TL;DR - come to our event if you're in AV industry or investing in it: https://lu.ma/8cdowa8b
Self-driving cars. Robotaxis. Autonomous trucks. For years, it felt like the future of transportation was just around the corner. Mobility became a “hot” investment theme. Auto-tech began to overtake CES. And then every timeline of every technology missed. Apple shut down Project Titan [1]. GM shut down Cruise [2]. Ford and VW shut down Argo [3]. SPAC after SPAC after SPAC tanked.
But guess what? The corner has been turned.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are now actively being deployed without drivers in an increasing number of cities, and there’s refreshed hope that they’ll be in many cities in the US and globally by this time next year.
Some examples of momentum from just the last month…
Aurora, Pony.AI, and WeRide – the three most pure play autonomous stocks are up substantially on news of their technology achievements.
May Mobility launched its third driver-out city… not a test program, it's a live, operational / commercial service
Both Uber and Lyft have gone public with refreshed autonomous strategies
Ribbon cuttings for charging hubs to serve electric AV fleets are becoming a more frequent event
Here's a picture from a Waymo ride I took in January in LA.
And plenty more as we see expansion announcements continue to come from Waymo, Zoox, Mobileye, and others.
So "What Now?"
There are many things up for debate. A few things on my mind are:
As the industry hits an inflection point – who are the winners?
I personally think it’s becoming increasingly clear that there will be “various” robotaxi tech winners (i.e. Waymo, May Mobility) – as described in the pretty thoughtful graphic by Lyft below.
Without mature technology – vertical integration has been by in large the only answer for robotaxi companies to date. Now that we’re passing driver-out milestones for several of the vertically integrated tech companies, which parts of the ecosystem still need to be filled out to support AV at scale?
I think this graphic from Lyft CEO David Risher articulates that relatively well, or at least a framework for it.
On April 2nd, we're hosting our first debate on the topic in NYC. If it’s fun, we’re planning to do follow up events in a few other cities later in the spring.
Send me at note at ben@keyframecapital.com if you'd like to chat about the market and investment opportunities, and devika@keyframecapital.com if you’d like to get involved with the event!
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