Reilly Brennan’s Future of Transportation newsletter included links to the pitch decks that Joby and Lucid used in their recent SPACs. In an alternate universe, these would have been the pitch decks presented to growth- and late-stage venture capitalists, and wouldn’t have been available to the public. Because both Joby and Lucid went public via reverse mergers with SPACs, their pitch decks are also public.

The Joby deck has forty beautiful slides and a ton of information. I found it a little hard to parse, though, perhaps because I’m not used to navigating decks of companies at this stage.

I did not a few items:

• Joby plans to start generating revenue in 2024, and to reach “scale” in 2026.
• The pro forma financials call for revenue growth from $0 in 2023 to $2BB+ (!!) in 2026.
• At scale, they anticipate the vehicle to cost $1.3MM.
• The projected returns for investors seem maybe not that great? Again, I found this hard to parse, but I think they hypothesize that if they hit their 2026 goals, and if the stock market applies a 25–30x P/E multiple (!!), then investors today would see a 20% (annual?) return. Lots of caveats.
• They forsee a robust market for intra-city transport.

• They will focus on “meaningfully” penetrating each city before moving on to the next, and thus only anticipate penetrating 20 cities in the next ten years.
• They project an average trip length of 24 miles, with an average “passenger load” of 2.3, and a price point of $3 per “seat mile.” Each vehicle will have 4 passenger seats, so the price point per “vehicle mile” is presumably $12. For a hypothetical 24 mile trip, the price would then be $288 total, but potentially as low as $72 per passenger, split four ways. They present this as “cheaper than Uber black for an individual.”

I am spending most of today “in the field,” at The Villages, San Jose, where Voyage is preparing to launch a driverless robotaxi service for senior citizens.

This is my first trip to The Villages, and my first time riding in a Voyage vehicle. I love it!

I’ve been fine-tuning the brake control parameters for our 3rd-generation vehicles, largely from home (everyone works from home right now), using data collected in the field by our operations team. Today was an opportunity to ride along in the vehicle itself and see how well the brakes perform.

Riding in the vehicle is such a different and more visceral experience than sitting at a desk, working with data files on a computer. I could really feel what was comfortable and what wasn’t, in a way that normally gets relayed second-hand from our operations team.

And, since this was my first trip to The Villages, I got a much better understanding of the streets and the environment where we operate. Reviewing top-down maps or even vehicle sensor feeds just doesn’t provide the same level of context and being in the operational design domain (ODD).

This is a big part of what makes working on self-driving cars so much fun!

I was excited to read that PIX has just raised a “pre-Series A” round of funding.

PIX is an under-the-radar electric, autonomous vehicle manufacturer in the “small” city of Guiyang, China. I put “small” in quotes because Guiyang, while small relative to other Chinese metropolises, has a population of 4,000,000 people, which would make it the second-largest city in the United States!

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Guiyang and work with PIX on a self-driving car bootcamp that they jointly hosted with Udacity. Students from all over China flew in and spent a week building and programming a self-driving car. It was pretty awesome!

PIX has pioneered a process for large-scale 3D metal printing that allows them to build a wide variety of vehicle form factors on top of their foundational electric and autonomous “skateboard” platform.

It’s fun and exciting to watch little startups, especially in out-of-the-way places, grow and compete with industry leaders. I hope to see more great things from the team in Guiyang!

My latest Forbes.com article features a discussion with Yariv Bash, CEO of the Israeli drone delivery company Flytrex, about aerial technology, drone regulation, business models, and a “future of instant gratification.”

“Flytrex’s model is to utilize existing in-store fulfillment processes and then complete delivery with a drone. Store associates can prepare a drone delivery order for pick-up, just like any other type of pick-up order. Then a Flytrex team member will take the order from the store to a drone outside the store. 
The drone will fly the order to the customer’s house, hover, and lower the package to the customer on a wire.”

Motional, the company formerly known as nuTonomy, announced today that it has begun driverless testing in Las Vegas.

Several years ago, the company was the first to offer self-driving rideshares, with a safety operator, to the general public, in partnership with Lyft. Lots people have used Lyft to fetch a self-driving robotaxi up and down the Las Vegas Strip. In most cases, however, the human safety operator took over driving responsibility in the most complex environments, such as hotel drop-off lanes.

Motional’s move to full driverless testing has been a step removed from the Lyft pilot, although both take place in Las Vegas. The driverless testing, though, occurs in the quieter, residential areas of the city, and does not yet involve passengers.

The driverless tests involve a safety “steward” onboard, in the passenger seat, who can stop the vehicle in an emergency. In this regard, Motional’s testing represents a kind of “intermediate” step between safety operators and a completely empty vehicle.

Another interesting aspect of the Motional test is their partnership with TUV SUD, a renowned European safety certification company. The details are vague, but TUV has conducted an audit of Motional’s safety practices and “supports” the current testing protocol.

As part of the announcement, Motional also highlighted plans to launch a public driverless service with Lyft in 2023.

“In 2023, Motional and Lyft will launch a scalable, fully-driverless, multimarket service — the largest agreement of its kind for a major ridesharing network, and a quantum leap forward for an already successful partnership.”

Cruise, which is emerging San Francisco’s hometown self-driving car company, just announced plans “to build one of the largest electric vehicle charging stations in North America” in a formerly industrial, now gentrifying area of the city known as Dogpatch.

This makes a lot of sense, given Cruise’s commitment to a 100% electric fleet, and its commitment to developing, testing, and launching its service in San Francisco.

There has long been some question as to whether robotaxis will journey far away from the city limits for charging and parking during off-hours. Initially, that may not make sense, since it would entail expanding the operational area of the vehicles. Placing the charging station in San Francisco is expensive from a real estate perspective, but potentially makes the technical challenge simpler, since Cruise already plans to offer service in the city.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more detail (gated, though).