Trucks | Future of Transportation for 2026.06.01
FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital

Notable

BYD announces that it will take full responsibility for any accidents occurring when its City Navigation ADAS is in use (link). 'It covers all losses without an upper limit, including vehicle repair, third party property damage and personal injury.' The strength of your system is measured by your willingness to take responsibility for it.

Trump administration wants to raise North American auto content to 82%, with 1/2 from US (link). 'The shift, if accepted, would be a major break from the current USMCA, which requires 75% regional content to qualify for preferential tariff treatment.'

Auto prices are so high, around 1M new car buyers in the US have left the market entirely (link). 'Buyers are left with few options. They could turn to used cars, but those are similarly climbing in price. Many choose to keep their old cars running longer. The average car on U.S. roads is now about 13 years old, a historic high, according to S&P Global.'

Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union (link). From banker friend and FoT reader: 'This will likely hurt Lyft more because they're more concentrated in North American rideshare; Uber is more diversified across rideshare, delivery, logistics, etc.'

Waymo opens its Zeekr-built Ojai vehicle to paying riders in the US (link). Also in this release is the news that Waymo plans on ramping production to 'toward a capacity of tens of thousands of units per year.'

Chinese AV startup Pony sets 2026 fleet AV goal at 3500 units, which would likely be the world's largest (link).

'The commercial drone business is brutally hard. 15 years after it was founded, drone delivery company Matternet is still doing [under $500k] a year in revenue' (link).

Ferrari released its new four-door Luce EV (link). The feedback on this is mostly negative, although 100% of the people making these comments (myself included) aren't the target buyer. Ferrari deserves to have some weird cars, but usually when it does so it is pushing new ground visually; Luce however feels like a nice Nissan lozenge. Oddly the car doesn't have CarPlay Ultra despite the Ive roots. I liked designer Alan Clarke's comments here (link), former Ferrari CEO Luca di Montezemolo's (link) and Tom Goodwin's tart return serve (link): 'Sometimes I think we've rebranded stupidity as bravery.' Overall, the Ferrari brand is so strong that even the failures seem to demand a global response.

Video: Nuro shows its Lucid vehicle testing in Mountain View, CA (link). Audio: Bingo co-founder Alex Nesic talks about the $12k vehicle for Africa's Uber network (link). Video: Charles Ray's big toy firetruck is now showing at Deitch in Los Angeles (link).

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Jam-resistant radio maker Radionor seeks $3B sale (link).

Ridehailing and charging startup Revel merges with Voltera (link).

German drone startup Stark reportedly raising $300M at $2.5B valuation (link).

Dutch hybrid-electric aviation startup Maeve Aerospace shuts down (link).

EV truck startup Harbinger reportedly planning IPO (link).

Teleoperations startup Mapless AI acquired by Fort Robotics (link).

Porsche investment executive beats lawsuit from auto startup (link).

Under new House bill, Mercedes-Benz may be shut out of U.S. market under bill aimed at Chinese automaker ownership (link). Via Weans. 'Mercedes-Benz’s largest individual shareholder is BAIC, a Chinese state-owned automaker.'

Board & Executive Changes:

General Motors: Jon McNeill to leave board (link).

Trimble: Mark Peek resigns from board (link).

ZeroAvia: CEO Val Miftakhov steps down from role, remains on board (link).

Avis Budget Group: Tina Goldenberg promoted to Chief Accounting Officer, succeeds Cathleen DeGenova (link).

Curated Jobs:

View over new 1133 active job listings from companies like Scout (link), Stack AV (link) and Umbra (link) on MobilityJobs. Post your own jobs for free.

Director, Prediction and ML Planning at Motional in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States (link).

Real-time AI Engineer (C++/CUDA) at Torque AGI in San Francisco, CA USA (link).

New Stuff:

Elderly and young drivers' perceptions of ADAS (link). 'Most participants showed a positive attitude toward the development of ADAS and, surprisingly, elderly drivers were more likely to rely on and trust ADAS functions, particularly those designed to enhance safety and reduce driving stress. In contrast, younger drivers were more picky about the system limitations.'

Researchers show vision language model for motorcycle ADAS (link).

Patents & Patent Applications:

GM's patent application shows how vehicle can gather wind data from sensors (link).

Statistics / Projections:

Walmart tops 1M total drone deliveries, with 40% taking place this quarter (link). Via Dronexl.

Filings show registered AV fleet sizes in Texas: 42 for Tesla, 577 for Waymo, 64 for Gatik (link).

Nearly 1/3 of automotive loan terms are now longer than 6 years (link). Via Experian. 'The percentage of new vehicles with loan terms more than six years old reached 35.55% in Q1 2026, up from 30.83% a year ago. Additionally, new loans with terms greater than 85 months increased from 2.95% to 3.33% over the same period.'

Thank you:

Thank you to Terry Baggett (link) and Greg Bartness (link) for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

Bingo (link), Gatik (link), Motional (link), Torque AGI (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

See you next week,

Reilly Brennan