Rebecca Bellan

Senior Reporter, Transportation, TechCrunch

Rebecca Bellan covers transportation for TechCrunch. She’s interested in all things micromobility, EVs, AVs, smart cities, AI, sustainability and more. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes.com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more.
Rebecca studied journalism and history at Boston University. She has invested in Ethereum.

Rebecca Bellan

Latest from Rebecca Bellan

Uber is taking a shuttle product it developed for commuters in India and Egypt and converting it for an American audience. The ride-hail and delivery giant announced Wednesday at its…

Uber has a new way to solve the concert traffic problem

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

Zeekr’s market hype is noteworthy and may indicate that investors see value in the high-quality, low-price offerings of Chinese automakers.

The buzziest EV IPO of the year is a Chinese automaker

Uber plans to deliver more perks to Uber One members, like member-exclusive events, in a bid to gain more revenue through subscriptions.  “You will see more member-exclusives coming up where…

Uber promises member exclusives as Uber One passes $1B run-rate

Apple’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri challenged investor worries over an 8% drop in China revenue by noting that sales in other emerging markets are growing. “When we start looking…

Apple: Pay attention to emerging markets, not falling China sales

Hyundai has agreed to spend nearly $1 billion on Motional, an investment that will give the automaker a majority stake while providing the self-driving startup with the necessary capital to…

Hyundai is spending close to $1B to keep self-driving startup Motional alive

Featured Article

A wrestling match over who should control robotaxis is playing out in California

Cities around the country have long been crying out for more control over how autonomous vehicles are deployed on their streets. In California, they might finally get their wish. A handful of AV-related bills, which made progress this month in their long journey through the state legislature, could put more…

7:00 am PDT • April 27, 2024
A wrestling match over who should control robotaxis is playing out in California

Social media platform TikTok says that a bill banning the app in the U.S. is “unconstitutional” and that it will fight this latest attempt to restrict its use in court.…

Breaking down TikTok’s legal arguments around free speech, national security claims

Tesla profits fell 55% to $1.13 billion in the first quarter from the same year-ago period as a protracted EV price-cutting strategy and “several unforeseen challenges” cut into the automaker’s bottom…

Tesla profits drop 55%, company says EV sales ‘under pressure’ from hybrids

Tesla investors, still digesting a 43% drop in share price since the beginning of the year, are gearing up for what will likely be unimpressive financial results for the first quarter…

Tesla earnings week spotlights EV price cuts, ‘balls to the wall’ autonomy push

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend…

Tesla layoffs, Cybertruck recalls and Serve Robotics goes public

Serve Robotics, the Uber and Nvidia-backed sidewalk robot delivery company, debuted publicly on the stock exchange Thursday, making it the latest startup to choose going public via a reverse merger…

Uber, Nvidia-backed Serve Robotics hits public markets with $40M splash

Waymo can operate on San Francisco freeways without a human driver, but the company is still only testing on freeways with a human driver in the front seat.

6 Waymo robotaxis block traffic to San Francisco freeway on-ramp

Waymo, the self-driving company under Alphabet, began testing its robotaxis in Atlanta on Tuesday, adding another city to its ever-expanding testing and deployment domain. Over the next few months, Waymo…

Waymo begins robotaxi testing in Atlanta

Tesla has ended discounts on inventory across its electric vehicle lineup — even as sales for EVs have flagged — as part of a larger and vague plan by CEO…

Tesla ditches EV inventory price discounts as Elon Musk moves to ‘streamline’ sales and delivery

Featured Article

Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say

Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The layoffs were announced to staff just a week before Tesla is scheduled…

5:35 am PDT • April 16, 2024
Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say

The price cut comes a couple of weeks after Tesla launched a free one-month trial of FSD for every customer in the U.S. with a compatible Tesla.

Tesla drops FSD price to $99 per month in US

General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The catch? The cars will be in “manual…

GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them

Over here at TechCrunch, our time is often spent finding and reporting on the next new new thing in mobility, from autonomous drones and electric air taxis to self-driving trucks…

The overlooked tech that kept cities moving in 2023

Featured Article

What the demise of Superpedestrian means for the e-scooter industry

At an all-hands meeting just before Thanksgiving, Superpedestrian’s CEO Assaf Biderman told staff the electric scooter company was gearing up for fresh funding and a merger. Management would announce the news on January 1, but until then, Superpedestrian needed to go lean. A handful of people lost their jobs, including…

8:00 am PST • December 28, 2023
What the demise of Superpedestrian means for the e-scooter industry

Featured Article

Why Australia is ripe for VC

The addition of new technology sectors into Australia’s landscape could also help attract the necessary capital and business acumen, while creating a more inclusive environment.

7:36 am PST • December 28, 2023
Why Australia is ripe for VC

With Canva, generative AI hits different. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a better technology to boost Canva’s user growth and revenue generation.

From graphic design to visual workflows, Canva’s new AI core is changing its business

Beyond just giving women money, F5 Collective wants to create generational change for a billion women across India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

The Australian VC firm that sponsored California’s diversity bill

Featured Article

Australia’s climate tech industry is booming, but it could bust without funds

To date, $435 million has been invested into Aussie climate tech startups from international investors.

7:30 am PST • December 28, 2023
Australia’s climate tech industry is booming, but it could bust without funds

Micromobility.com, formerly Helbiz, was delisted from the Nasdaq on Monday as a result of the company’s noncompliance with the stock exchange’s listing rules, according to a regulatory filing. Competitor Bird…

Micromobility.com gets delisted from the Nasdaq

Tesla wants to pause a federal agency’s lawsuit against the automaker for racial bias against its Black workers at its Fremont assembly plant. The electric vehicle maker, in a filing…

Tesla requests pause in federal racial bias lawsuit as it wraps up other cases

Trevor Milton, the disgraced founder and former CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for securities fraud. The sentence, by Judge Edgardo Ramos…

Nikola founder Trevor Milton sentenced to 4 years for securities fraud

Autonomous vehicle company May Mobility has launched its first driverless on-demand microtransit service on public roads in Sun City, Arizona in partnership with transit tech company Via. The milestone is…

May Mobility’s driverless microtransit service might beat robotaxis to profitability

Peer-to-peer carsharing company Getaround has filed its first earnings report since going public a year ago via a SPAC combination. The company’s third-quarter earnings report details a company seeing quick…

Getaround’s Q3 earnings delight investors, but the company isn’t out of the woods yet

Select Waymo One riders can now get picked up or dropped off by the company’s robotaxis curbside at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Waymo became the first autonomous vehicle operator…

Waymo launches curbside robotaxi pickup at Phoenix airport