Voyage, the autonomous car startup that spun out of Udacity, introduced Thursday it has raised $31 million in a spherical led by Franklin Templeton.
Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land-Rover’s InMotion Ventures, and Chevron Technology Ventures additionally participated within the spherical. The firm, which operates a ride-hailing service in retirement communities utilizing self-driving automobiles supported by human security drivers, has raised a complete of $52 million since launching in 2017. The new funding features a $three million convertible be aware.
Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron has huge plans for the contemporary injection of capital, together with hiring and increasing its fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which all the time have a human security driver behind the wheel.
Ultimately, the expanded G2 fleet and workers are simply the means in the direction of Cameron’s grander mission to show Voyage into a really driverless and worthwhile ride-hailing firm.
“It’s not just about solving self driving technology,” Cameron instructed TechCrunch in a current interview, explaining {that a} price efficient car designed to be driverless is the important piece required to make this a worthwhile enterprise.
The firm is within the midst of a hiring marketing campaign that Cameron hopes will take its 55-person workers to greater than 150 over the subsequent 12 months. Voyage has had some success attracting high-profile folks to fill executive-level positions, together with CTO Drew Gray, who beforehand labored at Uber ATG, Otto, Cruise and Tesla, in addition to former NIO and Tesla worker Davide Bacchet as director of autonomy.
Funds may even be used to extend its fleet of second-generation self-driving automobiles (referred to as G2) which are at present being utilized in a 4,000-resident retirement group in San Jose, Calif., in addition to The Villages, a 40-square-mile, 125,000-resident retirement metropolis in Florida. Voyage’s G2 fleet is 12. Cameron didn’t present particulars on what number of automobiles it can add to its G2 fleet, solely describing it as a “nice jump that will allow us to serve consumers.”
Voyage used the G2 automobiles to create a template of types for its eventual driverless car. This driverless product — a time period Cameron has utilized in a earlier put up on Medium — will initially be restricted to 25 miles per hour, which is the driving velocity inside the two retirement communities by which Voyage at present assessments and operates. The car may function at a low velocity, however they’re able to dealing with complicated visitors interactions, he wrote.
“It won’t be the most cost effective vehicle ever made because the industry still in its infancy, but it will be a huge, huge, huge improvement over our G2 vehicle in terms of being be able to scale out a commercial service and make money on each ride,” Cameron mentioned.
Voyage initially used modified Ford Fusion automobiles to check its autonomous car know-how after which launched in July 2918 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, its second technology of autonomous automobiles. But the top purpose has all the time been a driverless product.
TechCrunch beforehand reported that the corporate has partnered with an automaker to offer this next-generation car that has been designed particularly for autonomous driving. Cameron wouldn’t title the automaker. The car will likely be electrical and it received’t be a retrofit just like the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid automobiles Voyage at present makes use of or its first-generation car, a Ford Fusion.
Most importantly, and a element Cameron did share with TechCrunch, is that the car it makes use of for its driverless service could have redundancies and safety-critical purposes constructed into it.
Voyage additionally has two offers in place with Enterprise rental automobiles and an insurance coverage firm to assist it scale.
“You can imagine leasing is much more optimal than purchasing and owning vehicles on your balance sheet,” Cameron mentioned. “We have those deals in place that will allow us to not only get the vehicle costs down, but other aspects of the vehicle into the right place as well.”
