Notable reads and other tidbits
ADAS
Porsche has partnered with Mobileye to bring hands-free automated assistance and navigation functions to future sports cars.
Autonomous vehicles
Nuro is laying off 30%, or about 340 employees, across the company as part of a restructuring meant to extend its capital runway. The company is also pausing plans to ramp up commercial operations this year and delay volume production of its Nuro bot — the third-generation, or R3, delivery robot designed to be the flagship of its commercial strategy.
Ouster was named the exclusive long-range lidar supplier through 2026 to Motional for its Ioniq 5 robotaxis.
Earnings
Woof! There were a lot of earnings this week and many of the results were on the gloomy side of things. I can’t cover them all, but here are a few highlights.
Bird cuts costs in the first quarter, but the rest of its results, including ridership and revenue, were not so hot.
Gogoro reported first-quarter revenue of $79.3 million, down 16% year-over-year, while its net loss grew to $40.6 million — up from its net loss of $21.7 million in the same quarter last year. The company said that while revenue from its battery-swapping service was up YoY, sales of hardware and vehicle sales decreased compared to the same quarter last year.
Lucid’s first-quarter results show a company with widening losses and revenue that failed to meet Wall Street expectations. Lucid’s Q1 revenue was $149.4 million, up year-over-year, but lower than the $257.7 million it reported in the fourth quarter of 2022. Importantly, the company said it plans to produce more than 10,000 vehicles in 2023, which is on the lower end of its previous guidance.
Luminar beat its own guidance for Q1 and brought in $14.5 million in revenue, up 112% from the same period last year. That gain is on top of a net loss of $146.8 million, which was wider than expected. Luminar still has cash and cash equivalents of around $90 million. The lidar company said it’s on track to meet or beat its goal of adding at least $1 billion to its forward-looking order book in 2023 and expects its revenue to grow 100% in 2023.
Rivian was one of the few bright spots — although the company is still burning through cash. The company beat Wall Street expectations with $661 million in revenue in the first quarter, a nearly seven-fold increase from the same period last year when it was plagued by supply constraints and production woes that curbed deliveries. It also managed to narrow losses to $1.35 billion, or $1.45 per share, in the first quarter, down from the $1.59 billion, $1.77 per share, in losses in Q1 2022. Oh, and how could I forget — Rivian is sitting on $12 billion in cash.
TuSimple did not file a Q1 report, and that’s the problem. The company hasn’t filed an earnings report since the end of the third quarter in 2022. As a result, TuSimple received a delisting notice from the Nasdaq for failing to file its quarterly report on time. TuSimple shares may stop trading as early as May 15.
Electric vehicles, charging and batteries
Fisker lowered its production target for the year to 32,000 EVs. The EV company also said it has partnered with Ample to bring the first Fisker Ocean SUV to market with swappable battery technology by Q1 2024. The companies intend to share revenue generated from the battery-swapping system.
Subaru is stepping up its EV plans. The company plans to add four EVs to its portfolio with an aim to produce 400,000 units by 2028.
Tesla officially broke ground on a Texas lithium refinery, making it the only U.S. automaker to refine its own lithium.
Volvo will call its upcoming small all-electric SUV the EX30.
In-car tech
Google unveiled a bunch of new auto-related features — like YouTube and conferencing coming to cars — at the company’s 2023 Google I/O developers conference. Auto tidbit of the event: By the end of the year, 200 million vehicles will be equipped with Android Auto.
Tesla is facing another lawsuit. This time, a group of Tesla Model S and Model X owners filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleging that automatic software updates decreased driving range or caused battery failures.
Miscellaneous
HopSkipDrive brought on a new executive team with backgrounds from Walmart, The Honest Company and Bird.
Vianova is working with French public transport operator RATP to analyze curb activities and sidewalk usage to prevent bus lane congestion and transform curb usage in Paris.
Zipline, the drone delivery startup, is expanding its U.S. customer base across healthcare, restaurant and retail verticals.
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