The future of transportation is in a moment of flux, and that continues to provide opportunities for startups to build solutions provide new ways for us to get from A to B. In the latest development, a startup out of the UK called Drover that provides access to flexible car subscriptions for private users — longer than a typical rental, shorter than a lease or purchase, and easy to shorten or extend as needed — is announcing some funding to continue its growth.

The company has picked up £20.5 million ($25.7 million) in a round of funding co-led by three firms:  Target Global, RTP Global (the Russian company formerly known as ru-Net) and Autotech Ventures. New investors Channel 4 Ventures and Rider Global, as well as previous backers Cherry Ventures, BP Ventures, Partech, Version One and Forward Partners all also participated. Drover is not disclosing its valuation. It’s raised £27.5 million to date.

The plan, CEO and founder Felix Leuschner said in an interview, is to use the money to continue investing in the technology it uses to calibrate prices and personalise offers for individuals, as well as to hire more talent and gear up for more expansion. Founded in the UK, Drover opened France earlier this year. In theory, wherever cars are sold and used is game, and Drover’s growth to date seems to point to it being a strong candidate for driving ahead to new frontiers.

That’s because despite the huge drop in the economy in the last several months because of COVID-19, perhaps because of its flexible model (fitting for when you don’t know what is coming around the corner) Drover has seen business go up. “May and June have been our best two months on record for us since launching three years ago,” said Leuschner, who added that it is continuing to see an acceleration in the business, doubling in revenues year on year. “Every month should be the best month when you’re a growing startup, but we’ve seen acceleration even beyond that.”

Car ownership is going through an interesting phase at the moment. It was not that long ago when many people believed that the Ubers of the world, combined with other innovations in transportation like autonomous driving, improved public and communal transport models, on-demand rentals and new vehicles like electric bikes and scooters, would all combine to make it easier for individuals to forego traditional private car ownership altogether — the idea being that collectively, they would provide an economical, convenient and eco-friendly enough mix to make buying and maintaining a car obsolete.

That idea might still have some mileage longer term (excuse the pun!), but current events have thrown it for a loop: the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that people are staying at home a lot more, and when they do go out, many are proactively eschewing transportation forms that involve sharing space or touching surfaces that others have touched.

“We think this will lead to a renaissance for cars,” Leuschner said — a fact echoed by its investors.

“Drover offers an attractive and affordable alternative to car ownership, which has proven to be extremely robust during the recent COVID-19 crisis with record high subscriber bookings,” said Anton Inshutin, partner at RTP Global, in a statement. “We fully share in Felix’s vision for Drover as the future European leader in the car-as-a-service market, and offered our support to the company in both Series A and Series B financings.”

But even without a global health pandemic, there were a number of signals that pointed to the fact that “disruption” might not have been a quick and seamless transition anyway. We’re a long way off from actual autonomous cars (you know, the ones that are predicted to be so expensive and tricky to maintain that most will not own them but will subscribe to services to be driven around). The Ubers of the world haven’t actually sorted out their unit economics. Scooters can be dangerous. Etc.

For better or worse, all of that brings us back to private cars, and the opportunity to play around with different ways of providing these to individuals, opening the door to companies like Drover to tap those who may have started to part with the idea of owning a car outright, but have yet to let go of the idea of using a private car altogether.

Target demographics, Leuschner said, are people in their 20s and 30s who have some disposable income for a car and are more likely to be keen to pay the premium on incremental ownership to forego total cost of ownership, if it proves to be cheaper than leasing for the one-month minimum of usage on Drover (which appears to be Drover’s main competitor).

Not all is Fair

Others have attempted to tackle the subscription car market before, also focusing on customers that want to have the use of cars for more than just an hour or a day or even a week but don’t want to pay out to own them outright or get locked into long leases.

One of those — Fair in the US — looked to be especially promising with big-name founders raising hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and debt from companies including Softbank. But it ultimately faced a spectacular implosion, unable to get the business model right.

Leuschner contends that while Drover might sound like the same model as Fair, it’s actually a very different vehicle on the inside. For starters, some two-thirds of its inventory is sourced from dealerships, OEMs and others that distribute cars.

They use Drover as another channel, in part to diversify distribution, and in part as a way of tapping stock that it’s not able to sell through other channels. The remaining one-third is bought in by Drover, which means that the startup gets better margins on those vehicles as the owner of the vehicles, but also means higher risk for the startup — one of the areas where Drover’s technology comes into play.

“It’s an optimisation game for us,” said Leuschner. “When you have open inventory you get a better margin but more risk. We are at that point where we know what the best vehicles are for our customer base and we have a lot of data and trading history. We’re comfortable taking some risk and higher margin structure in those cases.”

Another key difference is that Drover is also only focusing squarely on private individuals, rather than working on subscriptions for professional drivers. That has meant that the drop off in business from those users, which some car leasing companies have seen as a knock-on effect from the fall in demand on ridesharing platforms, hasn’t had an impact for Drover.

It’s nonetheless a big market with many opportunities for growth. Online car sales are still only one percent of all sales in the UK, he said, which is far below the rate of sales for retail goods at 20% (one reason that might be obvious: the bigger the ticket, the more likely people will want to see the goods in person). All of that is gradually shifting — not least because more recognised names are coming into the fold, and providing more legitimacy and guarantees in the process, and that opens the door to companies like Drover, too

“By tapping into ongoing digitalisation and on-demand trends in tandem, Felix and his team are well poised to aggressively seize market share from traditional car retailers,” said Ben Kaminski, partner at Target Global, in a statement. “This new capital injection is a testament to both the team and the tech behind Drover which is disrupting the car-ownership model for the better. We’re excited to offer our support as Drover continues to scale throughout Europe.”

Daniel Hoffer, MD at Autotech Ventures added in his own statement: “After studying the European landscape closely, we believe that Drover’s unique focus on a next-generation customer experience enabled by an asset-light approach has the potential to revolutionize how Europeans relate to car ownership. Bolstered by strong execution, Drover is poised to emerge stronger as a result of COVID-19 and recession-driven changes to consumer preferences in the ground transportation domain.”

I have to admit, I was an e-bike virgin. Sure, I’d tried out Uber’s Jump bikes and similar e-bikes, but these are more like normal bikes “with a little extra help.” So when I was offered the chance to try out the new VanMoof S3, an e-bike that has literally been built from the ground up, I was excited at how different the experience might be.

Perhaps more significantly, I had a particular task in mind for it. In the current COVID-19 pandemic much has been made of cities being transformed into proverbial deserts, as traffic and pedestrians disappeared. Now, with many cities coming out of lockdown, governments have advised their citizens to go back to work, desperate to get their economies moving. And they are pushing cycling as a viable alternative to public transport, where the virus is more likely to be found. So what better time would there be to try out an e-bike as a viable alternative to commuting to and from the suburbs of a large city?

Indeed, the U.K. government has unleashed a £2 billion package to create a new era for cycling and walking.

In the U.S., New York City recently committed to adding protected bike lanes across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Berlin is extending some of its already extensive bike lanes. And Milan will introduce a five-mile cycle lane to cut car use after the lockdown. New York City has reported a 50% increase in cycling compared to this time last year, and cycling in Philadelphia has increased by more than 150% during the COVID-19 outbreak.

But much of the official advice is to avoid public transport where possible, due to the near-impossibility of social distancing.

So with cycling a viable option in many cities, but distance still the old adversary, many consumers are looking to e-bikes as a way to kill two birds with one stone. Not only can you socially distance, but you can also take the bikes on much longer commutes than is possible with traditional bikes and, dare I say it, traditional legs.

With London still on lockdown recently, I decided to try out the new VanMoof S3 on the deserted streets, cycling from the deep London suburbs right into the empty center of the city.

The bike
For starters, it’s worth saying that the VanMoof S3 is a handsome bike. As a significant upgrade to its previous version, it is similar in its good looks, but what’s “under the bonnet” is what counts.

The S3 is a full-size bike with 28-inch wheels. It has a 24-inch wheeled sister called the X3, which is more compact and it therefore technically “nippier” in the city; however, I found the S3 perfectly suited to London. In fact, its “chopper-like” handling felt very reassuring over London’s bumpy and often unkempt roads.

The S3 and X3 both cost $2,000. Both also come with four-speed automatic shifting and hydraulic brakes. They are cheaper than the previous S2 and X2 models, which only had two-speed automatic shifting and cable brakes. Although the frame construction is unchanged, VanMoof says it has achieved savings by making production more efficient. The bikes weigh about 41 pounds, which is very acceptable for an electric bike. You can get front and rear racks as accessories for pannier bags, cargo boxes or a child seat.

The range per charge varies somewhere between 37 and 93 miles, depending which power level you select on the smartphone app. Level 0 turns off the electric pedal assist, leaving the bike quite heavy to pedal, and level 4 boosts the bike continuously. For my jaunt around London I used Level 4 all the time and managed to get a full, and quick, 45 miles out of the bike without even breaking a sweat, showing that even the heaviest users would be well served by the S3. If you are concerned about your battery charge level, this is displayed on top of the cross-bar, which also shows you current speed. It takes four hours to charge the bike to 100%, but just under an hour and a half to get to 50%.

The VanMoof is driven by a front hub motor and in “European mode” gives a continuous power of 250 watts. But to get more speed you can select the U.S. setting, tick a disclaimer and get 350W of continuous power, with peak power-hitting 500W via the Boost button on the right handlebar. That means you can take off at the lights very easily and quickly get ahead of the traffic, while the normal pedal assist will suffice for most needs. The Boost is particularly useful when going up hills, which the S3 seemed to devour on my ride through London.

Thieves will find this bike frustrating. The rear brake locks when you tap the button near the rear hub. All parts apart from the handlebars and seat post require a special tool to undo. The headlight and taillight are integrated into the frame. The tires are large and puncture-resistant and covered by large metal fenders with integrated mud flaps.

If a thief tries to wheel away the bike when it’s locked it will immobilize the rear wheel and belt out a loud alarm. If the thief persists, a more shrill alarm will sound, the headlights and taillight will flash, a notification will appear on your phone and the bike will refuse to work at all. Only VanMoof can then re-enable the bike using the bike’s built-in cellular data connection and Bluetooth. The bike will sense the phone in your pocket as you approach, allowing you to unlock the rear wheel — and the app always shows the bike’s current location.

VanMoof’s three-year, $340 “Peace of Mind” plan means that it guarantees to find or replace your bike if it gets stolen (assuming it was locked). In the meantime, you will get a bike on loan, although this plan is only available in cities where VanMoof has a presence.

One possible drawback of having the battery welded inside the bike is the necessity of needing to be near a power outlet every time it needs charging. This drawback will be limited to those who are unable to take the bike up to an apartment, or fear for the bike’s safety if it has to charge outside a house. Yes, the hard-wired battery might well be a security “feature,” but this may well be a deal breaker for many, forcing them to look to other bikes which have removable batteries. That said, you are likely to pay more for the bike in the first place.

The journey
As for my test around London, to put the bike through its paces I cycled from the deep suburbs right into the heart of the West End. I’d like to say people asked me about the bike, but no one was around to impress! At the time of the test, London was in full lockdown and eerily quiet.

Hitting the Boost button felt like the “Punch it, Chewy” moment form Star Wars, as I pulled away from traffic. I unwittingly rode the bike at Level 4 all the way there and back, which meant that after about four hours and about 45 miles I ran out of charge on the last mile home. However, this was not a problem as I could cycle the last leg, despite it being a bit of a strain without any electrical assistance. Level 2 or 3 would probably have been a more ideal combination of power and range.

When you drive a Tesla you drive differently, zipping in and out of lanes. Similarly with this bike I realized I could overtake “normal” bikes effortlessly. Overall I’d say this is an excellent electric bike.

VanMoof, which was was founded in 2009 by Taco and Ties Carlier, two Dutch brothers, has now attracted a €12.5 million ($13.5 million) investment from London VC Balderton Capital and SINBON Electronics, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer which is VanMoof’s bike assembly partner. So expect to see this company ramp up its presence across Europe and the U.S.

Admittedly they are not the only VC-backed e-bike on the market. Brussels-based Cowboy is an e-bike startup which only appeared in 2017 but which has since raised $19.5 million from Tiger Global and London’s Index Ventures.

It looks like the e-bike wars have begun, they have.

Ford is finally taking the wraps off the reborn Bronco next week. Literally. The company has teased the vehicle for months, showing a camouflaged SUV bouncing through rocky streams and charging over dusty hills. This week, the wraps come off and the sheet metal will finally be exposed.

The launch of the Bronco looks to be a masterclass in nostalgia. For the last few weeks, Ford has been feeding journalists with media assets — pictures, staged interviews, and upcoming advertisements. And I’ve yet to see the full vehicle because in the end, Ford is not relying on the Bronco itself to drive sales, but rather, is digging deep into the power of nostalgia to move the Bronco off lots.

Recalling the past can help companies develop a unified theme around a product or service. And in this case with the Bronco, only recalling part of the past helps companies dial in messaging. With Ford, the company wants consumers in agreement: this is a tough vehicle and it’s always been a tough vehicle. Forget about OJ, these adverts say. Instead, look at how the Bronco was used by two burly men bounding over the rolling hills of a cattle ranch. Ford is digging deep into American lore to show the Bronco as a rugged conqueror of the frontier instead of a conqueror of parking lot flowerbeds.

The Bronco is an iconic American vehicle. It wasn’t the best selling, nor the best performing vehicle in its class. It had reliability issues, and was often underpowered and outclassed by competitors. And yet, like the Mustang, it was a hit for Ford. In 1966 Ford unveiled the Bronco as a competitor to the Jeep CJ-5 and International Harvester Scout. Ford took the Bronco racing, and racked up wins in long-distance endurance races. Over its 31-year run, the Bronco remained true to itself as a two-door, sport utility vehicle.

The upcoming model is set to be different than the past. Ford is relaunching the Bronco as a family of vehicles with three models at launch. Little is known about the difference at this time, though the family appears to include a two-door off-roader, four door version and an entry-level sport model.

The launch of the new Bronco is similar to how Ford launched the retro Mustang in 2005. At the time, the Mustang was coming off decades of stale designs and lagging sales. The Fox body Mustang of the 80s was boring at best (though the 5.0 engine is notable), and the swooping design of the ’90s model was uninspired. In 1999, Ford launched a sharp, modern take on the Mustang, and yet in a few years, it was time for something new.

Karma Automotive has raised a $100 million lifeline from outside investors, as reported by Bloomberg, with the struggling electric vehicle maker’s fortunes likely buoyed by the current market optimism on other EV companies including Tesla. Karma is the reincarnated version of Fisker Automotive, which previously faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Wanxiang Group in 2014.

Karma Automotive has made more progress than Fisker ever did, including actually delivering around 500 of its inaugural Revero electric sport sedan in 2019. The company will be continuing to sell the Revero, which retails staring at around $140,000, and will also be looking to add a high horsepower GTE version, as well as a supercar for an even higher-tier customer.

The automaker also says that it’s in discussions with a partner for a commercial delivery truck, which it intends to develop in prototype form by year’s end. There are a number of different companies pursuing delivery vans for use by courier companies including UPS and FedEx, and the increase in e-commerce spending does present an opportunity for multiple players to succeed in this category, even as there is a rush on in terms of entrants.

Karma will also seek to leverage and extend the benefits of its fresh investment by shopping around its EV platform to other automakers and OEMs, the company says, and also will eventually expand beyond pure EVs to hybrid fuel vehicles. In short, it sounds like Karma is willing to try just about everything and anything to chart a path towards profitability, but time will tell if that’s intelligent opportunism, or scattershot desperation.

This morning as the markets rally, shares of Lyft are up 3% while Uber shares are up 6%.

Why is Uber so far ahead of Lyft, its domestic ride-hailing rival that is suffering from the same economic impacts? It appears that investors are heartened that Uber has closed its Postmates acquisition after both firms danced around each other for some time, leading to all sorts of leaks that wound up being not coming true.

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This explains why Uber investors are excited about Uber’s Postmates buy; what about the smaller company is making Uber shares so buoyant? Let’s take a walk through the numbers this morning.

If we reexamine Uber Eats’ recent growth, contrast it to Ubers Rides’ own growth, mix in Eats’ profitability improvements along with Postmates’ own financial results, we can start to see why public investors might be heartened by the deal.

Afterward, we’ll toss in a note about how Postmates may provide Uber some narrative ammunition heading into earnings. This exercise should be fun, and a good break from our recent IPO coverage. Let’s get into the numbers.

Growth, losses

In case you are behind, Uber is buying Postmates for $2.65 billion in an all-cash deal. Uber estimated that it would issue around 84 million shares to pay for the transaction. At its share price as of the time of writing, the deal is worth $2.72 billion at Uber’s newer share price. For reference, that price tag is about 4.8% of Uber’s current-moment market cap.

To understand why Uber would spend nearly 5% of its worth to buy a smaller rival, let’s remind ourselves of the performance of the group that it will plug into, namely Uber Eats.

From Uber’s Q1 2020 financial reporting, the following chart will ground our exploration, showing how Eats has performed in recent quarters:

Via Uber’s financial reporting. Q1 2019 on the left, Q1 2020 on the right.

Distressed satellite constellation operator OneWeb, which had entered bankruptcy protection proceedings at the end of March, has completed a sale process, with a consortium led by the UK Government as the winner. The group, which includes funding from India’s Bharti Global – part of business magnate Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Enterprises – plan to pursue OneWeb’s plans of building out a broadband internets satellite network, while the UK would also like to potentially use the constellation for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services in order to replace the EU’s sat-nav resource, which the UK lost access to in January as a result of Brexit.

The deal involves both Bharti Global and the UK government putting up around $500 million each, respectively, with the UK taking a 20 percent equity stake in OneWeb, and Bharti supplying the business management and commercial operations for the satellite firm.

OneWeb, which has launched a total of 74 of its planned 650 satellite constellation to date, suffered lay-offs and the subsequent bankruptcy filing after an attempt to raise additional funding to support continued launches and operations fell through. That was reportedly due in large part to majority private investor SoftBank backing out of commitments to invest additional funds.

The BBC reports that while OneWeb plans to essentially scale back up its existing operations, including reversing lay-offs, should the deal pass regulatory scrutiny, there’s a possibility that down the road it could relocate some of its existing manufacturing capacity to the UK. Currently, OneWeb does its spacecraft manufacturing out of Florida in a partnership with Airbus.

OneWeb is a London-based company already, and its constellation can provide access to low latency, high-speed broadband via low Earth orbit small satellites, which could potentially be a great resource for connecting UK citizens to affordable, quality connections. The PNT navigation services extension would be an extension of OneWeb’s existing mission, but theoretically, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to leverage planned in-space assets to serve a second purpose.

Also, while the UK currently lacks its own native launch capabilities, the country is working towards developing a number of spaceports for both vertical and horizontal take-off – which could enable companies like Virgin Orbit, and other newcomers like Skyrora, to establish small-sat launch capabilities from UK soil, which would make maintaining and extending in-space assets like OneWeb’s constellation much more accessible as a domestic resource.

It’s been a busy last 24 hours or so for on-demand delivery company Postmates. According to reporting, the company is reviving its IPO plans, possibly selling to Uber, or perhaps looking to go public with the help of a special purpose acquisition vehicle, also known as a SPAC.

For Postmates, a company caught somewhere between DoorDash’s cash-fueled rise and Uber’s ability to lose hundreds of millions on its Uber Eats delivery service every quarter, multiples options are likely welcome.

Postmates first filed to go public in early 2019, but its IPO failed to materialize. The company was also reported to be pursuing a sale in 2019 after it had filed to go public. An M&A exit also failed to appear.

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But 2020 is very different from 2019. With GrubHub’s bidding war behind us, Uber appears hungry for more volume, and the IPO market is surprisingly hot given the global pandemic. Postmates may have a number of viable options in front of it, instead of a continued grind as a private company.

The IPO market

So what to do?

Despite some blips, if Postmates has managed anything like revenue growth acceleration because people have been staying home and ordering more food and other goods, the company’s IPO story could prove attractive. And if so, the firm could perhaps best what a cash-burning company can afford to part with in an M&A transaction by going public.

Let’s check the tape. It’s a commonly known fact that the public markets have favored technology companies this year, especially software companies. For many venture-backed companies, this is great news. For Postmates, it’s a slightly different equation, as its margins won’t match those of software companies, nor will its revenue recur in a similar fashion.

But, there are IPOs from this year that we can point to featuring companies that also do not feature strong margins or recurring revenue that did great. So, there is an IPO path for venture-backed startups and unicorns to go public even if they are not software entities.

Vroom

Crowdsourced navigation platform Waze, which is owned by Google and yet remains a separate, but intertwined product relative to Google Maps, just got one of its biggest UI and design overhauls ever. The new look is much more colourful, and also foregrounds the ability for individual drivers to share their current emotions with Moods, a set of user-selectable icons (with an initial group of 30) that can reflect how you’re feeling as you’re driving.

Moods may seem like a relatively small user personalization option, but it’s actually a very interesting way for Waze to add another data vector to the crowdsourced info it can gather. In a blog post describing the feature, Waze Head of Creative Jake Shaw talks about the added Mood set, which builds upon the Moods feature previously available in Waze and greatly expands the set of expressible emotions.

“The fundamental idea of Moods has always been the same: to reflect how users feel on the road,” he wrote. “We had a lot of fun exploring the range of emotions people feel out there. A dozen drivers could all feel different in the exact same situation, so we set about capturing as many of those feelings as possible. This was critical to us, because the Moods act as a visual reminder of all of us out there, working together.”

Extending Moods to be more varied and personalized definitely has the advantage of being more visually-appealing, and that could serve to boost its engagement among the Waze user community. They don’t mention this explicitly, but you can imagine that combining this as a sort of sentiment measure along with other crowd-reported navigational details including traffic status, weather conditions, construction and more could ultimately help Waze build a much richer dataset and resulting analyses for use in road planning, transportation infrastructure management and more.

This update also includes a full refresh of all the app’s interfaces, using colored shapes based around a grid system, and new icons for reported road hazards. It’s a big, bright changes, and further helps distinguish Waze’s visual identity from that of its sibling Google Maps, too.

Shaw talk repeatedly about the value of the voice of the community in informing this redesign, and it definitely seems interested in fostering further a sense of participation in that community, as distinct from other transportation and navigation apps. Oddly, this serves as a reminder that Google’s most successful social networking product, with the exception maybe of YouTube depending on how you define it, may well be Waze.

Amazon has announced that it will acquire Zoox, a self-driving startup founded in 2014, which has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and which aims to develop autonomous driving technology, including vehicles, for the purposes of providing a full-stack solution for ride-hailing.

Zoox will continue to exist as a standalone business according to Amazon’s announcement, with current CEO Aicha Evans continuing in her role, as well as CTO and co-founder Jesse Levinson. Their overall company mission will also remain the same, the release notes.

The Wall Street Journal had reported at the end of May that Amazon was looking at Zoox as a potential acquisition target, and that the deal had reached the advanced stages.

Zoox has chosen one of the most expensive possible paths in the autonomous driving industry, seeking to build a fit-for-purpose self-driving passenger vehicle from the ground up, along with the software and AI ended to provide its autonomous driving capabilities. Zoox has done some notable cost cutting in the past year, and it brought in CEO Evans in early 2019 from Intel, likely with an eye towards leveraging her experience to help the company move towards commercialization.

With a deep-pocketed parent like Amazon, Zoox should gain the runway it needs to keep up with its primary rival – Waymo, which originated as Google’s self-driving car project, and which counts Google owner Alphabet as its corporate owner.

Amazon has been working on its own autonomous vehicle technology projects, including its last-mile delivery robots, which are six-wheeled sidewalk-treading bots designed to carry small packages to customer homes. The company has also invested in autonomous driving startup Aurora, and it has tested self-driving trucks powered by self-driving freight startup Embark.

The Zoox acquisition is specifically aimed at helping the startup “bring their vision of autonomous ride-hailing to reality,” according to Amazon, so this doesn’t look to be immediately focused on Amazon’s logistics operations for package delivery. But Zoox’s ground-up technology, which includes developing zero-emission vehicles built specifically for autonomous use, could easily translate to that side of Amazon’s operations.

Meanwhile, if Zoox really does remain on course for passenger ride-hailing, that could open up a whole new market for Amazon – one which would put it head-to-head with Uber and Lyft once the autonomous driving technology matures.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been hyping a potential battery day for quite a while now, and it looks like we should see it happen within the next few months – Musk said on Twitter that September 15 is the “tentative date” for the “Tesla Shareholder Meeting & Battery Day,” which will include the usual shareholder meeting as well as a tour of the automaker’s cell production system for the batteries that provide the power for its vehicles.

The so-called ‘Battery Day’ has already run into a few delays, after originally being planned for April of this year. It’s been bumped to May, and subsequently June, but Musk’s latest timeline of September seems a lot more realistic given the current state of global affairs due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, as well as Tesla’s own complicated issues with its handling of COVID-19, local government shutdown orders and employee health and safety.

Battery day has been modified from an earlier event planned to also include a powertrain component, but Musk made the switch to keep the focus more narrowly on the work Tesla has been doing to improve its battery performance and output. The Tesla Model S recently because the first and only electric vehicle to achieve a 400 mile plus EPA certification rating for range, and Tesla has reportedly been working on new, lower-cost and long-lived electric battery technology that Reuters reported earlier this year it plans to introduce to its China-made Model 3 vehicles either later this year or early next.

This would be the first significant event Tesla has hosted since its Cybertruck unveiling in 2019. Anything the automaker does with respect to its battery technology will draw a lot of attention, given that it’s likely the company’s most important competitive advantage in terms of continuing to win more customers away from internal combustion fuel vehicles.

SpaceX is in the process of building out its Starlink network of low Earth orbit small satellites that will provide the backbone of a global, high-bandwidth, low-latency internet service – but there’s a clock running out in terms of at least one potential source of funding for it to recoup revenue from those efforts: The FCC requires that anyone participating in its $16 billion federal funding auction for rural broadband access demonstrate latency under a 100-million threshold, but anyone who hopes to quality must meet that threshold within the next month.

The FCC has issued a report (via Engadget) on the Phase 1 auction for this lucrative funding, serving as advance notice ahead of its actual auction date of October 29, 2020 – but companies have to submit their applications to compete for said auction by July 15. In the report. the FCC acknowledges that any satellite provider operating at LEO has a potential advantage over providers who are using much higher altitude, geostationary satellites instead, but also qualifies that by noting that in order to pass the stated threshold they must also pass it taking into account delays introduced by relay stations, hubs and destination terminals.

SpaceX, for its part, believes that the FCC needn’t doubt its network’s abilities, and says that in fact it’s aiming for latency times under the 20 millisecond mark, which is better in some cases than traditional terrestrial cable-backed bandwidth networks.

In terms of deployment, SpaceX has been moving fast with Starlink, especially in 2020. Thus far, it has launched seven missions this year for the constellation, sending up a total of 418 satellites – which is actually more than any other private satellite operator even has currently working. The sprint is about building the network to the point where it can begin to serve customers in the U.S. and Canada by sometime later this year, and then expand to more customers globally later on.

SpaceX seems to be on track to make that happen, but the requirements for this more lucrative tranche of government funding might be too soon relative to those goals. Still, there are other federal contracts related to this initiative that it would be eligible for later on.

As Uber and Lyft reached their public-market nadir in mid-March, you would have been forgiven for thinking they were heading under. If the markets are somewhat efficient, why else would America’s top two ride-hailing companies shed two-thirds and three-quarters of their value, respectively, in just over a month?

As we know now, both companies quickly recovered and have since regained much of their former value. The two public firms have guided for a sharply unprofitable Q2 2020, but investors appear content to see their improving results as evidence that the worst is behind them.

Airbnb is another company that could be out of the worst of it and shared two data points lately that cast positive light on its operations. Three of the most-famous American unicorns that were hit among the hardest by the pandemic, then, are coming back to a degree.

Today I want to parse the three companies’ public notes regarding their performance so we can track how their fortunes have changed. This will help us understand how much have things improved since their collective value reached all-time lows. And, it turns out that Uber and Lyft might have some good news for Airbnb shareholders.

Uber, Lyft

In mid-March, on the same day that Uber and Lyft shares came off their record lows, Uber told investors that “ride volume has gone down by as much as 60%-70% in recent days in the hardest-hit cities like Seattle,” but that it could get through “even in the worst-case scenario of rides down by 80% for the year” with enough cash to survive.