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I was sad to have missed the Monterey Car Week this year, especially because there were a number of reveals I was interested in, including the all-electric Cadillac Opulent Velocity; the Chevrolet Corvette CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo concepts; and Lucid Gravity X reveals. But alas, the sprawling, Champagne-soaked grounds of Quail or the sea of seersucker suits and wide-brimmed hats at Pebble Beach Golf Course were suboptimal landscapes for my newly fractured and boot-encased foot. Next year!

In the meantime, I thought I would reach out to you, dear reader, to get your forecast on what’s in store for automakers and EV sales in the United States once the federal EV tax credit expires September 30.

My prediction? Well I don’t really want to taint the results, but I will say this: Automakers are going to have to do something in the short term to attract customers, and not just because of the expiring EV tax credit.

A little bird

Serve Robotics, the autonomous sidewalk delivery robot company, announced earlier this week that it acquired Vayu Robotics, a startup that has developed AI foundation models and a simulation-powered data engine for robots. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but some back-of-the-envelope math and a little bird helped me determine that Serve Robotics paid between $45 million and $50 million for Vayu. 

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com

Deals!

Several weeks ago, I highlighted a deal between Uber, autonomous vehicle tech startup Nuro, and EV maker Lucid. You can read about that here, but the important piece to remember is Uber’s commitment to make an undisclosed “multimillion-dollar” investment into Nuro. (Sources told me it is more than the $300 million Uber invested in Lucid.)

Nuro has now raised more money in a Series E round that has reached $203 million from a group of new investors that includes Nvidia, existing backer Baillie Gifford, Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, and Pledge Ventures. And a portion of Uber’s investment has gone toward the Series E round.

Other deals that got my attention …

ARK Invest, Cathie Wood’s firm, invested about $12.9 million in the Chinese autonomous driving firm Pony.ai, according to the company.  

Grid Aero, an aerospace startup, raised $6 million in seed funding from Calibrate Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures.

Group14, a battery materials startup, raised $463 million in a funding round led by battery manufacturer SK with participation from ATL, Lightrock, Microsoft, Porsche, and OMERS. Alongside the round, Group14 also announced it had “acquired full ownership” of a joint venture with SK in South Korea.

Oway, founded in 2023 and backed by Y Combinator and General Catalyst, recently closed a $4 million seed round. Read up on the company’s plan to build a decentralized “Uber for freight.”

One update on the Via IPO: Renaissance Capital estimates Via could raise up to $500 million.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Hertz will start selling preowned vehicles on Amazon Autos.

Redwood Materials said it is working with Caterpillar to recycle the battery packs from the company’s battery-electric underground loaders.

Tesla is planning to introduce in-car voice-assistant functions powered by DeepSeek and ByteDance’s Doubao artificial intelligence.

The Routing Company, a startup that helps transit agencies match riders with vehicles quickly and cheaply, landed Zoox as its first robotaxi client. Zoox will purchase a nonexclusive license for The Routing Company’s tech and will bring five of the startup’s engineers on board to “advance the efficiency and scalability” of its fledgling robotaxi service. 

Volkswagen faces a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey over the buttons on the steering wheel of its cars, including ID.4. The lawsuit alleges the buttons are too sensitive and too easy to activate unintentionally.

Waymo has been granted a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City, the first such approval granted by the city. The company told TechCrunch it plans to start testing “immediately.”

In the world of drones and food, I suppose it was inevitable we would get Zipotle — a merging of the words Zipline and Chipotle. Zipline, an autonomous drone delivery startup, has partnered with Chipotle to fly digital orders to guests’ locations in the greater Dallas area.

One more thing …

Vanity Fair has a lengthy feature on Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana that digs into her past, how she manages, and, as the author notes, her un-Elon style. It’s worth the read and gives me an opportunity to remind you all that Mawakana will be on our stage at Disrupt 2025, which will be held October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.