This week in Mobility: focus on ride-hailing, autonomous & micromobility

This week focusing on ride-hailing, autonomous and micromobility news - the building blocks of moving people. 

Ride-hailing

Siemens Mobility acquired Padam Mobility, enhancing Siemen’s multimodal offering. Padam is present in >70 cities in Europe, Asia and North America. This is more of the consolidation & partnerships we are seeing across the DRT landscape. 

Revel launched a Tesla electric ride-hailing service in NY, adding to its e-moped and e-bike offer. With Tesla cars and employee drivers, Revel claims it would still be price competitive with Uber & Lyft. So far the company is having trouble getting licensed by NYC’s Taxi & Limousine Commission, who say the ride-hailing market is over-saturated. 

Ola is introducing “Ola EV” in London, allowing people to book electric-only rides, and wavering all commission from drivers, to encourage the switch to EVs. Ola is busy fighting both TfL, who took away its license last year and we are now in the appeals stage while Ola continues to operate; and Uber, with Ola taking only 15% commissions instead of Uber’s 25%. 

In the US, Uber & Lyft are offering free rides to vaccination centres. Both companies reached an agreement with the White house that will share information on the 80K vaccine centres (or, in this case, centers). The scheme will continue up to July 4th; Biden’s goal is to reach 70% of adults vaccinated by that date. 

Urbvan is going head-to-head with a Mexcian government fixed route line, taking advantage of recent changes to the line that have made it slow and expensive. The company is offering its cheapest price ever on its platform to lure everyday commuters to its service. 

ioki has a ‘franchise’ business model. Take a look at Mufmi, which is operating a ioki-based-DRT solution in Malagan, Spain. Very interesting. Liftango in Christchurch, NZ. Following a week-long driver strike, Uber is raising prices in Lagos, Nigeria, by 13%. Drivers aren’t fully satisfied, and are calling on Uber to recognize their union and reduce the 25% commission. 

A shareholders vote calling for Uber to be more transparent about its lobbying spending has managed to raise only 30% of the votes. The Teamsters General Fund who raised the issue are pleased, saying that the result indicates a step in the right direction. Also, has Uber managed to use 50 shell companies to dodge taxes on $6bn revenue? Yes. 

And Uber & Lyft quarterly financial reports raise the same old question - is this business model sustainable?

Autonomous

Baidu launched “Apollo Go”, China’s first paid autonomous vehicle service. The service runs along 8 stations in a 2.7 sq. km area. In Hamburg, VW is aiming to launch self driving shuttles via moia in 2025. To reach that goal, VW and Argo AI are currently setting up a test site in Munich. 

Good semi-long read on the shrinking of the autonomous world. The technology is far from being market ready; valuations have been slashed; consolidation is happening fast with car manufacturers buying units and startups; robotaxis out, logistics and industrial applications in. I’ve written about this a number of times, and this story tells it well. 

Micromobility

Voi prefers to fuel expansion over reaching profitability. The company was set to show profits in 2021, but it now says that quick global expansion demands growth prioritization. In the UK, Voi is hiring a new GM and a new head of policy to help expansion. 

Bird is SPACing on the NYSE, in an implied valuation of $2.3bn. Bird is going to use the money to expand, switch to low carbon solutions and improve efficiencies. 

A court decided that JOCO could continue operating until the hearing. With no license from the city of NY. The question before the court: do you need a license to operate docked bike-sharing that are docked only on private property? 

Zoomo raises $12M. The company want to expand into Europe and extend its offer to commuters (today serving gig delivery workers)

All other

Optibus raised $107M a couple of months ago and now we’re hearing of new initiatives. Partnering with Hitachi to help fleets become electric and partnering with Liftango to integrate on-demand transport to their platform. Read what their CEO has to say on the pandemic and the opportunities it brought. Note: with big money come open positions. Tell them David sent you. 

Transit: South Nevada integrated public transportation with bike-sharing into a single app. Santa Cruz partnered with Flixbus to provide intercity travel. Porterville partnered with Uber to provide on-demand transportation. Blablabus is reporting high demand in France. 

Food Delivery: Getir is looking to raise >$500M at $7bn valuation. Gorillas is going for - only - $6bn valuation. Delivery Hero en route to Germany. 

World’s loneliest bus route is a 500 mile ride from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, Alaska, with only 24 houses along the route. I don’t understand how you can get lonely on a bus.