Delta Air Lines, in partnership with TSA PreCheck, today announced an expansion of how it uses biometrics to let passengers drop their bags, go through security and board their plane by simply showing their face. For now, the newest part of this, the PreCheck bag-drop experience, is a pilot that’s only available in Atlanta and for Delta’s SkyMiles frequent flier program members who are also registered for TSA pre-check.

The project builds and expands upon the work the airline has done at its Detroit hub and for its international flights out of Atlanta. But now it includes a facial recognition-powered bag-drop experience, too.

In Atlanta, where Delta and the TSA are running this pilot, members of Delta’s SkyMiles frequent flier program who are also TSA pre-check members now get their own self-service PreCheck bag-drop area. There, passengers who opt in to the program (which they have to do every time they check in to a flight on the Delta app) simply walk up to the new bag-drop machines, scan their face, which will validate who they are through the TSA’s database, and the machine will print out their baggage label for them. Once they attach the label, they set the bag on the belt and the new automated bag-drop machines weigh the bag and use cameras to check its size.

Image Credits: Delta

“Our target here is 30 seconds,” Greg Forbes, Delta’s managing director of Airport Experience said during a press event ahead of the official unveiling. “The way that we’re going to get there is not only the technology, the fact that there’s no choreography — you don’t have to launch the app or look for your driver’s license — [but also because] we’re also gathering together people who travel very similarly.”

Forbes noted that this only works for regular roller bags, suitcases and duffle bags. It’s essentially the bag-drop area for frequent fliers who know what they are doing.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

“If you come in with your surfboard, your golf clubs, Skycap [curbside check-in] is going be a better choice for you. If you’re Mrs. Johnson’s second-grade field trip and there’s 30 kids and they all have ticket problems. Not a great experience for you,” he said. 

Currently, about a quarter of Atlanta-based Delta fliers are already qualified to drop off their bags this way. Since the experience is linked to a SkyMiles account, this may also incentivize a few people to sign up for Delta’s frequent flier program, too, which then gives it new ways to market to those fliers as well.

In trying out the experience firsthand, the promise of a 30-second bag drop seemed quite achievable. The facial recognition, with the mask briefly removed, takes a few seconds. Attaching the luggage tag probably took longer than anything else.

For now, Delta set up a small space for this with only four machines, but Forbes noted that if capacity becomes an issue, the airline already has plans for a second bag-drop area elsewhere in the airport.

The new bag-drop machines also feature affordances for the visually impaired and, in case there’s any confusion about who you are, a boarding pass scanner.

From bag drop, it’s off to the PreCheck line, where there’s another facial scan and then the boarding gate, for yet another one. If all goes well, you never need to get out a boarding pass or ID (but you should bring an ID anyway, of course).

Image Credits: TechCrunch

By default, the use of biometrics raises some privacy questions. Delta stresses that it only takes the image to send it to the TSA to validate your identity. And to be fair, if you opt in to PreCheck or Global Entry, the TSA already knows what you look like and when you travel. Forbes also noted that Delta itself doesn’t touch any of the biometric data but leaves that up to its partners who provide the technology for it. The security of their technology has been validated by the government, but we all know that there is no system that is guaranteed to be 100% secure.

Personally, I’ve now crossed the U.S. border a number of times this year, mostly using Global Entry, which at this point fully relies on facial recognition, too. It felt a bit odd the first time, but since Homeland Security already has all of my information, it became a non-issue and simply got me on my way to my connection faster. Using the Delta system from curbside to boarding felt quite similar (and not having to touch anything is a nice bonus in the age of corona).

Still, not everybody is going to be willing to make these tradeoffs. For them, nothing really changes. All of this is opt-in, after all.

For now, this is a somewhat exclusive partnership between Delta and the TSA, at least for the current pilot program. Other airlines are surely already working on something similar (United is a likely next adopter, despite its partnership with CLEAR). I would expect Delta to expand on this throughout its various customer touchpoints in the airport and others to follow suit soon.

Image Credits: Delta

Berlin-based e-scooter rentals company Tier Mobility has announced what it’s billing as the “first close” of a $200 million Series D, as investors continue to plough money into urban micromobility.

Today’s announcement follows a $60M debt raise this summer, and a $250M Series C last November (led by SoftBank).

It’s not clear from its PR whether Tier is intending to raise a meatier sized Series D (and seeking to flush more investors out of the bushes with today’s announcement) — hence its talk of “first close” — or whether it’s taken just the first tranche of a planned $200M raise. We’ve asked for clarity and will update when we get it.

It’s also not entirely clear whether the Series D round contains any debt or is all equity (we’ve also asked).

Tier’s PR describes it as “part of a broader equity and debt raise” but the raise does follow on from the smaller debt round announced in June. And later in the PR the round is described as an “equity raise” — although there’s also mention of unlocking the “debt capacity”. Again, a representative for the company could not be reached at the time of writing but we’ll update when we have confirmation.

In a statement, Alex Gayer, chief financial officer at Tier Mobility, said: “This equity funding provides further firepower to scale our multimodal market presence globally, and pursue strategic investments & acquisitions. Our vehicle capex needs will be serviced with the debt capacity unlocked. Our goal is to build Tier into the European micro-mobility powerhouse, building on our current position as the number one player in the shared electric scooters market.”

Existing investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is co-leading the Series D with the UAE-based Mubadala Capital, which also backed Tier’s Series C last year, while other existing investors RTP Global, Novator, White Star Capital, Northzone, and Speedinvest also participating.

Mubadala’s increased backing for Tier follows it jumping into the UAE’s market last year — after it was selected by the local Roads & Transport Authority, following a lengthy trial of scooter rentals.

The funding also includes sees new investors joining — including the green impact fund M&G Investments and Mountain Partners, a diversified global investment holding.

Tier said its micromobility business is now valued at $2BN (which is up around double from the value being reported around the time of its Series C last year) — saying it’s raised a total of $660M in equity and debt funding to date.

The 2018 launched e-scooter, e-bike and e-moped startup competes in a highly competitive space with a myriad of players, including the likes of Bird, Dott, Lime, Voi and Wind (to name a few) — although authorities in cities around the world have sought to bring a little structure to the fast-developing micromobility market by setting limits on the number of operators allowed per city. That means that winning a slot as a city provider can help leapfrog competitors at a local level.

In the press release, Tier, for example, trumpets its recent win of a tender to provide e-scooters for rent in a trial in London (alongside Dott and Lime). Other new cities it touts are both in the Middle East: Manama (Bahrain) and Doha (Qatar).

It also operates in Paris — where city authorities have been making a big push to shift the urban transport mix away from cars to alternatives like bikes and public transport. So it can claim some major wins.

To-date, Tier says it’s deployed 135,000 e-scooters, e-bikes and e-mopeds across 150 cities in 16 countries — claiming to have established itself as “the European market leader through unrivalled capital efficiency and operational excellence”.

The Berlin-based startup’s plan for the new funding is for “acquisitions and strategic investments”, as well as for further international expansion — with Tier saying it will be targeting coverage across strategic growth markets, in Europe and the Middle East.

So it sounds like more consolidation is headed for the fast-paced e-scooter market as fresh dollars pour in. (And one way to circumvent city-imposed limits on the number of operators — to grab further scale — would be to buy up rivals that have won tenders in cities you haven’t… )

Tier also says it will be directing some of the investment into continuing to roll out its network of battery charging stations hosted by local businesses, aka the Tier Energy Network.

“With the launch of e-bikes in several European countries, Tier is expanding its growing range of multimodal options, making it the first European micro-mobility provider to offer users three different types of vehicles in one app,” it adds.

In a statement, Lawrence Leuschner, CEO and co-founder, said: “The funding provides Tier with additional resources to fulfil our mission to Change Mobility For Good. Clocking more than 80 million trips, replacing over 13 million car rides, in such a short amount of time exemplifies that cities around the world look for ways to make their transport networks safer and move towards a zero-emission future.”

“Lawrence, Matthias and Alex’s passion for change can be felt across the organisation — from Tier’s hub in Dubai to their HQ in Berlin,” added Amer Alaily, director at Mubadala Capital Ventures, Europe, in another supporting statement. “They have quickly emerged as not only a leader in the European micro-mobility space, but one whose commitment to sustainability sets them apart from their competitors. We are proud to have been part of their journey and look forward to remaining a partner to Lawrence and his team for years to come.”

FlixMobility, the $3 billion-German transportation startup that has doubled down on long distance buses and slowly and quietly gobbled up transit lines and operations across Europe, today announced a big move to raise its game in the U.S. The company announced that it is acquiring Greyhound Lines, the iconic U.S. bus network, from UK-based owner FirstGroup. Flix said the deal — which includes a vehicle fleet, trademarks, and related assets and liabilities — has an enterprise value on a debt-free / cash-free basis of $46 million, with an unconditional deferred consideration of $32 million with an interest rate of 5% per annum alongside that.

FirstGroup acquired Greyhound back in 2007 in a bigger $3.6 billion deal, part of a bigger strategy to take on the U.S. market (it also bought Ryder, the yellow school bus network, around the same time). But more recently it has been divesting a number of its U.S. assets in a bid to focus more on the U.K. market. It had in fact been looking to sell the assets Flix has now acquired since 2019. FirstGroup hived off its Greyhound facilities last December for $138 million, and in April sold off the bulk of the rest of the business to EQT, but that did not include the Greyhound transit network.

The deal signifies a huge move for Flix to double down not just on bus transport, but the U.S. market, where it was already active but with a significantly smaller profile. FlixBus, as the service is known, is today active in more than 2,500 destinations in 36 countries outside the U.S., working across 400,000 daily connections. Greyhound is actually nearly as big: it covers 2,400 destinations in North America, with almost 16 million passengers annually. (Flix’s last reported customer numbers were from 2019, pre-pandemic, and were more 62 million; those figures would have drastically dropped in recent times given distancing and travel restrictions around Covid-19, which could be one reason why it does not provide more updated numbers.)

The deal is not about expanding Flix’s network, but also presence and mindshare. Greyhound is nothing short of an iconic presence. In a country fixated on travel, it has figured in dozens of famous songs, films and other art forms, albeit not always in the most flattering of lights.

And that somewhat extended to the business, too: Greyhound was a waning part of FirstGroup’s profitability, although Flix would argue that there is still a lot of mileage (sorry) left in long-distance bus transport — a profile that it believed, even as many stopped traveling anywhere, increased during the pandemic as it presented itself as a lower-cost form of travel at a time when gas prices have gone up, and air travel was too expensive or too difficult to manage, yet people still needed to get from A to B.

This is also where Flix’s tech comes into play. Like other transportation startups such as Uber but also those that have focused on longer-distance journeys like BlaBlaCar, Flix’s approach has been to take a legacy service — in this case buses (it also operates trains) — and apply better algorithms to determine pricing and routing and timing for the different buses on the network. Indeed, it has often been referred to as the “Uber of buses.”

It also generally does not own its fleet, working with third-party independent bus companies to operate vehicles that it brands itself. (I think it’s very unlikely to drop the Greyhound branding altogether however, given the iconic status of it.) However, this deal appears to represent a shift in that strategy. When the company raised its monster $650 round earlier this year — a round it specifically said would be used to expand in the U.S., a long-desired frontier for the startup — we raised the question of whether it would, longer term, continue to pursue a model where it does not directly own buses, but instead works with third parties that take on that capital investment themselves (not unlike Uber). The Greyhound deal will include a fleet so it may well be moving further into that realm now.

Jochen Engert, FlixMobility’s co-founder and co-CEO said in a statement: “The continuous expansion of our services through partnerships and acquisitions has always been an integral part of our growth strategy to build our global presence. The acquisition of Greyhound is a major step forward in the US. The FlixBus and Greyhound teams share a common vision to make smart, affordable and sustainable mobility accessible to all.”

“Consumers across North America are increasingly seeking affordable, comfortable, smart and sustainable mobility solutions. A compelling offering will draw significantly more travellers away from private cars to shared coach mobility,” added André Schwämmlein, another co-founder and co-CEO of FlixMobility, in a statement. “Together, FlixBus and Greyhound will be better able to meet this increased demand. As our business continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic, we will replicate the success that we have already achieved in 36 countries outside of the US with our innovative and customer centric approach.”

Tesla now offers car insurance in Texas, its new home state, a couple of years after launching the product in California. According to Electrek, though, the insurance available to Texans is quite different than the one owners can get in The Golden State: It calculates for a customer’s insurance premium using their real-time driving behavior. Their credit, age and gender that are typically used by other insurance providers apparently don’t matter to Tesla. The automaker says it won’t even look at customers’ claim history and driving records.

Instead, Tesla will look at their “safety scores,” which is a feature it introduced with the Full Self-Driving Beta version released in September. That could make things quite tricky, since the premium that needs to be paid can change every month based on the conditions the driver encounters on the road. Every forced collision warning and forced Autopilot disengagement will affect their score. Following other vehicles from an unsafe distance, braking too hard and turning corners aggressively could lower their score, as well. Safety score is still a beta feature at this point, and Tesla said it should improve over time.

Owners can now apply for a quote, wherein which the automaker will assume a 90 safety score to start their policy. The price will depend on the client’s performance after that, and it could be higher or lower than what a traditional provider charges. During Tesla’s shareholder meeting, where its new home state was also revealed, Elon Musk said the company plans to upgrade its offering in California to be based on real-time driving behavior, as well. It’s not allowed to implement the change just yet, but it’s currently trying to ask permission from regulators.

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

Spanish ride-hailing unicorn Cabify is getting into grocery deliveries as it looks to add another string to its multi-modal mobility and urban utility bow.

It announced the addition of a ‘Super’ option in its app today — which is available for users in nine cities in its home market, namely: A Coruña, Alicante, Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Murcia, Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza.

The grocery delivery service is powered by a partnership with local grocery picking startup, Lola Market. But there’s an added twist here because the latter was acquired by Spain’s on-demand delivery platform giant, Glovo, last month — as part of its efforts to expand a speedy urban grocery delivery business. So it’s been a busy few months (of being in demand) for the smaller Spanish startup.

The relationship between Cabify and Glovo (via Lola Market) looks to be only at the level of a strategic partnership for now.

Last month Glovo said Lola Market would retain its brand and operate independently post-acquisition — led by Gonçalo Soares da Costa, CEO of a second grocery picking business, Mercadão, that Glovo simultaneously acquired.

And while Cabify is touting the new ‘Super’ offering as the first time its users will be able to grocery shop via its app, the service (including delivery) is being fulfilled by Lola Market. So it’s a purely technical integration — and looks like a play to cross-sell the ride-hailing platform’s users on the convenience of push-button, app-based supermarket shopping too.

Madrid-based Lola Market, meanwhile, deliveries groceries from Spanish supermarket chains including Makro, Lidl, Carrefour, Mercadona, DIA, Alcampo, as well as saying it can do picking from traditional markets and some specialised shops.

The new ‘Super’ option in Cabify’s app in Spain (Image credits: Cabify)

This summer Cabify rolled out a pilot multimodal subscription offering in Madrid — seeking to nudge users towards subscription plans that make use of its different mobility offerings — ride-hailing, its electric micromobility subsidiary MOVO, bike subscription service Bive and courier service.

With the new grocery tie-up it’s billing the move as a further expansion of this multi-modality strategy — and trying to claim green credentials, by suggesting it will reduce trips in private cars and help improve the urban environment by reducing emissions through grouped deliveries.

Though of course ride-hailing can negatively impact cities by clogging roads and causing congestion that can degrade the quality of public transport services and other emissions-free mobility options (e.g. biking and walking), as well as worsening air quality (even electric cars can produce pollution by generating particulate matter, such as from wear to car tyres).

Ride-hailing services also took a knock during the pandemic — while grocery deliveries surged during lockdowns. So diversification looks sensible.

“This new service expands the concept of what we know as ‘multi-mobility’,” said Lucía Chávarri, VP of new business at Cabify in a statement. “With the ‘Super’ service, thanks to the collaboration with Lola Market, we avoid trips to supermarkets in private cars, which are often occupied by only one person, and which are very common in cities. “In addition, online shopping improves the efficiency of available resources, because delivery allows different orders to be grouped together and delivered following the best route.”

Luis Pérez del Val, the founder and CEO of Lola Market, suggested the “collaboration” with Cabify will allow it to reach many more users and “take advantage of our infrastructure, making the service accessible to many more people in major cities”.

“With this integration we will be able to further optimise the efforts of our Personal Shoppers,” he also said, sketching the use-case of a Cabify user getting picked up at the airport and on the way to their destination having time to buy their groceries in the app and receive them when they arrive home.

“The possibility of shopping in 1 hour or at the scheduled time is a huge opportunity for this collaboration,” he added.

Cabify also operates its ride-hailing platform in a number of cities in Latin America. We’ve asked if it has any plans to add grocery deliveries for users in that region.

More broadly, the lines between different on-demand city-based ‘convenience’ services continue to blur in Europe and the Americas as different platform giants jockey for position and profitability — chasing the dream of a China-style ‘super app’.

Wayve, a U.K.-based self-driving startup that is notable for its use of deep learning and cameras rather than more-costly Lidar and other sensors to guide vehicles, is gearing up for its next stage of development with a strategic backer in its pocket. Today Ocado — the online grocer that also powers online grocery systems for other retailers like Kroger in the U.S. — announced that it is investing £10 million ($13.6 million at today’s rates) in the startup.

The deal will give Ocado early access to London-based Wayve’s technology, which will be used in a trial in which Wayve’s hardware and software will be fitted on to Ocado vans and trialled for a year in real-world scenarios involving traffic congestion, making awkward turns on small residential streets, and navigating complicated, non-grid street layouts.

Longer term, Ocado wants to use the technology across its wider global footprint: the U.K. company licenses its grocery picking, inventory, and logistics technology, which it calls the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) to other retailers around the world.

The deal is a two-way street in terms of data: Wayve will also be retrofitting Ocado vehicles with its computers and cameras to gather more data about delivery driving in general: the company’s big claim is that it doesn’t rely on costly Lidar and other sensors to operate, and that this also means that it can be used in unfamiliar environments, but it still needs lots of training data for its machine learning to operate that system.

“Ocado Group has been driving innovation in global grocery logistics for decades. Their cutting-edge approach to grocery operations and international reach aligns strongly with Wayve’s culture and global ambitions,” said Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, in a statement. “I am incredibly excited to collaborate with Ocado Group and learn from their vast expertise. Globally, there is huge momentum to transform mobility in grocery operations right now. We are focused on delivering an autonomous last mile solution to support the needs of grocery retailers everywhere. Through this partnership with Ocado Group we aim to unlock autonomous delivery faster in more places worldwide.”

Wayve may be taking a different approach to a lot of the other companies building autonomous systems, but prior to its engagement with Ocado, it already had some credibility, in the form of some deals in its pocket.

It has been working with other big retailers in the U.K. — just last month, Asda (the UK retailer that used to be owned by Walmart but is no longer) kicked off a trial with the company. According to records at Companies House, Wayve has been working with Ocado for some months already.

Wayve has other strategic investors in the company: Virgin — the conglomerate that has stakes in a variety of businesses — in March announced an investment of an undisclosed amount in the startup. In total Wayve has disclosed more than $58 million in funding, with Yann LeCun, Balderton and Firstminute (Brent Hoberman’s VC) among the other investors.

One significant incentive for Wayve’s potential partners is the fact that the startup’s system would be significantly less expensive to implement than one based around Lidar and other sensors. (Wayve sells its approach as “AI software, lean hardware and fleet learning platform for AV 2.0”.)

Given that both approaches are still some way away from full, real-world implementations, it’s important that we continue to see a variety of approaches at this stage to find the best and safest solutions (not just those that are the most cost-effective).

The deal marks one more step for Ocado in building out its next generation of technology, and underscores how the company has placed autonomous systems at the heart of that strategy. Earlier this year it also invested a similar amount of funding in Oxbotica, which builds software to power these systems. (It is not clear how Oxbotica’s technology would work with Wayve’s: we are asking and will update as we learn more.)

“Ocado is on a journey to develop highly intelligent autonomous mobility systems to further transform the operational economics, and proposition, of the Ocado Smart Platform for our OSP retail partners,” said Alex Harvey, chief of advanced technology, Ocado Group, in a statement. “We’ve been impressed with Wayve’s approach to solving this most complex of challenges and are excited to accelerate our capabilities so that our retail partners globally can take advantage of them at the earliest opportunity.”

Earlier this year, GM announced plans to go green by 2035 with the vehicles it produces and by 2030 with how it produces them. Now, the company has announced that it will be early on the “how” part, using 100 percent renewable energy across its US operations by 2025 — five years ahead of schedule.

To achieve the goal, GM said it would increase energy efficiency and source renewables for its facilities. It also plans to create technology to store renewable energy over the medium and long term and “create microgrids that help deploy renewable energy.”

“We know climate action is a priority and every company must push itself to decarbonize further and faster,” said GM Chief Sustainability Officer Kristen Siemen. “That’s what we are doing by aiming to achieve 100 percent renewable energy five years earlier in the US.”

It also detailed plans to work with a company called PJM Interconnection to track energy usage based on carbon output of the grid at any given time. “When the power being supplied consists mostly of fossil fuels, GM can make informed decisions about tapping into stored renewable energy or reduce the amount of power being consumed,” the company said.

As for the vehicles it produces, GM plans to have 30 EVs globally by 2025, and still plans to “eliminate tailpipe emissions for new light-duty vehicles (i.e., cars, SUVs and pickups) by 2035.” The wording suggests that could include hydrogen-powered cars, though GM appears to be focusing mostly on EVs.

GM’s plans to reduce pollution have drifted with the political winds, however. It was one of several automakers that backed the Trump administration’s planto bar California and other states from setting their own pollution and zero-emission requirements. That would have allowed manufacturers to raise fuel efficiency by just 1.5 percent per year, well below the previous administration’s five percent requirement. GM withdrew from the litigation shortly after Joe Biden was elected President.

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

Unagi Scooters has revealed what it claims is the first smart scooter around in the Model Eleven. It includes a bunch of intriguing features, such as audible directions, remote kill and an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) sensor.

You can play your own music or podcasts using the built-in Bluetooth speaker and hear turn-by-turn directions to help you get where you’re going. Unagiteamed up with Google to bring the navigation feature to its iOS and Android app. After you’ve selected your destination and put your phone away, you’ll hear direction prompts through the audio system and see directional signals on the display.

Unagi Scooters

On the security end, there’s a motion sensor alarm to deter potential thieves, as well as GPS tracking. You’ll be able to kill a stolen scooter remotely from within the app.

Perhaps the Model Eleven’s most eye-catching feature is that ADAS sensor in the higher-end version. Unagi says the scooter can tell the difference between people, stop signs, stoplights, cars and other objects. It can warn you of a potential collision through both the audio system and the touchscreen display.

Unagi Scooters

Unagi enlisted industrial designer Yves Béhar to help create the Model Eleven, which it says is the lightest, full suspension scooter on the market in part thanks to its use of long carbon fiber. The foldable scooter features Unagi’s existing dual motor system, a swappable battery system and what the company claims are puncture-proof tires you can easily change when needed.

The standard Model Eleven costs $2,440. For the ASAS model, you’ll need to fork over $2,860. Unagi is initially offering pre-orders through an Indiegogo campaign, but with the likes of Best Buy now selling the company’s scooters, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Model Eleven at retailers in the future.

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

General Motors has spent a lot of time recently talking up the capabilities of its upcoming Ultium battery technology but has said significantly less so about the motors those cells will power. That changed on Tuesday when the company detailed its new Ultium Drive motors. With today’s announcement, the series consists of three different models: a 180 kW front-drive model, a 255 kW rear- and front-drive variant and a 62 kW all-wheel drive assist motor. The first two models are permanent magnet motors GM designed in such a way so as to try and reduce its dependence on heavy rare metals.

The company didn’t speak to the specific torque and power density characters of each motor but claimed they should deliver “excellent” performance on those fronts. It also revealed the 2022 Hummer EV will feature three of the 255 kW models. GM claims they will enable the vehicle to produce a combined 11,500 ft/lb of torque and accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in approximately three seconds.

GM says its engineers designed the motors with scalability in mind. Each one can be made using similar tools and manufacturing techniques. It also found a way to integrate components like the power inverter directly into the motors, a feat the company said should reduce costs and simplify manufacturing.

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

The used car market is getting another major infusion of venture capital today, with one of the faster scaling startups out of India picking up a major round of financing to double down on growth: Cars24 — a site and app that sells users cars and used two-wheeled motorbikes — has raised $450 million, a Series F of $340 million and $110 million in debt. The investment values Cars24 at $1.84 billion post-money, the company said, making it one of the more valuable privately-held used car startups globally.

DST Global, Falcon Edge and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 co-led the Series F, with Tencent and existing investors Moore Strategic Ventures and Exor Seeds also participating. The debt round came from a mix of financial institutions. This fundraise, now confirmed and official, was rumored in past weeks, although at a smaller amount: it didn’t include the debt portion, and some reports were based on regulatory filings for less than the sum ultimately raised.

Vikram Chopra, the CEO who co-founded the company in Gurugram with Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal and Gajendra Jangid, said that the plan will be to use the funds across a range of areas.

They include national and international expansion (it’s already operating in India, Australia and UAE, and has its eyes on more markets); technology (specifically areas like further expanding its virtual appraisal process, as well as more data science around pricing and other details related to sales and after-sales); and financing both to buy in vehicles, as well as to help consumers make purchasing a vehicle a viable economic option.

Cars24 is active in 130 cities in India, and it has sold 400,000 vehicles to date (both cars and motorbikes) with upwards of 13 million monthly visitors on its site. All this gives it claim to being the largest platform of its kind in India. But its ambition is to improve the inefficiencies of selling a car, or buying a used car, in many parts of the globe, not just its home market.

“Buying or selling a car is hard anywhere in the world,” Chopra said in an interview. “It’s just a broken experience everywhere, so we are trying to solve for this.”

This is also where the financing and technology figure significantly. When Cars24 first started out in 2015 in India, Chopra said, it faced the added issue (or opportunity?) of a tricky economic landscape with very low car ownership penetration overall — just 2%, or 2 cars per 100 people, compared to typically between 50 and 80 cars per 100 people in Europe.

“But buying a used car in India is a way for a person to own any car,” Chopra said. In a country like India, “we want to take the penetration to 10 or 15.” He added that the car resale market today in India is around $25 billion, but is on track to soon get to $100 billion.

Cars24 has been built around a “buying-in, fixing up, and then reselling” model similar to that of the real-estate juggernaut Opendoor: it appraises vehicles from individuals looking to sell them; buys them up if an agreed price can be reached; reconditions them; and then re-sells and delivers them to new owners. This model, Chopra said, gives Cars24 an edge over some of the shortcomings that exist with traditional players (both on and offline).

First, it provides a centralized platform, cars24.com and its corresponding app, where users can browse a one-stop-shop inventory that goes beyond their local areas (and local dealers). That inventory is curated and made discoverable using a number of algorithms, and pricing is also determined by Cars24’s technology.

“CARS24 is building a data-enabled tech platform that is organizing the fragmented used car market in India,” said Munish Varma, managing partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “We have been closely tracking its approach and efforts that have disrupted the used car retailing in India.”

“We believe CARS24 is enhancing the customer experience in the used car industry with its sharp focus on technology,” said Sumer Juneja, partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “We will continue to support this growth given our expertise in e-commerce businesses across markets”.

Second, when consumers do make a purchase, they can keep and try out a vehicle for up to seven days “and return it if you don’t like it.”

This, Chopra continued, is in contrast to other used-car sales sites, as well as physical dealers: either they don’t offer trial runs, or (in the case of physical dealers or individual offline sellers), they might give a driver 10 or 15 minutes tops, with someone attending you as you drive the vehicle around: not a great way to discover what you like or don’t like about a vehicle.

It’s also a model that investors believe will give Cars24 an edge over competitors.

“We have studied used car platforms globally and are struck by the similarities we see between CARS24 and analogous businesses that have scaled successfully,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder of Falcon Edge Capital, in a statement. “CARS24 has cemented its first-mover advantage by building wide-ranging supply side moats, which in turn drive demand liquidity on the platform. In positioning itself as a buying and selling solution for consumers, CARS24 drives immense top-of-mind recall. It is rare to find a business as focused on the consumer experience and as driven to ensure it is outstanding via the use of data science and technology. Finally, we are deeply impressed by the founders’ leadership, and are thrilled to back them as they transform the used car industry in India and scale internationally across MENA and SE Asia.”

A used-vehicle marketplace raising a huge amount of money is somewhat ironic given some of the bigger trends in the world of transportation.

Some have theorized that a wave of factors — they include the rise of ubiquitous e-hailing apps like Uber; on-demand car-sharing services like Getaround or Zipcar; a push in urban centers encouraging people to use a wider array of transportation options to offset traffic; and bigger environmental trends that are leading some to eschew gas guzzling autos — would push the world away from car ownership. Yet essentially, Cars24 (and others like it) are extending the life of a lot of older models to keep more vehicles in circulation and private hands.

But using Uber can get pricey and is not the same as having your own wheels, and the desire to have your own vehicle is perhaps at a high-point right now because of Covid-19 and people concerned about spreading or catching the virus, Chopra said.

“It’s definitely not the case in India that less people want to own cars,” he said. “During the pandemic, we have seen a lot of demand, in India specifically.” On new, greener vehicle technology, this is also interesting and will simply present another class of vehicles on Cars24 as adoption of electric vehicles increases, he added. But it’s not all quite there, yet.

The strength of the current opportunity is partly why it seems that we’ve found ourselves crowded with startups and scale-ups hoping to define the new generation of used-car-sale platforms.

Others in the same space that have recently raised money include close competitors like Spinny, also out of India; Cazoo in the UK, which has now gone public; InstaCarro out of Brazil; Kavak out of Mexico; and Carsome from Malaysia, among many others. Carvana, one of the biggest used-car platforms, is also publicly listed and is now valued at nearly $28 billion.

What has been interesting is that each of these big players have up to now carved out very strong markets for themselves in their home countries, and they are only more recently moving to expand internationally. Cars24 has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in funding (it also raised $200 million less than a year ago) in part because its investors think it has what it takes to export, and thus scale, its model beyond the huge market of India.

“CARS24 is at the forefront of transforming the way consumers buy and sell cars by providing a unique end-to-end digital shopping and transaction experience,” said Rahul Mehta, managing partner at DST Global, in a statement. “They have emerged as the undisputed leader in the used car space in India and early traction in international markets is exceeding expectations. We love backing founders who are bold and ambitious thinkers and couldn’t be more excited to enter the second innings of our long-lasting partnership with CARS24.”

One of Gogoro’s battery swapping station

Gogoro is going public. The company, which is best known for its electric Smartscooters and swappable battery infrastructure, announced today it will list on Nasdaq through a merger with Poema Global, a SPAC affiliated with Princeville Capital. The deal sets Gogoro’s enterprise valuation at $2.35 billion and is targeted to close in the first quarter of 2022. The combined company will be known as Gogoro Inc and trade under the symbol GGR.

Assuming no redemptions, Gogoro anticipates making $550 million in proceeds, including an oversubscribed PIPE (private investment in public equity) of over $250 million and $345 million held in trust by Poema Global. Investors in the PIPE include strategic partners like Hon Hai (Foxconn) Technology Group and GoTo, the Indonesian tech giant created through the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia, and new and existing investors like Generation Investment Management, Taiwan’s National Development Fund, Temasek and Dr. Samuel Yin of Ruentex Group, Gogoro’s founding investor.

The capital will be used on Gogoro’s expansion in China, India and Southeast Asia and further development of its tech ecosystem.

Founded ten years ago in Taiwan, Gogoro’s technology includes smart swappable batteries and their charging infrastructure, cloud software that monitors the condition and performance of vehicles and batteries. Apart from its own brands, including Smartscooters and Eeyo electric bikes, Gogoro also makes its platform available through its Powered by Gogoro Network (PBGN), which enables partners to create vehicles that use Gogoro’s batteries and swapping stations.

Gogoro’s SPAC deal comes a few months after it announced major partnerships in China and India. In China, it is working with Yadea and DCJ to build a battery-swapping network, and in India, Hero MotoCorp, one of the world’s largest two-wheel vehicle makers, will launch scooters based on Gogoro’s tech. It also has deals with manufacturers like Yamaha, Suzuki, AeonMotor, PGO and CMC eMOVING.

With these partnerships in place, “we really now need to take our company to the next level,” founder and chief executive officer Horace Luke told TechCrunch. Gogoro decided to go the SPAC route because “you can talk a lot deeper about what the business opportunity is, what the structure, what the partnerships are, so you can properly value a company rather than a quick roadshow. Given our business plans, it gives us a great opportunity to focus on the expansion,” he said.

One of the reasons Gogoro decided to work with Poema is because “their thesis is quite aligned with ours,” said Bruce Aitken, Gogoro’s chief financial officer. “They have, for example, a sustainability fund, so our passion for green and sustainability merges well with that.”

Gogoro says that in less than five years, it has accumulated more than $1 billion in revenue and more than 400,000 subscribers for its battery swapping infrastructure. The company will launch its China pilot program in Hangzhou in the fourth-quarter of this year, followed by about six more cities next year. In India, Hero MotoCorp is currently developing its first Gogoro-powered vehicle and will begin deploying its battery-swapping infrastructure in New Delhi in 2022.

“We see the demand in China as a lot bigger than we first anticipated, so that’s all good news for us, and that’s one of the fundamental reasons why we need to go public’s because we need to raise the capital and resources needed for us to actually contribute in a big way to these markets,” said Luke.

When asked if Gogoro is planning to strike a similar partnership with GoTo to expand into Southeast Asia, Luke said the “important thing is to recognize that Southeast Asia is the third-largest market outside of China and India for two-wheelers. Gogoro has always had the vision to go after these big markets. GoTo, being a great success in Indonesia, their investment in Gogoro will start conversations, but there isn’t anything to announce at this point other than that they’re joining the PIPE.”

In a press statement, Poema Global CEO Homer Sun said, “We believe the technology differentiation Gogoro has developed in combination with the world-class partnerships it has forged will drive significant growth opportunities in the two largest two-wheeler markets in the world. We are committed with working alongside Gogoro’s outstanding management team to support its geographic expansion plans and its transition to a Nasdaq-listed company.”

Uber has lost another legal challenge in Europe over the employment status of drivers: The Court of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, has ruled that drivers for Uber are employed, rather than self employed contractors.

The court also found drivers are covered by an existing collective labor agreement in the country — which pertains to taxi drivers — meaning Uber faces increased costs to comply with the agreement which sets pay requirements and covers benefits like sick pay. (And it may be liable for paying driver back pay in some cases.)

The court also ordered Uber to pay €50,000 in costs.

The ride hailing giant has some 4,000 drivers working on its platform in the Dutch capital.

The Amsterdam court rejected Uber’s customary defence that it’s just a technology platform that connects passengers with taxi service providers — finding instead that drivers are only self employed ‘on paper’.

The judges highlighted the nature of the service being provided by drivers and the fact Uber exerts controls over how they can work and earn through its app and algorithms.

Europe’s top court already ruled back in 2017 that Uber is a transport provider and must comply with local transport laws — so you’d be forgiven for deja vu.

The Dutch lawsuit was filed by the national trade union center, FNV, last year — with the hearing kicking off at the end of June.

In a statement today, the FNV’s VP, Zakaria Boufangacha, said: “This statement shows what we have been saying for years: Uber is an employer and the drivers are employees, so Uber must adhere to the collective labor agreement for Taxi Transport. It is also a signal to The Hague that these types of constructions are illegal and that the law must therefore be enforced.”

Uber has been contacted for a response to the ruling.

At the time of writing the company had not responded — but, per Reuters, Uber said it intends to appeal and “has no plans to employ drivers in the Netherlands”.

In the UK, Uber lost a string of tribunal rulings over its employment classification over a number of years — going on to lose in front of the UK supreme court this February.

Following that Uber said it would treat drivers in the UK as workers, although disputes remain (such as over its definition of working time). In May, Uber also said it would recognize a UK trade union for the first time.

Elsewhere in Europe, however, the company continues to fight employment lawsuits — and to lobby European Union lawmakers to deregulate platform work…

The EU has said it wants to find a way to improve platform work. However it’s not yet clear what any pan-EU ‘reform’ may look like. 

The Commission has been contacted with questions on its platform work initiative.

“Digital labour platforms are clearly worried, evident through investing heavily on their lobbying power and throwing more resources on the EU level. These companies — including Uber of course — have also recently come together to create a new funding lobby group that specifically targeting to influence policies on platform work,” said Jill Toh, a PhD researcher in data rights at the University of Amsterdam, talking to TechCrunch after the Amsterdam ruling.

“We saw how Uber wielded and amended laws in their Prop 22 campaign in California, and together with other companies in Europe, they’re attempting to do so again. It’s disheartening to see that the Commission in its two consultations on platform worker regulation has only been talking to tech companies and has held no meetings with trade unions or other platform work representatives.”

“All of this is incredibly problematic and concerning especially if the EC consultations result in a directive on platform work. Overall, the wins in the courts are important for workers, but there remains the issue of corporate power and influence in Brussels, as well as the lack of public enforcement to these court decisions,” she added.