BY AUTOMOTIVE VENTURES | 19 JUNE 2023 | VIEW ONLINE ➡️

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I've often wondered why consumers fall for the low-priced "loss leader" deal in automotive. Turns out, we have mostly ourselves to blame. (💲Link)Why America Isn’t Ready for the EV Takeover. (💲Link)Fascinating graphic of automaker customers' political leanings. (Link)A report from the American Lung Association lays out the enormous health benefits of a nationwide shift to electric vehicles and clean energy. (Link)The novelist Upton Sinclair observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Well, the opposite is true, too. (💲Link)Alliance For Automotive Innovation CEO John Bozzella: "Chinese manufacturers gained a foothold and entered the European market at a budget price point." (💲Link)Rising demand for crude oil is set to slow to a trickle within five years and peak before the end of the decade, as electric-vehicle uptake surges and developed nations rapidly transition to cleaner sources of energy. (💲Link)Tesla CEO Elon Musk “likes to think he can make the EV affordable for everyone — he’s been talking about a $25,000 electric vehicle for years, but he doesn’t have one right now. BYD has an $11,000 electric vehicle, and it will be available this year. If anyone is democratizing the EV, it’s Wang Chuanfu, and he’s the one who should be called the Henry Ford of the 21st century.” (💲Link)With both political parties concerned about China's growing clout in manufacturing and technology, being anti-EV would amount to surrendering the future of the automobile industry to China. (💲Link)Turning a car electric doesn’t make it environmentally friendly. (Link)Two pathways are emerging as EV charging infrastructure expands across the U.S. Automaker partnerships will determine whether those technologies will coexist or whether one will push the other out, like VHS and Betamax. (💲Link)Moves by EV charging companies underscore how quickly the industry is shifting to a single standard, at least in North America. (💲Link)Automaker Stellantis continues to evaluate Tesla's charging standard after Ford and GM said they were adopting it. (💲Link)Tesla’s decision to invest billions of dollars into owning and operating its own charging network has given it a formidable edge. Will Tesla enact a two-tiered billing system: one charging rate for Tesla owners, and a second, more expensive rate for Ford and GM customers? (💲Link)Tesla will face a difficult choice: spend big to maintain the Supercharger network’s high level of service or “optimize” the network for higher revenue at the expense of availability. (Link)EVs lose a significant amount of range when loaded with heavy cargo. The range of the Ford F-150 Lightning dropped by nearly 25 percent when loaded with cargo approaching the maximum capacity. (💲Link)One of the fastest-rising inputs in the consumer-price index was the cost of auto repair. Also rising? The cost of auto insurance. (💲Link)U.S auto safety regulators told nearly two dozen major automakers not to comply with a Massachusetts vehicle telematics law, saying it poses significant safety concerns. (💲Link)

It started exactly 30 days after we purchased our F-150 Lightning. "Your Ford Streaming service is coming to an end for 'MT's Lightning' and will expire if you choose not to renew," the email said. Soon after, Ford's emails were followed up by those from SiriusXM concerning our satellite radio free trial, and from AT&T about our Wi-Fi hotspot trial. (Link)

Ford recently filed a patent for a backup battery pack that EV owners can bring along so they don't have to worry so much about range. (Link)

New research outlines a recycling method that refurbishes the cathode — batteries with the recycled cathode both last longer and charge faster. (Link)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a measure prohibiting most direct-to-consumer vehicle sales, but certain provisions will allow Tesla to continue to operate its franchiseless model. (💲Link)

Toyota's first solid-state battery is expected in 2027, offering a 20% range boost compared to their lithium pack for a total of around 745 miles. Even better, recharge times are expected to be around 10 minutes. From there, a second, more advanced solid-state battery is expected to hit the market sometime after 2028. Toyota expects it to offer 50% more range than that 2026 lithium-ion pack, suggesting a driving range of 932 miles. (Link)

America’s fragmented electric grid, which was largely built to accommodate coal and gas plants, is becoming a major obstacle to efforts to fight climate change. The electric system was cobbled together over a century by thousands of independent utilities building smaller-scale grids to carry power from large coal, nuclear or gas plants to nearby customers. By contrast, the kinds of longer-distance transmission lines that would transport wind and solar from remote rural areas often require the approval of multiple regional authorities, who often disagree over whether the lines are needed or who should pay for them. (💲Link)

The generative AI boom will usher in an age of accelerated productivity and prosperity for some and profound disruption for others. 60-70% of worker hours worldwide were spent on tasks that could be automated. (💲Link)As ad agencies race to embrace AI-powered tools, they are simultaneously automating positions that will look quite different—or not exist at all—in the coming years. (💲Link)The BloombergNEF Electric Vehicle Outlook 2023 is available now for download (Link)

Have a great week,Steve Greenfield

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📰 Had a blast at ASOTU LIVE in Atlanta. (Link)🗣️ It was a pleasure catching up with Jeff Kelley from the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association (VADA) to discuss the automotive industry. (Link)🎤 On this week's Future of Automotive segment on CBT News, we discuss how Tesla is strategically leveraging their Supercharger network. (Link)

🌟 EMO.energy is implementing battery-powered solutions for high-energy, high-power applications for light electric vehicles. EMO has developed a proprietary battery tech platform that allows 100% fire safety, 20 min fast charge & 120% better life. (Link)

🌟 Spinframe Technologies makes viewing your fleet's condition in real-time possible and provides a timeline of the vehicles' physical condition history, utilizing AI-powered damage detection technology at key points along the fleet's path. (Link)

✈️ Air Mobility & Space

Norwegian drone logistics company Aviant has launched its home delivery service, Kyte, now capable of delivering groceries, takeaway food, and non-prescription medicines to sparsely populated areas and holiday homes in Norway. The company has landed an additional €1M of public funding from Innovation Norway to autonomously deliver vital prescription medicines directly from pharmacies to people in remote and suburban areas. (Link)Airbus Ventures announces its investment in Venus Aerospace, a Houston-based hypersonic startup enabling cost-effective one-hour global transport. The company’s advancements can also enable more efficient travel in and through space. (Link)

🦾 Autonomy, Robotics & AI

Automotive software company LeddarTech is going public through a merger with a blank-check company led by Prospector Capital Corp. The deal will give LeddarTech a pro forma equity value of $348 million. (💲Link)MatrixSpace, a leader in AI collaborative sensing solutions, announced a $10M Series A. MatrixSpace is revolutionizing radar technology with its compact, AI-powered system that digitizes the outdoors, dramatically extending the range of human senses over long distances to a degree previously unavailable. (Link)

Percepto - Autonomous Drones has raised a Series C of $67 million, composed of around $50 million in equity and $16 million in debt funding. Percepto has become the first industrial drone company to get a nationwide Beyond Line of Sight (BVLOS) waiver from the FAA in the U.S. (Link)

Stellantis Ventures announced investments into artificial intelligence and computer vision developer Nauto, offroad guide provider Trails Offroad and e-bike developer beweelsociety. (Link)

🚗 Dealer Tech & Auto Commerce

Kenyan automotive marketplace Peach Cars KE announced a $5 million Seed round. The startup was founded in 2020 to democratize car ownership in sub-Saharan Africa, starting with Kenya. (Link)Space Auto, the new integrated software and marketing solution for car dealerships, secured a Series A funding round. The funding is earmarked specifically for building out dynamic AI automation across Space Auto’s website, retailing, and CRM software products to improve the car buying process for both consumers and dealerships. (Link)

⚡ Electrification & Alternate Fuels

About:Energy, a London, UK-based battery technology company, raised £1.5M in Seed funding. About:Energy is a battery software company that focuses on building a portfolio of battery measurement and modeling capabilities to deliver a comprehensive software solution for battery design. (Link)London-based energy flexibility start-up, Axle Energy has raised $1.6 million in Pre-Seed funding. Axle, founded in early 2023, acts as the ‘virtual wires’ connecting home energy devices to electricity markets. By optimizing the combined flexibility of many home energy devices, Axle’s software dynamically provides flexibility to the electricity grid and shifts energy usage to when it's cheapest and greenest. (Link)Amadeus has acquired a minority stake in Caphenia, an innovator in aviation fuel, for an undisclosed amount. Caphenia is working on producing synthesis gas from a mixture of biogas, CO2, water and electricity with the end goal being renewable fuels. (Link)CHARGE ZONE, an EV charging company in India, has completed the first phase of its highway EV charging network deployment. The company said it has installed over 1,600 EV charging stations across 450 locations, covering more than 15,000 km of highways throughout the country. The company has announced plans to raise $125 million in equity as part of its Series A2 funding round. (Link)Chilean startup evsy, dedicated to the public and private installation of electric car chargers, raised $2 million. The Chilean venture has two major lines of business: public charging, which represents 20% of the operation; and private or home charging, which occupies the remaining 80% and installs charging terminals in residential buildings at no cost, in order to monetize as users charge their vehicles. (Link)Forge Nano, a Denver, CO-based precision nano-coating technology company, raised US$50M+ in funding, bringing the total amount to $95M. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth of its commercial-scale nanotechnology opportunities for battery material and develop a battery production line to satisfy full-scale, premium battery contracts. (Link)Sequoia Capital made a seed investment in Mach Industries, a startup company specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense platforms that run on hydrogen fuel. The company is developing a weapon system that could produce oxyhydrogen fuel to power UAVs and aerial protection devices. (Link)Oort Energy, a UK-based next-generation hydrogen electrolyzer developer, has closed its oversubscribed £5M Seed raise. The company's products produce clean hydrogen gas from water and renewable electricity. (Link)Pebble Mobility, a California-based EV startup aiming to bring electrification, automation and the usability of an iPhone to the RV world, raised $13.6 million in a Seed and Series A round. The company’s first product will be a “medium-sized” towable all-electric travel trailer equipped with technology that’s similar, but not exactly the same, as the advanced driver assistance systems found in today’s modern vehicles. (Link)

Standard Fleet, a provider of fleet management solutions for electric vehicles (EVs), has successfully raised a $7 million Seed funding round. With a focus on automating, securing and scaling electric fleet businesses, Standard Fleet aims to accelerate the adoption of EVs in various sectors, including rental car businesses, rideshare companies and leasing fleets. (Link)TeraWatt Technology, a next-generation battery producer, announced the completion of another financing round prior to Series C ("Pre-C"). TeraWatt will accelerate the large-scale pilot production of its next-generation lithium-ion batteries (Link)

💲Finance & Insurance

Chilean fintech Galgo (formerly MIGRANTE), announced the acquisition of CrediOrbe, a Colombian fintech focused on motorcycle credits, to boost its presence in the country. Galgo, an online platform focused on motorcycle financing aims to become the biggest player in the motorcycle credit market in Latin America. (Link)Brazilian insurtech Justos closed a $5.9M venture round. Justos uses machine learning models to offer better-priced car insurance, with custom premiums for each driver. Plus, the company offers drivers a discount on their monthly payment depending on their driving habits. (Link)EV financing platform RevFin Services has secured $5 million funding from the United States International Development Finance Corporation. Revfin said it plans to finance two million electric vehicles in the next five years. (Link)

🛴Micromobility

A new global mobility player called Today has been formed by merging six brands in the micromobility industry:  Frog, Leap, Ottr, Element, MIXTE and White Fox. They are wholly owned by venture capitalist fund EFO Ventures, which invested £2.5m to combine the hardware and mobility–as-a-service (MaaS) companies. Its commercial fleet consists of 8,000 vehicles made up of e-scooters, e-bikes, e-cargo bikes and e-mopeds.

 (Link)

TVS Motor Company has acquired an additional 25% stake in SEMG - Swiss E-Mobility Group (Schweiz) AG. After the completion of the transaction, SEMG will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of TVS Motor Company. (Link)NEOMOUV, an electric bike design specialist, has announced the acquisition of Unibike, a Portuguese company with a new assembly plant. (Link)

👥 Shared Mobility & Subscription

Uber has led a $20 million round into Everest Fleet, a Mumbai-based fleet management company that boasts over 10,000 vehicles running on rideshare platforms Uber and Ola throughout India. The company will use the funds to accelerate its transition to electric vehicles, with a goal of having 10,000 EVs in its fleet by 2026. (Link)

🚛 Supply Chain & Logistics

German company FERNRIDE closed a $31 million Series A round. The funding will be used to accelerate the transition to automated and sustainable logistics. Fernride is a pioneer in the field of autonomous and electric trucks. (Link)Trucksters, a Madrid, Spain-based transport operator, received an investment from Volvo Group Venture Capital. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Founded in 2018, Trucksters offers a service that reduces long-distance road transit time by allowing trucks to be continuously on the move through relays. Today, the company is managing four logistics corridors from Spain to Western and Eastern Europe and the UK. Through the corridors, it has fixed relay points where a truck exchanges its semi-trailer with another truck, avoiding stops and enabling the driver to come back home. (Link)

🔐 Vehicle Connectivity & CyberSecurity

Startup Airbag Technologies has raised US$700K. Airbag aims to reduce the problem of traffic accidents through software focused on drivers. (Link)Military and transportation security startup Shift5 has raised a $33 million Series B extension round. Shift5 has developed software-defined radios to get visibility into radio frequency attacks, which allows adversaries to masquerade as the ground station and send data packets to an aircraft. (Link)

🏭 Vehicle Production & Assembly

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment and Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Human Horizons have entered into a significant partnership, with the Saudi Arabian government agreeing to invest $5.6 billion in the collaboration. This agreement, announced during the Arab-China business conference in Riyadh, is part of Saudi Arabia's diversification strategy, aiming to boost investments in non-oil sectors. (Link)Revoh Innovations, an EV sub-components manufacturing company, has raised a $425K Seed round. Revoh is an EV sub-component manufacturing company, developing technology solutions for motor controllers to enhance the efficiency of two-wheeler/ three-wheeler EV vehicles. (Link)Telo Trucks has raised $1.4 million at a $10 million post-money valuation. Telo Trucks is betting that lots of Americans actually want a petite pickup — one with the “footprint of a two-door Mini Cooper” and the “same interior and bed space as a Toyota Tacoma.” The truck will seat five adults and go from 0 to 60 mph in four seconds. It’s also supposed to pack a 350-mile range. (Link)

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