VanMoof, the flashy e-bike startup that skidded into bankruptcy this summer, has gotten back on its own bike, so to speak. Today it was announced that Lavoie, which makes electric scooters, has acquired the business out of administration. The company plans to invest in the brand and relaunch the business, it said. That will include […]

Zeelo — a ‘smart buses’ platform providing bus operators, employers and schools with private bus and shuttle transport programs — has secured $14 million in a fresh Series A ‘Extension’ round of funding. The new investment was led by FlatzHoffmann (a European growth equity investor) and was joined by IREON Ventures (the CVC arm of Motor Oil Hellas), and an unnamed Boston-based family office.

Zeelo now plans to accelerate sales and US operations on the East and West coasts, as well as work on its tech platform.

A company spokesperson clarified that this round is an equity-based extension rather than a Series B or growth equity round because – based on its growth in the US – the company plans to attract US lead investors for it’s next stage of funding.

Up until this point Zeelo has ‘been through the wringer’ somewhat, after having to abruptly reverse out of an acquisition by mass transit group Swvl, which itself had fallen fowl of the massive devaluations in SPACs. The lauded $100 million buyout was only announced three months prior to that.

Last year, Swvl, an Egyptian-born startup that provides shared transportation services for intercity and intracity trips, layed-off 50% of its remaining headcount. The 99% stock tumble it took after a SPAC merger might have had something to do with it.

That said, while Swvl agreed to terminate the acquisition of Zeelo, it had already committed to a $5 million convertible promissory note for Zeelo, which the latter managed to retain.

Prior to all that, Zeelo had raised $19.6 million from investors such as ETF Partners, InMotion Ventures and angels. The full funding outline to date is: At pre-Seed the company raised $1.6 million, then a Seed of $6 million. Its Series A part 1 was $12 million, then the above Series A extension of $14 million. That makes it’s total Series A $19.6 million, with the total funds raised standing at $33.6 million.

Outside of the UK, Zeelo now has a second headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-founders Sam Ryan and Barney Williams have fully relocated to the US. It now has contracts with Fidelity, and some, unnamed, large enterprise clients.

After a tumultuous 2022, Sam Ryan, Co-Founder and CEO at Zeelo told me the company was “thrilled” when it managed to get the Series A extension, especially in the current market: “But the underlying growth of business even through last year has been really strong.”

I asked him what has been fueling the business? In short, it’s down to both the lack of public transport options in the US and the cost of living crisis: “Our business… works very well in places where there’s limited public transit, where people are car dependent. A lot of our customers are in manufacturing, distribution and warehouses where a lot of workers can’t afford cars. It’s a big issue outside of London, but it’s pretty much an issue everywhere outside of Manhattan.”

He said there was a “big increase in demand when fuel prices increased, because employees were becoming noisier about the cost of their car.”

He added that although there is spotty competition there is a large and ready market in the US for this model: “On a deal by deal basis we rarely bump into anybody. There is some competition but given the size of the market, the whole thing is wide open.”

Christopher Hoffmann, Partner at FlatzHoffmann added in a statement: “Zeelo is a unique and proven mobility player headquartered in Europe with a strong expansion push to the US. It combines a strong transit-tech platform with a clear sustainability mission.”

Brussels-based startup Cowboy has been in the news lately for its cash burn rate. But the company wants to control its narrative again with some product and business news. Cowboy is launching a new feature called ‘AdaptivePower’, which automatically adjusts the power of the motor depending on the current slope and weather conditions.

Cowboy’s electric bikes are pretty straightforward — there is no gear and there are no + and – button to adjust the power of the motor. The company thinks riding a bike should be as easy as jumping on the saddle and putting a foot on the peddle.

But that minimalistic approach has some drawbacks. While the default power mode works fine in most cities, it’s not enough in hilly cities like San Francisco.

Instead of releasing a new bike with gears or buttons, the company is leveraging the sensors in the existing Cowboy lineup, such as the gyroscope and accelerometer. While these sensors were originally included for crash and theft detection, they can be leveraged to make the bike smarter. Based on the current torque, speed and other factors, Cowboy automatically increases the power delivery of the electric motor or reduces it.

This feature will be rolled out to Cowboy’s latest models that were released a couple of years ago — the C4 and its step-through version the C4ST. It will be an over-the-air software update. Once the update is installed, you’ll be able to choose between the ‘adaptive’ and ‘eco’ options in the mobile app for the motor power settings.

In other product news, the company is also releasing some new colors for the C4ST as you can see in the image at the bottom of this article.

New funding round at a lower valuation

In January 2022, Cowboy announced an $80 million funding round. A bit more than a year later, the company is raising more money. But it isn’t disclosing the dollar figure of this new funding round.

Of course, things have changed drastically for tech startups. VC firms aren’t deploying capital as rapidly and startup founders sometimes struggle to raise their next funding round. For a hardware company like Cowboy, supply chain issues and inflation also had some impact on the company’s margins.

A few weeks ago, Cowboy co-founder and CTO Tanguy Goretti said in a spicy LinkedIn post that the company was “in the process of closing a €15M round” (that’s $15.8 million at today’s exchange rate). From what I’ve heard, Cowboy ended up raising a bit less than that, but an equity crowdfunding part is going to round up that round.

He also added in his LinkedIn post that this recent funding round is a down round. The company’s total valuation is down by 44% compared to the previous funding round. In other words, it’s a long and windy road for Cowboy and the past few months have been more difficult than expected.

But the startup’s existing investors chose to invest more money in the company, which should improve the company’s runway right before the peak season of Cowboy sales (between March and October). After some logistics challenges a year or two ago, Cowboy’s margins are also back to where they should be.

With AdaptivePower, Cowboy can now think about other potential vehicles as well. For instance, this feature would work particularly well with cargo bikes. But there’s nothing to announce on this front for now.

“2022 has been our best year ever with €41 million in revenue and sales growing by 2.7x year over year,” co-founder and CEO Adrien Roose said in a statement. Cowboy has sold 50,000 since 2018. And 2022 was a great year as the company told me it managed to sell 20,000 bikes in a single year.

E-bike maker Cowboy raises new funding round and launches AdaptivePower by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer faired rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity.

Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10 pm and 6 am, and only on designated streets in the city. But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service.

It sounds like Cruise is still a ways off from making this offering available far and wide to San Franciscans eager to take a trip with a robot chauffeur, but this is still a major step towards a future where AVs crawl the streets in big cities picking up paying fares.

The world’s fifth-largest automaker will reportedly soon plead guilty to end a multi-year investigation into its efforts to conceal the amount of pollution created by its diesel engines. According to Reuters, the US Justice Department and Dodge parent company Stellantis could announce as early as next week that the automaker has agreed to pay $300 million to settle allegations of crminal fraud. Stellantis declined to comment on the report.

The Justice Department began investigating Stellantis around 2019 when the automaker recalled nearly 1 million vehicles in the US and Canada for not meeting federal tailpipe emission standards. As of last year, the agency has announced criminal charges for just three Stellantis employees. The probe involved approximately 100,000 Ram pickup trucks and Jeep SUVs sold in the US.

The deal comes five years after Volkswagen famously pleaded guilty to its own emissions scandal. “Dieselgate” saw the German automaker eventually pay more than $20 billion in fines and legal settlements for installing illegal software designed to cheat government emissions tests. Since then, sales of diesel vehicles have plummeted in Europe and other parts of the world.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

Welcome to the very first episode of The TechCrunch Podcast! Every week, the new TC podcast will dive into the biggest stories in tech, as told by the writers who penned them. We’ve been developing and iterating on the concept for many months now, so we’re thrilled to finally be able to deliver our first ever full episode, which you can get by subscribing here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Our first ever show is typical for TechCrunch, since it was recorded mostly on the road at one of our fantastic yearly events – TechCrunch Mobility 2022! If there’s one thing TC is great at, it’s rolling with the punches and improvising on the fly, and we did that with on-location and remote recording, bringing you highlights from the biggest news of the week alongside in-depth interviews with TC’s own Kirsten Korosec and Taylor Hatmaker.

Be sure to subscribe, and leave us a 5-star review with your feedback. We’ll be delivering the TechCrunch Podcast weekly, with fresh interviews from the writers closest to the biggest stories of the week, as well as a roundup of what you need to know for what went down in the wide world of tech.

This year at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022, we’ll be chatting with Holoride co-founder and CEO Nils Wollny. The company is set to start shipping its in-auto VR experience in production Audi cars and SUVs this year, and Wollny will be able to provide us with more details about that pending launch.

Wollny will also be offering more insight into Holoride delving into the world of crypto, and developing its own utility token for its virtual experiences. The company has put a lot of thought into its business model, and has been very explicit about its intent to not pursue an ad-supported revenue plan. Wollny will talk about how the crypto plans for Holoride work relative to that core commitment and the business overall.

We’ll also talk on the changing environment for VR in general, including the advent of “The Metaverse,” as well as rules that could pave the way for people in self-driving cars to legally be able to consume entertainment content on the road while in motion, even with no driver at the wheel.

Virtual reality has come a long way even in just the few short years since Audi spun out Holoride and it made its debut as an independent company at CES in 2019. Now, on the verge of its production vehicle debut, Wollny will give us a glimpse into what kind of future the startup is about to deliver.

TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 breaks through the hype and goes beyond the headlines to discover how merging technology and transportation will affect a broad swath of industries, cities and the people who work and live in them. Register today before prices increase May15!

Ralph Gilles started at Chrysler in 1992, and he’s still with the company as the chief design officer at the newly formed conglomerate, Stellantis. His design resume is legendary: The Chrysler 300C, Dodge Magnum, Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT and the SRT Viper. But now he’s leading Stellantis into the electric future, which requires (and allows) for radical new designs.

Gone are radiators, exhaust piping and massive crates of metal consuming the front quarter of the vehicles. Designers now need to account for just batteries and motors, and this is resulting in a dramatic paradigm shift that could see the reinvention of passenger vehicles.

Gilles has a daunting charge: create and implement a design language that links the far-flung Stellantis lineup. From Chrysler to Alfa Romeo to Ram and Peugeot, with Jeep and Dodge and Citroen mixed in, too. Some of Stellantis’ brands are among the oldest in the automotive world, and he’s in charge of pushing them into the future.

Look at the just-released Chrysler Airflow concept. To me, this speaks to his deep respect for the legacy of these brands. The 2025 Airflow is supposed to reinvent the Chrysler brand — just like the 1934 Chrysler Airflow reinvented the young Chrysler brand nearly 90 years ago.

Respecting the past while moving forward is a challenge facing every mobility vendor and manufacturer in the mobility space, and we’re thrilled to have Ralph Gilles speak candidly on the process at TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility.

TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 breaks through the hype and goes beyond the headlines to discover how merging technology and transportation will affect a broad swath of industries, cities and the people who work and live in them. Register today before prices increase May15!

Dat Bike is on a journey to reduce the amount of gasoline used in Vietnam. The startup makes electric motorbikes with key components that it designs and produces domestically to reduce costs and improve performance. Today, Dat Bike announced it has raised a $5.3 million Series A led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Wavemaker Partners.

Both are returning investors. Jungle Ventures led Dat Bike’s seed round a year ago, when TechCrunch first profiled the company. The latest funding brings Dat Bike’s total to $10 million raised since it was founded in 2019 by Son Nguyen.

Dat Bike is recognized by the Vietnam Ministry of Transportation as the first domestically-made electric bike. Nguyen said that Dat Bike uses vertical integration instead of relying on third-party, imported electric drivetrains and parts because that keeps costs down while improving quality. Most of the parts on Dat Bike’s vehicles are designed by the company and 80% of its suppliers are located in Vietnam. It also uses a direct-to-consumer distribution model, pushing prices down lower.

Part of the funding will be invested in its technology. Nguyen explained that the three most important parts of an electric bike are its battery, motor and controller. Right now, Dat Bike owns technology for its battery packaging and controller. With its new capital, it will be able to invest in its engine technology. Nguyen added that the company will also upgrade its mobile app, adding new features and shortening the feedback loop on its error reporting feature.

One major thing the company had to address was consumer concerns about the performance of e-bikes compared to their gasoline counterparts. The company says its first product line, the Weaver, displayed three times the performance (5 kW versus 1.5 kW) and two times the range of (100 km vs 50 km) of most competing electric bikes. Dat Bike’s second model, the Weaver 200, was launched last year with higher performance, or a range of 200 km and 6 kW power. It also reduced charging time from 1 hour for 100 km to 2.5 hours for its full 200 km charge.

“We aim to develop a new product every year and research for faster charging,” Nguyen said.

Dat Bike currently has two stores in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and its bikes can be ordered online, too. Part of the funding will be used to expand its offline-to-online model into more large cities, including Thai Nguyen, Bac Ninh, Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Ha Long, Vinh, Quy Nhon, Nha Trang, Danang, Can Tho and Vung Tau.

QED incubated this auto financing company in 2016 and Kevin Bennett became CEO in 2018 and soon after raised its first seed round. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in November 2021 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relationship with their cars. Since the founding, Bennett has raised $74 million for the company, including early angel funding from Rachel Holt. At the time, she was a rising executive in Uber — a post she left in 2020 when she co-founded Construct Capital. Hear how Bennett pitched early investors, and what investors like Holt can provide to mobility companies.

This event opens on May 4 at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET with networking and pitch practice submissions. The interview begins at 12 pm PT followed by the TCL Pitch Practice at 12:30 pm PT. Register here for free.

TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesday at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET. Join us! Click here to register for free and gain access to Caribou’s pitch deck, enter the pitch practice session and access the livestream where you can ask the speakers questions.

Following the release of its dual-motor variant late last year, Polestar announced on Wednesday that the 270-mile long range, single-motor version of its Polestar 2 EV is now available for sale in the US.

Starting at $45,900 — $33,400 after federal and state incentives — the single-motor Polestar 2 is $4,000 less expensive than its AWD sibling (which starts at $51,200) and provides 16 extra miles of driving range to the all-wheel’s 249 miles. Other than the number of e-motors affixed to their axles, the two are functionally identical.

Folks looking to stick it to their local petrochemical conglomerate can schedule a test drive either through the Polestar 2 configurator site or at one of the company’s physical retail locations located in major cities throughout the US.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

Five months after announcing a deal with two of China’s biggest two-wheel vehicle makers, Gogoro officially launched there today, opening 45 battery swapping stations in Hangzhou. The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer Horace Luke told TechCrunch that it targets 80 stations by the end of the year, before expanding into other major cities with its partners, Yadea and Dachangjiang Group (DCJ).

In China, Gogoro’s battery swapping technology will operate under the Huan Huan brand, a partnership between Gogoro, Yadea and DCJ.

Yadea and DCJ are both developing vehicles that run on Gogoro’s battery swapping technology, with Yadea launching two models for sale today, starting in Hangzhou.

The companies expect consumer demand to be driven by government regulations for electric two-wheel vehicles that (among other things) require the use of lithium batteries instead of lead-acid. An estimated 270 million vehicles that don’t meet the new regulations will need to be retired by 2025.

Gogoro announced last month that it will go public on Nasdaq after a $2.35 billion SPAC deal with Poema Global that is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. In addition to its battery swapping network, Gogoro is also known for its own range of high-end two-wheel scooters, but has made deals with other manufacturers to produce vehicles that use its batteries and charging stations, including Yamaha, Suzuki and AeonMotor.

Its partnerships have been an important factor in increasing the accessibility of Gogoro’s technology, and the company also announced a deal this year with Hero MotoCorp, the market leader for two-wheeled vehicles in India.

“We’ve always been looked at as ‘Gogoro is too premium, we are out of reach to the people that really matter in major cities,’ and with Yadea and DCJ, everyone is going to be able to ride and buy the vehicles, which won’t be any more expensive than previously-sold mass vehicles,” said Luke.