Can this Silicon Valley startup make autonomous fleets profitable?

""I've been following self-driving cars for many years, and I'm a huge believer that it can bring about transformational welfare as long as the economics are right," Kalligeros tells Fast Company. "Self-driving cars don't make [economic] sense today. They're burning through $2 billion or $3 billion a year, so what we have today is not fit for scale.""

"Led by Waymo, autonomous driving is already live in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, with expansion plans for another 20 cities. By 2035, Goldman Sachs predicts a $48 billion domestic market as robotaxi numbers grow from the current 3,000 to 3 million, and a $415 billion global market expanding from 7,000 to 6 million vehicles."

"They'd navigated similar logistics with their London startup Pushme Bikes, a massive battery-swapping network for shared e-scooters & e-bikes that raised $600 million before selling to Germany's Tier Mobility in 2020. (The global platform now serves 5,000 locations across 40 cities.) Now they're applying that experience to autonomous driving."

"When they noticed robotaxi expansion goals outpacing its earning ability, Kalligeros and Keene set about reimagining an operations structure that wouldn't consume the majority of fleet costs. Their solution-a connected network of automated, localized service pods-is the basis for Aseon Labs, a Redwood City, CA startup backed by Y Combinator and publicly unveiled today."

Robotaxi growth faces a major operating-cost bottleneck that prevents self-driving economics from scaling. Two mobility entrepreneurs, George Kalligeros and Dan Keene, apply logistics experience from Pushme Bikes, a large battery-swapping network for shared e-scooters and e-bikes. They founded Aseon Labs to redesign robotaxi operations around a connected network of automated, localized service pods. The goal is to service fleets more quickly and efficiently so servicing does not consume most fleet costs. Autonomous driving is already operating in multiple U.S. cities, with large projected market growth, but expansion depends on solving the cost and logistics constraints of fleet operations.

Read at Fast Company