The world of on-demand storage has seen some ups and downs, with some of the biggest hopefuls pivoting into new areas, some as unrelated as cryptocurrency, in the search for better product-market fit. One that found its groove early on, however, is today announcing an acquisition to expand its existing business into a new market category. Clutter, the on-demand removals and storage company backed by SoftBank, is today announcing that it has acquired The Storage Fox, a startup that will spearhead Clutter’s expansion in to self-storage services in urban locations, starting first in the New York metro area where The Storage Fox is currently active.

The deal is valued at $152 million, Clutter said. Ari Mir, Clutter’s co-founder and CEO, added in an interview that  Clutter did not need to raise any extra funding to finance this acquisition, but said his company is likely to be taking on more financing in the future for growth.

To date, Clutter has raised $310 million, according to PitchBook, including a $200 million round earlier this year led by SoftBank that valued the company at $600 million post-money. Future financing is likely to come in the form of debt to acquire property, as well as equity to expand the business’s platform, hiring and more. It’s currently active in 1,000 cities and towns across the US and the plan will be to stay domestic until it has wider penetration, before exploring how to grow internationally. The deal will bring the total amount of space that Clutter leases and owns up to two million square feet.

“Expanding into self-storage is something we have been discussing since Clutter’s Series A pitch to Sequoia and we are excited to see it come to fruition,” said Omar Hamoui, partner at Sequoia Capital, in a statement. “The acquisition reinforces Clutter’s market leadership and expands Clutter services by offering a better experience for customers who need self-storage or on-demand storage.”

(Notably, too, is that Clutter had to actively bid for this business: “Portfolios like that of The Storage Fox are extremely rare, and this acquisition signals that Clutter is uniquely positioned to take on and succeed in the self-storage industry,” said Eliav Dan, Head of West Coast Real Estate Finance at Barclays, which acted as Clutter’s exclusive financial advisor, in a statement. “Clutter competed with multiple self-storage REITs throughout the bidding process to win the deal — a testament to the strength of the company’s management team and its ability to execute on an innovative business model.”)

Up to now, Clutter business has focused on extending the on-demand model — which has become a cornerstone for a huge wave of e-commerce startups that are tapping into new innovations for managing logistics, the rise of the gig-economy, the proliferation of smartphones, and consumer tastes for instant gratification — to the messy business of helping people move and store their worldly possessions, from which Clutter makes revenues by charging service fees.

Customers might typically be urban dwellers — for example moving to smaller digs or simply looking for a way to, yes, de-Clutter — but the storage centers themselves tend to be far outside city centers. On top of this, Clutter has largely operated on a long-term lease model with the facilities that it uses.

In that regard, this acquisition will be giving the company a couple of interesting new possessions of its own, to tap the self-storage market, estimated to be worth $40 billion annually.

The Storage Fox’s facilities, like other self-storage businesses, are located in areas that are much closer to urban centers, since the model is predicated more on people being able to dip in and out of their storage units quickly and potentially very regularly. In its case, its facilities today are in Yonkers, White Plains, Queens and Brooklyn.

It will also give Clutter a trove of real estate that it will now own: The Storage Fox didn’t appear to raise any traditional VC funding, but it did have large finance agreements in place in order to buy property. That is a pattern that Clutter is likely to continue, Mir said.

Now that there will be more accessible space on Clutter’s platform that it actually owns, it will also give the company a point of entry into a new potential range of business services alongside the self-storage. Could that extend into something like office space, potentially pitting Clutter against one of its portfolio neighbors, WeWork? Mir declined to answer specifically but we’ve seen some outlier cases — such as this guy who lived out of his storage unit — that, while not exactly okay for a number of reasons, does underscore that there is a lot of potential there.

“There are over 52,000 self-storage facilities in the US alone,” Mir said. “If you take all that and add it up, there are more square feet in those storage spaces than there are in McDonald’s and Starbucks in the US, combined. At the same time, inside of cities, we’re running out of space. So our vision is to apply all the technology that we’ve built in house to increase the value that these self-storage facilities provide across society.”

Clutter has already made some moves beyond simple storage in its existing business: it’s already actively advertising the option to rent, sell, donate and dispose of your items if you choose — although it seems that these four services are not yet actively live. Earlier this year, it acquired the storage business of Omni, which itself is currently focusing on rentals.

Storage over all has not been an easy area to tackle for a lot of reasons: on top of the usual issues of needing to ensure that the contractors — the face and engine of your business — are responsible and good at their jobs, the cargo can be unexpectedly large or fragile, and the movement of it might be tied up in all kinds of backstories that make getting from A to B and eventually back to the owner again very complicated.

Mir concedes that the customer satisfaction aspect has been challenging: it’s one of those areas that people are quick to publicly complain when something has gone awry. He also insists that its ratings and Clutter’s efforts are generally improving, and frankly it’s great to hear him be honest about this and not deny that criticism is a challenge and that the company is always working to make this better.

Amazon will be stepping up its efforts to reduce its climate impact, CEO Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday. The company will be ordering 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Michigan’s Rivian as part of this commitment, Bezos said. The commerce giant will seek to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2040 – 10 years earlier than is outlined by the United Nations Paris Agreement.

Bezos said at a National Press Club event in Washington where he made the announcement that the updated timeline is due to the increase in climate change, which has been more aggressive than even some of the more serious predictions had anticipated five years ago whine the Paris agreement was reached.

Amazon’s overarching efforts to make the company carbon neutral are bundled under a plan the company is calling the “Climate Pledge,” which will be open to other companies as well. In addition to efforts like the Rivian order for emission-free delivery vehicles, Amazon will also be seeking  to reduce its footprint through other means, including solar energy and carbon offsets.

Rivian noted that this was the largest order to date of any electric delivery vehicles, and that they’d begin actually deploying for Amazon starting in 2021. Amazon led a $700 million investment round in Rivian in February, and the company announced a further $350 million from auto industry giant Cox automotive earlier this month.

Developing…

Rocket Lab is nearing completion of its second launch facility – its first in the U.S., located on Wallops Island in Virginia. The company announced that it has finished installing the launchpad at Launch Complex 2, which is set to finish construction as early as the end of this year, with the first launches taking off from the site in early 2020.

All final build and integration of launch systems are expected to be done by December, according to the company, which will then allow for final testing and readiness prep of the launch site itself ahead of the first rocket actually launching from LC-2 next year. Rocket Lab’s first Electron launch from the U.S. will be a key milestone for the company – not only because it will double their potential mission capacity when combined with their existing facility in New Zealand, but also because a U.S. launch site will open up additional business for Rocket Lab in the form of lucrative government launch contracts.

WE don’t yet know who the first customer to launch on board a Rocket Lab customer from the Wallops facility will be, but Rocket Lab says it will reveal this info in short order, with a reveal planned for later this year.

LC-2 construction began in February this year, and the facility largely mirrors the existing Rocket Lab launch complex in New Zealand, which has been successfully serving clients with launches since early 2018.

SpaceX is making progress assembling its Starship orbital spacecraft prototype, as seen in new photos shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk . This full-scale testing version of the Starship will take over for the StarHopper, which was a scaled down version used to test the Raptor engine initially with low-altitude ‘hop’ flights.

The Starship Mk I Prototype and Mk II prototypes, which are under construction simultaneously at SpaceX facilities in South Texas and Florida, will be used to test flight at higher altitudes and higher speeds, and will use as many as three to six Raptor engines simultaneously, vs. the single engine used with the StarHopper.

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The round sections of the prototype you see in the photos being lowered on top of one another measure 9 meters (about 30 feet) in diameter, and unlike the StarHopper, these will feature a smooth curved top section, which you can see in the second photo. Once complete, SpaceX will run a first test of the orbital prototype with the goal of reaching a height of 12 miles, or 63,000 feet, before moving on to higher velocity testing at similar heights, and finally a first orbital flight.

Ultimately, SpaceX’s goal with Starship is have it become the workhorse of all of its commercial operations, replacing entirely the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon Capsule spacecraft and servicing both Earth orbital needs, as well as trips to ferry supplies and astronauts to Mars, and potentially beyond.

The promise of flying cars has become an idea more synonymous with the tech world’s shortcomings than its exciting potential, but today one of the startups that has been focused on actually trying to make small, airborne vehicles a reality is announcing a fundraise and says it’s on track for a commercial launch in two to three years.

Volocopter, which has been building drone-like autonomous electric flying taxis for its own (as-yet unlaunched) urban commercial passenger transportation service — the latest model is its two-passenger VoloCity announced earlier this summer — has closed €50 million ($55 million) in funding led by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd, the Chinese automotive company that owns Volvo, Lotus and a number of other car brands. There are also plans for another significant tranche of money underway, likely to be closed later this year.

In this latest round, Geely is investing alongside other unnamed new and existing investors in the Bruchsal, Germany-based company. Previous backers include Intel and Daimler, the German car giant that owns Mercedes and a number of other brands.

Rene Griemens, Volocopter’s CFO, said in an interview that the German company intends to use the funding to continue working on its taxi R&D; meeting safety and other regulatory requirements for its small taxi vessels (which seat two); working other upcoming models such as those that can transport cargo; and business development around commercial launches.

Indeed, part of this latest investment is paving the way for future business: Geely and Volocopter will be working on a joint venture to bring the Volocopter and its “Urban Air Mobility” concept to China.

While there is no commercial airtaxi or other “flying car” services in existence today in any urban area, the market for hopefuls is a crowded one, with the likes of Lilium, Kitty Hawk, eHang, Uber, and many others building completely new styles of aircraft and hoping to play a role in offering short-range flights as an affordable alternative to road-based transportation. (Blade, an airtaxi service of sorts, is offering more conventional helicopters and other vessels in its limited launch for executives.)

“Urban mobility needs to evolve in the next few years to meet rising demand,” said Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, in a statement. “With our Volocopter air taxis, we are adding a whole new level of mobility in the skies.”

Among its many potential competitors, Volocopter has been one of the more prolific when it comes to building and testing its drone-like vehicles, most recently in Helsinki where it became the first autonomous VTOL — vertical take-off and landing — aircraft to operate in the same airspace as other commercial aircraft.

(You might also recall when Intel brought the Volocopter on stage at CES in Las Vegas in 2018 for a flight demonstration during its keynote, still the only time the Volocopter has been airborne in the US.)

Details on how Volocopter’s service would operate are still — pardon the expression — up in the air, but Griemens said that while Volocopter would own the aircraft, it would likely partner with local operators to help run the service. The average price of each aircraft, he noted, may be akin to a small helicopter, but operations would likely be one-fifth to one-quarter of the price. While initial rides would be expensive, between five and 10 years, they estimate the price would come down to the cost of a taxi ride on the ground.

“The goal was always to democratize flying,” he said.

Its first launch markets are likely to be Singapore, Dubai — where it has a partnership with the city — and an unspecified large European city. That could be somewhere in its home market of Germany, or Helsinki, but just as equally London, where the company has been engaging with city officials on what an airtaxi service could look like. (It’s also part of a new experimental ‘sandbox’ launched by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority to test out technology related to air-based transportation and travel.)

But even with regulatory frameworks in place, delays can come in many forms. This isn’t even the first time that Volocopter has predicted commercial services in “two to three years.”

Nevertheless, startups like Volocopter represent a credible version of the future of transportation, so for companies like Geely, Daimler and Intel, which still have large legacy businesses, investing in and working with Volocopter gives them a shot at playing a key role (and having a financial stake) in that market.

“Geely is transitioning from being an automotive manufacturer to a mobility technology group, investing in and developing a wide range of next-generation technologies,” said Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman, in a statement. “Our joint venture with Volocopter underlines our confidence in Volocopter air taxis as the next ambitious step in our wider expansion in both electrification and new mobility services.”

Geely already works with Volocopter’s investor Daimler — which has been a prolific investor in next-generation transportation services — on ride-sharing services in the country.

UPS is introducing 15 new vehicles to its U.K. fleet that offer extended driving range versus traditional EVs, but that are also capable of operating in fully electric mode when required to do so, as in emission-free zones and dense city cores. The trucks, developed in partnership with commercial electric vehicle tech startup Tevva, can switch between hybrid and fully electric modes for a total range of up to 400km (~250 miles), with the same cargo carrying capacity of same-sized, diesel-powered trucks.

The trucks can operate at a much longer range than fully electric delivery trucks, which typically top out at around 60 miles of range. They can also switch between modes to stay fair of local transportation bylaws. This is especially helpful where they’re rolling out in Birmingham and Southampton in the UK, since Birmingham will introduce a clean air zone to block non-electric commercial vehicles in its city center by sometime next year.

UPS has already made use of electric delivery vehicles, but the range of its existing trucks meant they couldn’t make the trip from central depots to in-city drop-off points in every case. Plus, this hybridized solution will be able to carry a lot more packages than the fully electric trucks, which should lead to fewer cars on the road overall and less congestion, according to UPS.

The crucial difference between these trucks and standard hybrid vehicles is that they’re capable of fully autonomously switching between purely electric motors and their diesel hybrid powertrains – and can do so with geofencing whenever they cross into and out of a clean air or reduced emissions regulated zone.

UPS has taken delivery of 15 of these vans already, serving customers in both Tamworth and Southampton in the UK. They’re just one part of UPS’s overall effort to decrease their emissions footprint and environmental impact.

Starship Technologies is fresh off a recent $40 million funding round, and the robotics startup finds itself in a much-changed market compared to when it got its start in 2014. Founded by software industry veterans including Skype and Rdio co-founder Janis Friis, Starship’s focus is entirely on building and commercialization fleets of autonomous sidewalk delivery robots.

Starship invented this category when it debuted, but five years later it’s one of a number of companies looking to deploy what essentially amounts to wheeled, self-driven coolers that can carry small packages and everyday freight including fresh food to waiting customers. CEO Lex Bayer, a former sales leader from Airbnb, took over the top spot at Starship last year and is eager to focus the company’s efforts in a drive to take full advantage of its technology and experience lead.

The result is transforming what looked, to all external observers, like a long tail technology play into a thriving commercial enterprise.

“We want to do 100 universities in the next 24 months, and we’ll do about 25 to 50 robots in each campus,” Bayer said in an interview about his company’s plans for the future.

Didi Chuxing will begin picking up ride-hailing passengers with self-driving cars in Shanghai in just a few months, according to company CTO Zhang Bo (via Reuters). The plan is to roll out autonomous pick-ups in Shanghai first, starting in one district of the city, and then expand the program from there – finally culminating in the deployment of self-driving vehicles outside of China by 2021.

Like Uber’s autonomous test vehicles, Didi’s cars will be staffed with a human driver on board during the initial launch period, which awaits a few remaining licenses before it can actually begin serving human passengers. Self-driving rides will be free for customers, and Zhang said that more than 30 different vehicles will be offered for self-driving trips as part of the pilot.

After its initial pilot launch in Shanghai, Didi will look to expand its offerings to Beijing and Shenzhen as well, with hopes to be live in all three cities by 2020.

Didi is the largest ride-hailing company in China, and beat out an attempt by Uber to establish a presence in the market, resulting in Uber selling its Chinese business to Didi and exiting the market in 2016 (in exchange for a minority stake). We spoke to Didi’s CTO (who asked to be identified by as ‘Bob’ at the time, hence the lower-third in the video below) later that same year about why the company believes it has an advantage when it comes to data-driven technology development relative to Uber and other ride-hailing companies.

Aside from a general sense in the industry that autonomy is a likely, if not inevitable end goal for ride-hailing and other mobility services with a technological focus, Didi is also likely motivated by a need for drivers to meet demand – and drivers who can provide a safe and secure experience for passengers. The company revealed in July that it had proved over 300,000 drivers that didn’t meet up to its safety standards after overhauling those standards last year.

Earlier this month, Didi also announced that it was spinning out its autonomous driving unit as a separate company, with Zhang as CEO. It’ll look to develop tech for its own fleet, and work in partnership with automakers, including Toyota, in pursuit of commercializing and deploying autonomous driving.

The Volocopter 2X air taxi vehicle is now the first electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) craft to fly at an international airport, fully integrated into the same airspace as other commercial passenger craft. It performed this key milestone flight at Helsinki International Airport, in a demonstration mission that showed it successfully integrated with both traditional air traffic management, and air traffic management systems designed specifically for aircraft with no pilot on board controlling the vehicle manually.

The test is intended to show that air traffic management systems which are designed for both traditional piloted flight and autonomous aircraft, including air robotaxis, can operate in concert with one another, even in areas with dense sky traffic – including over cities in future.

Volocopter, which recently unveiled a new version of its eVTOL which it intends to be the version that goes into commercial service once it launches for paying customers, ran tests at Helsinki airport along with AirMap, Altitude Angel and Unifly, all providers of air traffic management services for unpiloted aerial craft. Through the test, they determined that the Volocopter systems work well with each provider, which is a key step towards gaining certification for commercial flight.

The German startup will be flying its 2X vehicle at an event in Stuttgart on September 14, but its next major milestone will be unveiling the new VoloCity commercial craft and its prototype VoloPort take-off and landing facility in Singapore later this year.

The X-59 supersonic research airplane developed by NASA, which aims to pioneer quiet supersonic flight for eventual use in commercial aviation, is one step closer to reality thanks to testing of a system it will use to provide the aircraft’s pilot with a fully virtual view of the skies. The eXternal Visibility System (or XVS because NASA loves ‘X’ in their acronyms) includes a front-facing camera and display combo that can provide a view for the pilot enhanced by augmented reality, which will include overlaying information like guidance to destination airports, warnings and alerts when other aircraft enter their airspace, and additional info and key cues upon landing approach and takeoff.

Sensors and a 4K camera feed combine to output the info on a 4K monitor that is inside the aircraft facing the pilot in the cockpit. There’s also an additional retractable camera located underneath the aircraft that can provide a key second view during lower speed flight, as in approaching an airport for landing.

The tests involved mounting the XVS on a Beechcraft King Air UC-12B test plane, and then flying with pilots on board and gauging their ability to spot other aircraft through the display, including in situations where it’s traditionally very difficult for pilots to spot the planes, as in when aircraft are coming at each other but with a slight offset in their relative paths vs. being truly head-on.

The reason the XVS is even necessary is that the X-59 will feature a totally new, unique design that emphasizes a much more contoured look vs. current commercial aircraft, which is how it aims to achieve its quiet flight and avoid loud sonic booms when it actually goes supersonic. This is a key development target because the whole point of the aircraft is to show that it’s possible to fly at supersonic speeds without loud booms at ground level, in order to show regulators that it’s possible to fly commercial supersonic aircraft over land and populated areas. The Concorde, which provided supersonic flight commercially from 1976 until 2003, couldn’t operate over land for this reason.

Despite not having a front-facing window, the X-59 will have a transparent canopy, and test pilots say that even if the XVS system were to somehow fail, they could still fly the aircraft using that external view and information from the aircraft’s sensor and avionics system alone.

The X-59 is currently under construction, being built by Lockheed Martin, and aims to take its first flight sometime in 2021.

SF-based Elroy Air hopes to transform bulk air cargo shipping with its ‘Chapparal’ vertical take-off and landing craft, the first version of which will be able to carry 250 lbs of cargo as far as 300 miles. The startup, which was founded in 2016 by experienced professionals with track records of working in UAS (uncrewed aerial systems) has just completed its first flights of the ‘Aluminum Falcon’ prototype test craft.

The 1,215 lb aircraft is a full-scale testing version of the eventual planned commercially deployed Chapparal system, and managed to fly to a height of 10 feet, hovering for just over a minute before returning in a controlled landing. The test took place at McMillan Airfield, at the California National Guards Camp Roberts in Central California, and during the test the VTOL was piloted remotely by the company’s lead pilot.

Elroy Air raised $9.2 million in funding in February, but it’s mostly been quietly making progress on bringing its prototype to life after debuting the initial design in 2017. The startup’s goal is to “decouple air cargo from airports” according to CEO David Merrill – which means letting big VTOLs do the work that small cargo planes currently handle for air freight.

The specific approach Elroy Air is taking makes use of hybrid-electric power trains for its aircraft, which help them to travel longer distances vs. fully electric VTOLs, while retaining better fuel efficiency vs. vehicles that only use internal combustion engines. The aircraft is also designed to work with pre-packed pods, so that it can easily and quickly swap its cargo for another shipment at its destination for the return flight.

The company will now carry out further tests of its prototype following this successful hover demonstration, and it’s looking to begin some small commercial service launches as early as next year if all goes well.

Google is introducing combo navigation directions that pair ridesharing and biking options with transit guidance. Starting today, when you search from directions using Google Maps and select the ‘transit’ tap, you’ll see ridesharing options included when the nearest station is a bit further than most people might expect to go on foot. Similarly, you’ll also see routes with bike suggestions for certain legs, all listed alongside routes that stick to just transit alone for a full range of options.

The new hybrid navigation options will include useful info life the cost of rideshare segments, as well as wait times and traffic conditions. You’ll be able to specify your preferred rideshare provider from this available through Google Maps in your area, and also pick which rideshare method you prefer (ie., pool or economy).

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Bikers will get route directions specific to the best paths and roads for bikes to takes, and in both cases, all of the available info will be fed into providing an overall ETA, so you can make an informed decision about which route and method of transportation to take depending on when you need to be where you’re going.

Google says that the combined transit/ridesharing navigation will start rolling out today on both Android and iOS, and that iOS users will start seeing the biking options today, with Android to follow in the coming weeks.