Trucks | Future of Transportation for 2026.03.23
FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital

Notable

Uber partners with Rivian on a batch of up to 50,000 L4 robotaxi R2 models (link). Uber will invest $300M into Rivian now, with additional funding up to $1.25B in total after certain milestones. Rivian will push back its 2027 profit goals to work on AVs (link). This raises a few new questions: 1) does every OEM now require an AV story, if not a full engineering effort? Likely 2) Will robotaxi manufacturing de-value the perceived brand quality of those same models at retail? Across Lucid and Rivian we will learn the answer shortly 3) How quickly will Rivian ramp up its AV engineering group, presumably all under the control of SVP James Philbin (formerly at Zoox and Waymo)? 4) Was Volkswagen's dog's breakfast of AV efforts the necessary precursor to them ultimately ending up merging with Rivian to get both AV and EV? What a long, strange and expensive trip.

NVIDIA's GTC conference was a major proof point that automakers are relying on the company for AV systems (link). The big names announced using NVIDIA's Drive Hyperion unit for L4: BYD, Geely, Isuzu and Nissan (notably this is likely a painful partnership reveal for Mobileye as Geely has been one of their most important SuperVision customers; it’s not yet clear how Geely is thinking about updatings its vendors for upper levels of automation). Also Hyundai expanded its partnership with NVIDIA to cover L2+ through L4. Finally, NVIDIA full-stack AVs will launch with Uber across 28 markets by 2028, beginning with Los Angeles and San Francisco in the first half of 2027. What's amazing is that automotive is still only 1% of NVIDIA's revenue; imagine what it will become in the next decade.

BYD's new global ambitions include a full acquisition of an automaker (link). Li: 'I don't think a JV will work.' Chinese auto M&A is not vision-limited or capital-limited. It's just temporarily regulation-limited.

With gas prices up more than 30% over two weeks in some US states (link), dealers anticipate a move to EVs and hybrids (link). Not even Biden could drive EV demand like this. Elsewhere: 'About 1,100 miles (1,770 km) away in Hanoi, Nguyen Hoang Tu Anh said his VinFast showrooms had to hire more sales staff after customer visits quadrupled, resulting in the sale of 250 EVs in the three weeks since the Iran war started. That works out to more than 80 a week, or double the average rate in 2025' (link).

The Tesla influencers who broke ranks to leave the cult (link).

Former Uber and Twitter CTO details the complacency that led to his ADAS crash (link). 'I was driving the way the system had conditioned me to: monitoring instead of steering, trusting the software to make the right call. The familiarity curve bends toward complacency, and the companies building these systems seem to know it. I certainly did. I got lulled anyway.' I tell all family and friends to avoid using Level 2 and 3 systems and unless you are a professional driver I hope you do too.

Pokemon Go was merely a delivery robot map maker (link). Via Weans.

The Corvette ZR1X: hybrid V-8, zero-to-60 in 1.7 seconds, 233-m.p.h. top speed, all wheel drive (link).

Video: What sensor unit sits atop these Tesla robotaxis? (link).

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Stair-climbing robot startup Rivr acquired by Amazon (link).

Ex-Nikola founder emerges after Presidential pardon, takes over ownership and operations of aircraft maker Syberjet (link).

School bus platform startup BusRight raises $30M (link). Led by Volition Capital.

Revolv's delivery fleet platform acquired by Zenobe (link).

Tesla and SpaceX announce $25B ‘Terafab’ chip factory (link).

EV hydrofoil startup Candela raises $34M (link). Led by EQT Ventures and SEB Private Equity, U.S. pension fund CalPERS, boat manufacturer Beneteau and marine transport investor Ocean Zero LLC.

Autonomous flight startup Merlin merges with IPAC and goes public on NASDAQ (link).

Australian positioning startup Advanced Navigation raises $110M (link). Led by Airtree Ventures.

Mitsubishi Electric to sell 50% stake in auto parts unit to Foxconn (link).

Board & Executive Changes:

Nauto: Daniel Grimwood-Bird joins as Head of Insurance (link).

AeroVironment: Brad Truesdell to retire as COO (link).

Archer Aviation: Tosha Perkins departs as Chief Admin Officer (link).

SoundHound: Nitesh Sharan resigns as CFO; Co-founder and Former CFO James Hom to serve in role as interim (link).

Curated Jobs:

Story & Content Creation, Senior Specialist at Motional in Pittsburgh, PA USA, hybrid (link).

Simulation Engineer at JetZero in Long Beach, CA, USA (link).

Hiring? Post a job (link). If you're a startup, use code 'Trucks' for free standard listings.

Hunting? View all 253 postings on the MobilityJobs job board (link).

New Stuff:

I'm headed to the Ride AI conference in SF on Apr 15 and they just announced all the people going will receive Waymo SFO access to the event (link). This ticket link is for $300 off; I don't benefit from you buying it through this link. If you plan on attending, let me know.

DriveTok: 3D Driving Scene Tokenization (link). 'Most existing tokenizers are designed for monocular and 2D scenes, leading to inefficiency and inter-view inconsistency when applied to high-resolution multi-view driving scenes. To address this, we propose DriveTok, an efficient 3D driving scene tokenizer for unified multi-view reconstruction and understanding.'

Tracking ‘dual use’ venture capital investments, technology and jobs (link).

Another view emerges of China's sea-skimming craft, which can fly just above the water to avoid radar that and looks like a Soviet-era 'ekranoplan' (link).

Amazon rolls out 1-hour, 3-hour delivery as ultrafast shipping trend grows in the U.S. (link). 'Prime members will pay a $9.99 fee for one-hour delivery and $4.99 for three-hour delivery, while customers without a Prime membership will pay $19.99 for one-hour delivery and $14.99 for three-hour delivery.'

Tesla faces expanded probe over ADAS performance in poor weather (link).

Patents & Patent Applications:

Tesla's patent application shows air suspension system that finds optimal distance/angle to wireless charging pad (link).

Ford's patent application shows optical communication between vehicles (link).

Statistics / Projections:

Polymarket on crude oil price predictions: 15% chance of $200/barrel crude by end of June (link).

55% of Americans report financial impact from rising gas prices, with 87% expecting further gas price increases amid Iran conflict (link). Via Reuters / Ipsos.

Lithium-ion battery packs have dropped in price permanently beneath $100, with grid electricity from four-hour batteries costing $78 per megawatt-hour at the end of last year (link). Via BloombergNEF.

Waymo reports they've driven over 170M miles autonomously as of Dec 2025 (link).

Thank you:

Thank you to Dean Donovan (link), Lyla Ellens (link), Jay Ellis (link), George Kellerman (link) and Ben Marcus (link) for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

JetZero (link), Motional (link), Nauto (link). View the full portfolio of Trucks companies (link).

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks (Dorothy Sayers),

Reilly Brennan