1 job board for auto & transportation companies (link). New: any startup can now post standard jobs for free. Just use the code 'Trucks' at checkout.

Statistics / Projections:

EV buying rates different across demographic groups (link). Via Automotive News. 'Only 4.8% of EVs were bought by Black consumers, who represent 7.8% of the market overall. Black consumers have bought around 4,000 EVs per month this year, compared with 12,000 for Hispanics and 24,000 for Asian Americans, according to Marc Bland, S&P Global Mobility's chief diversity officer.'

In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023 (link). Via Pew Research.

Carbon emissions of richest 1% equal to those of poorest 66% (link). Via CNBC / Oxfam.

Battery prices estimated to fall to $99 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage capacity by 2025 — a 40% decrease from 2022 (link). Via Electrek / Goldman Sachs.

The US average price for a gallon of regular gasoline on Wednesday was $3.28, down nearly 20% in three months (link). Via AAA / NYT. 'They fell to levels not seen at this time of year since 2021, according to the AAA motor club, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices higher.'

Thank you:

Thank you to Muzna Khan (link) and Daniel Ryan (link) for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

Auriga Space (link), Joby Aviation (link), Tangram Vision (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

See you next week,

Reilly Brennan