Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Uber seemed to be everywhere, all at once in the emerging autonomous vehicle technology sector. The Financial Times has now put a number on it. The FT calculated that Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying autonomous vehicles and taking equity stakes in the companies developing the tech, according to public records and discussions with folks behind the scenes. About $2.5 billion of that is in direct investments, with the remaining $7.5 billion to be spent on buying robotaxis over the next few years, the outlet reported.

We’ve reported on Uber’s numerous investments and deals with autonomous vehicle companies across drones, robotaxis, and freight. Some of its investments include WeRide, Lucid and Nuro, Rivian, and Wayve. 

This rather large number (and particularly that $7.5 billion) got me thinking about another transformative era in Uber’s history and how it has visited these asset-heavy shores before. Uber might have started with a plan to be asset light, but for a brief period it did quite the opposite.

Uber went on a moonshot spree between 2015 and 2018. It launched electric air taxi developer Uber Elevate and the in-house autonomous vehicle unit Uber ATG, which would be boosted by its acquisition of Otto in 2016. It also snapped up micromobility startup Jump in 2018. 

And then in 2020, Uber pulled the asset-heavy rip cord, ostensibly leaving all of those moonshots behind. Uber sold Uber ATG to Aurora, Jump to Lime, and Elevate to Joby Aviation. But it didn’t completely divest; it kept equity stakes in all of them.

Uber is now entering into a new and different asset-heavy era. It’s not plunking down millions, or even billions, to develop the technology in-house, although I’m sure folks there would be quick to pipe up that there is always R&D happening over at Uber. Instead, it appears to be focused on owning (or perhaps leasing) the physical assets. 

That could mean interesting line items on Uber’s balance sheet in the future. 

Owning fleets of robotaxis built by other companies might not have been the original vision of Uber, or its former CEO Travis Kalanick, who has said the company made a mistake when it abandoned its AV development program. But this new approach could still get it to the same end point.

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Notable reads and other tidbits

Doug Field, the high-profile executive who shaped Ford’s electric vehicle and technology strategies over the past five years, is leaving. Notably, Ford is shaking up the organization as well, creating a “product creation and industrialization” team to be led by COO Kumar Galhotra. Any guesses where Field is headed next? Perhaps he’ll return to Silicon Valley. 

Lightship, the all-electric RV startup, is expanding its Colorado-based factory by another 44,000 square feet, which will allow it to quadruple its manufacturing capacity.

Rivian and battery recycling and materials startup Redwood Materials partnered years ago. We’re now seeing the fruits of that relationship. Redwood is installing battery energy storage at Rivian’s factory in Illinois. The catch? Redwood is using 100 second-life Rivian battery packs, which will provide 10 megawatt-hours (MWh) of dispatchable energy to reduce cost and grid load during peak demand periods.

Tesla created a new self-driving app that makes it easier for owners to subscribe to its Full Self-Driving software and see statistics on how — and how often — they use it. This may not be huge news, but it did catch my eye because of the gamified qualities of these new stats. 

Waymo, as per usual, has a few news items this week. The Alphabet-owned company started testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads in London. It also removed its waitlist in Miami and Orlando to scale its robotaxi services in the two cities. 

One more thing …

This newsletter isn’t my only project that is leaning more heavily into robotics. My podcast, the Autonocast, is too, as the worlds of autonomous vehicles, AI, and robotics mash together. Check out this interview with Foxglove founder Adrian MacNeil, who previously worked at Cruise.