“Flying cars” — airborne vehicles designed for urban and other short-distance commutes to replace conventional private automobiles — are (at best) still years away from being a reality, with significant safety, technology and business model hurdles to clear before they ever hit the sky. Now, sources tell us that one of more promising startups in the field, the German startup Lilium, wants to put itself into pole position, by ramping up its financial position.

Lilium has been talking to investors to raise a big round of funding, between $400 million and $500 million, according to those familiar with its plans. “It’s a very large round at a very large valuation,” one VC told TechCrunch.

It’s not clear yet who is investing in this latest round, or what that valuation might be.

Lilium already has some deep-pocketed investors behind it. In addition to WeChat owner and Chinese internet giant Tencent; it counts Atomico, founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, as a repeat investor. Obvious Ventures, the early-stage VC fund co-founded by Twitter’s Ev Williams; LGT, the international private banking and asset management group; and e24, a fund from Christian Reber (co-founder of Wunderlist and now Pitch), have also backed it, among others.

In all, Lilium has raised over $100 million in financing to date in previous rounds. But given that its plans involve not only building ground-breaking aircraft but then operating them in fleets, that’s not nearly enough to establish its service and have the impact that founder and chief executive, Daniel Wiegand, hopes he can have.

“It’s not only a benefit in terms of relieving society from transit traffic, but the much, much bigger benefit would be that everyone can use it and that people can get to their destination five times quicker, basically a five times increase of their daily radius of life,” Wiegand said in 2017. “This connectivity is going to be a huge benefit to society but also economic growth.”

Tencent, Atomico and Obvious were among the investors backing Lilium in its most recent $90 million raise. Sources tell us that Tencent is again in this latest round, and the startup has been pitching potential new investors since at least this spring, visiting with firms in Silicon Valley.

It seems this latest, bigger round has yet to close. The target size implies the involvement of big names, with big funds behind them.

“I sincerely hope they get the funds to transform transportation,” one source said.

When (if) the round closes, that would make it the biggest fundraising to date for flying taxis, an area that has lots of potential, but is still far from tested — a fact that one source suggested could contribute to the longer period needed to close the outsized round.

“It’s a known secret how hard it is to raise growth rounds in this space because it’s such a new and untested market,” an executive from another air-taxi startup noted. “Early investments were betting on the market vision and the concept of radically new mobility, but now it’s dawning on investors and others that it’s also a regulation play, and more.” That translates potentially to sustained costs, “and that may be one reason why it’s taking some time.”

Add to that the ambition at hand — designing completely new transportation hardware, then manufacturing the aircraft at scale, and then finally building a transportation, taxi-style service around them — and you can start to see why the round might be very large.

Lilium, Atomico, Tencent and Obvious all declined to comment for this story. We’ll update the post if that changes.

Up, up and away

It’s been a little over two years since Lilium and others in the same space such as Volocopter began publicly discussing their visions for the future of mobility alongside incredibly well-funded industry giants like Uber and established aerospace companies like Airbus, Boeing, and others.

Lilium raised its first round of funding in December 2016 and only a few months later, Uber convened its first Elevate conference, which included discussions on the transportation industry’s flying future.

Since those initial discussions, the companies developing technologies and services to bring those plans to fruition have made significant strides.

Earlier this year Lilium announced the first successful flight for a new five-seat electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle. Others are readying pilot projects in their first launch cities, with the timeline for first full-launch services currently hovering around the three-year mark from now (note: dates do get pushed back).

For Lilium and its competitors, the development of completely new, air-borne vehicles are a means to solving a specific problem: roads in and between cities are too congested with traffic; and electric, air-based options can be a way to offset that situation in an environmentally-friendly way.

Many companies building these new craft are considering taxi-style services as the first or primary point of market entry because — similar to fully-autonomous cars — the cost per vehicle will likely be too high for most individuals to consider buying for private/sole use, notwithstanding the safety features of being able to manage a full fleet autonomously that would be harder to execute with single users (who would have to be pilots, in the case of flying cars).

Lilium’s new vehicle claims to have a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour and a 300 kilometer range, which would make it capable of covering longer distances than its competitors. Lilium says this is partly because it’s designed it in the form of a small jet aircraft instead of mimicking the mechanics and form factor of drones or helicopters (the latter is the approach that Volocopter, another startup out of Germany backed by the likes of Intel and Daimler, is taking). The fixed-wing design of the plane means that it can rely on lift to stay aloft, cutting down on the power demands on the electric 2,000 horsepower engines when it’s aloft.

“This efficiency, which is comparable to the energy usage of an electric car over the same distance, means the aircraft would not just be capable of connecting suburbs to city centres and airports to main train stations, but would also deliver affordable high-speed connections across entire regions,” Lilium said in a statement at the time.

But physics is just one part of the complex system of moving pieces that would need to come together to get Lilium (or any of its rivals) off the ground.

For one, any system will need to integrate with existing air traffic control infrastructure as well — as local and national regulators grapple with increasingly crowded skies.

Another involves the logistical components to operate a service. The company also established a software engineering base in London to help build out the fleet management software and mobile phone application that will connect customers to the jets for transit, and it has been hiring.

Although we have yet to see any commercial services emerge built on the concept of fleets of providing short/medium-distance, air-based taxi-style transportation, there are a number of hopefuls that have identified the opportunity of both designing aircraft and building services around them.

Companies like Kitty Hawk, eHang, Joby and Uber all hope to play a role in offering short-range flights as an affordable alternative to road-based transportation. (Blade and SkyRyse, two other air taxi services of sorts, are offering more conventional helicopters and other vessels in limited launches for well-heeled travelers willing to spend the money.)

Last week at San Francisco Disrupt 2019, Kitty Hawk announced its latest vehicle, Heaviside. It’s an electric aircraft designed to be a personalised vehicle, less obtrusive than a helicopter, ableto go anywhere and land anywhere fast and quietly, and as easy to operate as “pushing a button,” according to CEO Sebastian Thrun.

Once you get up high enough, you don’t have to worry about a lot of the obstacles like pedestrians and traffic jams that plague autonomous cars. That’s why Sebastian Thrun, Google’s self-driving team founder turned CEO of flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk, said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF today that we should expect true autonomy to succeed in the air before the road.

“I believe we’re going to be done with self-flying vehicles before we’re done with self-driving cars” Thrun told TechCrunch reporter Kirsten Korosec.

Why? “If you go a bit higher in the air then all the difficulties with not hitting stuff like children and bicycles and cars and so on just vanishes . . . Go above the buildings, go above the trees, like go where the helicopters are!” Thrun explained, but noted personal helicopters are so noisy they’re being banned in some places like Napa, California.

That proclamation has wide reaching implications for how cities are planned and real estate is bought. We may need more vertical takeoff helipads sooner than we needed autonomous car-only road lanes. More remote homes in the forest that have only a single winding road that reaches them like those in Big Sur, California might suddenly become more accessible and thereby appealing to the affluent since they could just take a self-flying car to the city or office.

The concept could also have wide-reaching implications for the startup industry. Obviously Thrun’s own company Kitty Hawk would benefit from not being too early to market. Kitty Hawk announced its Heaviside vehicle today that’s designed to be ultra quiet. If the prophecy comes true, Uber which is investing in vertical take-off vehicles could also be in a better position than Lyft and other ride-hailing player focused on cars.

To make sure its vehicles don’t get banned and potentially pave the way for more aerial autonomy, Kitty Hawk recently recruited former FAA Administrator Mike Huerta as an advisor.

Eventually, Thrun says that because cars have to navigate indirect streets but in the air “we can go in a straight line, we believe we will be roughly a third of the energy cost per mile is Tesla.” And with shared UberPool style flights, he sees the cost of energy getting down to just “$0.30 per mile”.

But in the meantime, Thrun is trying to get people, including me, to stop saying flying cars. “I personally don’t like the word ‘flying car’, but it’s very catchy. The technical term is called eVTOL. These are typically electrically propelled vehicles, they can take off and land vertically, eVTOLs, vertical takeoff landing, so that you don’t need an airport. And then they fly very much like a regular plane.” We’ll see if that mouthful catches on, and if the skies get more congested before the roads thin out.

Can you never find a scooter to rent when you need one? Here’s a radical idea. Buy one. While Bird, Lime, Skip, Scoot, Uber, Lyft and more compete for on-demand micromobility, a new startup invented a vehicle worthy of ownership. The Unagi looks downright futuristic with its classy paint jobs, foldable body, LED screen, and built-in lights. The ride feels sturdy, strong, and responsive while being light enough at 24lbs to lug up subway stairs or the flights to your home.

That’s why Unagi has become a hit with musicians like Kendrick Lamar, Chance The Rapper, Halsey, Steve Aoki, and teen pop megastar Billie Eilish, who use the scooter to rip around the empty venues as they soundcheck before concerts. Paparazzi shots of those moments have spurred demand for the $990 dual motor and $840 single motor Unagis, with co-founder David Hyman telling me the startup can’t make them fast enough but it’s ramping up production.

To fuel the fervor for the scooter before it’s inevitably copied by cheap knock-offs, Unagi has raised a $3.15 million seed round led by Menlo Ventures. Building on its $750,000 in Kickstarter, angel, and founder-contributed funding, the cash will go to building out a distribution network and developing its next-gen scooter with a smoother ride but no more pounds.

“We felt Unagi’s focus on light weight and substantial powering in a beautifully designed package was the right approach for ownership” Menlo partner Shawn Carolan tells me. “This is what premium brands do – continue to reinvent the way we think about the world. This category of vehicle – personal, portable, and electric has enormous potential and we are still in the first inning of the game.”

The magic of the Unagi Model One is how it balances speed, battery, weight, price, and style so it works for most anything and everyone. That combination won it CNET‘s best all-around scooter award versus the hardcore but extremely heavy Boosted Rev, cheap but weak Swagtron, long-lasting but boring Ninebot, and speedy but scary Mercane.

The Unagi’s biggest flaw is the smoothness of the ride due to its harder airless wheels and narrow handlebars that can make gravelly roads precarious. The high-pitched beeeeeep of its horn is also so annoying that people are more likely to cover their ears than get out of your way, but Hyman promises his 12-person team will fix that.

Where Unagi truly excels is in its looks. The lithe curves of its polished carbon fiber frame are accented with candy paint jobs in matte black, white, grey, and blue. It ditches the bike handlebar vibe for something closer to space shuttle controls. And while many people scoff at scooter riders, I saw those smirks turn into curious awe as I flew by.

Hyman got the idea for a premium scooter you own after a rental turned into a melty mess. He’d taken an on-demand scooter to the grocer on a hot day, picked up some ice cream, and emerged to find his ride snatched by another user. He hustled to another nearby but someone else got their first. He walked home dripping sugar everywhere wondering “Why am I messing around with rentals i just want to own one?”

He bought a generic scooter off Alibaba, and despite being janky straight out of the box “it made me feel like I was a super hero with this magic carpet”. But he wanted something better.

Previously the CEO of audio fingerprinting giant Gracenote and then Beats Music before it sold to Apple, Hyman is known for his obsession with hi-fi speaker systems. So after touring Chinese scooter factories and still being unsatisfied, he partnered with a group of inventors called QMY who’d prototyped a slick vehicle they called the Swan. Hyman funded it to production, brought the team in house, and now they’re selling Unagis as fast as they can.

Now the startup wants to double-down on selling to more petite riders who could never carry the 46lb Boosted Rev out of a train station. But the clock is ticking before copycats with similar silhouettes but inferior insides spring up. Meanwhile, Unagi must keep safety top-of-mind to avoid any disastrous crashes hurting customers and its brand. There are plenty of better funded mobility giants that could barge into the space if Unagi can’t build a lead. It also has to prove why the reliability of ownership is worth the price of renting a scooter hundreds of times.

Scooters are part of a powerful wave of new technologies that actually sell us back our time. When a 20-minute walk becomes a 4-minute scoot, you gain something priceless. Urban landscapes unfold beneath their wheels as you explore new neighborhoods or parts of parks. I was once a diehard electric skateboarder until a crash on a Boosted Board shattered my ankle. Unagi is the first scooter that delivers that same gliding feeling of weightlessness and freedom but in a form-factor safe enough for most people to experience.

Tesla is rolling out a new software update that adds a slew of new features to its cars. These include the new ‘Smart Summon’ feature which will allow cars equipped with the optional $5,000 full-self driving package to automatically drive themselves from a parking spot to collect you in a parking spot.

This is one of the most advanced semi self-driving features that Tesla has yet released to the general public, and the company still says you should use it only in lots and when you have a clear view of your car. The company also notes that you’re ultimately responsible for the vehicle, so definitely be aware of what’s going on with the car and its surroundings if you’re planning to use this one – and you can stop the car remotely should you feel the need to. Smart Summon has been out in a limited preview beta for some customers, but now it’s going to be rolling out to all vehicles that have purchased the FSD option

Other new features included in this update include the much-requested native Spotify support, which is available to all Spotify Premium account-holders across all markets where it’s available. That should go a long way towards satisfying Tesla owners who have been less than satisfied with playing audio via Bluetooth from this extremely popular streaming music option. In China, Tesla is also rolling out Ximalaya, a podcast and audiobook streaming service.

Tesla Theater Mode, also new in version 10.0, connects your infotainment system to your Netflix, YouTube and Hulu/Hulu+ (including Live TV if you’re subscribed to that feature) accounts, giving you access to streaming video from all these platforms while the car is safely in park. In China, the automaker is also adding IQiyi and Tencent Video, and it says it’ll be adding more options globally “over time” to supplement these offerings. The new Theater Mode will also provide access to Tesla vehicle tutorials for owners to watch in-car, again only while parked.

A lot of these updates focus on entertainment options, including the new “Car-aoke” mode, which, as you might have guessed, adds an in-car karaoke experience that includes a “massive” library of music and lyrics, Tesla says, with multiple languages supported. Singing along on road-trips has long gotten by with low-tech options only, but official support might encourage more amateur James Cordens.

Last but not least for new entertainment features, there’s the launch of the Cuphead port on Tesla Arcade, the in-car gaming software Tesla launched earlier this year. Cuphead is a cult smash hit indie game, with an iconic art style reminiscent of early Disney animation, and this is definitely a nod to Tesla’s core geek audience (and probably a treat for the Musk man himself). Again, this is only available while parked in case you were worried about distracted driving.

Tesla also added some new navigation features that suggest interesting restaurants and sightseeing opportunities along your way, w which could result in some more interesting spontaneous adventures. There’s also a new file system tweak that separates videos captured by the car’s camera when in Dashcam and Sentry Mode to make it easier for users to find them, and they’ll be auto-deleted when there’s a need to free up storage.

This is a big ol’ update packed with new features, and it’s going to be rolling out over-the-air to vehicles beginning this week. As mentioned a couple of places above, you might see some slight differences region to region but Tesla says you can also check out the updates in-store at its showrooms if you want a sneak preview.

Uber’s best bet is to use its ubiquity and product breadth to beat rivals in ride hailing, scooters, and food delivery. It’s the only US company doing all three, but competition threatens to eat away at its margins on each. But if it can become your one-stop-shop for getting yourself or a meal from point A to point B, it might be able to salvage its share price and survive until self-driving cars change its economics.

Uber’s new V2 test that highlights Uber Eats that’s now running in 9 markets

So today at Uber’s own launch event it unveiled two visions for the future of Uber’s home screen. One test adds a prominent Uber Eats button to the bottom of the screen, and it’s already reaching some users in US, Canada, Europe, and Australian cities. An even more aggressive version replaces the hallmark map with two big buttons in the screen’s center: one for ride hailing, one for Uber Eats. Clearly it’s imperative to Uber to can get more of its nearly 100 million users Eating. This version is now testing in 9 markets.

“We want to be the operating system for your every day life” says CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. “A one-click gateway to everything that Uber can offer you.”

Uber’s V1 test makes Uber Eats slightly more prominent with a tab button at the bottom

Additional launches announced today include:

Uber Rewards

-The expansion of its rider loyalty Rewards program to its first international markets starting with Brazil and Mexico

-The option to get favorite dishes from local Uber Eats restaurants as Rewards

-Flexibility in how your Rewards are applied so instead of always getting $5 in Uber cash, you could get 25% off your next UberX or 10% off your next Uber Eats

Uber Pass

-Uber is formally launching Eats Pass, which lets users subscribe to unlimited free Uber Eats deliveries

-Uber’s revamped Uber Pass for $24.99 for surge price protection on every ride, free Eats deliveries, and free Jump scooter and bike rides

Uber Eats

-Allergy-friendly filters in Uber Eats search and easy ways to communicate allergies and dietary restrictions to restaurants

-To reduce waste, Uber Eats will now default to not including utensils and straws unless you request them

-A partnership with Feeding America will allow restaurants that use Uber Eats to easily donate excess food, and see Uber Freight moving food donations between the non-profit’s 200 food banks and 60,000 pantries

-Uber Copter will be available for all New York City users offering 8 minute rides to JFK airport

Safety

-Uber will now allow you to text 911 from your rider with a prefilled message that includes your car make, year, and color, your current location and destination, and room for you to add info about your emergency

-Uber Ride Check which is designed to make sure you don’t get in the wrong car is expanding to 200 more cities around the world

-Uber’s driver check feature now makes drivers verify their identity by moving their head in certain ways like they’re training FaceID to ensure no one else users their driver account, instead of just using a selfie

-Uber pin check lets riders opt for drivers to have to provide a special pin code that users input to verify they’re getting in the right car.

-Uber is prototyping an ultrasound-based system that uses an inaudible tone emitted from rider and driver phones to ensure they’re supposed to be together

Voom, the helicopter service with ride-sharing and one-hour advance booking that Airbus developed and launch first in Latin America, is getting its U.S. debut starting in San Francisco. The service will be available for travel between five Bay Area airpots, including SFO, San Jose, Napa, Oakland and Palo Alto.

Travellers wanting to make use of Voom can book their trips online, using either the dedicated Voom app for smartphones, or the Voom website. You can make bookings up to an hour before a scheduled flight departure, and on the day of travel, you only need to be at the helipad 15 minutes prior to boarding, which makes it a pretty attractive option for business travellers frequently making trips around the Bay Area, or as a traffic-skipping option to get to the airport faster for longer-haul trips.

Voom’s trip time from SFO to San Jose, for instance, is just 20 minutes – which is about 20 minutes better than driving times in the best possible traffic conditions, like in the middle of the night. During prime commuting hours, that same trip will be at least an hour, and more like an hour and a half, which is a considerable additional chunk of travel time.

Though this is the first time Voom is launching its services in the Bay Area, the company is no stranger to the region: Voom’s headquarters is in San Francisco, and it launched in 2016 as part of Airbus’ A^3 Silicon Valley-based innovation lab.

Voom enters a U.S. market that’s starting to see more activity in short-hop helicopter service, with streamlined booking through apps and online reservation platforms, and essentially on-demand options for short notice flights. Blade and Uber both offer similar service in NYC, for instance, connecting JFK with Manhattan in another popular business travel route that’s frequently mired in plenty of traffic.

Voom’s model is a platform one, with third-party helicopter operators and helipads offering their services via its booking tools, though the Airbus company does stringently vet its ride providers. The young company is also launching a Voom for Business offering in the U.S., which is designed to provide easy employee travel management options for enterprises who want to make access to Voom available to its staff while simplifying and unifying billing.

Of course, a commuter helicopter option isn’t exactly within reach for everyone – but because of the ride-sharing model wherein you can book a seat on a helicopter alongside other passengers, costs are lower than full charters, with rides in the Bay Area starting at $215 depending on the route. It’s a lot more than an Uber ride between San Jose and SFO, definitely, but it’s also a massive time saver and not something that would appear out of place on some corporate expense policies – especially in the U.S. tech and innovation capital, home to the wealthiest companies on the planet.

Voom’s service in the Bay Area is available now, and you can also use the platform to book full plane charters to other small airports serving the region, including Half Moon Bay, Monterey, Livermore and Sacramento.

Ford is adding another city to the list of places it’s going to be deploying self-driving vehicles: Austin. The automaker revealed that the Texas city would join Miami-Dade County and Washington, D.C. as the third deployment location for its autonomous vehicle testing and commercial service development.

As with its prior roll-outs, Ford will first begin by putting its Fusion Hybrid AV test vehicles, which are powered by Argo AI autonomous driving technology, on Austin roads by the end of November to begin mapping the city. Mapping cars will have a safety driver and an observer on board, and the cars will be collecting data to build the HD maps needed for eventual deployment of pilot commercial services with partners.

Ford will be announcing the specific location of the terminal from which its AVs will be operating soon, but said that the cars will be operating in the Downtown and east Austin areas to start, but that eventually they’ll look to expand as much as the market requires, going “as big as Austin allows us from a delivery standpoint,” according to Sherif Marakby, the CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles.

Marakby said on a briefing with journalists that Austin represents another very different and varied environment in which to test its technology, with a busy downtown, college areas and more. Autonomous vehicles should be able to “solve some issues” when working in tandem with the city, he added.

Ford’s strategy in developing and deploying AVs is to work on both the autonomous technology and the business aspects simultaneously, which is why it’s going to be looking for pilot businesses to partner with in the area. In the course of its research both in Austin and in its existing cities, it’s looking to figure out what the right mix is in terms of goods and package delivery, and ride-hailing and personal transportation.

Marakby says that Ford is still planning to deploy its AV fleet commercially for customers by 2021, and that Austin will be part of that deployment. He added that this will incorporate both passenger and goods transportation in response to a question about whether package delivery would precede moving people, but that the “exact mix will be determined as they work on segmentation.”

As for the vehicles themselves, the current Fusion Hybrid AVs are testing vehicles only, which are useful to Ford in developing and testing their technology stack, but the vehicles in actual commercial service will be purpose-built cars designed specifically for autonomous use.

This vehicle will be a hybrid-electric, which “makes sense from the perspective of running all day” and decreasing down-time due to charging, Marakby says. It’ll also be a commercial-grade vehicle, since “in autonomous mode, it’s hundreds of thousands of miles in a short period of time,” he added. The vehicle will also feature easy entry and exit and comfortable seating for passengers, but there will be a custom version that will be focused on goods transportation as well.

VC firm Target Global has just announced it’s expanding its European network by adding a local office in Barcelona, Spain — building on its existing presence in Berlin and London, plus Tel Aviv and Moscow.

The firm has €700 million under management and a broad investment range that covers SaaS, marketplaces, fintech and insurtech, as well as a big focus on mobility.

TechCrunch sat down with general partner Shmuel Chafets and investor director Lina Chong, who will be heading the firm’s push into Spain, to talk about its decision to set up shop in Barcelona — discussing how they see the local and national ecosystem, as well as picking their brains on wider investments trends and regulation in Europe.

Want to know what it takes to get a meeting with Target Global and factors they weigh when they’re deciding whether to cut a check or not? Read on…

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

TechCrunch: Why choose Barcelona and why now? Why not Spain’s capital, Madrid — or even a city like Paris?

Shmuel Chafets: First of all have you been outside!?

I started coming to Barcelona four or five years ago just to see things and we had some angel investments here and it feels to me today — or when Lina and I started getting more serious about Barcelona it seemed to us that Barcelona has the attributes of Berlin eight or nine years ago. When I at least started coming to Berlin and Lina moved to Berlin, it has the same attributes. It looks like it’s just about to happen

I think it has a few factors. The first one is that it’s a great place to live and you can’t ignore that. In Europe, if you’re a team and you’re an international team there are very few places that you can live in. So London is the original ex-pat city of Europe and it still is amazing but very, very expensive. Berlin is the second one. And I think a lot of Berlin’s early success was fuelled by people who were not necessary German and definitely not Berliners coming and starting a company there.

It’s a good place to live, it’s also a cheap place to live, and it’s a cheap place to do business. Salaries here are quite low but the quality of living is quite high and that makes it very good for startups. Particularly when you need young people, developers, creative people to move. It’s an easy place to convince people to move to.

It doesn’t have a dominant industry. And that is very similar to Berlin — Berlin is not where Germany economically is, and that means that the smartest people around want to go in for startups. That’s the best employment option. There is no banking industry sucking people in with high salaries. And also driving costs up. It is in its culture a very creative city, a very open, very creative city and that I think is also very important.

And lastly, there are these early success stories that fuel the idea of entrepreneurship and also fuel financial entrepreneurship. So one of the interesting things about entrepreneurship is that people who start need to know where it ends or where it’s going to. And the early success stories — first of all they make the smartest kid graduating — who has a McKinsey job offer and a Goldman Sachs job offer and a startup idea — he needs to know that the startup idea has a future. That there’s a future in being an entrepreneur and he needs to look up to people around him. It’s not enough to know that Mark Zuckerberg dropped out — that’s fine but that’s very far and very large.

Image via Getty Images / Pol Albarrán

But to look at Carlos [Pierre, founder and CEO] from Badi and say okay there’s a guy, he’s a few years older than me, he started a company, he’s doing very well — this is the path that I want to take.

Also, there are more and more mentors. People who’ve done it before. And they can help you figure things out. You have to be able to call someone up and say hey let’s have breakfast and explain how they do it.

And there’s more money — for seed. Because you look at a lot of people starting funds, and we were just talking on the way about the Ticketbis guys. They’re starting a fund. And that’s a great example of one of these early success stories and now they’re putting it back into the ecosystem and helping it grow.

Rocket Internet did a lot of that in Germany. They had early exits and then they went and plowed it all back into the ecosystem in their own particular way. People like [serial entrepreneur] Lukasz Gadowski — who we work with a lot. He built Spreadshirts… [then later] he founded Delivery Hero. So through Team Europe. So people who were early, early entrepreneurs — and then in the second wave helped build an ecosystem. So I think there are more and more people like that that we see here.

That usually fuels the ecosystem. Also as companies here start to scale and as more of these European startups start to build hubs here there’s more experience. You can find people who’ve been through a couple of rounds.

And the last thing which is not about Barcelona it’s about Spain in general. There’s a decent local domestic market and there is a natural second market in South America. And actually in the US too — because Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in America so when you start a company here you have that second market built-in. Which is very important — you can scale it.

Latin America is a fascinating market right now, a fascinating time. So in a way, it’s a way for us to make a side bet on Latin America in a way without going out of Europe and insetting far. My first boss told me never to do business in a place where there’s no direct flight from where I live and I adhere to that. If things go belly up you don’t want to be stuck in transfer in some airport sitting there waiting for a transfer.

TechCrunch: So in a way being in a second city — this isn’t Madrid, Spain’s capital — is a more interesting proposition for startups because there’s less competition for talent?

Chong: It’s a bit of an underdog here. There are not these big dominant industries. It’s not cosmopolitan like how Madrid is perceived. There’s a lot of creativity, a lot of people who are more entrepreneurial in spirit.

Hola Barcelona. Target Global, a pan-European VC firm with €700 million under management and a broad investment canvas spanning SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, insurtech and mobility, is opening an office in the Catalan capital.

Investor director, Lina Chong, will lead the expansion into Spain, having relocated to Barcelona from the fund’s Berlin headquarters. They’re setting up in a co-working space on Avenue Diagonal in the center of the city. 

Target Global backs early and growth stages startups, as well as doing some seed investing. The firms tells us it’s expecting to do between one and three deals per year out of the Barcelona office, envisaging the same mix of investments in terms of early and growth stage.

“We’ve been seeing decent deals in both stages. Definitely. Across Spain,” says Chong. “There is just more — by numbers — way more early stage seed than A. I think that’s just the maturity of the ecosystem here.”

Dialling up a local presence across Europe means Target Global can pitch founders on being able to connect talent and expertise across key regional startup hubs, while also plugging into a wider international network. (It also has offices in London, Tel Aviv and Moscow.)

From a VC perspective opening local offices is of course about deal flow. Being on the ground to take more meetings widens the pipe, increasing the chance of an early shot at the next high growth business.

That’s important because Europe’s startups have many more options for early stage funding than in years past, and founders are getting smarter about choosing their investors. Boots on the ground means more time for all important relationship building.

Target Global describes itself as something of a startup — it was founded in 2012 — which means it’s competing for deals with VCs that have more established brands and networks. Becoming a familiar face in the room looks like a solid strategy to growth hack its own network.

“We are a global or a pan-European fund but for an entrepreneur here we want them to feel that we’re local; we understand the ecosystem; that we have deep rooted connections; that we’re committed; that we show up,” general partner Shmuel Chafets tells TechCrunch.

“It’s all a function of time and effort. Just being here and having breakfast with people, lunch with people and helping out even the people we don’t invest. You get more connected and then you start to see more deal flow.”

This is the second local office it’s opened in Europe this year, after adding a London base in April — making it a flattering pick for Barcelona. Plenty of other European hubs are being passed over in the city’s favor this time, be it Madrid, Lisbon, Paris or Stockholm. 

Chafets says the firm looked at five or six other cities but settled on Barcelona for now, though he won’t rule out opening more offices in future. “Never say never,” he quips. 

Having been a regular visitor to Barcelona for a number of years he talks enthusiastically about the creative energy motivating entrepreneurs — saying the city’s ecosystem reminds him of how Berlin felt a few years ago. “It looks like it’s just about to happen,” he reckons. 

“From what I’ve seen Barcelona is sort of strong in creative. It’s a very creative city. It’s always pretty strong in mobile, historically. It had more mobile successes… SaaS, particular smb SaaS, is pretty good here. I think it would be harder to find enterprise sales companies and companies building these very deep tech stuff right now. But definitely in the marketplace, smb SaaS space, mobile space you see great stuff here. 

“That ties into the creativity, because it’s a product driven environment — not a tech driven environment. I think Berlin is a very operationally driven environment, Tel Aviv is a very tech driven environment, this is a very product driven environment — which actually complements well our other hubs.”

“There’s some pent-up energy here,” agrees Chong, who says they’ve already come across a “surprising” amount of deal flow. “Again it’s very similar to Berlin where there’s a lot of willingness and there’s a lot of dreaming but there’s not a lot going on. So I think the younger people here they’re creating that.”

Target Global has been testing the water prior to formalizing its commitment to Barcelona, and has four local portfolio companies which it’s ploughed around €20M into over the past 12 months.

Its biggest regional investment to date is in business trip booking SaaS, TravelPerk. It’s also backed flatmate matching platform Badi; online doctor booking platform, Doc Planner (which relocated from Warsaw, Poland after merging with local startup Doctoralia); and medical chat app MediQuo.

From a wider perspective, Barcelona’s tech ecosystem has been gathering momentum for years, helped by the annual presence of the world’s biggest mobile tradeshow (MWC) — as well as more specific pull factors for startups such as a relatively low cost of living and an attractive Mediterranean location. 

“It’s a great place to live and you can’t ignore that,” says Chafets. “In Europe if you’re a team and you’re an international team there are very few places you can live.”

This combination means Barcelona is now home to a growing number of high growth startups, including Target Global’s portfolio firm TravelPerk — as well as the likes of on-demand delivery platform Glovo; and RedPoints, which sells a SaaS to brands for detecting and acting against the sale of fake goods online, to name two other notable examples.

Other local startups grabbing attention and investment in recent years include 21Buttons, Holded, Housfy, Typeform and Verse. While hyper local mobile marketplace startup Wallapop — which was on a growth tear in an earlier wave of ecoystem growth — remains the go-to classified app on every local’s phone (though it merged with a US rival back in 2015).

The city even has its own youthful scooter startup (Reby) which has refused to be put off by some tough regulations controlling rentals — and has recently been applying AI to try to make like a good citizen by automatically detect poor parking.  

Mobility is a major area of focus for Target Global — which last year announced a dedicated fund (with an initial raise of $100M) for startups working to disrupt transportation. Although, when it comes to stand-up e-scooters the firm is already invested in Berlin-based Circ so will presumably be looking to spend elsewhere on that front.

“Barcelona is the perfect city for scooters,” says Chafets. “Scooters can really change the way the city works. It’s also small and has relatively good public transportation from outwards in — but they need to be regulated. You need to really make sure that [they aren’t a misused nuisance].”

He notes that European regulators have been relatively quick to spot the risks of shared mobility, and close off the antisocial expansionist playbook that played out in some US cities during the first wave of scooter startups — when people trolled Bird by hanging scooters in trees (or, well, worse) — but he sees that as good news for building a sustainable future for alternative mobility. 

“It’s a great challenge and it will be a huge money maker — that’s where we want to be right, multiple trillion dollar businesses!”

Away from disruptive developments on the ground in Barcelona and the other local tech hubs that Target Global is intending to explore from its new base in Catalonia, it also views Spain as a low risk gateway to opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic. 

“There’s a decent local domestic market and there is a natural second market in South America,” says Chafets. “Actually in the US too — because Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in America so when you start a company here you have that second market built in. Which is very important — you can scale it.”

“Latin America is a fascinating market right now, it’s a fascinating time,” he adds. “So in a way it’s a way for us to make a side bet on Latin America without going out of Europe and investing far.”

We’ll share a full interview with Chafets and Chong on Extra Crunch.

London’s transport regulator, TfL, has given Uber a temporary reprieve to continue operating in the UK capital.

The ride-hailing giant’s current (provisional) licence expires tomorrow but there’s no return to normality for Uber in its most important European city — with TfL issuing just a two-month extension on its private hire vehicle licence — not a full five-year term, as Uber had hoped.

The backstory here is TfL’s decision two years ago to deny Uber’s application to renew its licence — when it raised a range of safety and corporate governance issues.

The then scandal-struck company was nonetheless allowed to continue operating in London during an appeal process.

Uber went on to claim it was making changes to improve its processes and come into compliance with the regulator’s requirements. And in June 2018 a UK court granted it a provisional 15-month licence so it could continue to work on satisfying TfL’s conditions.

But the latest short leash extension puts the company on watch again.

TfL says the extension has the same conditions Uber has been subject to over the past 15 months, as well as some new conditions “to ensure passenger safety” which it says cover ride sharing, appropriate insurance and driver document checks by Uber.

Last year the court attached a number of extra conditions to Uber’s provisional licence to operate, including that the company produce an independently verified assurance report every six months; appoint three non-executive directors to its board; provide at least 28 days notice for changes to its operating model; and maintain arrangements with London’s Met Police for the reporting of passenger complaints that may be criminal — all of which still apply.

The regulator adds that it’s requesting additional material from Uber to inform any future licensing decision — emphasizing that its original concern included culture and governance issues.

“Uber London Limited has been granted a two-month private hire operator licence to allow for scrutiny of additional information that we are requesting ahead of consideration of any potential further licensing application,” a TfL spokesperson said in a statement.

In a statement responding to TfL’s decision, Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional general manager for Northern & Eastern Europe, sought to put a positive spin on not being knocked back entirely.

“TfL’s recognition of our improved culture and governance reflects the progress we have made in London. We will continue to work closely with TfL and provide any additional requested information,” he said.

“Over the past two years, we’ve launched a range of new safety features in the app, introduced better protections for drivers and our Clean Air Plan is helping to tackle air pollution. We will keep listening, learning and improving to provide the best service while being a trusted partner to London.”

Among the changes Uber claims to have made since the regulator stepped in and slapped down its licence renewal, are a new senior leadership team in the UK; limits to operating hours for drivers, with a log-out required at 10 hours; a 24/7 support centre staffed by trained agents to handle driver and rider safety queries; a free insurance product for drivers and a dedicated forum where they can share feedback; various safety alerts and privacy tweaks; and real-time public transport information shown within the app.

Uber also says it’s an “ambition” that every car on its app in London is fully electric in 2025 — saying it’s raised £50M to put towards helping licensed drivers upgrade to a fully electric vehicle.

There are major question marks about the rising costs of doing business for Uber as regulatory and legal requirements dial up around the world — including in the US.

Earlier this month California passed gig economy workers rights legislation that could see Uber on the hook for wage and benefit protections in its home market. While, in the UK, the company has continued to lose appeals against a successful legal challenge over drivers rights back in 2016.

Uber’s own investor prospectus warned potential shareholders the company may never be profitable.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was in Boca Chica, Texas over the weekend to oversee key construction activities in the assembly of the company’s newest Starship prototype. Musk will deliver an update on Starship, which will likely recap progress to date and provide a more detailed roadmap of SpaceX’s plans for the future of its next-generation spaceship and launch system.

Musk shared photos of the prototype construction in progress, with the so-called “Mk1” prototype getting its rear moving fins, which are located on the bottom half of the rocket and which work together with fins located on the yet-to-be-installed top half of the spacecraft to control its stability during entry and landing.

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The Starship Mk1 prototype will be the first to represent the final vehicle in its orbital-class configuration, after a ‘Starhopper’ prototype SpaceX produced initially accomplished the goal of testing one of the new Raptor engines and demonstrating low-altitude flight, control and landing capabilities. That stubbier version of Starship is retired after doing both a short and a longer ‘hop’ test flight over the past two months, and now SpaceX will look to test higher altitude and longer duration flights, using multiple Raptor engines, with the Starship Mk1 and Mk2 prototypes currently under development at Boca Chica, and in another SpaceX facility in Florida.

Musk has said that Starship Mk1 already has three Raptor engines installed on the vehicle, and the company has filed documents with the FCC required for it to receive permission for the communications components of its first test launches. We should find out more concrete details as of Saturday, and TechCrunch will have all the info here as it happens.

Automaker Hyundai is forming a new joint venture with autonomous driving technology company Aptiv, with both parties taking a 50 percent ownership stake in the new company. The goal of the new venture will be to develop Level 4 and Level 5 production-ready self-driving systems intended for commercialization, with the goal of making those available to robotaxi and fleet operators, as well as other auto makers, by 2022.

The combined investment in the joint venture from both companies will total $4 billion in aggregate value (including the value of combined engineering services, R&D and IP) initially, according to Aptiv and Hyundai, and testing for their fully autonomous systems will begin in 2020 in pursuit of that 2022 commercialization target.

In terms of what each is bringing to the table, Aptiv will be delivering its autonomous driving tech, which it has been developing for many years – originally as part of global automative industry supplier Delphi – as well as 700 employees working on AV tech. Hyundai Motor Group will provide a combined $1.6 billion in cash from across its subrands, vehicle engineering, R&D and access to its IP.

Heading up the new joint venture will be Karl Iagnemma, the President of Aptiv’s Autonomous Mobility group, and it’ll be headquartered in Boston and supported by additional technology centres in multiple locations in the U.S. and Asia.

Both companies have been demonstrating autonomous vehicle technologies for multiple years now, and Aptiv has been working with Lyft in Las Vegas on a public trial of autonomous robotaxi services since debuting the capabilities at CES in 2018. Aptiv’s Vegas pilot uses BMW 5-Series cars for its autonomous pick-up fleet.

This joint venture should help them with brining the technology to market with the scale of a global automaker, while Hyundai gains by being able to shore up its own work in self-driving with a partner who has invested in developing these solutions as a primary concern over many years.