Trucks | FoT: Mergers, FSD Cannonball, Carter

FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital 

Notable:

After official announcement of the Honda-Nissan planned merger in 2026, some of my favorite reads: Reuters: time is not on their side (link). 'But the full effect of synergies is not likely to be felt until after 2030, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a joint press conference on Monday. The companies need to build up capabilities to take on Chinese rivals by then, he said, or face being beaten.' Bloomberg: more scale to compete against China, but there's more overlap than complementary businesses (link). NYT: Why big auto consolidation has mostly failed (link).

Volkswagen's data breach: nearly a million owner records stored on an Amazon cloud account (link). Via Om. 'Movement data from 800,000 electric cars and contact information for the owners were exposed unprotected on the internet. It was possible to see who was parking at home, at the BND or in front of the brothel and when.' Der Spiegel knows how to twist the knife, doesn’t it?

Researchers show EV subsidies are better spent on consumer rebates vs charging infrastructure (link). Via Margaret M. 'The key results demonstrate that consumer subsidies, especially when concentrated in early stages, significantly enhance battery electric vehicles market share. In contrast, subsidies for charging stations have a more modest effect, a reduction in station subsidies leading to only a 0.87% drop in battery electric vehicles adoption while reducing consumer subsidies results in an 8.8% decline. Allocating additional resources to consumer subsidies requires diverting 12.56%–16.23% of the budget from charging stations, while reducing station subsidies frees up 15.83%–16.17% of the budget for consumer incentives.'

RIP President Jimmy Carter, whose 'most underrated legacy was the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 which deregulated insterstate trucking' (link). Also note his significant role in auto emissions and safety (link).

Alex Roy set a new Cannonball coast-to-coast record, this time using Tesla FSD (link). Motorsport used to have a direct line to production hardware and how the public understood durability. But over the last 50 years that connection thinned out quite a bit. However, these new Cannonballs are a return to that connection for ADAS (and eventually AV). That it’s not controlled by a central sanctioning body makes it that much more interesting, ambiguously legal, and fertile. In our parallel FoT cosmos Roy would be national AV Czar.

Many cheap cars in the US are built in Mexico, highlighting potential impacts of new tariffs (link). 'Today, nearly 1/3 of all vehicles priced below $30,000 and sold in the U.S. are built in Mexico.'

Rivian's $6B loan compromise: union neutrality (link). 'With the agreement in place, Rivian will not oppose unionization at its Illinois plant once certain profitability benchmarks are met.'

Timeline of the fall of the Fisker brand (link).

How the 'Dala' or Toyota Hilux became the primary vehicle for security and warfare in Pakistan (link).

Video: Jason Cammisa on why the new Toyota Land Cruiser misses the mark (link). Is there anyone better than Cammisa and Hagerty at vehicle reviews these days? Video: 'banger racing' is a crash-welcoming R/C series (link). Video: building a tiny train coffee table, T-gauge size (link). Video: landing a Sikorsky helicopter on a ship in bad weather (link). Via PG. Video: Amtrak 'snow-mo' (link). Video: Considering a novel New Years Eve celebration for the Brennan house (link). Via Weans.

Executive Osamu Suzuki dies at age 94 (link). 'Mr. Suzuki, the fourth son in a farming family, worked at a bank until he met his future wife, Shoko Suzuki, a member of the automaker’s founding family. They married in the late 1950s and he took his wife’s family name, not an uncommon practice among prominent Japanese families.'

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Bankrupt VTOL startup Lilium could be saved after investor group steps forward (link).

Board & Executive Changes:

Freyr Battery: Mingxing Lin joins board (link).

Blink Charging: Martha Crawford joins board (link).

ChargePoint: Henrik Gerdes resigns as Chief Accounting Officer (link).

Old Dominion Freight Line: Leo Suggs retires from board (link).

Featured Jobs:

Reliability Engineer at River in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (link).

Electrical Engineer, Harnessing at Skyryse in El Segundo, CA, USA (link).

MobilityJobs is the No.1 job board for auto & transportation companies (link). If you are a startup you can use the job board for free standard listings — just enter 'Trucks' at checkout.

New Stuff:

A new simulation framework for robots lets them practice tasks in simulated reality 430,000 times faster than in the real world (link). Via Weans.

After an EV rental, Hertz asks if you'd prefer to keep it (link).

New York City's revived congestion pricing program clears legal hurdles (link).

Blue Origin plans launch of new Glenn rocket (link). 'It is as tall as a 32-story building. It will compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets in launching commercial satellites, space probes for NASA and military spacecraft for the Defense Department.'

Upstart air carriers Avelo and Breeze focus on second-tier airports (link). 'Breeze and Avelo are broadly similar. Both mainly serve people traveling for fun or to visit family and friends. They often fly routes that few or no other airlines operate on — for example, from New Haven, Avelo flies to cities like Knoxville, Tenn., and San Juan, P.R., while Breeze offers flights between Erie, Pa., and Orlando, Fla.; Hartford, Conn.; and Wilmington, N.C.'

Patents & Patent Applications:

Ford's patent application shows a stair-climbing robot (link).

Statistics / Projections:

Motorcycle sales in the US continue to decline (link). Via Bloomberg / BTS. 'The data suggests motorcycling in the US may be dying. 'In 1970, the first year for which the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics has data, 1.1 million new motorbikes were sold at retail in the US. From there, sales fell more or less steadily to a low of 278,000 in 1992. Then they began to climb. By 2007 they had surpassed 1.1 million again. But with the financial crash, bike sales crashed too, and never really recovered. By 2021, the last year of available BTS data, sales had not reached even half of their 2007 peak.'

US car buyers received about $3,400 in discounts and other incentives on average in December 2024, up more than 25% from a year earlier (link). Via WSJ / JD Power.

Thank you:

Thank you to CJ Na (link) and Rick Wagoner for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

River (link), Skyryse (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

Marionette strings are dangerous things (PMD),

Reilly Brennan