The Station - ChargePoint goes SPAC, a new investor for TuSimple and Polestar green-lights the Precept

Saturday, September 26, 2020 • By Kirsten Korosec

Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

The Station took a two-week break and wow, a lot has happened. Over in TechCrunch country, we held TC Disrupt 2020, our annual tech conference. This year it was a virtual event and it took a serious amount of effort from the entire staff. But there was a massive bonus: startups from all over the world were able to participate. I wrote about two of the mobility-related ones, a Zimbabwe startup called Tuverl and an Illinois-based company called CleanFlame Engine Technologies.

Now, an event that I’ve been personally working on for months is fast approaching. TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 will be held virtually October 6 and October 7. I get that this isn’t the same as attending an event in person and meeting investors, founders and policy folks. However, we have put together an agenda of amazing speakers and are using a platform that lets folks network and chat and even exhibit. I tried it out during Disrupt and it was pretty cool.

And since this is a virtual event, we’ve lowered the ticket price. As always, we have tiered pricing, including a sweet deal for students.

This year we have two new features: Q&A sessions following three of our main stage interviews that will let the audience ask panelists questions and a pitch night for early stage startups. A word to my Station readers: please check out the agenda and send me an email if you have ANY, and I mean ANY questions for the speakers who will be joining our stage.

Speakers include JB Straubel of Redwood Materials (and formerly Tesla), Celina Mikolajczak, the vice president of battery technology for Panasonic Energy of North America, Waymo COO Tekedra Mawakana, Uber’s director of policy, cities & transportation Shin-pei Tsay, Argo AI founder and CEO Bryan Salesky, Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson, Ike Robotics co-founder and chief engineer Nancy Sun, Formula E race car driver Lucas di Grassi, Cruise’s director of global government affairs Prashanthi Raman, Refraction AI co-founder Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath and Rebecca Yeung, vice president of Advanced Technology & Innovation at FedEx.

OK, that’s enough promotional stuff. Although I am very excited about this one, perhaps because I’ve been working on it since January.

Vamos.

Email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin'

Remember when I predicted that subscriptions and micromobility would become a thing? Yes, of course you do. Well, here’s another example.

Joyride, the micromobility software platform, rolled out a new service for long-term rentals called Joyride Keep. The product lets shared mobility operators rent out e-bikes, bikes and scooters for unlimited periods of time. The company tells me I should think of this as a hybrid between full personal ownership and shared micromobility in its original form.

The service is designed to feed a growing need for extended use of scooters and bikes without having people commit to any large financial outlay or monthly subscription plan, the company’s marketing head told me in an email.

On a side note: I just learned that Joyride is an early-stage exhibitor at our upcoming TC Sessions: Mobility event on October 6 and 7. If you’re curious about the company, go check them out in our virtual expo hall.

Unagi, another scooter company that has launched a subscription product, just opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Los Angeles. Will more cities start seeing the neighborhood scooter shop open up?

Other micromobbin’ news …

Bird has launched a new foldable scooter called the Bird Air that it is selling for $599. The scooter, which weighs about 30 pounds, has a top speed of 16 mph and a range of 16 miles.

Image Credits:

HumanForest suspended its “free” e-bike service in London, after experiencing “mechanical” issues and after a user had an accident on one of its bikes, TechCrunch learned. The suspension has also seen the UK-based company make a number of layoffs with plans to re-launch next spring using a different e-bike. The company’s troubles come just a few months after it started the trial in North London and announced a $2.3 million seed round of funding backed by the founders of Cabify and others.

Revel, the shared electric moped company, resumed operations in Miami. The company halted its service after a government shutdown order due to COVID-19. Revel has returned its fleet of 200 mopeds to service and will operate in a number of neighborhoods including Coconut Grove, Little Havana, Little Haiti and Downtown Miami, to name a few. The company also relaunched its “access program” in Miami, which gives riders who are eligible for or actively participating in local, state, or federal assistance programs a 40% discount on rides. Active military and veterans are eligible to receive a 20% discount on rides.

Strava has rolled out a new product called Strava Metro, which is an active travel dataset, and it’s making it available for free to urban planners, city governments and safe infrastructure advocates. Strava shared some stats it gathered from its new product and I’m passing them along to you, dear reader.

When COVID-19 pandemic hit and shelter-in-place orders began, data showed a drop in total bicycle trips in April 2020 compared to the same month the year before. In Chicago it fell 30.33%, in NYC it dropped 16.94% and in Washington D.C. ridership sank 35.26%.

Things changed though and bike commutes began to increase in June and July. In Houston there was a 96.22% YoY increase in total bike trips and a 90.40% YoY increase in people who completed at least 1 bicycle trip, based on data taken in June. That same theme played out in Chicago (in June a 20.77% YoY increase of total bike trips) NYC (in July a 79.87% YoY increase in total bike trips) and Los Angeles (in July a 71.34% YoY increase in total bike trips).

Deal of the week

While the number of smaller raises was a bit lower this past week, one big SPAC deal stood out. ChargePoint, the electric vehicle charging network, announced it will merge with special-purpose acquisition company Switchback Energy Acquisition Corporation, with a market valuation of $2.4 billion. ChargePoint will continue to be led by President and CEO Pasquale Romano and the existing management team. You can read my story on the announcement and check out their investor deck, which the company posted on its website.

If you’ve ever seen its chargers around it would be easy to think of ChargePoint as a hardware company. But that’s not how the company is structured. A software-as-a-service company might be a more apt description.

I had a chat Friday with Romano and I’ve excerpted the interview below. It’s been edited for length and clarity. I posted one of the company’s investor slides below.

On why ChargePoint didn’t continue to go the venture-backed path (the company raised $127M back in August):

Romano: Public market capital gives you more flexibility in terms of access to capital when you need it, right? For us and any one in a new market, I think there are two triggers for when you basically access public capital versus private: one is when public market investors feel confident that an early market trend is leaving the early market and becoming the mass market, which I think electric vehicle adoption is there in everyone’s mind.

So, condition two is that you have to have an established company; you have to be, in our opinion, in revenue and have all of the necessary things around your products and services, like support and go-to-market [strategy], a sales force and channel partners and training programs and all those sorts of things we have. So the company is sufficiently mature, and the market awareness is there.

On aiming for profitability:

Romano: For us, the glass ceiling over our head, revenue wise, is the number of electric vehicles that are on the road. We can’t arbitrarily scale our revenue because the demand for the structure of our business is completely driven by the arrival rate of EVs — the new EV sales, as they increase the utilization pressure and cause more purchases to happen. And so what drives us to profitability is simply tracking the growth of EVs. That’s all we have to do.

On ChargePoint’s market strategy:

Romano: We have a sales force and a broad channel everywhere in North America and now everywhere in Europe. We would never focus on a region — we are way past that. And we don’t even focus on a segment. So it is a complete pull-through model. We don’t place chargers; we don’t go around and knock on a business’s door and said, ‘Hey, we want that parking space.’ We don’t do that. Remember, it’s much more like Airbnb, where we glue together all of this CapEx that’s owned by each of these businesses into a uniform network as seen by the driver in one mobile app, or our integration into the infotainment systems of vehicles. If you look at our map of our network, in terms of where chargers are, it’s almost a perfect heat map overlay of where electric vehicles are. It gets pulled through to where the electric vehicles are. ‘Build it and they will come’ is not a good business.

Other deals that got my attention ….

Aurora Labs, the Tel Aviv-based startup that has developed a platform that can spot problems with software in cars and fix it on the fly, raised $23 million in a Series B funding round jointly led by LG Technology Ventures, the investment arm of the LG Group, and Marius Nacht, co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies. Porsche SE, Toyota Tsusho, UL Ventures and existing investors also participated in the latest round.

Humatics, the microlocation technology company, raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Blackhorn Ventures with Tenfore Holdings, Fontinalis Partners, Airbus Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures and Presidio Ventures also participating. The $30 million raise grows the company’s funding by a third, bringing its total raised to over $80 million.

Rappi, the Colombian delivery app, raised more than $300 million in a funding round that included T. Rowe Price Associates, Reuters reported.

Redwood Materials, the recycling startup founded by longtime Tesla CTO and co-founder JB. Straubel, landed Amazon as a new investor and customer. Redwood didn’t disclose the amount, but it is part of Amazon’s $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund. Other recipients of Amazon’s fund include CarbonCure Technologies, climate technology company Pachama, electric automaker Rivian and smart motor Turntide Technologies.

Rhombus Energy, an electric vehicle charging infrastructure and energy management software company, raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Series C round led by Emerald Technology Ventures. Cycle Capital Management, Inci Holding, Nabtesco Technology Ventures, Greenhouse Capital Partners and earlier shareholders also participated.

WM Motor, the Chinese electric vehicle startup, raised 10 billion yuan ($1.47 billion) in a Series D round. The five-year-old company, which is backed by Baidu and Tencent, is one of the highest-funded EV startups in China. This latest injection of capital will pay for research and development, branding, marketing and expansion of its sales channel.

Image Credits: ChargePoint

A little bird

A couple of items this week, one of which I already reported.

This first item is based on four sources within the investment, automated technology and trucking industries. Steve Girsky, the former GM vice chairman, VectoIQ CEO, consultant and investor whose special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merged with hydrogen electric startup Nikola this summer, is in talks to back self-driving trucks startup TuSimple. You might recall that TuSimple is on the hunt for about $250 million in new capital.

You can read the whole story here. Or skim through these main basic points: The capital would come from Girsky’s VectoIQ LLC, a consulting and investment company he runs with managing partner Mary Chan, and would be part of a consortium of investors. The deal could close as early as mid-October.

Way back in July, Reuters reported that Amazon was creating at least $100 million in stock awards to retain the 900-plus employees of Zoox. Reuters reported that Amazon could also walk away from the deal if large numbers of them turned down job offers.

I guess that all got sorted out because insiders confirmed to me that the Amazon-Zoox acquisition has officially closed.

Meanwhile, I’m going to put my speculator hat on and predict that Zoox is about to have some sort of media event or demo. The company just received the official regulatory OK to test its autonomous vehicles on public roads without a human safety driver behind the wheel. But the permit is just for two vehicles and is restricted to an area around its Foster City headquarters.

Notable reads and other tidbits

There’s not enough space to cover it all, so here’s a sampling.

Aurora Innovation, (or just plain Aurora) is apparently bullish on a post-COVID-19 kind of existence. The company is renovating more than 100,000 of office space in the Strip District for its new Pittsburgh headquarters. The office space will be for a cross-section of employees, including engineers, technical operations, recruiting and IT. It will also house its vehicle fleet. The move looks to be in preparation of expanding its staff; about 50 job openings are posted on its career page, according to the company.

Cavnue, the company behind the recently announced 40-mile connected autonomous vehicle corridor in Michigan hired Tyler Duvall as its CEO. Duvall is the former CEO of SH 130 Concession Company, where he oversaw the operation and maintenance of a 41-mile privately operated toll road between Austin and San Antonio.

Glovo, a Spain-based delivery platform startup, is facing legal disruption in its home market after the country’s Supreme Court ruled against its classification of delivery couriers as “autonomous” (or self employed). The court ruled that riders are instead in a laboral relationship with the platform.

Locomation received a purchase order from Wilson Logistics for minimum of 1,120 Wilson Logistics tractors to be equipped with the company’s “Autonomous Relay Convoy” technology. This “convoy” tech is designed to let one driver to pilot a lead truck while a follower truck works in tandem made possible by a fully autonomous driving system. The first units are to be delivered in early 2022. Additionally, the deal amends the commercial agreement between the two companies to extend through 2028.

Mobileye announced at the Beijing Auto Show that its computer vision technology will be used in a new premium electric vehicle called Zero Concept from Geely Auto Group. Zero Concept is produced by Lynk & Co., the brand formed as a joint venture between Geely Auto and Volvo Car Group, and uses Mobileye’s SuperVision driving-assistance system. Mobileye and Geely Auto have also signed a long-term, high-volume agreement for advanced driver-assistance systems.

Motional, the automated vehicle technology joint venture of Aptiv and Hyundai, released a consumer survey and report examining Americans’ perception and understanding of driverless vehicles. A few takeaways include that 51% of those surveyed agree their communities haven’t done enough to increase access to transportation; 54% agree self-driving vehicles could address mobility access for the underrepresented; 83% agree that access to safe, clean transportation is a public health issue and 70% believe the risk of infection is a real concern impacting their transportation decisions.

Postmates will soon be gobbled up by Uber. On Friday afternoon, Uber filed an SEC doc and luckily our own Danny Crichton noticed the changes, which includes insight into Postmates. The company posted a loss of just $32.2 million in Q2, compared to a loss of $73 million in Q1, nearly cutting its cash burning in half, for instance. Altogether, Postmates lost $105.2 million in the first half of 2020, compared to a loss of $239 million in the same period of 2019.

Tesla had lots of news this week. There was Battery Day, which raised more questions than provided answers. The company revealed that it’s working on a new kind of tabless battery as well as plans to vertically integrate the entire manufacturing process, including the mining of lithium. Industry experts – in mining and battery development – tell me this is a very hard task and one riddled with regulatory, technical and logistical challenges. Not convinced? Here’s Musk and Tesla SVP Drew Baglino talking about the battery cell manufacturing process the company is developing.

“I mean to be clear, I would not like to say that it’s totally working. It’s close to working, but it’s not even now at the pilot plant level, it is close to working well I could say it’s fair to say probably it does work but with not a good, not a high yield.” — Musk

And then Baglino:

Yeah, so we’re still ironing out the kinks, but we’ve made tens of thousands of cells thousands of kilometers of electrode. I mean, we are on the fourth generation of the equipment so we’ve learned a lot along the along the way.

Meanwhile, Tesla had a widespread network outage that my sources say is related to the company working on two-factor authentication and the company joined a growing list of automakers and sued the Trump Administration over tariffs on imports from China.

Sixt, the rental company, launched a new feature timed with Apple’s iOS 14 release. Sixt customers can now select the exact vehicle they want in the U.S. prior to pick-up by scanning the “App Clips” QR-code on their iPhone.

One more thing: another Polestar!

Polestar today announced that it plans to produce the Precept, the slick, futuristic- looking vehicle that was unveiled as a concept earlier this year. Polestar made the announcement at Auto China 2020 in Beijing.

Image Credits: Polestar

The company’s R&D team, which is based in the United Kingdom, is developing the new model. The Precept, which will feature a mix of sustainable materials including recycled PET bottles, reclaimed fishing nets and recycled cork vinyl in the interior, will be produced in China. Polestar didn’t provide a timeline.