3 hours ago
4 ARTICLE AD
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
Lucid Motors delivered a surprise this week when it announced that CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson was resigning. Speculation about the departure, which includes vacating a board seat, was amplified when Rawlinson didn’t attend the fourth-quarter earnings call.
Senior reporter Sean O’Kane has all the details, including how the EV maker performed, who is filling the top spot (for now), and what the company’s goals are moving forward. Rawlinson will be around in some capacity, although it should be noted that he will not be there daily, nor will he have any decision-making authority. The company said he will serve as “strategic technical adviser” to Turqi Alnowaiser, who is chairman of the board and a top executive at Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — Lucid’s majority owner.
So where does Lucid go from here? It needs to sell more EVs — namely its new Gravity SUV — and reduce costs. That’s no small feat, especially considering Lucid is also developing a new midsize vehicle platform (more $$$) that is expected to launch at the end of 2026.
Before we jump into the rest of the news, I wanted to highlight an article about Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen and a suite of new products and features that the freight forwarding and logistics startup is rolling out. Many of these new products use AI, which isn’t what caught my eye.
It is the pace of the rollout. Petersen told TechCrunch this is the first in a series of semi-annual announcements of this kind — à la Airbnb. Petersen said Airbnb founder Brian Chesky’s talk about founder mode is what inspired the strategy. The viral moment for “founder mode,” which was fueled by Paul Graham’s essay, might be over. But Petersen’s latest move shows this management strategy isn’t fading anytime soon.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Remember the big round of Cruise layoffs that happened earlier this month? For those who don’t, parent company GM announced it would slash Cruise’s workforce by nearly 50%. The remains of Cruise are supposed to move under parent company General Motors as the automaker directs its resources toward improving its hands-free driver-assistance system Super Cruise — and eventually rolling out personal autonomous vehicles.
Some little birds told us a few more layoffs have occurred since the initial round, namely that the Cruise marketing team — about eight people — has been dismissed. We hear that finance and legal departments will likely follow once the transition is complete.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com, or Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. Or check out these instructions to learn how to contact us via encrypted messaging apps or SecureDrop.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Let’s start with the transportation-adjacent world of delivery. Last month, Dutch food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway sold off Grubhub for $650 million, a fraction of the $7.3 billion valuation the delivery startup had when it was acquired in 2020. Now, Just Eat Takeaway is the one being gobbled up.
Global tech company Prosus reached an agreement to buy Just Eat Takeaway for €4.1 billion in cash. If the deal is completed, Prosus will become the fourth largest food delivery group globally.
Other deals that got my attention …
AIRO Group, an aerospace and defense company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., filed for an estimated $100 million IPO. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq exchange.
Circuit, a short-trip, electric shuttle solutions startup, raised $17 million as part of a Series B round. Private investment firm MKB, as well as existing investors Tribeca Venture Partners and Impact Engine, participated.
Donut Lab, a subsidiary of Verge Motorcycles developing electric motors and other related technology, raised €15 million. The company’s anchor investor is Risto Siilasmaa, founder of cybersecurity companies F-Secure and WithSecure and former chairman of Nokia’s board. Siilasmaa will also join Donut Lab’s board.
Gozem, an African startup that offers ride-hailing, commerce, vehicle financing, and digital banking across Togo, Benin, Gabon, and Cameroon via its app, raised $30 million in a Series B funding round. The round, which includes $15 million in equity and $15 million in debt, was led by SAS Shipping Agencies Services and Al Mada Ventures.
Vidyut, a Bengaluru, India-based startup that provides financing for commercial and passenger EVs, raised $2.5 million from Flourish Ventures.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Autonomous vehicles
AAA released its annual survey that’s designed to gauge consumer interest and acceptance of advanced driver-assistance systems and robotaxis. TL;DR: Enthusiasm for self-driving vehicles is low — just 13% of surveyed drivers consider it a priority, a decrease from 18% in 2022. And it seems many are not interested in using them, either, with 53% saying they would not choose to ride in one. Meanwhile, interest in ADAS is high, especially around features like Automatic Emergency Braking.
Avride autonomous sidewalk delivery robots have made it to Japan. The Yandex spinout has launched commercial operations in central Tokyo with a fleet of about 10 robots.
Electric vehicles, charging, & batteries
Aston Martin cut 170 jobs and pushed back plans to launch an EV (will it ever happen?). The company will instead work on an ultra-luxury hybrid model.
Last week, I highlighted Sean’s article that looked into how and who organized the Tesla Takeover movement, which led to protests at Tesla showrooms in dozens of U.S. cities. Now it seems the Tesla Takeover movement is gaining some traction. The question is how long it will persist and whether it will affect Tesla’s bottom line as protestors hope.
Range Energy, a startup that developed electrified semitrailers, is shuffling its executive deck. Founder and CEO Ali Javidan is moving into the president and CTO role, the company told TechCrunch. Jon Foster, the former CFO of Zoox who helped architect the autonomous vehicle company’s acquisition by Amazon, is Range’s new CEO.
Future of flight
Joby Aviation released its earnings and here’s what we know. The electric vertical takeoff and landing startup says it’s on track to deliver an aircraft to Dubai by mid-2025, when it will demonstrate the vehicle’s readiness to carry passengers. The company now has five aircraft in its test fleet and made progress on stage four of type certification. Joby said it expects to go through the final step of the FAA certification process within the next 12 months. But this is an expensive pursuit: Joby’s net loss for 2024 was $608 million.
In-car tech
Four years ago, Google was hit with a €100 million antitrust fine by Italy’s competition authority for refusing to let a third-party electric car-charging app developed by Enel integrate with its Android Auto platform. Senior reporter Natasha Lomas wrote about a new ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that affirmed the watchdog organization’s view that Google’s initial block can constitute antitrust abuse.
The upshot? The CJEU judgment sets out conditions for tech giants when it comes to interoperability that could have wider applicability for app makers seeking to plug their wares into key platforms.
This week’s wheels
Nothing this week, but stay tuned.
What is “This week’s wheels”? It’s a chance to learn about the different transportation products we’re testing, whether it’s an electric or hybrid car, an e-bike, or even a ride in an autonomous vehicle.
