Trucks | Future of Transportation for 2026.05.18
FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital

Notable

Maybe the best version of the Fisker brand is in the hands of its owners (link). 'Within months of the bankruptcy filing, thousands of Ocean owners formed the Fisker Owners Association (FOA) — a nonprofit that quickly grew to 4,000 members and began operating as something between a car club, a tech startup, and an independent automaker.'

Chinese EVs are coming to Canada, and some dealers can’t wait to sell them (link). The same follows for the US: it sounds a bit odd but the people most interested in Chinese cars coming to the US (outside of the Chinese execs) are Texas car dealers in cowboy hats.

Offline on purpose: 'Removing the Modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 Hybrid' (link). 'Rather than relying on companies’ promises or meaningless opt-outs, we’re going to stop the data at the source by physically removing the modem as well as the built-in GPS.'

Will short flights last? (link). Via CL. 'A lot of the fuel is used in the takeoff and landing processes, Grant says. And every landing, he notes, adds wear and tear on the planes' equipment. To hit the sweet spot of revenue versus cost, Grant says, airlines typically try to be in that two-hour block time – a category that includes flights over 500 miles, such as Washington, D.C., to Atlanta.'

Honda's first operating loss in 70 years comes on the back of a shift in EV strategy (link). 'As part of its efforts to reorganize its EV business, the automaker said it will cancel market launches and development of some EV models initially planned for production in North America.' The company's release on its new plan (link). Honda is at its best when it focuses on making amazing powertrains; there is probably an amazing Honda EV out there somewhere but it appears that won't be for another decade.

Researchers develop responsibility sourcing model for AV failures (link). The new framework can figure out AV failures caused by system problems vs those from traffic conflicts.

Toyota was quiet on EVs, but now has 4 ready for launch (link).

Video: fast forward rehab of a Land Cruiser (link). Via Henry M. Video: Waymo cars circling a Georgia neighborhood leave homeowners confused (link).

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Indian EV asset management and leasing company Astranova raises $6.4M (link). Led by IvyCap Ventures with participation from Trucks.

Collaborative autonomy startup Havoc AI raises $100M (link). Led by CCM Capital Markets.

Indian ridehailing startup Rapido raises $240M (link). Led by Prosus.

Volkswagen becomes Rivian’s top shareholder, displacing Amazon (link). 'VW Group’s increasing equity stake in Rivian has grown from 8.6% to 15.9% in less than two years.'

Rivian's side project Mind Robotics raises $400M (link). Led by Kleiner Perkins.

Trump and Boeing announce China will purchase 200 planes (link).

Unical Aviation sold to Airbus unit Satair (link).

Porsche shuts down its ebike business (Porsche eBike Performance GmbH), silicon anode battery cell research group (Cellforce Group GmbH) and data comms business (Cetitec GmbH) (link).

Board & Executive Changes:

GM: Sean Harris named Director of AI/ML (link).

CSX: Steve Watkins named Chief Digital & Technology Officer, succeeds Stephen Fortune (link).

Redwood Materials: Deepak Ahuja named CFO (link).

Curated Jobs:

View over new 1149 active job listings from companies like Lime (link), Polestar (link) and Relativity Space (link) on MobilityJobs. Post your own jobs for free.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Data Mining at Motional in Las Vegas, NV USA and remote (link).

Propulsion Architect at JetZero in Long Beach, CA USA (link).

New Stuff:

Tesla's updated Smart Summon increases speed to 8mph (link).

AV Watch is a new community based incident reporting platform for automated vehicles (link).

Vision-Language-Action can beat Vision-to-Action with the right architecture (link). Researchers demonstrated that a unified Vision-Language-Action architecture can outperform pure vision-to-action models on driving planning tasks by solving the streaming and timing integration bottleneck.

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis over risk of entering flooded roads (link).

Patents & Patent Applications:

GM's patent application shows collaborative birds eye view from multiple vehicles (link).

Statistics / Projections:

The US national average for a gallon of gasoline was $4.534 at the end of last week (link). Via AAA. 'The national average per kilowatt hour of electricity at a public EV charging station remained the same this past week at 41 cents.'

Global EV demand rises for second month (link). Via Reuters / Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. 'Registrations of new battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles rose 6% from a year earlier to 1.6 million in April.'

Repairable claims for mild hybrid electric vehicles (MHEVs) reached an all-time high in Q1—jumping to 5.69% in the U.S. and 5.28% in Canada (link). Via Mitchell. 'This represents a year-over-year increase of 25% and 33%, respectively.'

Thank you:

Thank you to Danny Ellis (link), Laura Engelland (link), Alex Haag (link), Peter McArthur (link), Tom McQuillen (link) and Philipp Willigmann (link) for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

Astranova (link), JetZero (link), Havoc AI (link), Motional (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win (Julius Erving),

Reilly Brennan