<p>Uber is inviting customers in Atlanta to join a list if they&#8217;re interested in hailing a Waymo robotaxi as the companies prepare to launch a commercial service in the city. Uber and Waymo last September announced plans to offer a robotaxi service in Austin and Atlanta in early 2025 as part of an expanded partnership. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Shared micromobility company Lime has reached an agreement to send batteries used in its scooters and e-bikes to Redwood Materials, which will extract and recycle critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper. The agreement announced Monday makes Redwood Materials the exclusive battery recycling partner for Lime&#8217;s shared scooters and e-bikes located in cities [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The car rental giant attributed the breach to Cleo, whose customers had data stolen by a ransomware gang in 2024.</p>

<p>Self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics plans to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II. The transaction values Kodiak, which has raised around $243 million to date, at about $2.5 billion pre-money. New and existing Kodiak institutional investors, like Soros Fund Management, ARK Investments, and Ares, have funded or [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A handful of engineers who worked at Lucid Motors and on Apple&#8217;s electric car project have launched a new startup that puts a fresh spin on electric hub motors. The new startup, called Conifer, has developed its motor to be free of rare earth elements by using more abundant ferrite magnets, which the company says [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. If there is one certainty in this uncertain moment, it’s this: U.S. tariff policy is likely to change again. As of Friday morning, there [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola&#8217;s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call toward the end of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A new shipbuilding startup called Blue Water Autonomy has emerged from stealth with the promise of developing captain-less naval ships. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company has raised a $14 million seed round from Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. The startup was founded in 2024 by former members of the U.S. Navy, leaders of Amazon Robotics, and [&hellip;]</p>

<p>General Motors is laying off 500 workers at a factory in Canada because of weak demand for its all-electric BrightDrop vans, according to CNBC. GM told CNBC that the cuts were not related to the ongoing trade war being waged by President Donald Trump. The company is cutting one of the two shifts at the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handle about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO, Matt Soule, wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system.  The Los Angeles-based company [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A recent breach of Berkshire Hathaway-owned private jet company NetJets has revealed a guide for flight attendants serving Elon Musk, per a Bloomberg report. The memo offers an interesting glimpse into the personal preferences of the world’s richest man. Some of the preferences are surprising for the CEO of Tesla, a company dedicated to sustainability. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>EV startup Lucid Motors has emerged as a surprise winner in the bankruptcy auction for electric trucking company Nikola&#8217;s Arizona factory and other assets, according to a late Thursday night court filing. Lucid committed around $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations in exchange for the factory, Nikola&#8217;s lease on its Phoenix headquarters, and &#8220;certain [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk&#8217;s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Just one day after TechCrunch revealed that Jeff Bezos is backing a secretive EV startup called Slate Auto, an early version of the company&#8217;s low-cost electric pickup truck was spotted in the wild. Reddit user u/discostranger09 posted a photo to the r/whatisthiscar subreddit on Wednesday of a small, dark gray, two-seater pickup truck on a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The cuts that Elon Musk&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency made at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February &#8220;disproportionately affected&#8221; employees working on vehicle automation safety, according to The Financial Times. That division was formed in 2023 and therefore included a number of staffers who were still in their initial probationary hiring period, which [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar saw its first-quarter sales jump 76% compared to the same period in 2024 after it began offering discounts and other promotions, including ones geared toward locking in Tesla owners. Polestar sold 12,304 cars in the first three months of the year compared to 6,975 in Q1 2024. Sales were relatively [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The sale of bankrupt EV startup Canoo’s assets to its CEO has been approved by the judge overseeing the case. After evaluating a number of limited objections to the sale, Judge Brendan Shannon said in a hearing Wednesday he believes the process was fair and that no one else but Canoo CEO Anthony Aquila made [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Nissan said it will use self-driving software developed by Wayve to beef up its advanced driver-assistance system starting in 2027, a landmark deal for the buzzy U.K. startup that has raised more than $1.3 billion from Nvidia, Microsoft, SoftBank Group, and Uber.  Nissan will integrate Wayve&#8217;s software as well as its sensors, including lidar from an undisclosed [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A Waymo robotaxi caused a traffic jam at a Chick-fil-A in Santa Monica, California, this week after getting stuck in the fast food restaurant&#8217;s drive-through lane. Waymo confirmed the incident, which was first reported by local broadcast station KTLA 5, to TechCrunch via email. Waymo told TechCrunch that there weren&#8217;t any passengers in the robotaxi. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale technology demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in fresh funding to help scale its autonomous driving technology and advance commercial partnerships.&nbsp; The Series E round brings Nuro’s total funding raised to $2.2 billion and its valuation to $6 billion. That’s a drop from the [&hellip;]</p>