Trucks | Future of Transportation for 2026.10.26
FoT is the intelligence arm of Trucks Venture Capital

Notable

Waymo fleet expansion reportedly to double by end of 2026, quintuple by end of 2027 (link). They're going to write that Waymo shouldn't have a Chinese-made chassis, while typing on their Chinese-made iPhones.

Privately-owned Tesla Cybercabs reportedly to go on sale by end of this year (link). Via HC.

Blue-green (cyan) set to become the official color of vehicles in a state of automated driving, at least according to recent federal communications (link).

Stanford opens its autonomous vehicle learning resources to the world (link). Via Maya T. This combines a new textbook, Principles of Robot Autonomy, with video lectures, slides, open-source code and assignments. (Link to book, link to lecturer materials)

Delivery robots accused of scanning customer faces and sharing biometric data (link). Via Weans. 'The men filed separate class-action lawsuits in Cook County court Oct. 9 against Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics, alleging the companies violated a state privacy law. They claim the companies’ machines scanned their faces and hands without their knowledge or consent. Both companies dispute the allegations.'

In this New Yorker deep dive on Waymo, which is long enough to support multiple pro and con positions, we learn that the vehicles charge their batteries for only 50 minute cycles at a time (link). In a discussion about rider support operators: 'I spoke to a different former contractor employee who said that one of his tasks had been to teach support agents “the difference between empathy versus sympathy.” In practice, what this meant was that they should “refrain from saying ‘I’m sorry,’ ” he told me. “It could imply admission of guilt.”'

A new anti-robotaxi efforts called People First Transportation shares a similar set of connections to Citizens for Affordable Rates, an effort that was at one point funded by ridehailing companies (link). Ethan McKenna dives into some of the connections here (link).

Bloomberg's Matt Levine: 'Obviously SpaceX and Tesla Will Merge' (link). 'One model of Elon Musk five years ago is that he had a bunch of disparate interests and was really passionate about all of them...One model of Elon Musk today is that there is only one thing.' Classic Jim Barksdale quote: 'There are only two ways to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.'

The real estate era of AVs is upon us: they need parking and staging (link). 'According to the staff report, the arrangement would follow the Parking Division's standard license protocol and would indemnify the city for incidents involving Zoox vehicles. The city expects the deal to generate about $500,000 or more a year in new recurring revenue, which Chi said Zoox would pay on a per-space basis.'

Video: Zoox and Waymo face off in a traffic jam (link). Video: very, very big 10-foot scooter (link). Video: America banned this Chinese car, so I bought one for $2000 (link).

M&A / Deals / Changes:

Positioning startup Xona raises $250M (link). Led by Steve Jurvetson's Future Ventures.

Hertz's 'everything but the software' robotaxi division Oro raises $80M (link). Led by Cohen Private Ventures.

UK simulation startup Third Dimension acquired by Rivian for undisclosed amount (link).

Croatia robotaxi startup Verne raises strategic round from Uber (link).

Aviation autonomy startup Reliable Robotics raises $115M (link). Led by Nimble Partners.

Bolt picks NVIDIA Alpamayo for its European AVs (link).

San Diego battery materials discovery company Holyvolt raises $45M (link). Led by Zone II.

Board & Executive Changes:

CarMax: Darren Woodell named Controller and Chief Accounting Officer (link).

Lear Corp: Jared Fedele promoted to CFO, succeeds Jason Cardew (link).

Curated Jobs:

View over new 1351 active job listings from companies, including Grid Aero (link) and Humble (link).

Spacecraft Test Engineer at Xona in Burlingame, California (link).

New Stuff:

Seattle is installing hundreds of curbside EV chargers (link).

Foundation4D is a single neural network that simultaneously handles 3D object detection, depth estimation, semantic scene occupancy, and scene reconstruction from standard multi-camera video (link). These tasks typically require separate, specialized models running in parallel.

IQ Labs and Comma face off in IP dispute (link). 'In the log data IQ.Lvbs published to support its claims, the company flags the username haraschax as one of those associated with Comma AI IP addresses. Schäfer uses that username on GitHub.'

VTOL startup Beta receives FAA's Special Airworthiness Market Survey Certificate approval (link).

Statistics / Projections:

Af of Q3 2026 numbers, Rivian moves to the #2 EV brand in the US (link, link to PDF report). Via Cox Auto. 'EV sales in Q3 accounted for approximately 6.4% of all new-vehicle sales, an increase from 5.8% in Q2 and the strongest share since Q3 2025.'

US transborder freight numbers from August: $160.6B, increasing 22.6% YoY from 2025 (link). Via BTS.

Thank you:

Thank you to JT for offers of introductions to new founders, investors and friends over the last week.

Trucks portfolio companies mentioned in this issue:

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

'When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck' (Paul Virilio)

Reilly Brennan