Dealer Tech & Auto Commerce:
Automotive Ventures portfolio company Car Capital Technologies, has closed a $150 million three-year secured credit facility and a $6.125 million equity investment from funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group. This milestone transaction provides Car Capital with the debt needed to continue to expand their rapidly growing business, fund more dealers, and increase the number of underserved consumers who want to purchase a vehicle. Car Capital allows their dealer partners to instantly approve 100% of their customers, regardless of credit history and the ability to make 24/7 approval decisions based on the economics of each unique car and consumer. Dealer partners get back-end profit based on performance, not a minimum portfolio size. (Link to article)Moladin, an Indonesia-based marketplace for used cars and bikes, has closed a $42 million Series A funding round, co-led by Northstar Group and Sequoia Capital India. (Link to article)Carsome, which operates a Southeast Asian used-car online marketplace, has raised almost $300 million led by Temasek and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. 65 Equity Partners and SeaTown Holdings International — both backed by Temasek — and Qatar Investment Authority are among investors that participated in the fundraising by Carsome. Malaysia’s most valuable technology startup is planning an initial public offering in the U.S. later this year. Founded in 2015, the company has expanded into Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. The company works with more than 8,000 dealers and handles more than 100,000 transactions on an annualized basis. (Link to article)
Vehicle Connectivity:
Automotive technology supplier Aptiv has agreed to buy software firm Wind River from private equity firm TPG for $4.3 billion in cash as it seeks to capitalize on a surge in spending by automakers to digitalize their cars. The all-cash deal will expand Aptiv’s footprint in an area that is fast becoming the next battleground for automakers, which are spending billions of dollars to enable over-the-air updates and add smartphone-like features. (Link to article)
Shared Mobility & Subscription:
Peer-to-peer car-sharing startup Turo has released its filing to become a publicly-traded company in the United States, a process the company began confidentially in August. The S-1 document does not include terms for its offering. Turo, which was founded in 2010 and has been compared to Airbnb for cars, allows private car owners to rent out their vehicles through the startup’s website or app. The company boasts 85,000 active hosts and 160,000 active vehicle listings in over 7,500 cities as of September 30, 2021. (Link to article)
Electrification:
BMW i Ventures announced a lead investment in HeyCharge, the German start-up democratizing access to electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in apartment complexes, office buildings and other infrastructure locations. HeyCharge was in Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch of start-ups. HeyCharge’s patent-pending technology, SecureCharge, eliminates the need for an on-site internet connection, allowing the app and chargers to communicate directly over bluetooth with the HeyCharge App or SDK. This maximizes availability of the system while minimizing latency between the phone and the charger. When combined with Access Point, HeyCharge’s simple and effective hardware component, total costs can be reduced up to 80% in buildings. (Link to article)Indian two-wheeler vehicle maker Hero MotoCorp will invest up to 4.20 billion rupees ($56.66 million) in electric vehicle start-up Ather Energy as it looks to expand its presence in the green mobility space. The company, which held 34.8% in Ather Energy prior to the investment, said its new stake in the startup would be determined after Ather’s funding round completes. (Link to article)India-based EVage raised a $28 million seed round, led by RedBlue Capital, and will use the funds to complete its production-ready factory outside of Delhi in the first quarter of 2022 and scale up production to meet growing demand. EVage has five EV trucks on the road for a range of e-commerce customers, including Amazon India’s Delivery Service Partner, with plans to provide “in the thousands” more to Amazon by the end of the year, according to one investor. (Link to article)
Autonomy:
Magna International has acquired the technology, IP and assets of Optimus Ride, a startup based in Boston that was trying to commercialize electric autonomous shuttles. As part of the deal announced Tuesday, Magna has hired more than 120 employees of Optimus Ride. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, Magna aims to leverage the tech and expertise from Optimus Ride to beef up its efforts in advanced driver assistance systems — technology that is in high demand. (Link to article)
Micromobility:
Estonian startup Bolt announced a fresh round of €628m at a valuation of €7.4bn, after raising €600m last August. The round, led by Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Investments, with participation from Whale Rock Capital Management LLC, Owl Rock Capital, D1, G Squared, TEKNE srl, GHISALLO CORP and others, brings the total raised by the nine-year-old startup to €1.8bn. Bolt’s top-line numbers are impressive: since October 2020 the company has grown from having a presence in 200 cities to over 400 across Europe and Africa; from 2,000 employees to over 3,000; from 50m passengers to 100m globally; and from a valuation of around €2bn to €7.6bn today. (Link to article)
