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Welcome again to The Station, a publication devoted to all the current and future methods folks and packages transfer from Point A to Point B.
What.A.Week. Shall we dig in?
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Transportation on the poll
Election Day was Election Week as the presidential race tightened and the world waited to see if President Trump would stay in workplace or if Joe Biden would develop into the 46th chief of the nation.
On Saturday morning, AP, Fox News and each different main information shops referred to as the race, naming Joe Biden president-elect. The poll counts will nonetheless proceed and ultimately result in every state’s Electoral College electors formally casting their votes for president and vp on December 14, as dictated by our election course of.
Assuming Biden is sworn in as the subsequent president of the United States, transportation will seemingly not be his first space of focus. However, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see how his private expertise of shedding his first spouse and daughter in a automobile crash, views on local weather change and love for Corvettes in addition to Amtrak would possibly form federal transportation coverage. The nation has deep infrastructure wants, a rail service in disaster and an rising tech sector centered on commercializing automated car know-how.
Election Day was, after all, about greater than Trump and Biden. Ballots all through the U.S. contained dozens of transportation-related measures, together with public transit funding, a automobile proprietor’s proper to restore and whether or not gig economic system employees must be categorized as workers or unbiased contractors.
Prop 22, the California poll measure, might need been the most seen marketing campaign because of the tens of tens of millions of {dollars} that Uber, Lyft and different gig worker-reliant corporations contributed to assist garner assist and get it handed. Voters permitted Prop 22, which implies that gig employees will proceed to be categorized as unbiased employees. Companies that use gig employees will probably be required to offer an earnings assure of at the least 120% of minimal wage, 30 cents per engaged miles for bills, a healthcare stipend, occupational accident insurance coverage for on-the-job accidents, safety towards discrimination and sexual harassment and car accident and legal responsibility insurance coverage.
Fresh off of its success on Election Day, Uber signaled that it’s going to proceed to push legal guidelines just like the Prop 22. The ride-hailing firm’s ambitions for legal guidelines that protect its enterprise mannequin are world. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated Thursday throughout an earnings name with analysts that the firm will “more loudly advocate for laws like Prop 22.” He later added that it is going to be a precedence of the firm “to work with governments across the U.S. and the world to make this a reality.”
There have been at different transportation-related measures that have been determined by voters in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan Oregon and Washington. Of the 19 measures associated to public transit, 15 handed, two failed and one in Gwinnett County, Georgia continues to be “too close to call.” The Center for Transportation Excellence created a useful spreadsheet monitoring Election 2020 poll measures associated to public transit.
Finally, one other poll measure, which obtained numerous consideration and lobbying {dollars}, was Question 1 in Massachusetts. The poll measure, which was permitted by 75% of voters, amends and broadens a regulation that provides shoppers in Massachusetts the proper to restore the autos they personal.
Automakers that promote autos with telematics programs in Massachusetts will now need to equip them with a standardized open information platform starting with mannequin yr 2022. This standardized open information platform has to provide car house owners and unbiased restore services direct entry and the capacity to retrieve mechanical information and run diagnostics via a mobile-based utility.
Importantly, this measure covers the information that telematics programs gather and wirelessly transmit. And it not solely offers entry to the mechanical information, it permits house owners and unbiased mechanics to ship instructions to the car for restore, upkeep and diagnostic testing.
The upshot? While this poll measure is restricted to Massachusetts, there may be precedent that it’s going to increase to the remainder of the nation. The preliminary Right to Repair regulation went into impact in Massachusetts in 2013. By 2014, the business agreed in a memorandum of understanding to increase that invoice and cowl the remainder of the nation.
Deal of the week
Transportation isn’t nearly the motion between locations; it’s additionally about the much less lively moments like parking. Which brings us to at least one eye-popping deal this week.
REEF Technology, the Miami-based firm that began its life as ParkJockey, raked in $700 million from a bunch of buyers that included Softbank and Mubadala Corp.
REEF offers {hardware}, software program and administration providers for parking heaps. But it extra just lately added different providers reminiscent of offering infrastructure for cloud kitchens, healthcare clinics, logistics and last-mile supply and even brick-and-mortar retail and experiential shopper areas.
The firm stated that the money will probably be used to scale from 4,800 areas to 10,000 new areas round the nation and to remodel the parking heaps into “neighborhood hubs,” in line with Ari Ojalvo, the firm’s co-founder and chief govt. Private fairness and monetary funding giants Oaktree, UBS Asset Management and the European enterprise capital agency Target Global additionally participated in the spherical.
As TechCrunch’s Jonathan Shieber famous in his protection of the REEF spherical, like WeWork, REEF leases most of the actual property it operates and upgrades it earlier than leasing it to different occupants (or utilizing the areas itself). Unlike WeWork, the enterprise truly has a good shot at understanding — particularly given enterprise tendencies which have accelerated in response to the well being and security measures applied to cease the unfold of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other offers that acquired my consideration …
ANOTHER LIDAR SPAC! Aeva is the newest firm to eschew the conventional IPO path and go public by way of a merger with a particular function acquisition firm. It’s additionally the third lidar firm, following Velodyne and Luminar, to take this path to the public markets.
Aeva is a Mountain View, California-based lidar firm began by two former Apple engineers and backed by Porsche SE. The firm introduced it was merging with particular function acquisition firm InterPrivate Acquisition Corp., with a post-deal market valuation of $2.1 billion. The take care of InterPrivate is anticipated to shut by early 2021.
Logisly, a Jakarta-based startup that describes itself as a “B2B tech-enabled logistics platform,” introduced right this moment it has raised $6 million in Series A funding to assist streamline logistics in Indonesia. The spherical was led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.
Marshmallow, a UK startup aiming to take on legacy insurance coverage giants with a brand new strategy to figuring out danger, raised $30 million in a Series A spherical. The firm has a post-fundraising valuation of $310 million.
Pony.ai, the autonomous car firm that operates in California and China, is now valued at $5.Three billion following a recent injection of $267 million in funding. The spherical was led by TIP, an innovation fund inside the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board that focuses on late-stage enterprise and progress fairness investments in corporations that ship disruptive know-how. Existing companions Fidelity China Special Situations PLC, 5Y Capital (previously Morningside Venture Capital), ClearVue Partners and Eight Roads additionally participated in the spherical.
Provizio, which developed a sensory platform it says can understand, predict and forestall automobile accidents in actual time and past the line-of-sight, closed a seed funding spherical of $6.2 million. Bobby Hambrick, the founding father of Autonomous Stuff, the founders of Movidius, the European Innovation Council (EIC) and ACT Venture Capital participated in the spherical.
Scale AI, a startup that makes use of software program and folks to course of and label picture, lidar and map information for corporations constructing machine studying algorithms reminiscent of Toyota and Zoox, is on the brink of changing into an organization valued $Three billion, The Information reported. The firm based and led by 230year-old Alexandr Wang reportedly obtained a suggestion of funding from Tiger Global Management valuing Scale at $3.2 billion pre-money, or triple its prior valuation.
Notable reads and different tidbits
All the different stuff it’s best to find out about …
Amazon has began operations at its first European Amazon Air hub, based mostly out of the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. The new facility spans 20,000 sq. meters and will host two Amazon-branded Boeing 737-800 plane, bringing the firm’s complete operational air fleet to greater than 70 plane.
Bentley Motors has begun its lengthy farewell to the 12-cylinder combustion engines which have been the cornerstone of the 100-year-old firm. The extremely luxurious automaker beneath VW Group stated it would solely produce plug-in hybrid and all-electric automobiles beginning in 2026 with an goal to drop all combustion engines in the subsequent decade. Its whole lineup will probably be all-electric by 2030. The British producer stated two plug-in hybrid fashions will come out subsequent yr and its first all-electric car will come to market in 2025.
CarGurus’ 2020 Pickup Truck Sentiment Study revealed that COVID-19 pandemic might need helped spur gross sales, because of younger patrons. More than 26% of pickup truckers house owners surveyed for the research stated they’d not deliberate to purchase this class of auto. Other outcomes, embody 34% stated they’ll most likely/undoubtedly personal an electrical pickup truck in the subsequent 10 years and 23% in the subsequent 5 years.
Gen Z/millennial truck house owners are over two instances extra more likely to count on to personal an electrical truck in the subsequent 5 years when in comparison with older truck house owners (30% vs. 12%). The identical age cohort of youthful shoppers are additionally two instances extra more likely to contemplate a truck from category-newcomers like Tesla (32% vs. 14%), Rivian (11% vs. 4%) or Hummer (13% vs 6%) when in comparison with older truck house owners, the research discovered.
GM is beginning to rent folks for greater than 1,100 new jobs for its almost Three million-square-foot Ultium Cells LLC battery cell manufacturing facility in Lordstown, Ohio. Ultium Cells LLC is a three way partnership with LG Chem that may mass-produce Ultium battery cells for electrical autos. The plant continues to be beneath building, however GM stated it would start actively hiring for “key positions.”
Tesla formally launched Teslaquila, a company-branded liquor that initially co-starred in CEO Elon Musk’s controversial April Fool’s Day joke about the automaker submitting for chapter. The Tesla Tequila prices $250 and is already offered out.
Uber reported earnings this week. As Alex Wilhelm and I wrote, the firm’s two core segments have been a story of two cities: Uber’s ride-hailing (Mobility) enterprise shrank, however made money, whereas Uber’s meals supply (Delivery) enterprise grew, however continued to lose money.
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