PRESS RELEASE – November 5, 2018

Transit’s mobile app aggregates and maps real-time transportation data, functional in more than 175 metropolitan areas around the world.

Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has announced today that it has invested in the latest round of funding in Transit, a multi-modal transportation mobile app company based in Montreal, Canada. This marks the latest technology investment by Alliance Ventures, launched earlier this year to support start-ups, early-stage development and entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.

François Dossa, Alliance Global Vice President, Ventures and Open innovation, said: “We are pleased to make a strategic investment in Transit, the leading urban mobility navigation start-up in North America. This investment, which will advance Transit’s efforts to make mobility seamless and accessible in cities, fits with the Alliance 2022 strategy to become a leader in robo-vehicle ride-hailing mobility services and a provider of vehicles for public transit use and car-sharing.”

Sam Vermette, chief executive of Transit, added: “New modes of mobility are entering the market at record speeds. It took decades for car-sharing to catch on. Now, e-bikes and scooters are being rolled out in weeks. This is an exciting time, as Transit helps people navigate their new mobility options. We look forward to working closely with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi as Transit grows.”

Transit’s mobile app platform enables multi-modal transportation, integrating public transit, ride-hailing, bike-sharing, and scooter-sharing. By combining real-time data from transit agencies with user crowdsourcing, Transit provides the most accurate information. Users enable GO, a function to get real-time notifications for their ride. Transit then tracks the real-time location of the vehicle and notifies the user when to leave for their stop, when to disembark, and sends adjusted ETAs. The investment reflects the capability of Transit in advancing multi-modal transportation as new modes of mobility rapidly enter the market. Transit is seen as a leader in its field, servicing more than 175 metropolitan areas globally

ABOUT TRANSIT

Transit solves the urban commute in more than 175 cities worldwide. Users can easily navigate public transit with accurate real-time predictions, simple trip planning, and step-by-step navigation. The app also integrates other transport modes — bikeshare, scooters, carshare and ridehail — so users can determine the best way to get from A to B. The company is based in Montréal, Québec. Investors include In-Motion Ventures, Accel, Real Ventures, Accomplice, BDC, and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi.
http://www.transitapp.com

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry. Together, the partners sold more than 10.6 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2017. The member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. They have strategic collaborations with other automotive groups, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng. This strategic alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.
www.alliance-2022.com
www.media.renault.com
www.nissan-newsroom.com
www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/newsrelease/

PRESS RELEASE – January 16, 2019

Investment in US provider of dealership software systems marks a new commitment for digital consumer experience in first year of corporate venture capital fund.

Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has announced today a new investment in digital technologies and services by investing in Tekion, a US company. Tekion brings connected digital experiences to automotive retail through the most advanced Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities available.

The investment in Tekion, based in California’s Silicon Valley, is the latest investment by Alliance Ventures in start-ups, early-stage development and entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.

François Dossa, Alliance Global Vice President, Ventures and Open Innovation, said: “Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi believes that automotive groups with the most advanced and digitally-connected customer services will enjoy significant competitive advantages. This is one of the reasons we are investing in Tekion, a company that is leveraging the most advanced technologies to provide digital experiences and solutions for automotive retail.”

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tekion added: “At Tekion, we offer the latest technology from ML/AI to Big Data and Internet of Things, all integrated in one cloud platform, bringing a seamless digital experience from online to in-store. This investment from Alliance Ventures will enable us to go farther and faster in creating best-in-class, integrated experiences that connect OEMs, dealers, and consumers better than ever before.”

The investment follows nine other direct investments in 2018, in startups based in North America, Europe, Middle-East and China, to allow Alliance Ventures to contribute to the future of mobility for all.

Financial terms of the Tekion investment will not be disclosed.

ABOUT TEKION
Tekion is a cloud platform that offers automotive retail technology that disrupts the status quo. Tekion services car dealerships across the United States who seek a better way to do business while providing excellent customer experiences and increasing efficiency, revenue and retention. Tekion was born in California’s Silicon Valley and employs over 150 innovators. For more information, visit Tekion.com.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry. Together, the partners sold more than 10.6 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2017. The member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. They have strategic collaborations with other automotive groups, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng. This strategic alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.
www.alliance-2022.com
www.media.renault.com
www.nissan-newsroom.com
www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/newsrelease/

PRESS RELEASE – February 18, 2019

Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, today announced a new investment in PowerShare, an electric vehicle (EV) charging platform startup based in China. PowerShare provides an online platform that connects EV drivers, charge point operators and power suppliers to streamline the charging experience. It offers a cloud-based system, enabling suppliers to monitor the demand from vehicles with the supply capacity of the grid and drivers to find available charging stations.

PowerShare is the most recent addition to the Alliance Ventures portfolio in the field of early-stage development and entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.

François Dossa, Alliance Global Vice President, Ventures and Open Innovation, said: “PowerShare’s expertise fits with the Alliance’s objective to maintain our leadership in vehicle electrification. A solid infrastructure network must be established to accelerate the deployment of EV and new mobility services, and we expect Powershare’s technology to help make that happen. Additionally, PowerShare’s base in China aligns with our strong focus on the market as a strategic hub.”

Ethan Zhu, founder and Chief Executive Officer of PowerShare added: “As a technology-based start-up with a focus on electric vehicle charging, PowerShare has accumulated rich experiences in this field through in-depth cooperation with domestic and foreign automobile manufacturers, charging operators and charging pile manufacturers over the past four years. This investment from Alliance Ventures will enable us to go farther and faster in expanding markets, developing core technologies, and exploring new business models in the global e-Mobility business. We look forward to working closely with Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi as PowerShare grows.”

The investment in PowerShare follows ten other Alliance Ventures investments, including start-ups based in North America, Europe and China, all with a focus on contributing to the future of mobility.

Financial terms of the PowerShare investment will not be disclosed.

ABOUT POWERSHARE
PowerShare, established in 2015, is an Internet of Things technology-based company providing services in the field of eMobility. Equipped with deep know-how in charging infrastructures in China and industry-comprehensive businesses, PowerShare provides simple access to charging stations via SaaS Platform service. Based on PowerShare’s Charging Platform and Algorithm, the company brings more solutions and technologies into EV features for the eMobility. PowerShare’s investors include Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, BP, and DETONG Capital.
www.powershare.com.cn/en/home/.

ABOUT ALLIANCE VENTURES

Alliance Ventures is the strategic venture capital fund of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automotive alliance. The fund, launched in 2018 and co-located in Amsterdam, Silicon-Valley, Paris, Yokohama, Beijing and Tel Aviv, plans to invest up to $1 billion in its first five years to support open innovation. Alliance Ventures targets technology and business model innovation in new mobility, autonomous driving, connected services, EV & energy and enterprise 2.0. By drawing on expertise and business opportunities from across the world’s largest automotive alliance, the fund makes strategic investments at all start-up stages and incubates new automotive entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry. Alliance Ventures is aligned with the objectives of “Alliance 2022”, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi’s midterm plan which aims to strengthen cooperation and double the annualized synergies generated by Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors to more than €10 billion.
www.alliance-2022.com/ventures/

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry. Together, the partners sold more than 10.7 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2018. The member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. They have strategic collaborations with other automotive groups, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng. This strategic alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and mobility services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.
www.alliance-2022.com
www.media.renault.com
https://newsroom.nissan-global.com/?lang=en-US
www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/newsrelease/

ALLIANCE VENTURE’S 5 INNOVATION TERRITORIES

Alliance Ventures focuses its strategic investments over 5 Innovation Territories which have been closely tracked since 2018:
• New Mobility
• Autonomous Driving
• Electric Vehicle, Cleantech & Energy
• Connected Services
• Enterprise 2.0

OUR INSIGHTS ON THE NEW MOBILITY INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM

We would like to share our vision and analysis of each Innovation Territory, starting with New Mobility in which we categorized Mobility Services, Goods Delivery, Mobility Marketplace Providers, MaaS Platforms, Fleet Ops. SaaS solutions and more. The results presented below have been found from our internal data, monitored from 2018 to 2021.
Investments in New Mobility startups have been increasing over the past few years, reaching a total of appr. $45B from January 2018 up to June 2021. Within this ecosystem, startups from the United States (29%) and China (23%) are concentrating over half the global amount raised. The Singaporean Grab and Indonesian Gojek ride hailing, and delivery platforms have allowed the rest of the world to also feature great successes, respectively raising appr. $4.8B and $3B over this period.
While China has the largest median raised money per New Mobility startup, Europe and North America benefit from a deep market of startups that have raised money in smaller average amounts.
We observed an interesting trend in the distribution of the series over the period. If Seed and Series A and Series B led by far the total amount of fundraising rounds over the first semester of 2018 (67 and 52 respectively vs 13 for Series C+), this distribution is today much more balanced with 26 Series C+, 23 Series A and B and 15 Seed over the first semester of 2021.
When we take an even closer look within New Mobility which sub-categories get the largest focus, we found out that startups in Mobility Services (61% in amount raised), Goods Delivery Services (20%) and Mobility Marketplace Providers (19%) have raised the most money. Goods delivery rise has been especially spectacular since the beginning of covid, going from appr. $1B raised over the first semester of 2020 to over $5B during 2021’s first semester.
Included in these amounts are some major success stories like the US delivery startup goPuff that raised an exceptional $1.15B over its 2021 Series G, the Chinese app-based transportation service Didi that raised $1B in Seed in 2020 and $600M in Series B in 2021, and the German e-commerce and transportation company Flixbus that raised a 2019 Series F of $560M.

Sources: Pitchbook, Crunchbase, Axios, Strictky VC Newsletter, Trucks Newsletter

ABOUT THE TEAM

Alliance Ventures, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Venture Capital fund launched in 2018, has seen a wave of new arrivals since the beginning of covid.
Alliance Ventures’ Paris team has been completely renewed over 2020-2021. In Europe, Veronique Sarlat-Depotte, also General Secretary and Executive VP of the Alliance Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has been appointed as Chairman of Alliance Ventures. Julien Lhotte has joined the team as Operation & Governance Manager. Jean-Baptiste Dagand has been working as Alliance Ventures’ Financial Analyst & Controller. Finally, Cyril Kernbaum & Zakaria Lazaar are working as Venture Capital Analysts, supporting the team with various analyses.
The US and China-based team hasn’t seen any new arrivals. Ryan Armbrust remains in his position as Alliance Ventures’ Senior Partner and Lei Qi as Principal. Respectively based in the Silicon Valley and in China, they have been leading our investment deals, strategic collaboration within the Alliance and portfolio management since the beginning of the adventure back in 2018.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry, whose member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. This strategic alliance is among the industry leaders in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.

ABOUT ALLIANCE VENTURES

Alliance Ventures is the strategic venture capital fund of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automotive alliance. The fund, launched in 2018 and co-located in Amsterdam, Paris and the Silicon-Valley, plans to invest to support open innovation. Alliance Ventures targets technology and business model innovation in new mobility, autonomous driving, connected services, EV & energy and enterprise 2.0. By drawing on expertise and business opportunities from across the world’s largest automotive alliance, the fund makes strategic investments at all start-up stages and incubates new automotive entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.

NEW COLLABORATION PROJECT

For the first time in France’s power market, in summer 2021, technology startup The Mobility House has implemented electric car battery storage. The battery storage is made up of first and second-life batteries from Renault’s Zoe car model.
Renault’s Advanced Battery Storage continues to support the electricity storage initiative from The Mobility House. The new facility at Renault’s Douai plant in northern France is designed similarly to the storage facility TMH and Renault opened in Elverlingsen, North Rhine-Westphalia, in November 2020. One difference: in Elverlingsen, only new batteries were utilized (First Life), whereas in Douai, a mixture of new and Renault Zoe’s batteries were used (Second Life).
“Electric mobility offers new opportunities for the energy transition. At The Mobility House, we are seizing them. Smart charging and energy storage solutions. With Vehicle-to-Grid and stationary storage, we are launching a revolution in the world of energy and realizing our vision: a future without CO2 emissions,” says Thomas Raffeiner, Founder of TMH.
The Douai plant is not only important for electromobility because of its stationary storage. Douai is the centre of ElectriCity, in which Renault is combining its northern French plants into an electromobility production network. Among other things, the new Renault 5 will be built at the plant.
Previously, The Mobility House had teamed up with Nissan and several other industrial and local actors with the aim of powering the largest European energy storage system using second life and new electric vehicle batteries in a commercial building, inside Amsterdam’s Johan Cruijff Arena. The 3-megawatt storage system provides a more reliable and efficient energy supply with the equivalent of 148 Nissan LEAF batteries.

ABOUT THE MOBILITY HOUSE

The goal of The Mobility House is to create a zero-emission energy and mobility future. Our technology platform unites the automotive and energy sectors. We integrate vehicle batteries into the power grid using intelligent charging, energy and storage solutions. This way, we promote the development of renewable energies, stabilize the power grid and make electric mobility more affordable. The technology company was founded in 2009 and operates globally from its Munich, Zurich and Sunnyvale (CA) sites, serving customers in over 10 countries. These include leading automotive manufacturers, fleet operators, installation companies, energy suppliers and electric car drivers. For more information, visit mobilityhouse.com.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry, whose member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. This strategic alliance is among the industry leaders in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.

ABOUT ALLIANCE VENTURES

Alliance Ventures is the strategic venture capital fund of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automotive alliance. The fund, launched in 2018 and co-located in Amsterdam, Paris and the Silicon-Valley, plans to invest to support open innovation. Alliance Ventures targets technology and business model innovation in new mobility, autonomous driving, connected services, EV & energy and enterprise 2.0. By drawing on expertise and business opportunities from across the world’s largest automotive alliance, the fund makes strategic investments at all start-up stages and incubates new automotive entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.