Trucks | Future of Transportation for 2026.08.24
FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital

Notable

Drones didn't matter until they did: Uber and Zipline announce US drone network with goal of 1M deliveries by end of 2029 (link); Amazon Prime Air drone delivery is expanding to about 500 US cities this year (link). When I was a kid, my sister told me it was good luck when a bird pooped on me; how do we feel about an Amazon box landing on our head?

New US space policy: 1000 rocket launches per year by 2030 (link).

Originally politically neutral because nobody believed they'd actually work, now AVs are becoming politically right-leaning in the US after blue regions appear to put up roadblocks (link). All topics of importance in American life have to pick a side or have one picked for them.

Researchers developed a way to make AI explain its collision-warning decisions in plain language (link, link to PDF). 'Vision-language models (VLMs), with inherent self-explainability, offer a promising solution, yet two critical challenges persist: (1) how to adapt general-purpose VLMs to the task-specific domain of collision prediction, and (2) how to reduce their high inference latency. To tackle these challenges, this paper develops a novel approach that distils VLMs for explainable vehicle collision prediction.'

Consumer Reports: We tested 13 electric scooters. We don’t recommend any (link). Via GK.

Children in London whose lung growth had been stunted by pollution showed impressive improvements after the introduction of an Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) in 2019 reduced emissions (link).

Chinese aerospace startup lands reusable rocket for the first time (link). Via John W.

Inside a low-cost drone interceptor company in Florida (link). 'Interceptors are like small missiles, designed to crash into and destroy airborne threats before they reach their targets. The interceptor that Powerus developed, called Guardian, costs about $5,000 and is based on a Ukrainian design that was effective against Russian Shahed drones.'

Fired GM engineer alleges job review method is illegal and brings lawsuit (link). From a friend and FoT reader who has led large public companies: 'Stack-ranking is simultaneously moronic and the best methodology ever invented to completely undermine the psychological safety and teamwork needed for effective product development. Can’t believe that Barra and her board believe this is the way to lead a 21st century creative culture.'

Video: the Ventral is a fishing boat, kayak and paddle board in one (link). Video: POV inside a Bonneville streamliner up to 330 MPH (link). Via Diego.

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Automation safety startup Fort Robotics will go public via $556M SPAC with Newbury Street (link, link to presentation PDF).

Aviation startup Ampaire raises $19M (link). Led by DiamondStream Partners.

Uber and Pony launch AV rides in Zagreb, marking the first European AV availability for the ridehailing company (link).

Daimler Truck sold a secondary offering of shares in Archion Corporation, reducing its equity stake to 25% (link).

Detroit EV startup Grounded raises $5M (link). Led by Also Capital and The 81 Collection.

Rivian's micromobility spin-out Also raises $150M (link). Led by Prysm Capital.

Google won a bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines' internal business data for $10 million (link).

Sidewalk robot startup Serve announces new Grubhub partnership and expansion of DoorDash deal (link).

Board & Executive Changes:

Boeing: Ryan Shedd named SVP Finance & Controller (link).

Copart: David Berger joins board (link).

Curated Jobs:

View over new 1371 active job listings from companies, including Torc Robotics (link), Atoms (link) and WeRide (link).

Head of Operations at Alex Roy Special Projects (link).

Head of Public Affairs at Zipline in San Francisco, CA USA (link).

Sales Development Representative at Carvis in San Francisco, CA USA (link).

New Stuff:

Tesla, Uber, and Waymo all get the OK to operate thousands of AVs in Nevada (link).

Google's new routing API allows large trucks to make special routes (link). 'It provides highly optimized routes that account for the physical characteristics of large vehicles and the real-world road restrictions they encounter.'

Researchers show connected vehicles have only about 100 milliseconds to validate incoming safety messages, but current detection systems are fundamentally too slow to prevent things like spoofed emergency braking (link).

Waymo discusses its in-house chip for its cars, a 5 nanometer ASIC (link). This appears to sit relatively early in the perception pipeline, processing raw sensor data before and alongside the broader vehicle compute system.

Geely's next generation battery aims for energy density of up to 500 Wh/kg, roughly twice the energy per kilogram of the best lithium-ion packs today (link).

Uber fined $963M by Dutch data authority over driver account suspensions (link).

NHTSA is proposing to remove two legacy crash-test procedures (Dynamic Rollover Resistance and Side Air Bag Out-of-Position testing) from its New Car Assessment Program and updating NCAP's 10-year roadmap (link).

Statistics / Projections:

Drivers of longer-range EVs in 2023–2024 primarily charged at home, but plugged in roughly 25% less often at home at the end of the day than drivers of shorter-range EVs (link, link to PDF). Via Nature / Transportation Research Journal.

Americans generally feel it's acceptable to drive 10 MPH over the speed limit, up to 25 MPH in some cases (link, link to PDF). Via AAA.

There aren’t enough ships to handle China’s booming car exports (link). Via WSJ. 'Specialized car carriers, essentially floating parking garages, are booked out years ahead to export cars from Chinese factories. Rates to charter ships are up 65% this year on the surging demand to move vehicles out of China.'

Monterey Car Week secondary sales topped $750M, exceeding 2022’s record high by some $284M (link). Via Hagerty. Christie's sold the most expensive American car of all time with the ex-Carroll Shelby 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe going for $42.9 million (link).

Chinese robots beat Usain Bolt's 100m world record at Beijing games (link). Via Reuters. 'Tiangong Ultra's time faster than 9.58-second human world record.'

Thank you:

Thank you to Rodolfo Elias Dieck (link), Jeremy Diamond (link), Tapan Kataria (link), Matt Logan (link), Micah Kotch (link) and Rich Pennock (link) for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

Carvis (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

‘We must tighten the nut! We are selling motorcycles, not clothes’ (S. Honda)

Reilly Brennan