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Autonomous ever expanding, car-sharing struggles and Chinese price wars continue
This week on #movingpeople
Barak Sas
December 09, 2025
#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility", focused on growth.
Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕
Waymo heading to four more cities: Baltimore, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia - bringing the total operating / aiming to operate to 29 cities worldwide. While ‘only’ five of those are currently autonomous commercial robotaxi operations, at this rate we can expect Waymo to be present (in different deployment stages) in close to 100 cities by the end of 2026, covering most “1” and “2-AA” cities in the US.
Expansion is not without its share of challenges. Waymo is having problems with school buses, with over 20 violations recorded, to the point of a recent software recall; driving into a police scene; running over cats and dogs; and making illegal U-turns. Teleoperation is less talked about, but is definitely in the background to help with some of those.
Uber and Avride launch robotaxi service in Dallas. Fully commercial at no additional cost over human drivers, for now with a safety driver and limited to a 9 sq. mile of ODD. With this deployment, Uber gained another proven robotaxi partner; for Avride it is their first robotaxi deployment. Good luck!
Wayve acquires Quality Match, a German company analysing AI model training data for automated driving. The 20-men team will move into Wayve, with the founder becoming Wayve’s Director of Data.
CaoCao, Geely’s mobility arm, revealed its "Ten Years, One Hundred Cities, One Hundred Billion RMB" strategy (100 billion RMB = €12.1 billion). Those 100 cities will be across five global operations hubs. At the event, CaoCao signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chongqing Qianli Zhijia Technology, developer of autonomous driving tech.
InDrive signs MOU with AI Driver, WeRide’s official dealer in Saudi Arabia.
Song, the President and head of Hyundai’s self-driving division, has resigned. Song founded 42dot in 2019 and was acquired by Hyundai in 2022. The division has been underperforming.
May Mobility launches goMARTI 2.0 in Minnesota - an on-demand autonomous rural transport solution. Safety driver included. goMARTI (1.0) started three years ago, here is the report the DoT issued in March 2025 - key takeaways:
27 months of operations
18,698 people and 1.3 riders per service hour (in a community of about 11,000)
And much more in the 64 pages report
Musk says Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) will allow texting while driving “depending on context of surrounding traffic.” Texting while driving is illegal in 50 out of 50 US states. A New Jersey bill might slow down autonomous adoption. In Houston, Waymo removes safety driver.
Zimbabwe introduces a digital tax, taxing offshore digital operators; in mobility, that will affect Bolt and InDrive. The tax rate has not yet been revealed. Catalonia (Spain) limits the number of VTCs (ride-hailing vehicles) and tightens taxi related regulations. Bolt grows 40% in Malaysia. Ride-Railing deadhead in California.
The Ultimate list of 2026 Mobility & Electrification events. The list covers (mostly) Europe and the US, with 75 events and counting. Check it out to decide which events you plan to attend this year.
DRT, Bus-Based Mobility & AV shuttles 🚍🚌
Tier IV partners with Horiba Mira, a UK-based automotive engineering company, to introduce L4 autonomy to the UK & Europe. Testing will begin soon, to allow safety validation and for Horiba Mira to ensure compliance with regulatory and operational requirements. This is a part of Tier IV’s European go-to-market strategy.
ADASTEC & Karsan autonomous bus in Frankfurt airport.
I had the opportunity to speak to Christian Adelsberger, founder/CEO of NECTURE, about autonomy and how it will change car-share & rental (and not just ride-hailing) and the role of EU decision makers in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. Listen to the podcast on Spotify and/or Apple.
Car Sharing/renting 🚗
Zity closes Milan. Last week we learned that Zipcar is closing the UK. Poppy adds leasing/ subscription. Turo did that a few weeks ago. Car-share is in distress, and there are many contributing factors, shared by all operators, regardless of where they operate:
High interest rates; rising motor insurance costs; volatile car resale prices; continuous vandalism; and challenging macroeconomic conditions, affecting customers’ wallets.
The switch to electric fleet is challenging; vehicles cost more (enter interest rates) and depreciate worse; charging prices are higher than anticipated; and charging adds many operational complexities.
In Zipcar’s case, the last nail of the coffin (but not THE reason) was a regulatory change, which added fees to existing London operations.
Why this introduction? A few years ago, micromobility players got together and created a global guideline for best practices, aimed at cities. Now I learn that French car-sharing players did the same in France, bringing in 150 stakeholders to create a new car-sharing strategy at a national level. It is time for car-sharing companies to come together - combine resources; and create a unified message, aimed at cities and government, to enable car-sharing to prosper.
And now for the news
Poppy introduces Poppy Lease - an “all included in one monthly fee” car offer.
Zity closes in Milan, removing 650 vehicles from the city. The company introduced the service back in June 2022. High municipal fees was mentioned as one of the reasons. After closing in Paris (Jan 24) and Lyon (April 24), Madrid is the only city in which Zity operates.
Ryanair partners with CarTrawler, connecting CarTrawler’s Connect Platform to the airlines app.
Micromobility 🚲🛴
Dott rider survey: 65% of trips are commuting; women are 22% of all riders.
Barcelona’s bike-share system requires a Spanish national ID to use the service; this is to provide better availability to locals. This is also the case in the Netherlands, but most cities benefit from the higher day rate tickets that tourists use. A David Zipper article.
Delivery - from bikes & cars to bots & drones 🍽🧺
Meituan posts first quarterly loss since 2022 - a result of the heightened price war taking place with Alibaba and JD.com. The company reported a net loss of 16 billion yuan - compared to a net profit of 12.8 billion yuan a year earlier. That’s 28.8 billion yuan difference - or in today’s exchange rate - €3.5 billion!
Foodora, Starship and McDonald’s launch Czechia’s 1st delivery bot operations, in Prague. For the occasion, Starship shared some interesting data on its global operations:
Over 2,700 robots in the fleet, in over 270 locations
More than 9 million completed deliveries
“Mostly autonomous while being monitored by humans who can assist them at any time”
DHL launches Singapore’s first autonomous vehicle in supply chain operations. The robot is by Zelostech.
Blinkit users can now add items - after completing the order - with no additional charge.
Jitse Groen, JETs CEO, leaves the post - will be replaced by Roberto Gandolfo, Chair of the JET Supervisory Board and Head of Prosus Europe. For readers who forgot, Proses just completed the acquisition of JET. Groen founded JET in 2000 (!) and has since been at the helm. Gandolfo has period experience from iFood.
AV Freight & Logistics 🚛🚜
Daimler Truck and Torc select Innoviz for LiDAR
California might soon relax its ban on self-driving trucks.
In other news 📰
Autolane is building the autonomous - private curbside access infrastructure layer, and has now raised $7.4M to do so. Examples of use cases are entry into private residential property; approaching a fast food drive through; or navigating Costco. “Robotics need precise instructions and precise geolocation and technological communication. You can’t just put up a white sign with some black letters and hope for the best with 10 different types of robotics coming in”.
Moonshot Space raises $12M for Electromagnetic space launch. Moonshot developed a system of electromagnetic coils that allow hypersonic speeds, up to Mach 6 (for reference, a Boeing 767 has a top speed of 0.85 Mach). The company is focusing on non-sensitive, high-G cargo, creating a dedicated logistics layer for propellants, steel coils, consumables, components, and raw materials.
Geopost launches Geopost Vision, real-time collection of street-level imagery enabled by Geopost’s delivery vehicles as they travel across Europe. Geopost has >65,000 vehicles traveling over 2 billion kilometres per year in 22 countries - so it makes sense to mount a camera on top of those vehicles and start collecting (and selling) data.
Bollinger Motors, EV truck manufacturer, ceases operations.
Ultraviolette Automotive, electric motorbikes, raises $45M. Funds will be used to expand in home India and abroad.
Heven AeroTech, hydrogen-powered Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), raises $100M.
Element acquires Car IQ, a vehicle payment company, for an undisclosed (rumored at $80M) price.
Read an interview with Roelof Hellemans, Secretary-General of the MaaS Alliance, on where MaaS is today (B2B & B2G) and the new ‘House of TOMP’ focus.
I love meeting new people and learning about innovation. Let’s get-to-know.
People 🧑🤝🧑
Drew Reynolds is the new Head of Growth @ Honda Innovation Labs.
Fabian Junio is the new Account Manager - eCommerce & FBA Logistics @ Unicargo.
Felix Rathke is the new Head of Sales DACH @ Monta.
Giovanni Pintor is now an Ad Hoc Expert in the mobility field for URBACT.
John Saffrett is the new Board Advisor @ Clearly.
Katharina Roecker is the new Chief Commercial Officer @ High Mobility.
Karolina Bjurehed is the new Director M&A @ Volvo Penta.
Maksim Osipov is the new Regional Manager MEA Delivery @ Yango.
Mark Thomas is the new EVP Marketing @ Way.com.
Tyler Wilson is the new Sales Enablement Specialist @ Flash.
Congrats and good luck!
#movingpeople is a weekly mobility & delivery newsletter - from Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi through Remote-Driving & Delivery Drones to e-bikes and Autonomous Freight & Logistics.
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