🏢 🚙 🤖 Issue 23: robot restaurants, Tesla factory tour and Barcelona’s super blocks

Sam Cash
Sam Cash
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on my article on European Seed financing — it was published yesterday here on VentureBeat. Have a read, comment, share and tweet if you found it useful.

Main Stories

🤖🌮 Robot restaurants — mechanised kitchens and restaurants have been around for a while, from dumbwaiters popularised in the 1840s to sushi conveyor belts which saw adoption in the 1990s.

Though recently, the prevelance of a number of autonomous technologies coupled with record low (US) unemployment rates and a workforce hesitant to enter the low-end of the service market — these robots are gaining in popularity beyond novelty use cases

To date, we’ve seen a number of startups build their own robots, generally focused on cocktails or coffee. These machines can make up to 120 drinks an hour, work 24 hours a day / 7 days a week and in the mid to long term are significantly cheaper to operate versus a human.

This trend speaks to a greater question. We no longer ask ourselves about whether these robots are able to make a martini but whether people want to actively embrace automation and see value in cutting out human interaction, inefficiency and fallibility.

A number of companies are breaking out from novelty use cases. One of the most prevalent is San Francisco based CafeX which uses a Mitsubishi 6-axis industrial robot to produce cups of coffee, the company is currently raising $12m in funding. Beyond this, Zume is a robotic pizza company which envisions building mobile pizza oven delivery vehicles (wtf is that?), which remotely takes orders through an app and cooks pizzas robotically whilst enroute to your home. It was reported last week that the company was in talks with Softbank about a $500m investment.

Whilst robot restaurants might gain popularity in narrow use cases, it remains to be seen whether wide-scale machine-visible adoption will take place. Humans have a deeply personal and social relationship with food and drink, one which transcends convenience. So far, people have found no objections to the automation of grocery stores, where consumers purchase pre-packaged goods (likely also made by machines). Will we see fully autonomous restaurants or bars anytime soon? Or will human interaction remain key parts of these experiences?

🚕 Car rental and ride-hailing — This week, peer-to-peer car rental company Getaround raised a $300m Series D from Softbank. The company recently announced a partnership with Uber, to be part of the ‘Uber Rent’ platform which allows users to rent nearby vehicles directly from owners within the Uber app. This is interesting for a number of reasons:

  • Uber management is clearly laser focused on becoming a multi-modal aggregator of transportation services
  • Getaround is not only going after rival Turo, but traditional car rental firms like Hertz, Avis etc.
  • Softbank further reinforces its position as an index for global ride-sharing and mobility companies with investments in Uber, Didi, Ola, 99, Grab, DoorDash and Grofers (did I miss any?)

>>Interestingly, this week Alix Partners released findings from a large scale survey on some of the issues ride-hailing poses to the traditional car rental market. Some interesting stats:

  • 35% of respondents found car rental a laborious process, 34% cited displeasure with high add-on charges
  • 49% said one of their key attractions to ride-hailing was the ease of use
  • The experience of using “premium” car rental companies versus “value” ones is practically indistinguishable

One of the clearest instances of a shift in consumer behaviour from car rental to ride-hailing is in the business segment. Business travellers are no longer renting vehicles for trips but are using ride-hailing not only to and from airports but in between meetings. Certify found that in 2017 Uber and Lyft accounted for 68% of ground transportation expense receipts

Interesting Companies

Pony Bikes — CEO and long time subscriber (hi Paul!) published a piece on his vision for decentralised ownership in bike sharing. Pony Bikes works in the same way as dockless bike sharing schemes though it also allows individuals to own the bikes (assets) which in turn derive income from usage

Inokyo (YC S18) — The soon to be YC graduate is looking to become an independent version of Amazon Go, the cashierless convenience store. Check out their video demo here

Vague Scientist

Uber and Lyft’s effect on Seattle — this is the Montagues v Capulets of mobility arguments. Does ride-sharing increase or decrease urban traffic? The Seattle Department of Transportation revealed that ride-sharing added 94 million driver miles to the city in 2017

The bear case for micro-mobility — ARK analyst Sam Korus, gives his view on why micro-mobility might not be as disruptive as expected with autonomous vehicles on the horizon — see if you agree.

Lucid Motors raises $1bn from Saudis — electric vehicle maker Lucid has, like Tesla, sought investment from Saudi Arabia

Tesla factory tour — this 15 minute video shows Elon giving a tour of the Tesla factory and explaining some of the processes behind the production of their vehicles

Barcelona’s Super Blocks — this short video looks at Barca’s super block schemes which looks to pedestrianise 40 acre (9x9 blocks) sections of the city. The city has started to be reclaimed by parks, playgrounds and social areas

Amazon linked to Landmark Theatres (cinemas) acquisition — the Seattle giant has been linked to the troubled cinema chain. This would give them an offline distribution channel for their content, and likely an additional benefit for Prime members. *I’m not convinced this makes a lot of sense unless they looked to repurpose the space for other useshit me up if you have a view

Apple Car in 202x? — famed Apple supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts the company is going to release a full autonomous vehicle between 2023 and 2025

Thanks for reading!

Socratic Tech

Thought pieces on startups and technology. Cutting through the noise, so you don’t have to.

Sam Cash

Written by

Sam Cash

Early stage VC @Project_A_Ventures | prev. @betaworks | loves great founders + tech + emergent behaviours | Newsletter: http://bit.ly/PWTjoin

Socratic Tech

Thought pieces on startups and technology. Cutting through the noise, so you don’t have to.

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