The Tesla Diner & Drive-In, a long-awaited and hyped facility that combines retro nostalgia and futurism with the automaker’s fast-charging network, officially opened at 4:20 p.m. Monday in Hollywood, California.

The Tesla Diner & Drive-In is technically a place for Tesla drivers to charge their EVs and maybe get hamburger, hot dog, or other classic diner menu items (which Eater shared in full). The diner, which per reporting from Not a Tesla App is loaded with Tesla-branded merchandise, an Optimus robot, and two 45-foot LED movie screens, is clearly hoping to attract more than just Tesla owners.

It’s too early to tell if the diner, which boasts 80 v4 Superchargers stalls and a drive-in movie theater that syncs with speakers inside a driver’s Tesla, will become an enduring fixture of Hollywood. The long lines of people who queued up Monday morning suggests the diner will attract crowds for awhile.

Even before its doors officially opened, Tesla CEO Elon Musk mused about establishing more of the diners globally.

“If our retro-futuristic diner turns out well, which I think it will, @Tesla will establish these in major cities around the world, as well as at Supercharger sites on long distance routes,” Musk posted on X.

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A little bird

If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now. Uber wants a big piece of the autonomous vehicle technology pie. The ride-hailing company has spent the past two years locking in partnerships with just about every AV company you can think of, and across every sector, including delivery, robotaxis, and trucks. 

And yet, I wasn’t totally prepared for the amount of money Uber invested in its latest tie-up with EV maker Lucid and AV startup Nuro. Click here to read my article on the partnership agreement and Uber’s plans for a premium robotaxi service.

We’re here in the “Little bird” section because I’ve learned something new, and welp, I wanted to share it with subscribers first. 

As a publicly traded company, Lucid had to disclose that Uber invested $300 million into the company. But Uber didn’t have to share what it invested into Nuro, saying only that it was a multi-hundred-million-dollar figure. One source with direct knowledge told me it was more than Lucid’s $300 million. Since the article was published, I’ve had some little birds fly in to tell me it was around $400 million. 

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com, or Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. 

Deals!

When Waymo shuttered its self-driving trucks program, I wondered where that talent would go. And I (correctly) assumed some might go off and start their own companies. 

Last year, I heard that Boris Sofman, who led the self-driving trucks program at Waymo, had started an autonomous vehicle technology startup focused on heavy equipment used at construction sites. I had even written a little nugget about it in the “Little bird” section. But I was never able to verify exactly how much it raised and who else was attached to it. 

Now we know. The startup, called Bedrock Robotics, raised $80 million from investors Eclipse and 8VC. Sofman co-founded Bedrock Robotics alongside Waymo veterans Kevin Peterson and Ajay Gummalla, as well as Tom Eliaz, who previously worked at Segment and Twilio.

Other deals that got my attention this week …

Amogy, a Brooklyn-based ammonia-to-power startup that can apply its tech to shipping, raised another $23 million in funding, bringing its most recent fundraise to $80 million. The round was led by the Korea Development Bank and KDB Silicon Valley LLC with participation from BonAngels Venture Partners, JB Investment, and Pathway Investment.

Geely Auto will take its luxury EV subsidiary Zeekr private through a merger agreement, just over a year after the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange.

Gridserve, a U.K.-based mobile EV charging company, raised £100 million ($134 million) from its existing institutional investors, including TPG Rise Climate, Infracapital, and Mitsubishi.

Pronto, the San Francisco-based startup that developed a self-driving system designed for haulage trucks and other off-road vehicles used at construction and mining sites, acquired competitor SafeAI. Terms were not disclosed. Co-founder and CEO Anthony Levandowski described the acquisition as a talent and technology play. The bulk of the 12-person startup’s engineering team and its IP will come over to Pronto.

Via, the transit software startup, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering — again. History lesson: Via filed confidentially for an IPO in 2021 but never took the next official and regulatory steps to enter the public markets. Now the company says it’s ready. Will 2025 be the year?

Notable reads and other tidbits

ADAS

Lucid is rolling out hands-free highway driving to its Air sedans via a software update at the end of the month, a major step forward for the company’s advanced driver-assistance system.

Autonomous vehicles

Uber struck a robotaxi deal with Chinese tech giant Baidu to deploy thousands of autonomous vehicles in multiple markets outside the U.S. and mainland China.

Electric vehicles, batteries, and charging

GM is the latest automaker to partner with Redwood Materials on its new energy storage venture. Speaking of GM, the automaker is upgrading the Tennessee factory it owns alongside LG Energy Solution to produce cheaper LFP batteries. 

Public records requests can reveal the darndest things. For instance, Rivian will resume prep work on its planned Georgia factory in August and is still looking to break ground early next year, according to emails TechCrunch obtained through a public records request.  

In other Rivian news … Rivian co-founder and CEO RJ Scaringe transferred a portion of his ownership stake and voting power as part of a newly settled divorce proceeding. The filing caught our interest for a few reasons (I suggest you read the story), notably that unlike so many tech founders, Scaringe never had a tremendous amount of voting power post-IPO.

The company’s newest software update gives its in-car navigation a new look and feel. In short: Mapbox is out, and a customized Rivian-meets-Google-Maps app is in. 

Senior reporter Sean O’Kane and I joke that we’re the only two people left on earth who care about what’s going on at Faraday Future. Oh! But wait, so does the SEC, and it appears the agency is getting ready to take action.

Subaru unveiled its all-electric crossover model called Uncharted that has more than 300 miles of range and will go on sale in the U.S. in early 2026. Subaru said it will release pricing closer to market launch. 

Tesla made its long-awaited entry into India with the opening of its first showroom — nine years after CEO Elon Musk first teased the move and following years of delays and shifting timelines in one of the world’s largest automotive markets. Stay tuned for more coverage from our India-based reporter Jagmeet Singh.

Tesla Cybertruck sales have plummeted from their peak last year. How far? Here’s one point of reference: The GMC Hummer EV (which isn’t exactly a volume seller) outsold the polarizing steel-clad curiosity in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, jury selection started for a federal civil lawsuit against Tesla. At issue is whether the company’s driver-assistance technology was to blame for a 2019 fatal crash in Key Largo, Florida. As you might expect, personal feelings about Elon Musk loomed large in the jury process.

Future of flight

Joby Aviation has doubled the size and production capacity of its pilot manufacturing facility in Marina, California, as it pushes to commercialize its electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles by early next year. 

Autonomous robotics startup Cartken, known for its four-wheeled robots that deliver food on college campuses and through Tokyo’s bustling streets, has found a new area of focus: industrials. 

Cartken co-founder and CEO Christian Bersch told TechCrunch that applying its delivery robots to industrial settings was always in the back of his mind as they built the startup. When companies started reaching out about using their robots in factories and labs, Cartken took a closer look.

“What we found is that actually there’s a real big need in industrial and onsite use cases,” said Bersch, who co-founded the startup along with other former Google engineers behind the Bookbot project. “Sometimes there have even [been] more direct value to companies optimizing their material flows or their production flows.”

In 2023, the startup landed its first big industrial customer, German manufacturing company ZF Lifetec. Initially, ZF Lifetec used its existing delivery robots, called the Cartken Courier, which can hold 44 pounds and resembles an Igloo cooler on wheels. 

“Our food delivery robot started moving production samples around, and it’s quickly turned into our busiest robot of all,” Bersch said. “That’s when we said, hey, there’s like real use cases and real market need behind it, and that’s when we started targeting that segment more and more.”

At the time, Cartken was still pressing ahead on its delivery sidewalk business, including locking in partnerships with Uber Eats and GrubHub for its last-mile delivery operations across U.S. college campuses and in Japan.

But that early success with ZF, encouraged the startup founders, which includes Jake Stelman, Jonas Witt and Anjali Naik, to expand its business model. Switching Cartken’s robots from food delivery to an industrial setting, wasn’t much of a challenge, Bersch said. The AI behind the robots is trained on years of food delivery data and the devices are designed to traverse various terrains and weather conditions. 

This means the robots can travel between indoor and outdoor settings. And thanks to data collected from delivering food on Tokyo streets, the robots are able to react and maneuver around obstacles. 

Cartken, which has raised more than $20 million from 468 Capital, Incubate Fund, Vela Partners, and other venture firms, has started to build out its robotic fleet to reflect its pivot to industrials. The company released the Cartken Hauler earlier this year, which is a larger version of the Cartken Courier and can hold up to 660 pounds. The company also released the Cartken Runner, designed for indoor deliveries, and is also working on something similar to a robotic forklift. 

“We have a navigation stack that is parameterizable for different robot sizes,” Bersch said. “All the AI and machine learning and training that went into that is like transferring directly to the other robots.”

Cartken recently announced that it was deepening its four-year relationship with Japanese automaker Mitsubishi, which originally helped the company get the needed certifications to operate their delivery robots on the streets of Tokyo. 

Melco Mobility Solutions, a company under the Mitsubishi umbrella, just announced that it will be buying nearly 100 Cartken Hauler robots for use in Japanese industrial facilities. 

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of traction across various industrial and corporate sites, from automotive companies to pharmaceutical to chemical,” he said. “All these companies typically have people moving stuff from one building to another, whether it’s being by hand, on a cart ,or a small forklift, and that is really what we’re targeting.”

Cartken will still continue its food and consumer last-mile delivery business, but it won’t be expanding it, Bersch said, adding they still do a lot of testing for new capabilities on these existing last-mile delivery routes.