💨 The world tries to chill out

The app tells you your ride is here. (Normal so far, right?)

If startup Halo.Car strikes it big, the next part is where things will take an unexpected turn: you are the one driving.

Oh, and your car is delivering itself, sans driver — well, kind of.

Um, what’s going on here?

Halo’s thing: sending rental cars right to users’ doors using remote operators, per TechCrunch.

• Like any ride-share service, you’d request a pickup at your preferred location.
• Halo’s EV fleet is outfitted with cameras, modems, and antennas; a remote driver at the startup’s operations center uses live video and sensor data to pilot the car to you.
• The remote driver then passes over control, and you pay a $12 hourly rate to drive the vehicle where you please.

Want to try it out?

Go to Las Vegas where the whole driverless delivery schtick is currently being tested.

If successful, it’d be a clever way to skirt competitors’ biggest challenges:

• Halo could compete with Uber and Lyft on pricing by limiting the pesky “having to compensate all the drivers” issue.
• Unlike fully autonomous robotaxi startups, it’d have fewer regulatory and perception hurdles to overcome.

Essentially, Halo monetizes like any rental car company — just using its driverless tech to optimally deploy its fleet.

What’s the downfall?

It only works if Halo can survive the expensive interregnum between now and wider adoption.

• For now, the company deploys not one, but two cars for each rental: the remotely piloted vehicle and a tail car with a human inside. If the primary rental car fails, the tail car can take over.
• Halo says it will stop deploying tail cars “over the next year,” per TechCrunch, if its system performs as hoped.

Last week, Mother Nature cranked up the thermostat enough to make it the hottest day on record — and the economy, entrepreneurs, and certainly the thermostat dads are all starting to notice.

Chilling stats

Extreme heat costs the US $1B in health care each summer and $100B annually in worker productivity losses, a number that’s projected to reach $500B by 2050.

Developing countries will foot much of the incoming AC bill. That’s good for their body temps, but not for the planet’s: AC accounts for ~4% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions across energy use, refrigerant leakage, manufacturing, and transportation.

Chill seekers

Private HVAC companies have raised ~$350m annually in recent years. Startups like Windmill and July are going the “Tesla of AC” route, promising sleek designs, energy efficiency, and easy installation.

In 2020, Chinese giant Midea’s American subsidiary debuted a popular U-shaped window unit that keeps the noisy parts fully outside. We say “popular” because there’s literally a fan club, and because it’s on track to sell 1m units this year.

A breath of fresh air

Last year, Bill Gates’ clean tech fund led a $20m investment in AC startup Blue Frontier, whose salt-based solution produces up to 87% less emissions than traditional systems.

1) It may surprise you to learn that Skype was founded in 2003 — a full eight years before Zoom — and that it was acquired by eBay in 2005, then by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5B. Oh, and that it still has 36m daily active users, albeit down from 40m in March 2020.

2) There are housing bubbles, and then there are bubble bubbles, except this one — the $640m US boba market  — won’t be popping anytime soon, per analysts: The industry is projected to be worth $2.2B by 2033.

3) Irish company CRH is paving the way for America. No, literally — the firm generated $10.2B in 2022 revenue across its Americas Road Solutions business, which produces asphalt to help pave the 2.8m miles of roads in the US (94% of which are made of asphalt). Our hope: they churn out even more asphalt to fill the 2.8m miles worth of ungodly potholes out there.

4) TikTok and Amazon are marching headfirst toward an ecommerce duel for the ages (i.e., millennials and Gen Zers). As Amazon dabbles with a TikTok-inspired feed of shoppable videos, TikTok is rapidly building out shopping capabilities across its platform. Gross merchandise value across TikTok Shop is forecast to reach $20B by year-end, up 4x YoY.