Amazon eyes Zoox, Aurora goes back to school and Cabana hits the road – TechCrunch

May 31, 2020 Admin

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Hi 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. I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch.

The mobility world got busy this week. Really. busy. This is gonna be a long one, buckle up.

Take a look at the most recent survey we conducted with a bunch of venture capitalists about mobility and what areas interest them most. We talked to Ernestine Fu with Alsop Louie Partners, Stonly Baptiste and Shaun Abrahamson with Urban Us, Shahin Farshchi with Lux Capital, Kate Schox with Trucks VC and Jeff Peters of Autotech Ventures.

Reach out and email me 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.

Alright, time to dig in. Vamos.

Micromobbin’

Uber tossed more than 20,000 JUMP bikes into a recycling yard following its deal to offload the JUMP brand to Lime. A photo below, courtesy of Cris Moffitt, shows a sliver of the thousands of bikes at the yard in North Carolina.

“The extent of waste is unfathomable,” the Bike Share Museum said in a tweet.

Since then, Tier Mobility CEO and co-founder Lawrence Leuschner said he wants to take some of those bikes, “repair them, and give them a second life – as we do for all of our vehicles,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

Image Credits: Cris Moffitt

Keaks (Kirsten Korosec) has been working on a big(ish) story about JUMP for the last week. Stay tuned and/or holler at her if you have any tips.

Meanwhile, we noticed Superpedestrian, the startup that makes self-diagnosing electric scooters, has teamed up with Zagster. Superpedestrian quietly launched LINK, its shared electric scooter service in partnership with Zagster in Fort Pierce, Florida in late December.

As of at least February 2020, Zagster had an agreement with Superpedestrian’s LINK to manage the fleet of shared scooters in Kansas, according to city commission documents. In March, the city council in Manhattan, Kansas authorized the city to negotiate a permitting contract with Zagster to run a six-month electric scooter pilot in partnership with Superpedestrian’s LINK.

Over in Europe, long-distance ridesharing startup BlaBlaCar said it’s expanding to scooter sharing. The company doesn’t plan to operate its own fleet of scooters. Instead, BlaBlaCar is partnering with Voi, a European e-scooter service that has raised $136 million over multiple rounds. Voi scooters will feature three different brands — Voi, BlaBlaCar and BlaBla Ride.

— Megan Rose Dickey

Deal of the week

It’s not a deal yet — well, as far as we know, but I’d be remiss not to highlight it here. I’m talking, of course, about the WSJ report that Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire self-driving vehicle startup Zoox.

Zoox is unlike any other autonomous vehicle startup I’ve encountered in the past five or so years. The company has taken on several capitally intensive and ambitious roles — electric vehicle designer and manufacturer, full stack autonomous vehicle developer and robotaxi operator. Zoox co-founder Jesse Levinson will disagree with me here — we’ve had this discussion before — but the company is essentially doing this alone. Yes, it has relationships and support from suppliers; it has investors. But it doesn’t have a meaningful OEM partner and backer like its competitors Argo AI and Cruise . And it has no where near the piggy bank that Waymo holds.

It’s a bold and risky strategy. It’s also expensive.

It’s a poorly kept secret that Zoox has had to do some belt tightening over the past 12 months. The company cut costs last year and tried to renegotiate some supplier contracts, sources told me at the time. In October, it raised $200 million in new convertible note funding, which was supposed to be folded into a Series C round and close by the end of 2019 or early 2020. As far as we know, that never happened. Sources have told me Zoox was in talks with OEMs about sealing a deal with a manufacturing partner that might also include financial backing. Daimler and FCA were name dropped in different conversations at the time, but I was never able to verify that the deals were close.

Then COVID-19 hit. Zoox tightened its belt further and cut nearly all of its contract drivers.

There’s no doubt that Zoox needs money to survive. But an Amazon-Zoox deal, if it happens, is bittersweet.

Zoox is the plucky startup — the stand-at-the-cliff’s edge pioneer that you want to succeed. Going it alone carries existential risk, but it has also given it the freedom to stick to its vision.

If acquired, Zoox will get sucked up into the Amazon ether and one wonders what it will become.

Other deals that got our attention:

Bolt, the Estonia-based company that provides on-demand ridesharing, scooters and other transportation services across some 150 cities in Europe and Africa, raised €100 million ($109 million) in a convertible note. Bolt also confirmed that is now valued at €1.7 billion (or nearly $1.9 billion at today’s rates). The money is coming from a single investor, Naya Capital Management, which was also a major backer of the company in its last round, a $67 million Series C announced in July 2019.

Ola Electric, the EV business that spun out of the ride-hailing giant Ola in 2019, acquired electric scooter startup Etergo. The Dutch startup built a scooter that uses a swappable, high energy battery that delivers a range of up to 240 km (149 miles). Ola Electric is aiming to produce and launch its own line of two wheelers as soon as this year.

Tesla’s board certified a financial milestone that unlocks the first tranche — worth more than $700 million — of an unprecedented multi-billion-dollar pay package for CEO Elon Musk, according a document filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The milestone allows Musk to purchase the first grouping or tranche of nearly 1.69 million shares at a steep discount. As far as we know (based on SEC filings) Musk has not exercised those options yet.

AV spotlight: Aurora

If you haven’t heard, there’s a battle over talent in the autonomous vehicle industry. One AV founder once described it to me as a “knife fight.”

It’s not just about hiring talent though. It’s about building the right culture to get the job done. In this case, it’s the not-so-small goal to develop and deploy autonomous vehicle technology at commercial scale.

Self-driving vehicle startup Aurora recently hit the 500-employee mark, an internal milestone capped by several new key hires, including Sagar Behere, as director of systems and safety engineering and Tara Green, who is leading human resources, recruiting and IT.

It wasn’t the 500-employee figure that I found interesting. It’s a new in-house program the company is calling Aurora Academy and Raul Rojas, a former professor of computer science and mathematics at the Free University of Berlin who was hired to lead it. The idea is to create a program where employees can build specific technical skills in the self-driving technology domain using its own experts. Rojas comes with deep background in robotics and autonomous vehicle technology. He met two of Aurora’s co-founders Chris Urmson and Drew Bagnell while participating in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Rojas also co-founded in 2011 Autonomous GmbH, an autonomy startup acquired by TomTom in 2017.

Aurora has hired computer scientists, engineers, physicists, and mathematicians to help in the complex task of integrating different hardware and software modules into an AV system. And yet, Rojas noted there is still a need “to build bridges across the various disciplines so that we can propagate expertise across all levels of the company.” He said that’s where Aurora Academy comes in.

The program kicked off in mid-March with a six-week course entitled “Essential Skills for Poses, Transformations and Lie Groups.” (Light stuff, right?) These are the mathematical tools that give roboticists a uniform and powerful framework for localization and motion planning.

Other classes will cover software engineering, sensor development, mathematical foundations, visualization, planning, control and machine learning. The academy will also be open to non-technical employees who want to learn more diverse skills, including how to program in Python.

“The self-driving world is still a small community, so there’s a limited pool of candidates to begin with, and not many universities offer specialized programs on autonomous driving, so it’s unlikely you will find someone right out of school with all the skills needed,” Rojas said.

For instance, Aurora acquired last year Blackmore, one of the few companies developing Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar, which emits a low-power and continuous wave.

“It’s unlikely someone could have studied it in school, so in June we’re starting a course to teach the physics of Doppler lidar, how to process the data at the fastest possible rate, and how to profit from the measurements in perception tasks,” Rojas noted.

Is your AV company doing something interesting — you know, beyond bringing autonomous vehicles into the mainstream? Hit me up and tell me about it.

Dispatches from Africa

On demand mobility powered by electric and solar is coming to Africa.

Vaya Africa, a ride-hail mobility venture founded by Zimbabwean mogul Strive Masiyiwa, launched an electric taxi service and charging network in Zimbabwe this week with plans to expand across the continent.

The South Africa-headquartered company is using Nissan Leaf EVs and has developed its own solar-powered charging stations. Vaya is finalizing partnerships to take its electric taxi services on the road to countries that could include Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, Vaya Mobility CEO Dorothy Zimuto told TechCrunch.

The initiative comes as Africa’s on-demand mobility market has been in full swing for several years, with startups, investors and the larger ride-hail players aiming to bring movement of people and goods to digital platforms.

Uber and Bolt have been operating in Africa’s major economies since 2015, where there are also a number of local app-based taxi startups. Over the last year, there’s been some movement on the continent toward developing EVs for ride-hail and delivery use, primarily around motorcycles.

Beyond environmental benefits, Vaya highlights economic gains for passengers and drivers of shifting to electric in Africa’s taxi markets, where fuel costs compared to personal income is generally high for drivers.

Using solar panels to power the charging station network also helps Vaya’s new EV program overcome some of challenges in Africa’s electricity grid.

Vaya is exploring EV options for other on-demand transit applications — from min-buses to Tuk Tuk taxis.

— Jake Bright

Layoffs, business disruptions and people

Let’s kick this section off this week by highlighting a new company hoping to disrupt van life.

Cabana is a new startup launched by a former Lime executive that’s bringing tricked-out vans with all the amenities of a Holiday Inn hotel room to cities on the West Coast, starting in Seattle. As TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Shieber noted, companies like Tentrr, HipCamp and even Airbnb have gotten in on the vanlife movement, and Cabana’s founder definitely thinks he can ride the wave.

Cabana has already raised $3.5 million from investors, led by Craft Ventures — the investment firm founded by David Sacks. Other investors include Goldcrest Capital, Travis VanderZanden (the chief executive and founder of Bird), and Sunny Madra, vice president of Ford X at Ford Motor Company.

Hiring news

Rivian appears to be planning to offer its own insurance to customers based on a new job posting for an insurance agency data manager first spotted by RivianForums, which passed along the tip.

The job is to lead Rivian’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance agency, a position that entails recruiting, training, coaching and managing employed licensed sales agents and an insurance customer care team, according to the posting on Rivian’s website. The employee will also sell insurance products and provide feedback to partners on opportunities, the posting said. It’s an unusual move, but not unprecedented. Last August, Tesla launched an insurance product.

Cruise has a new board member who comes with deep experience in tech and hardware. Regina Dugan has a lengthy resume that includes former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the current CEO of Wellcome Leap, a non-profit founded by Wellcome Trust to accelerate innovations that benefit global health. In between DARPA and Wellcome Leap, Dugan was head of Google’s Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) Group and led Building 8, Facebook’s hardware skunkworks.

“In health care and in transportation, I believe in the power of science and technology to change our world. With this power comes the responsibility to deliver life-saving advances at scale — Cruise has the tech, the team, and the tenacity to get it done. I’m stoked to join,” Dugan said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.

Sweden-headquartered Voi Technology recruited Richard Corbett to head up its U.K., Ireland and Benelux operations. Corbett joins from rival Bird, where he spent two years as the U.S. company’s U.K. and Ireland chief, as well as helping to launch e-scooter rentals in Netherlands.

Layoffs and other departures

AirMap, an airspace services platform for unmanned aircraft, cut its staff. Layoffs.fyi reported that around 30% of the team was let go.

Aston Martin announced CEO Andy Palmer was leaving his post. His replacement is Tobias Moers, the current head of Mercedes-Benz’s AMG division, Car and Driver reported.

Welp … Audi fired Daniel Abt from its Formula E racing team after learning he had a professional sim driver race for him during a virtual competition called the “Race at Home Challenge” held last weekend. It appeared Abt was going to merely be suspended. Abt said in a video message published Tuesday on YouTube that Audi had dropped him from the team.

German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs, or around 10% of its work force, by 2025 as a result of a slump in demand, according to a company memo that Automotive News reported. ZF said in an email to employees that half of the 12,000-15,000 job cuts would be in Germany.

Uber is cutting 600 jobs in India, or 25% of its workforce in the country. The job cuts, which affect teams across customer and driver support, business development, legal, policy, marketing, and finance, are part of the company’s global restructuring that eliminated 6,700 jobs this month.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Here are a few other items that caught my eye …

Deloitte Insights tackled a topic that many of us might be mulling as well. They looked at what mobility might look like after COVID-19. The report specifically explores four possible futures over the next three to five years. You can check out the full report here, which provides a high-level description of society, economy and geopolitics and then narrows in on transportation.

In one rosier scenario, dubbed “a passing storm,” the COVID-19 pandemic shakes society but, after a slow start, is met with an increasingly effective health system and political response, according to Deloitte. The pandemic causes long-term economic impact: e-commerce and last-mile delivery networks proliferate and are increasingly supported by autonomous vehicles and digitization of the logistics value chain. Vehicle sanitation becomes a priority, which leads to new self-cleaning materials, certification programs and form factors such as passenger partitions. The in-transit experience benefits from advances in digital entertainment and productivity prompted by the pandemic, including, potentially, AR and VR applications.

AV stuff …

I recommend reserving an hour or two to play around with this Global Autonomous Vehicles Index created by the autonomous vehicles group at law firm Dentons. It’s free and lets users compare the nuances of AV testing and deployment regulations across 18 countries and all 50 U.S. states. For instance, regulations in Canada don’t require a human driver in a vehicle when testing AVs. In China, rules require each organization to buy the compulsory liability insurance for traffic accidents for each vehicle. Yet in Germany, there are no special requirements for AVs which go beyond the motor vehicle liability insurance.

Baidu completed Apollo Park, an autonomous driving and vehicle-infrastructure testing base that houses more than 200 autonomous vehicles and is located in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. The facility is used for vehicle storage, cloud control on remotely sensed big data, operational command, maintenance and calibration, as well as research and development.

Baidu has completed Apollo Park, an autonomous vehicle testing and development center. Photo: Baidu

Waymo will bring its autonomous vehicles back to public roads in the Bay Area starting June 8, The Verge reported. The plan, according to an email viewed by The Verge, is to use the self-driving vehicles to deliver packages for two Bay Area non-profits: illustrator Wendy McNaughton’s #DrawTogether, which provides art kits to Bay Area kids; and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Autonomous robotics startup Nuro will test prescription delivery in Houston through a partnership with CVS Pharmacy. The pilot, which will use a fleet of the startup’s autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles and transition to using its custom-built R2 delivery bots, is slated to begin in June.

It’s electric …

Mercedes-Benz is now selling its EQV 300 all-electric premium van in Europe, the second EV to come out of the automaker’s initiative to produce a line of battery-powered models under its new EQ brand.

Rivian has resumed work at its factory in Normal, Ill. following a temporary shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Investor and customer Amazon provided an update this week stating that Rivian is still on track to supply it with electric delivery vans. Vans will begin delivering to customers in 2021, as previously planned. About 10,000 electric vehicles will be on the road as early as 2022 and all 100,000 vehicles will be on the road by 2030.

Audi created a new business unit called Artemis to bring electric vehicles equipped with highly automated driving systems and other tech to market faster.

Tesla slashed prices across its electric vehicle portfolio as the automaker aims to boost sales in an economy beaten down by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Model S and Model X saw base prices cut by $5,000, while the Model 3 standard range plus saw a $2,000 drop.

Ride-hailing and miscellaneous bits …

Uber is launching a book-by-the-hour feature in the U.S., starting Monday. The feature lets users book rides for $50 an hour and make multiple stops. The hourly booking feature, which is already available in a handful of international cities in Australia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, will initially launch in a dozen U.S. cities.

Core Investments, a Boston-based real estate development company, has proposed a last-mile delivery station for Amazon, Boston Business Journal reported.

Review: Lotus Evora GT

I delayed my first road trippin’ review to make room for Matt Burns’ take on his recent weekend with the $100,000 2020 Lotus Evora GT.

As Burns’ explains:

The Lotus Evora GT is supersized go-kart with nary an advanced technical feature. And I love it. While most cars are coming equipped with supercomputers, the lack of technical wizardry makes the 2020 Evora GT interesting, and that’s why it’s on TechCrunch.

Join Burns on his ride.

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This has been an incredibly tough week after a string of tough weeks. The killing of George Floyd showed yet again that…

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Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, May 29, 2020

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In a statement posted to Facebook late Friday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg offered up an explanation of why his company did not contextualize or remove posts from the accounts associated with President Donald Trump that appeared to incite violence against American citizens. “We looked very closely at the post that discussed the protests in Minnesota to […]

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After applying a fact-checking labelu00a0Tuesday to a misleading vote-by-mail tweet made by U.S. President Donald Trump, Twitter is on a roll and has labeled another of the president’s tweets — this time screening his words from casual view with what it calls a “public interest notice” that states the tweet violated its rules about glorifying violence.u00a0

Here’s how the tweet appears without further interaction (second tweet in the below screengrab):

The public interest notice replaces the substance of what Trump wrote, meaning a user has to actively click through to view the offending tweet.

Engagement options are also limited as a result by this label, meaning users can only retweet the offending tweet with a comment; they cannot like it, reply to it or vanilla retweet it.

Twitter’s notice goes on to explain why it has not removed the offending tweet entirely — and this is where the public interest element of the policy kicks in — with the company writing: “Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”u00a0

Twitter appears to be shrugging off the president’s decision yesterday to sign an executive order targeting the legal shield that internet companies rely on to protect them from liability for user-created content — doubling down on displeasing Trump, who has accused social media platforms generally of deliberately suppressing conservative views despite plenty of evidence that ad-targeting platform algorithms actually boost outrage-fuelled content and views — which tends, conversely, to amplify conservative viewpoints.

In the latest clash, Trump had tweeted in reference to violent demonstrations taking place in Minneapolis sparked by the killing of a black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer — with the president claiming that “THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd” before threatening to send in the “Military.”

“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” Trump added — making a bald threat to use military force against civilians.

Twitter has wrestled with the issue of how to handle world leaders who break its content rules for years. Most often as a result of Trump, who routinely uses its platform to bully all manner of targets — from rival politicians to hated journalists, disobedient business leaders and even actors who displease him — as well as to dispense direct and sometimes violent threats.

Since being elected, Trump has also used Twitter’s global platform as a foreign policy weapon, firing military threats at the likes of North Korea and Iran in tweet form.

Back in 2018, for example, he teased North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with button-pushing nuclear destruction (see below tweet) — before going on to “fall in love” with the dictator when he met him in person.

n

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the u201cNuclear Button is on his desk at all times.u201d Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

n

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

Twitter’s go-to defence for not taking offending Trump tweets down in the past has been that, as U.S. president, the substance of what the man tweets — however mad, bad and dangerous — is inherently newsworthy.

However, more recently, the company has created a policy tool that allows it to intervene — defining terms last summer around “public interest” content on Twitter.

It warned then (almost a full year ago, in June 2019) that it might place a public interest notice on tweets that would otherwise violate its rules (and therefore merit a takedown) — in order to “to provide additional context and clarity,” rather than removing the offensive tweet.

Fast forward a year and the tech giant has started applying labels to Trump’s tweets — beginning with a fact-check label earlier this week, related to the forthcoming U.S. election, and following up now with a public interest notice related to Trump glorifying violence.

So, finally, the tech giant seems to be inching toward drawing a limit-line around Trump in near real time.

Explaining its decision to badge the U.S. president’s threat to order the military to shoot looters in Minneapolis, the company writes: “This Tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today.”

n

We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @realdonaldtrump. https://t.co/6RHX56G2zt

n

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) May 29, 2020

“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance,” Twitter goes on.

It also links to its policy against tweets that glorify violence — which states unequivocally [in bold]: “You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people.”

Back in June, when Twitter announced the “abusive behavior” label, it also warned that tweets that get screened with a public interest notice will not benefit from any algorithmic acceleration, writing: “Weu2019ll also take steps to make sure the Tweet is not algorithmically elevated on our service, to strike the right balance between enabling free expression, fostering accountability and reducing the potential harm caused by these Tweets.”

However the newsworthiness of Twitter’s decision to finally apply its own rules vis-a-vis Trump will ensure there’s plenty of non-algorithmic amplification (and no little irony).

We reached out to the company with questions about its decision to apply a public interest screen on Trump’s latest tweet but at the time of writing it had not responded.

On Wednesday night, Twitter CEO and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, put out a series of tweets defending its decision to apply a fact-check label to Trump’s earlier misleading tweets about vote-by-mail.

“This does not make us an ‘arbiter of truth,'” wrote Dorsey. “Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.”

n

Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and thatu2019s me. Please leave our employees out of this. Weu2019ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.

n

— jack (@jack) May 28, 2020

Dorsey’s remarks followed pointed comments made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Fox News, seeking to contrast Facebook’s claimed “neutrality” when policing its platform with Twitteru2019s policy of taking a stance on issues such as political advertising (which Twitter does not allow).

u201cI just believe strongly that Facebook shouldnu2019t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,u201d Zuckerberg told the conservative news station. u201cPrivate companies u2026 especially these platform companies, shouldnu2019t be in the position of doing that.u201d

It’s notable that Dorsey used Zuckerberg’s exact turn of phrase — u201carbiter of truthu201d — to reject Facebook’s attack on Twitter’s policy as a straw man argument.

Update I, Trump reacts: In early reaction to Twitter’s move the Trump administration has now quote-retweeted the offending tweet from the official White House Twitter account — reamplifying the president’s violent threat.

n

u201cThese THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I wonu2019t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!u201d https://t.co/GDwAydcAOw

n

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 29, 2020

Trump has also reiterated his threat to regulate social media by revoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a new series of tweets this morning — accusing Twitter of ignoring “lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party.”

n

Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party. They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!

n

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

Update II, Whack-a-mole: Twitter has now screened the quote-tweeted copy of Trump’s tweet that the administration sent from the White House Twitter account.

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WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 30: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the beginning of a meeting with small business people in the Roosevelt Room at the White House January 30, 2017 in Washington, DC. During the meeting, Trump said he will announce his ‘unbelievably highly respected’ pick to replace the late Supreme Court Antonin Scalia on Tuesday evening. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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When news brokeu00a0Friday morning that Britain is looking to propose an alliance of democracies to build a 5G alternative to Huawei, you might think that that was the worst thing to happen to the controversial Chinese telecoms giant this week. In fact, it just caps off a series of fast-moving events that surely makes this one of the most decisive weeks yet in the global fight over next-generation 5G networks.

So letu2019s go back a step. After all, readers who have been following the Huawei debate might recall that not long ago the UK had controversially agreed to allow Huawei to attain up to 35% market share in u201cnon-core areasu201d of its 5G network. So what was behind Londonu2019s sudden about-face?

The answer is politics. There was always a loud group of China-skeptic dissenters in Parliament, but anger over Chinau2019s handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic pushed more MPs from Prime Minister Boris Johnsonu2019s own Conservative Party into the anti-Huawei camp and made the governmentu2019s position untenable. Rather than face a large parliamentary rebellion and possible legislative defeat later this year, Johnson instead gave in and announced plans earlier this week to phase out Huawei’s participation in Britainu2019s 5G network by 2023.

UK government reverses course on Huawei’s involvement in 5G networks

Now, Johnson seems to be going a step further. Reports indicate that he is seeking to organize fellow G7 countries Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States, as well as Australia, South Korea, and India on the issue. Skeptics of the U.S. campaign against Huawei have long lamented that Washington is asking governments to oppose Huawei without proposing a viable alternative. Londonu2019s so-called D10 alliance is the first attempt to explicitly try to answer that question.

Meanwhile on the legal front, British Columbia’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that proceedings to extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to the United States could go ahead. Instead of being released and on her way back to China, Meng, who is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, is now one step closer to facing trial in the U.S. on fraud charges relating to Huaweiu2019s circumvention of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Canada court finds against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on double criminality; extradition trial to continue

Huawei is used to geopolitical maneuvering, of course. After all, its plans to build an underseas cable last year connecting Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands with high speed internet were preempted when Australia, wary of growing Chinese influence in its South Pacific backyard, offered to pay for it instead.

When the Chinese ambassador to Denmark threatened to scuttle a trade deal with the Faroe Islands, a semi-autonomous Danish region, if Denmark didnu2019t choose it for its 5G network, Copenhagen responded by issuing tough new security requirements that Huawei has said would give it no choice but to leave the country entirely. And as I wrote in March, the question of Huawei has been increasingly debated at the highest levels of government around the world.

How Huawei is dividing Western nations

Yet, this week does seem to mark a dramatic turning point in the global 5G battle.

First, even limited access to the UK market had been a coup for Huawei. With its well-regarded Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, Britain’s seal of approval was a valuable signal to other governments on the fence about whether or not Huawei is worth the security risk. For Britain to not only reverse itself but then take the lead on coordinating an international alternative just a few days later marks a remarkable course correction.

A former British diplomat told me in March that the Westu2019s lack of cooperation on the issue was u201ca striking failureu201d of political coordination. Thatu2019s certainly not the case anymore u2013u00a0and as other NATO, EU, and Five Eye intelligence allies consider whether or not to permit Huawei themselves, the existence of a democratic anti-Huawei consortium (should it truly develop) would make it that much harder for them to justify going against the U.S.

Second, the Meng case might be soundly based in international law, but to paraphrase Clausewitz: itu2019s international relations by other means. After all, U.S. investigators, concerned that Huawei was acting as an arm of the Chinese government, had been looking for an excuse to file charges against the company for years. Fittingly enough, the charges against Meng were linked to an unrelated geopolitical issue: violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.

A defeat for the U.S. in the British Columbia Supreme Court would have struck a blow to the U.S. governmentu2019s attempts to extend its legal reach around the globe. Instead, its victory solidifies an already escalating global sanctions regime that is proving devastating for any company caught in its dragnet. As if the Meng case werenu2019t enough, TSMC, one of the worldu2019s largest semiconductors contractors, also announced that it would no longer sell to Huawei in order to comply with new US export controls.

TSMC reportedly stops taking orders from Huawei after new U.S. export controls

The question is thus: if this does mark a turning point in the US-China global tech rivalry, what will the next stage look like?

Given its history, thereu2019s not much suspense in what the Trump administration will likely do next. Certainly it will keep pursuing Huawei’s Meng in court. And count on a new round of pressure in Europe as the EU deadline for members to stake out their 5G security protocols fast approaches this summer. Butu00a0Americau2019s 5G diplomatic push has been seen as tone deaf in European capitalsu00a0u2013 now that Britain is onside, Washington would be smart to let London take the lead.

How China responds is the more important question. Its continued strong and vocal support for Huawei should be assumed, but what form will it take? Huaweiu2019s conciliatory approach in the UK has now clearly failed. But so too did its attempts to strong-arm Denmark. Will the gloves now come off? Or will Beijing be forced to distance itself from its national champion for Huaweiu2019s own good?

Huawei has tried to have it both ways, benefiting from the support it draws from the Chinese government while assuring foreign governments of its independence at the same time. But as global public opinionu00a0harden against Beijing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Western nations take stronger actions against his company, Huawei CEO Ren might consider just how hazardous being yoked to a superpower can be.

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Danny is Managing Editor at TechCrunch, where he covers technology, power, and startup growth. Previously, he was a foreign correspondent at TechCrunch based in Seoul, South Korea as well as a venture capitalist with General Catalyst in Palo Alto and Charles River Ventures in Boston and New York. He was awarded a Fulbright research scholarship to South Korea, where he researched the development of Koreau2019s startup ecosystem. He is a PhD dropout from Harvard where he studied public policy and an honors graduate of Stanford, where he studied mathematical and computational sciences. Danny is based in Brooklyn.

His ethics statement is located at https://www.dannycrichton.com/ethics/

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Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co., center left, leaves the Supreme Court following an extradition hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. Meng failed to persuade a Canadian judge to end extradition proceedings, keeping her under house arrest in Vancouver as the fight against U.S. efforts to prosecute her moves forward. Photographer: Darryl Dyck/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Welcome back to Thisu00a0Weeku00a0in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, withu00a0a recordu00a0204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are nowu00a0spendingu00a0three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps arenu2019t just a way to pass idle hours u2014 theyu2019re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had au00a0combinedu00a0$544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week weu2019re continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, with fresh data from App Annie about trends playing out across app categories benefiting from the pandemic, lockdowns and societal changes. We’re also keeping up with the COVID-19 contact-tracing apps making headlines, and delving into the week’s other news.

We saw a few notable new apps launch this week, including HBO’s new streaming service HBO Max, plus three new app experiments from Facebook’s R&D group. Android Studio 4.0 also launched this week. Instagram is getting better AR tools and IGTV is getting ads. TikTok got spammed in India.

Meanwhile, what is going on with app review? A shady app rises to the top of the iPhone App Store. Google cracks down on conspiracy theory-spreading apps. And a TikTok clone uses a pyramid scheme-powered invite system to rise up the charts.

COVID-19 contact-tracing apps in the newsu00a0

Latvia: Reuters this week reported that Latvia aims to become one of the first countries to launch a smartphone app, Stop Covid, using the new toolkit created by Apple and Alphabetu2019s Google to help trace coronavirus infections.

Australia: The role of the country’s Covidsafe app in the recovery appears to be marginal, The Guardian reports. In the month since its launch, only one person has been reported to have been identified using data from it. A survey even found that Australians were more supportive of using telecommunications metadata to track close contacts (79%) than they were of downloading an app (69.8%). In a second survey, their support for the app dropped to 64%. The app has been maligned by the public debate over it and technical issues.

France: The country’s data protection watchdog, CNIL, reviewed its contact-tracing app StopCovid, finding there were no major issues with the technical implementation and legal framework around StopCovid, with some caveats. France isn’t using Google and Apple’s contact-tracing API, but instead uses a controversial centralized contact-tracing protocol called ROBERT. This relies on a central server to assign a permanent ID and generate ephemeral IDs attached to this permanent ID. CNIL says the app will eventually be open-sourced and it will create a bug bounty. On Wednesday, the app passed its first vote in favor of its release.

Qatar: Serious security vulnerabilities in Qataru2019s mandatory contact-tracing app were uncovered by Amnesty International. An investigation by Amnestyu2019s Security Lab discovered a critical weakness in the configuration of Qataru2019s EHTERAZ contact-tracing app. Now fixed, the vulnerability would have allowed cyberattackers to access highly sensitive personal information, including the name, national ID, health status and location data of more than one million users.

India: India’s contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, is going open-source, according to Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney on Tuesday. The code is being published on GitHub. Nearly 98% of the app’s more than 114 million users are on Android. The government will also offer a cash bounty of $1,325 to security experts who find bugs or vulnerabilities.

Switzerland: Several thousand people are now testing a pilot version of Switzerland’s contact-tracing app, SwissCovid. Like Lativia, the app is one of the first to use Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API. Employees at EPFL, ETH Zurich, the Army and select hospitals and government agencies will be the first to test the Swiss app before its public launch planned for mid-June.

China: Chinau2019s health-tracking QR codes, embedded in popular WeChat and Alipay smartphone apps, are raising privacy concerns, Reuters reports. To walk around freely, people must have a green rating. They also now have to present their health QR codes to gain entry into restaurants, parks and other venues. These efforts have been met with little resistance. But the eastern city of Hangzhou has since proposed that users are given a color-coded health badge based on their medical records and lifestyle habits, including how much they exercised, their eating and drinking habits, whether they smoked and how much they slept the night before. This suggestion set off a storm of criticism on China’s Weibo, a Twitter-like platform.

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We continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile apps, with fresh data from App Annie about trends playing out across app categories benefiting from the pandemic.

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VCs share their bets on the future of work"},"content":{"rendered":"

And as loneliness mounts with shelter-in-place orders implemented in various forms across the world, investors are looking for products and services that foster true connection among a distributed workforce, as well as a distributed society.

But the future of work doesn’t just entail spinning up home offices. It also involves gig workers, freelancers, hiring tools, tools for workplace organizing and automation. The last couple of years have particularly brought tech organizing to the forefront. Whether it was the Google walkout in 2018 or gig workers’ ongoing actions against companies like Uber, Lyft and Instacart for better pay and protections, there are many opportunities to help workers better organize and achieve their goals.

Below, we’ve gathered insights from:

Saar Gur, general partner at Charles River Ventures

Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta

James Cham, partner at Bloomberg Beta

Karin Klein, partner at Bloomberg Beta

Ann Miura-Ko, co-founding partner at Floodgate

Quentin Clark, managing director at General Catalyst

Saar Gur, Charles River Venturesu00a0

What are you most excited about in the future of work?

Future of work is one of the most exciting opportunities in venture.u00a0u00a0

Pre-COVID, few tech companies were fully remote. While it seems obvious in retrospect, the building blocks for fully remote technology companies now exist (e.g. high-speed internet, SaaS and the cloud, reliable video streaming, real-time documents, etc.). And while SIP may be temporary, we feel the TAM of fully remote companies will grow significantly and produce a number of exciting investment opportunities.

I donu2019t think we have fully grokked what it means to run a company digitally. Today, most processes like interviewing, meetings and performance/activity tracking still live in the world of atoms versus bits. As an example, imagine every meeting is recorded, transcribed and searchable — how would that transform how we work?u00a0u00a0u00a0

There is an opportunity to re-imagine how we work. And we are excited about products that solve meaningful problems in the areas of productivity, brainstorming, communication tools, workflows and more. We also see a lot of potential in infrastructure required to facilitate remote and global teams.

We are also excited by companies that are enabling new types of work. Companies like Etsy (founded 2005), Shopify (2004), TaskTabbit (2008), Uber (2009), DoorDash (2013) and Patreon (2013) have helped create a new workforce of entrepreneurs. But many of these companies are over a decade old and we fully expect a new wave of companies that give more power to the individual.

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As tech companies like Twitter and Facebook gear up for longer-term remote work solutions, the future of work is becoming one of the more exciting opportunities in venture capital, Charles River Ventures general partner Saar Gur told TechCrunch. And as loneliness mounts with shelter-in-place orders implemented in various forms across the world, investors are looking […]

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Megan Rose Dickey is a senior reporter at TechCrunch focused on labor, transportation, and diversity and inclusion in tech.

She previously spent two years at Business Insider covering tech startups focused on the shared economy, IoT and music industry.

She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2011 with a degree in Broadcast and Digital Journalism.

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best investment every digital brand can make during the COVID-19 pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

ntt

ntttttttSteve TannttttttContributorntt

nnttt

nntt

nttSteve Tan is a Singapore-based serial entrepreneur and full-stack digital marketer with over 14 years of hands-on experience who is also the CEO and founder of Super Tan Brothers Pte. Ltd, which operates e-commerce, software, logistics, marketing, educational and investment companies around the globe.t

ntnt

Intuitively, stores that sell online should be making a killing during the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, everyone is stuck at home u2014 and understandably more willing to shop online instead of at a traditional retailer to avoid putting themselves and others at medical risk. But the truth is, most smaller online stores have seen better days.

The primary challenge is that smaller shops often donu2019t have the logistics networks that companies like Amazon do. Consequently, theyu2019re seeing substantially delayed delivery timelines, especially if they ship internationally. Customers obviously arenu2019t thrilled about that reality. And in many cases, theyu2019re requesting refunds at a staggering rate.

I saw this play out firsthand in April. At that point, my stores were down 20% or in some cases even 30% in revenue. Needless to say, my team was freaking out. But thereu2019s one thing we did that helped us increase our revenue over 200% since the pandemic, decrease refund requests and even strengthen our existing customer relationships.

We implemented a 24-hour live chat in all of our stores. Hereu2019s why it worked for us and why every digital brand should be doing it too.

Avoid the common u2018unreachabilityu2019 frustration

When I started my first online store in 2006, challenges that bogged my team down often meant that my teamu2019s first priority became resolving those challenges so that we could serve our customers faster. But admittedly, when these challenges came up, it became more difficult to balance communicating with our customers and resolving the issues that prevented us from fulfilling their orders quickly.

","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Customers donu2019t just forget about the companies that treated them well u2014 and post-crisis, theyu2019ll be more likely to return to the vendors who gave them a good experience.

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ntt

ntttttttJoey LeinttttttContributorntt

nntttt

ntttntttttnttttntt

nttt

nntt

nttJoey Lei is director of service management at Synoptek, a global systems integrator and managed services provider. Prior to joining Synoptek, he was a lead product manager for Dell EMCu2019s Data Protection Division and was a founding product manager for Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager, Dell EMCu2019s newest generation data protection and data management solution.t

ntnt

Due to COVID-19, business continuity has been put to the test for many companies in the manufacturing, agriculture, transport, hospitality, energy and retail sectors. Cost reduction is the primary focus of companies in these sectors due to massive losses in revenue caused by this pandemic. The other side of the crisis is, however, significantly different.

Companies in industries such as medical, government and financial services, as well as cloud-native tech startups that are providing essential services, have experienced a considerable increase in their operational demands — leading to rising operational costs. Irrespective of the industry your company belongs to, and whether your company is experiencing reduced or increased operations, cost optimization is a reality for all companies to ensure a sustained existence.

One of the most reliable measures for cost optimization at this stage is to leverage elastic services designed to grow or shrink according to demand, such as cloud and managed services. A modern product with a cloud-native architecture can auto-scale cloud consumption to mitigate lost operational demand. What may not have been obvious to startup leaders is a strategy often employed by incumbent, mature enterprises — achieving cost optimization by leveraging managed services providers (MSPs). MSPs enable organizations to repurpose full-time staff members from impacted operations to more strategic product lines or initiatives.

Why companies need cost optimization in the long run

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The landscape shifts quickly, but managed services providers enable organizations to repurpose full-time staff members from impacted operations to more strategic product lines or initiatives.

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views on the future of retail and the shopping experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

The global spread of COVID-19 and resulting orders to shelter in place have hit retailers hard.

n

As the pandemic drags on, temporary halts are becoming permanent closures, whether itu2019s the coffee shop next door, a historic bar or a well-known lifestyle brand.

n

But while the present is largely bleak, preparing for the future has retailers adopting technologies faster than ever. Their resilience and innovation means retail will look and fee different when the world reopens.

n

We gathered four views on the future of retail from the TechCrunch team:

n

n

Natasha Mascarenhas says retailers will need to find new ways to sell aspirational products u2014 and what was once cringe-worthy might now be considered innovative.

n

Devin Coldewey sees businesses adopting a slew of creative digital services to prepare for the future and empower them without Amazonu2019s platform.

n

Greg Kumparak thinks the delivery and curbside pickup trends will move from pandemic-essentials to everyday occurrences. He thinks that retailers will need to find new ways to appeal to consumers in a u201cshopping-by-proxyu201d world.

n

Lucas Matney views a revitalized interest in technology around the checkout process, as retailers look for ways to make the purchasing experience more seamless (and less high-touch).

n

n

Alexa, how do I look?

n

Natasha Mascarenhas

n

","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the present is largely bleak, preparing for the future has retailers adopting technologies faster than ever. Their resilience and innovation means retail will look and fee different when the world reopens.

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Natasha Mascarenhas is a reporter at TechCrunch covering early stage startups and venture capital trends. She also tracks the different networks that play into founder success, from loneliness to immigration. Before TechCrunch, Natasha reported on the same beat for Crunchbase News. She also has bylines in the Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, BostInno, and is proudly from New Jersey.

nn

Reach Natasha via e-mail at natasha.m@techcrunch.com or through DM on Twitter @nmasc_.

","cbAvatar":"https://crunchbase-production-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/x9fberhwpqwxusvvlxfj","twitter":"nmasc_","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users/133574362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users"}]}},{"id":12084691,"name":"Devin Coldewey","url":"https://coldewey.cc","description":"","link":"https://techcrunch.com/author/devin-coldewey/","slug":"devin-coldewey","avatar_urls":{"24":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/69fae9a8a3933fa91e81c086b8eee14a?s=24&d=identicon&r=g","48":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/69fae9a8a3933fa91e81c086b8eee14a?s=48&d=identicon&r=g","96":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/69fae9a8a3933fa91e81c086b8eee14a?s=96&d=identicon&r=g"},"links":{"homepage":"http://techcrunch.com/author/tcdevin","twitter":"http://twitter.com/techcrunch","linkedin":"http://www.linkedin.com/company/techcrunch","crunchbase":"https://www.crunchbase.com/person/devin-coldewey"},"position":"Writer & Photographer","cbDescription":"

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He first wrote for TechCrunch in 2007. He has also written for MSNBC.com, NBC News, DPReview, The Economist/GE's Look Ahead, and others.

nn

His personal website is coldewey.cc.

","cbAvatar":"https://crunchbase-production-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1458774381/r4iwkrm6qsw3n2ximghe.jpg","twitter":"techcrunch","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users/12084691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users"}]}},{"id":5188242,"name":"Greg Kumparak","url":"","description":"","link":"https://techcrunch.com/author/greg-kumparak/","slug":"greg-kumparak","avatar_urls":{"24":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9b107c9f9a43a21d8c93fcdefcc97dcd?s=24&d=identicon&r=g","48":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9b107c9f9a43a21d8c93fcdefcc97dcd?s=48&d=identicon&r=g","96":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9b107c9f9a43a21d8c93fcdefcc97dcd?s=96&d=identicon&r=g"},"links":{"homepage":"http://www.kumparak.com","twitter":"https://twitter.com/grg","crunchbase":"https://www.crunchbase.com/person/greg-kumparak"},"position":"Editor","cbDescription":"

Greg Kumparak is an editor at TechCrunch.

nn

Greg started at TechCrunch in May of 2008. He led TechCrunch's sister site MobileCrunch as editor until AOL acquired the company in 2010, at which point the editors of TechCrunch's four main sites (TechCrunch, CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, TechCrunch UK) merged the sites under one domain.

nn

Best known for his gadget coverage, Kumparak has broken hundreds of stories within the space u2014 unearthing details on everything from abandoned Samsung smartphone prototypes to new Apple devices. He's also one of the Internet's most prolific "live bloggers", having reported from the scene at dozens of international events for live audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

nn

He was one of the earliest writers to highlight and report on a number of companies that have since become "unicorns" (reaching a valuation of $1B or more), including Zenefits and Twilio.

nn

Kumparak is a frequent guest on TechCrunch's Gadget, Apple, and Android podcasts, and often appears on stage as an interviewer or judge at TechCrunch's meetups and Disrupt conferences.

nn

In 2012, Greg was featured on the BBC, Wired, Mashable, Engadget and many other outlets for a side project he called the "tARdis", or the Augmented Reality TARDIS. By combining augmented reality with a handmade physical model, Greg was able to replicate the otherwise physically impossible "bigger on the inside" visual effect that commonly appears on television's Doctor Who series.

","cbAvatar":"https://crunchbase-production-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1397184689/d45c9b9b954bcc0a697dae821253a36b.png","twitter":"grg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users/5188242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users"}]}},{"id":89192944,"name":"Lucas Matney","url":"","description":"","link":"https://techcrunch.com/author/lucas-matney/","slug":"lucas-matney","avatar_urls":{"24":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ac0471089769c31246f411dc339104f8?s=24&d=identicon&r=g","48":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ac0471089769c31246f411dc339104f8?s=48&d=identicon&r=g","96":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ac0471089769c31246f411dc339104f8?s=96&d=identicon&r=g"},"links":{"twitter":"https://twitter.com/lucasmtny","linkedin":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmatney/","crunchbase":"https://www.crunchbase.com/person/lucas-matney"},"position":"Writer","cbDescription":"

Lucas Matney is a reporter at TechCrunch and has been covering emerging technologies and startups since 2015. He lives in San Francisco and can be reached via email at lucas@techcrunch.com

","cbAvatar":"https://crunchbase-production-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/h5eslbyb5f1hwstm1wrt","twitter":"lucasmtny","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users/89192944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https://techcrunch.com/wp-json/tc/v1/users"}]}}],"author":[{"id":133574362,"name":"Natasha Mascarenhas","url":"","description":"","link":"https://techcrunch.com/author/natasha-mascarenhas/","slug":"natasha-mascarenhas","avatar_urls":{"24":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2f10add080685bb138750d850afec5b4?s=24&d=identicon&r=g","48":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2f10add080685bb138750d850afec5b4?s=48&d=identicon&r=g","96":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2f10add080685bb138750d850afec5b4?s=96&d=identicon&r=g"},"links":{"twitter":"https://twitter.com/nmasc_","crunchbase":"https://www.crunchbase.com/person/natasha-mascarenhas-734f"},"position":null,"cbDescription":"

Natasha Mascarenhas is a reporter at TechCrunch covering early stage startups and venture capital trends. She also tracks the different networks that play into founder success, from loneliness to immigration. Before TechCrunch, Natasha reported on the same beat for Crunchbase News. She also has bylines in the Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, BostInno, and is proudly from New Jersey.

nn

Reach Natasha via e-mail at natasha.m@techcrunch.com or through DM on Twitter @nmasc_.

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Link","children":[]}]},"playlistData":{"homepage":[],"videohub":[]},"entities":{"posts":[{"id":1996385,"date":"2020-05-31T10:32:41","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T17:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https://techcrunch.com/?p=1996385"},"modified":"2020-05-31T10:34:58","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T17:34:58","slug":"the-station-amazon-eyes-zoox-aurora-goes-back-to-school-and-cabana-hits-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/31/the-station-amazon-eyes-zoox-aurora-goes-back-to-school-and-cabana-hits-the-road/","title":{"rendered":"The Station: Amazon eyes Zoox, Aurora goes back to school and Cabana hits the road"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.u00a0Sign up here u2014 just click The Station u2014 to receive it every Saturday in your inbox.

n

Hi 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. I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch.

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The mobility world got busy this week. Really. busy. This is gonna be a long one, buckle up.

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Take a look at the most recent survey we conducted with a bunch of venture capitalists about mobility and what areas interest them most. We talked to Ernestine Fu with Alsop Louie Partners, Stonly Baptiste and Shaun Abrahamson with Urban Us, Shahin Farshchi with Lux Capital, Kate Schox with Trucks VC and Jeff Peters of Autotech Ventures.

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Reach out and email me 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 u2014 @kirstenkorosec.

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Alright, time to dig in. Vamos.

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Micromobbin’

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Uber tossed more than 20,000 JUMP bikes into a recycling yard following its deal to offload the JUMP brand to Lime. A photo below, courtesy of Cris Moffitt, shows a sliver of the thousands of bikes at the yard in North Carolina.

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“The extent of waste is unfathomable,” the Bike Share Museum said in a tweet.

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Since then, Tier Mobility CEO and co-founder Lawrence Leuschner said he wants to take some of those bikes, “repair them, and give them a second life – as we do for all of our vehicles,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

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Image Credits: Cris Moffitt

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Keaks (Kirsten Korosec) has been working on a big(ish) story about JUMP for the last week. Stay tuned and/or holler at her if you have any tips.

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Meanwhile, we noticed Superpedestrian, the startup that makes self-diagnosing electric scooters, has teamed up with Zagster. Superpedestrian quietly launched LINK, its shared electric scooter service in partnership with Zagster in Fort Pierce, Florida in late December.

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As of at least February 2020, Zagster had an agreement with Superpedestrian’s LINK to manage the fleet of shared scooters in Kansas, according to city commission documents. In March, the city council in Manhattan, Kansas authorized the city to negotiate a permitting contract with Zagster to run a six-month electric scooter pilot in partnership with Superpedestrian’s LINK.

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Over in Europe, long-distance ridesharing startup BlaBlaCar said it’s expanding to scooter sharing. The company doesn’t plan to operate its own fleet of scooters. Instead, BlaBlaCar is partnering with Voi, a European e-scooter service that has raised $136 million over multiple rounds. Voi scooters will feature three different brands — Voi, BlaBlaCar and BlaBla Ride.

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u2014 Megan Rose Dickey

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Deal of the week

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It’s not a deal yet u2014 well, as far as we know, but I’d be remiss not to highlight it here. I’m talking, of course, about the WSJ report that Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire self-driving vehicle startup Zoox.

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Zoox is unlike any other autonomous vehicle startup I’ve encountered in the past five or so years. The company has taken on several capitally intensive and ambitious roles u2014 electric vehicle designer and manufacturer, full stack autonomous vehicle developer and robotaxi operator. Zoox co-founder Jesse Levinson will disagree with me here u2014 we’ve had this discussion before u2014 but the company is essentially doing this alone. Yes, it has relationships and support from suppliers; it has investors. But it doesn’t have a meaningful OEM partner and backer like its competitors Argo AI and Cruise . And it has no where near the piggy bank that Waymo holds.

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It’s a bold and risky strategy. It’s also expensive.

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It’s a poorly kept secret that Zoox has had to do some belt tightening over the past 12 months. The company cut costs last year and tried to renegotiate some supplier contracts, sources told me at the time. In October, it raised $200 million in new convertible note funding, which was supposed to be folded into a Series C round and close by the end of 2019 or early 2020. As far as we know, that never happened. Sources have told me Zoox was in talks with OEMs about sealing a deal with a manufacturing partner that might also include financial backing. Daimler and FCA were name dropped in different conversations at the time, but I was never able to verify that the deals were close.

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Then COVID-19 hit. Zoox tightened its belt further and cut nearly all of its contract drivers.

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There’s no doubt that Zoox needs money to survive. But an Amazon-Zoox deal, if it happens, is bittersweet.

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Zoox is the plucky startup u2014 the stand-at-the-cliff’s edge pioneer that you want to succeed. Going it alone carries existential risk, but it has also given it the freedom to stick to its vision.

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If acquired, Zoox will get sucked up into the Amazon ether and one wonders what it will become.

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Other deals that got our attention:

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Bolt, the Estonia-based company that provides on-demand ridesharing, scooters and other transportation services across some 150 cities in Europe and Africa, raised u20ac100 million ($109 million) in a convertible note. Bolt also confirmed that is now valued at u20ac1.7 billion (or nearly $1.9 billion at today’s rates).u00a0The money is coming from a single investor, Naya Capital Management, which was also a major backer of the company in its last round, a $67 million Series C announced in July 2019.

n

Ola Electric, the EV business that spun out of the ride-hailing giant Ola in 2019, acquiredu00a0 electric scooter startup Etergo. The Dutch startup built a scooter that uses a swappable, high energy battery that delivers a range of up to 240 km (149 miles). Ola Electric is aiming tou00a0produce and launch its own line of two wheelers as soon as this year.

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Tesla’s board certified a financial milestone that unlocks the first tranche u2014 worth more than $700 million u2014 of an unprecedented multi-billion-dollar pay package for CEO Elon Musk, according a document filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The milestone allows Musk to purchase the first grouping or tranche of nearly 1.69 million shares at a steep discount. As far as we know (based on SEC filings) Musk has not exercised those options yet.

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AV spotlight: Aurora

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If you haven’t heard, there’s a battle over talent in the autonomous vehicle industry. One AV founder once described it to me as a “knife fight.”

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It’s not just about hiring talent though. It’s about building the right culture to get the job done. In this case, it’s the not-so-small goal to develop and deploy autonomous vehicle technology at commercial scale.

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Self-driving vehicle startup Aurora recently hit the 500-employee mark, an internal milestone capped by several new key hires, including Sagar Behere, as director of systems and safety engineering and Tara Green, who is leading human resources, recruiting and IT.

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It wasn’t the 500-employee figure that I found interesting. It’s a new in-house program the company is calling Aurora Academy and Raul Rojas, a former professor of computer science and mathematics at the Free University of Berlin who was hired to lead it. The idea is to create a program where employees can build specific technical skills in the self-driving technology domain using its own experts. Rojasu00a0comes with deep background in robotics and autonomous vehicle technology. He met two of Aurora’s co-founders Chris Urmson and Drew Bagnell while participating in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Rojas also co-founded in 2011 Autonomous GmbH, an autonomy startup acquired by TomTom in 2017.

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Aurora has hired computer scientists, engineers, physicists, and mathematicians to help in the complex task of integrating different hardware and software modules into an AV system. And yet, Rojas noted there is still a need “to build bridges across the various disciplines so that we can propagate expertise across all levels of the company.” He said that’s where Aurora Academy comes in.

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The program kicked off in mid-March with a six-week course entitled u201cEssential Skills for Poses, Transformations and Lie Groups.u201d (Light stuff, right?) These are the mathematical tools that give roboticists a uniform and powerful framework for localization and motion planning.

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Other classes will cover software engineering, sensor development, mathematical foundations, visualization, planning, control and machine learning. The academy will also be open to non-technical employees who want to learn more diverse skills, including how to program in Python.

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u201cThe self-driving world is still a small community, so thereu2019s a limited pool of candidates to begin with, and not many universities offer specialized programs on autonomous driving, so itu2019s unlikely you will find someone right out of school with all the skills needed,” Rojas said.

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For instance, Aurora acquired last year Blackmore, one of the few companies developing Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) lidar, which emits a low-power and continuous wave.

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u201cItu2019s unlikely someone could have studied it in school, so in June weu2019re starting a course to teach the physics of Doppler lidar, how to process the data at the fastest possible rate, and how to profit from the measurements in perception tasks,u201d Rojas noted.

n

Is your AV company doing something interesting u2014 you know, beyond bringing autonomous vehicles into the mainstream? Hit me up and tell me about it.

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Dispatches from Africa

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On demand mobility powered by electric and solar is coming to Africa.

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Vaya Africa, a ride-hail mobility venture founded by Zimbabwean mogul Strive Masiyiwa, launched an electric taxi service and charging network in Zimbabwe this week with plans to expand across the continent.

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The South Africa-headquartered company is using Nissan Leaf EVs and has developed its own solar-powered charging stations. Vaya is finalizing partnerships to take its electric taxi services on the road to countries that could include Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, Vaya Mobility CEO Dorothy Zimuto told TechCrunch.

n

The initiative comes as Africa’s on-demand mobility market has been in full swing for several years, with startups, investors and the larger ride-hail players aiming to bring movement of people and goods to digital platforms.

n

n

Uber and Bolt have been operating in Africa’s major economies since 2015, where there are also a number of local app-based taxi startups. Over the last year, there’s been some movement on the continent toward developing EVs for ride-hail and delivery use, primarily around motorcycles.

n

Beyond environmental benefits, Vaya highlights economic gains for passengers and drivers of shifting to electric in Africa’s taxi markets, where fuel costs compared to personal income is generally high for drivers.

n

Using solar panels to power the charging station network also helps Vaya’s new EV program overcome some of challenges in Africa’s electricity grid.

n

Vaya is exploring EV options for other on-demand transit applications — from min-buses to Tuk Tuk taxis.

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u2014 Jake Bright

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Layoffs, business disruptions and people

n

Let’s kick this section off this week by highlighting a new company hoping to disrupt van life.

n

Cabana is a new startup launched by a former Lime executive thatu2019s bringing tricked-out vans with all the amenities of a Holiday Inn hotel room to cities on the West Coast, starting in Seattle. As TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Shieber noted, companies like Tentrr,u00a0u00a0HipCamp and even Airbnb have gotten in on the vanlife movement, and Cabanau2019s founder definitely thinks he can ride the wave.

n

Cabana has already raised $3.5 million from investors, led byu00a0Craft Ventures u2014 the investment firm founded by David Sacks. Other investors include Goldcrest Capital, Travis VanderZanden (the chief executive and founder of Bird), and Sunny Madra, vice president of Ford X at Ford Motor Company.

n

n

Hiring news

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Rivian appears to be planning to offer its own insurance to customers based on a new job posting for an insurance agency data manager first spotted by RivianForums, which passed along the tip.

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The job is to lead Rivian’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance agency, a position that entails recruiting, training, coaching and managing employed licensed sales agents and an insurance customer care team, according to the posting on Rivian’s website. The employee will also sell insurance products and provide feedback to partners on opportunities, the posting said. It’s an unusual move, but not unprecedented. Last August, Tesla launched an insurance product.

n

Cruise has a new board member who comes with deep experience in tech and hardware. Regina Dugan has a lengthy resume that includes former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the current CEO of Wellcome Leap, a non-profit founded by Wellcome Trust to accelerate innovations that benefit global health. In between DARPA and Wellcome Leap, Dugan was head of Google’s Advanced Technology And Products (ATAP) Group and led Building 8, Facebook’s hardware skunkworks.

n

“In health care and in transportation, I believe in the power of science and technology to change our world. With this power comes the responsibility to deliver life-saving advances at scale — Cruise has the tech, the team, and the tenacity to get it done. I’m stoked to join,” Dugan said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.

n

Sweden-headquarteredu00a0Voi Technology recruited Richard Corbett to head up its U.K., Ireland and Benelux operations. Corbett joins from rival Bird, where he spent two years as the U.S. companyu2019s U.K. and Ireland chief, as well as helping to launch e-scooter rentals in Netherlands.

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Layoffs and other departures

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AirMap, an airspace services platform for unmanned aircraft, cut its staff. Layoffs.fyi reported that around 30% of the team was let go.

n

Aston Martin announcedu00a0 CEO Andy Palmer was leaving his post. His replacement is Tobias Moers, the current head of Mercedes-Benz’s AMG division, Car and Driver reported.

n

Welp … Audi fired Daniel Abt from its Formula E racing team after learning he had a professional sim driver race for him during a virtual competition called the u201cRace at Home Challengeu201d held last weekend. It appeared Abt was going to merely be suspended. Abt said in a video message published Tuesday on YouTube that Audi had dropped him from the team.

n

German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs, or around 10% of its work force, by 2025 as a result of a slump in demand, according to a company memo that Automotive News reported. ZF said in an email to employees that half of the 12,000-15,000 job cuts would be in Germany.

n

Uber is cutting 600 jobs in India, or 25% of its workforce in the country.u00a0The job cuts, which affect teams across customer and driver support, business development, legal, policy, marketing, and finance, are part of the company’s global restructuring that eliminated 6,700 jobs this month.

n

Notable reads and other tidbits

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Here are a few other items that caught my eye …

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Deloitte Insights tackled a topic that many of us might be mulling as well. They looked at what mobility might look like after COVID-19. The report specifically explores four possible futures over the next three to five years. You can check out the full report here, which provides a high-level description of society, economy and geopolitics and then narrows in on transportation.

n

In one rosier scenario, dubbed “a passing storm,” the COVID-19 pandemic shakes society but, after a slow start, is met with an increasingly effective health system and political response, according to Deloitte. The pandemic causes long-term economic impact: e-commerce and last-mile delivery networks proliferate and are increasingly supported by autonomous vehicles and digitization of the logistics value chain. Vehicle sanitation becomes a priority, which leads to new self-cleaning materials, certification programs and form factors such as passenger partitions. The in-transit experience benefits from advances in digital entertainment and productivity prompted by the pandemic, including, potentially, AR and VR applications.

n

AV stuff …

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I recommend reserving an hour or two to play around with this Global Autonomous Vehicles Index created by the autonomous vehicles group at law firm Dentons. It’s free and lets users compare the nuances of AV testing and deployment regulations across 18 countries and all 50 U.S. states. For instance, regulations in Canada don’t require a human driver in a vehicle when testing AVs. In China, rules require each organization to buy the compulsory liability insurance for traffic accidents for each vehicle. Yet in Germany, there are no special requirements for AVs which go beyond the motor vehicle liability insurance.

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Baidu completed Apollo Park, an autonomous driving and vehicle-infrastructure testing base that houses more than 200 autonomous vehicles and is located in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. The facility is used for vehicle storage, cloud control on remotely sensed big data, operational command, maintenance and calibration, as well as research and development.

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Baidu has completed Apollo Park, an autonomous vehicle testing and development center. Photo: Baidu

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Waymo will bring its autonomous vehicles back to public roads in the Bay Area starting June 8, The Verge reported. The plan, according to an email viewed by The Verge, is to use the self-driving vehicles to deliver packages for two Bay Area non-profits: illustrator Wendy McNaughton’s #DrawTogether, which provides art kits to Bay Area kids; and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

n

Autonomous robotics startup Nuro will test prescription delivery in Houston through a partnership with CVS Pharmacy. The pilot, which will use a fleet of the startup’s autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles and transition to using its custom-built R2 delivery bots, is slated to begin in June.

n

It’s electric …

n

Mercedes-Benz is now selling its EQV 300 all-electric premium van in Europe, the second EV to come out of the automakeru2019s initiative to produce a line of battery-powered models under its new EQ brand.

n

Rivian has resumed work at its factory in Normal, Ill. following a temporary shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Investor and customer Amazon provided an update this week stating that Rivian is still on track to supply it with electric delivery vans.u00a0Vans will begin delivering to customers in 2021, as previously planned. About 10,000 electric vehicles will be on the road as early as 2022 and all 100,000 vehicles will be on the road by 2030.

n

Audi created a new business unit called Artemis to bring electric vehicles equipped with highly automated driving systems and other tech to market faster.

n

Tesla slashed prices across its electric vehicle portfolio as the automaker aims to boost sales in an economy beaten down by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Model S and Model X saw base prices cut by $5,000, while the Model 3 standard range plus saw a $2,000 drop.

n

Ride-hailing and miscellaneous bits …

n

Uber is launching a book-by-the-hour feature in the U.S., starting Monday. The feature lets users book rides for $50 an hour and make multiple stops. The hourly booking feature, which is already available in a handful of international cities in Australia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, will initially launch in a dozen U.S. cities.

n

Core Investments, a Boston-based real estate development company,u00a0 has proposed a last-mile delivery station for Amazon, Boston Business Journal reported.

n

Review: Lotus Evora GT

n

I delayed my first road trippin’ review to make room for Matt Burns’ take on his recent weekend with the $100,000 2020 Lotus Evora GT.

n

As Burns’ explains:

n

The Lotus Evora GT is supersized go-kart with nary an advanced technical feature. And I love it. While most cars are coming equipped with supercomputers, the lack of technical wizardry makes the 2020 Evora GT interesting, and that’s why it’s on TechCrunch.

n

Join Burns on his ride.

n

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Micromobbin’

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