What has four wheels and loses money?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and go deep. This time Natasha and Alex corralled TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec to talk to us about the endless parade of EV SPACs, and more. Before we get into the show notes, you can follow Equity on Twitter here.

About to join the Equity podcast crew … what should I do to prepare? @alex @nmasc_

— Kirsten Korosec (@kirstenkorosec) May 18, 2021

And, because we are proud, we won a Webby! Our show! How cool is that? Thank you for love listening, hate listening, all of it. We are so thankful.

Ok, here’s what we talked about:

• Why is every electric vehicle company going public via a SPAC, and why is there so much potential fraud in the space? Kirsten has some notes on the matter, but it boils down to money in both cases.
• The Bird-SPAC deal in all its glory. You can read Alex and Kirsten’s dive into the Bird investor deck here. We had questions like why was the shared scooter model ever considered viable, and, how did the company improve its economics during a pandemic? The SPAC world never, ever disappoints.
• Of course, we couldn’t resist talking about the scooter barrage of news from years ago and how things have changed since.
• We end with her latest scoop, a series of exits at Waymo, and what that means for the future of the autonomous vehicle company. Plus, we didn’t get to make a joke about it in the show but let’s just say: Waymo has a waymore to go before it has driverless tech all over the streets.
• And one more thing: Kirsten gives a look at some of the speakers at our upcoming mobility event. Snag tickets here, and subscribe to her newsletter, The Station, for all things mobility every week.

And that’s that! We are back with our regular weekly news rundown Friday morning. Chat you all then!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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