All posts tagged: techcrunch mobility

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Normally, I have an analysis and then a little bird (my insidery bits curated just for you). But today I am combining them because I simply have too many little birds talking to me about the new talent wars. About seven years ago, the founder of a self-driving vehicle company told me that competing with the likes of Waymo for talent was “like a knife fight.” Now it seems there is a new poaching war going on, according to a handful of little birds. And it’s pushing base salaries (not including equity and other benefits) to between $300,000 and $500,000.  Here’s what is happening. The buzzy physical AI sector is filled with robotics and defense tech companies looking for people with a specific set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson). And these folks are mostly working at …

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Waymo shared that it is now providing 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week. That number is small compared to its human-driven ride-hailing counterparts, like Lyft and Uber. But that’s not what I found most interesting. The pace of growth in rides, new markets, and how it compares to its fleet size is what got my attention. We built a chart (which you can view below) that helps visualize the rapid scale.  That scale, however, does create new challenges, including the inevitably of the robotaxis becoming paralyzed, like so many did during the blackout in California in December. It got us wondering, what happens when a robotaxi gets stuck — and who unsticks it?  Senior reporter Sean O’Kane dug into Waymo’s system (which includes its own roadside assistance team), as well as at least six incidents in which first responders had to …

TechCrunch Mobility: Uber everywhere, all at once

TechCrunch Mobility: Uber everywhere, all at once

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! If you haven’t noticed, Uber is suddenly everywhere, at least when it comes to autonomous vehicles. The company sold off Uber ATG, its in-house autonomous vehicle development unit, back in 2020. Uber shed a number of its moonshots — although it maintained an equity stake in all of them — so it could focus on its core businesses of delivery and ride-hailing.  But Uber never gave up entirely on AVs. It’s spent the past two years locking up partnerships with dozens of autonomous vehicle technology companies across delivery, drones, trucking, and robotaxis. It has taken a worldview, too, making agreements with Chinese companies to launch robotaxis in Europe and the Middle East, as well as startups like U.K.-based Wayve.  And now there is another one with Rivian. The TL;DR of the deal is Uber will make an initial $300 million investment in …

TechCrunch Mobility: Travis Kalanick’s return proves it really is 2016 again

TechCrunch Mobility: Travis Kalanick’s return proves it really is 2016 again

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! This newsletter was wrapped and ready to go and then Travis Kalanick brought me back to 2016 by making an eyebrow-raising announcement. Uber’s co-founder and former CEO who resigned in 2017 after a string of controversies is back and building a robotics company called Atoms. And, wait for it, he is on the precipice of acquiring Pronto, the autonomous vehicle startup focused on industrial and mining sites that was created by his former Uber colleague, Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick revealed he is already the “largest investor” in Pronto. That is a lot to digest and the final sign that, yes, we really are back in 2016. For those who may not remember, 2016 was a hyped year for AVs. Uber acquired Levandowski’s startup Otto — a deal that went sideways almost immediately and resulted in Waymo suing the ride-hailing company for trade …

TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian’s R2 gambit

TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian’s R2 gambit

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for all things “future of transportation.” To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! I was out for a few days last week and we have a bit of catching up to do! I won’t rehash too much, but expect a few of the bigger news items — ahem, Wayve’s $1.2 billion raise — to make it in here.  One more housekeeping note: I will be in Austin next week for SXSW, the annual tech, music, film, and culture event that always attracts an interesting collection of tech founders, creators, politicians, and other industry folks. I plan to attend the Rivian event, where the company is expected to reveal full details of its upcoming R2 line. I will also be moderating a panel called Innovation & Impact: Female Leaders Transforming Legacy Industries, alongside Rivian CFO Claire McDonough, Madison Reed CEO and founder Amy Errett, and Spotify chief public affairs officer Dustee Jenkins. If you’re there, please reach out! Speaking of Rivian, …

TechCrunch Mobility: Waymo makes its defense

TechCrunch Mobility: Waymo makes its defense

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Earlier this month, Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña testified before the Senate Commerce Committee as part of a hearing to talk about autonomous vehicles. Much of the questioning fell under the standard “let’s educate the public” category. But it was Sen. Ed Markey’s questions about overseas workers, and Peña’s response, that everyone paid attention to.   Peña, when asked about human workers who assist with Waymo vehicles’ navigation or emergencies, revealed that the company has remote guidance workers based overseas in the Philippines. This sparked some quick ire from Markey, who admonished Peña on how the company could rely on people without U.S. driver’s licenses to assist its vehicles on U.S. roads, among other criticisms. Waymo formulated a response in a blog post written by Waymo’s head of global operations Ryan McNamara, which was published Tuesday. It has also shared the …

TechCrunch Mobility: Is B enough to build a profitable robotaxi business?

TechCrunch Mobility: Is $16B enough to build a profitable robotaxi business?

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Waymo’s acceleration over the past 18 months is undeniable. The Alphabet-owned self-driving company now operates commercial robotaxi services in six markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. It has plans to grow its fleet of driverless taxicabs this year to more than a dozen new cities internationally, including London and Tokyo.  And now it has $16 billion to fuel that expansion. Is it enough?  Talking to a few industry watchers, the answer kept landing in the squishy “sort of” and “it depends” territory.  First the bull case. Alphabet is clearly committed to ensuring Waymo’s success; the parent company is, and continues to be, the primary investor. Which means Waymo isn’t exposed like other AV startups that suddenly lost funding after their backers (often legacy automakers) got skittish or pivoted.  Its ridership and autonomous miles …

TechCrunch Mobility: The great Tesla rebranding

TechCrunch Mobility: The great Tesla rebranding

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent months — years? — trying to position his company as something more than just a maker of electric vehicles. When Tesla acquired Solar City in 2016, he (and his comms team) pitched it as a sustainable energy company. Over the past year, he has pushed the idea of Tesla as an AI and robotics company.  Musk’s aspirational branding has slammed right up against financial reality: The bulk of its revenue comes from selling EVs. Its latest earnings support this.  The company generated $94.8 billion in revenue in 2025. Of that, $69.5 billion came from selling and leasing EVs as well as related regulatory credits. The remaining $25 billion is split nearly down the middle between its energy generation (solar) and storage business and “services and other,” which include revenue from its Superchargers, parts sales, and Full …

TechCrunch Mobility: RIP, Tesla Autopilot, and the NTSB investigates Waymo

TechCrunch Mobility: RIP, Tesla Autopilot, and the NTSB investigates Waymo

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! A quick bit of breaking news that hit just as we were about to send this newsletter out. The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into Waymo after its robotaxis have been spotted illegally passing stopped school buses numerous times in at least two states. Read the full story here. Now onto our regular programming … Tesla made a couple of moves this week — and just before its quarterly earnings drops — designed to show its progress, and even dominance, in automated driving technology. But, hold up, there is more to it than mere optics.  The week started with Tesla offering passengers robotaxi rides in Austin without a human safety driver in the front seat. If you recall, Tesla launched a limited service in Austin last year with a fleet of modified Tesla Model Y vehicles running a …

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘Physical AI’ enters the hype machine

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘Physical AI’ enters the hype machine

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for all things “future of transportation.” To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! It’s been a minute, folks! As you might recall, the newsletter took a little holiday break. We’re back and well into 2026. And a lot has happened since the last edition.  I spent the first week of the year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And while I wrote about this last January, it’s worth repeating: U.S. automakers have left the building.  What has filled the void in the Las Vegas Convention Center? Autonomous vehicle tech companies (Zoox, Tensor Auto, Tier IV, and Waymo, which rebranded its Zeekr RT, to name a few), Chinese automakers like Geely and GWM, software and automotive chip companies, and loads of what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls “physical AI.”  The term, which is sometimes called “embodied AI,” describes the use of AI outside the digital world and into the real, physics-based one. AI models, combined with sensors, cameras, and …