Robotaxis drives miles just to get cleaned and charged; this new startup wants to fix that
Take a stroll around San Francisco and it won’t take long to spot an empty autonomous vehicle cruising the city’s streets, waiting to be hailed by a rider or heading off to a distant depot to be charged and cleaned. These deadhead miles — an industry term for miles driven without a paying passenger — are one of the biggest barriers between robotaxi companies and profitability.
A Redwood City, California-based startup Aseon Labs thinks it has a fix: parking space-sized automated pods that can be scattered throughout cities to inspect, clean, and charge robotaxis. The company, co-founded by the team behind battery-swapping startup Pushme, calls them robotic pit stops for robotaxi industry. And the idea has caught the attention of investors.
Aseon Labshas raised $10 million in a seed round led by Crane Venture Partners, TechCrunch has learned. Y Combinator, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp’s venture firm Expa, Robin Hood...
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