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- Baidu both Lyft & Uber in London, Grab acquires Infermove, Harman to acquire ZF’s ADAS
Baidu both Lyft & Uber in London, Grab acquires Infermove, Harman to acquire ZF’s ADAS
This week on #movingpeople
Barak Sas
December 30, 2025
#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business - a consultancy focused on Innovation, Growth and Autonomy in the Mobility industry.
Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕
Baidu Apollo Go will launch in London with both Lyft AND Uber. We’ve known about Lyft & Baidu since August, but Uber is new - raising questions over the power distribution in the robotaxi value chain. These (plural) operations will join Wayve+Uber, Waymo (solo) and Bolt + Pony.
Waymo on the recent San Francisco blackout, which led to multiple videos of stuck Waymos: “... While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets”. A software update has been implemented.
A few days later, the service was again paused - due to flood warnings.
These incidents also raise questions on teleoperations - the people responsible (and to what extent) for such crisis management. What are the teleoperator's roles and responsibilities? How many teleoperators are there per car? How many times is an autonomous car in need of human assistance? Who are these people (some are in the Philippines) and what training do they get? Where are these teleoperations centres located and who regulates them? What is considered adequate latency? A Junko Yoshida deep dive into teleoperations and Waymo’s recent audit by TUV-SUD.
And people aren’t just needed for remote driving / assisting - but also to close robotaxi doors and to tow juiceless Waymos, via a dedicated app called Honk, at prices roughly $23 for a door closing.
Will the autonomous future be decided by big tech or cities?
In the previous episode, the city of Santa Monica directed Waymo and its charging operator Voltera to stop late-night (11pm-6am) charging at two neighborhood facilities, following months of residents’ complaints about noise. See video here of how it looks and judge for yourself. The city threatened litigation if companies do not comply - which is exactly what happened - both sides are going to court.
Regardless of how this specific case ends - my bet is on big tech. They have far more resources and incentives to press forward. This crystal gazing is true only for Western Democratic countries. Can you imagine an AV or ride-hailing company in a place such as Dubai, suing the government? I can’t.
Zoox to recall 332 vehicles because “vehicles may cross the yellow center line and drive into or stop in front of oncoming traffic near intersections”. The company identified 62 such cases between August 26th and December 5th. Recent updates in May (270 vehicles) and April (258 vehicles) give insights to Zoox’s fleet growth rate - roughly 10 vehicles per month.
The Indian government blocks advanced tipping - tips will now be shown only after the ride has been completed.
Tesla has over 1,655 vehicles registered on its (not autonomous) ride-hailing service in California. This is the number of vehicles registered, not the number of operating fleet. Note that Tesla is using FSD for the service.
In Austin, Tesla has only circa 35 autonomous vehicles on its service. See online tracker.
Waymo is testing Gemini as an in-car AI assistant in its robotaxis - to answer rider questions and control in-cabin features.
In the Philippines, the regulator cuts surge prices and approves fixed pick-up fares for the holiday season, effective Dec. 20th to Jan. 4th. Both Lalamove and InDrive ‘volunteered’ to take 0% commissions from drivers, on the surge portion of the ride, for the holiday season.
In Singapore, Trans-Cab and Geolah receive full ride-hailing licences, joining CDG Zig, Grab, Ryde, Tada and Gojek.
Bolt rolls out kiosks in Riga airport - a similar move was announced by Uber a couple of weeks ago. If you’re wondering who is ahead in the kiosk race - it’s Uber. Bolt exploring chauffeur service in South Africa; we know the company has the same service in the UK. This is part of a larger play, with premium being the next frontier of ride-hailing (see here).
Use of sensors, Waymo vs. Tesla.
DRT, Bus-Based Mobility & AV shuttles 🚍🚌
Tier IV announce a capital and business alliance with Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central), focused on first/last mile autonomous mobility solutions to improve access to and from railway stations.
Imagry, Toyota and eVersum partner on a public transport pilot in Japan. The vehicle, a 6.9 meter midibus, will travel on public roads.
In Cambridge, a second autonomous bus, by ADL, is introduced,
Micromobility 🚲🛴
Marti publishes 2026 guidance:
X2 YoY revenue growth to an expected $70M revenue in 2026, thanks to increase in ride-hailing & delivery and increased & new monetization of existing cities
Adjusted EBITDA to be positive $1M, up from a negative $17M in 2025.
Beryl published its 2025 Rider Report, based on 11,375 responses across 17 schemes; of those responses 8,524 came from active riders. Key takeaways:
Convenience (45%) and speed (44%) were key considerations when signing up to the service
Most trips serve work commute (29%); followed by leisure (21%) and personal errands (18%)
When people sign up, 5% cycle for the first time and 41% have not cycled a year or more before. It shows that having an e-bike solution does bring a new audience.
Barriers: better availability & distribution of vehicles (26%), cost (21%) and parking availability (16%) were the top barriers
Men - roughly 70% of users
When Beryl asked about replacing mode of service - the options are (a) taxi or shared rides, (b) driving a car or van and (c) personal bike. I am greatly missing the option of public transport, which is an obvious substitute solution. Not cool.
Donkey Republic wins a West German region five-year tender, and will place 5,000 bikes in the region.
Denver selected Veo a sole supplier - starting May 2026 and replacing Lime and Bird. The new tender includes sidewalk detection, radar-based collision prevention, AI-powered parking enforcement, helmet-detection incentives, voice safety alerts, sensors to deter unsafe riding and multiple passengers and mandatory rider quizzes.
Bird partners with Lyft in Denver (not for long), Nashville and Cleveland - you can now book a Bird scooter from the Lyft app.
Delivery - from bikes & cars to bots & drones 🍽🧺
Grab to acquire Infermove, a robotics company with solutions in last mile delivery and also in retail and hospitality, industrial and warehouse and community services (security, bins). In 2024 infermove was valued at $33M. This acquisition joins other strategic investments Grab has made - in Momenta, WeRide and Vay.
Baemin to begin selling traditional liquor, making this a first for a quick commerce delivery solution. Baemin introduces "Reservation for Tomorrow" delivery service, with customers choosing a 1 hour window for the following day.
Southern Co-op partners with Deliveroo for 20-min deliveries within 2km of Southern’s 139 locations. Also on Deliveroo, a Stranger Things menu special.
AV Freight & Logistics 🚛🚜
Toyota introduces autonomous towing tractors at Haneda Airport, Japan.
In other news 📰
A round up of ADAS news:
Samsung Electronics’s HARMAN to acquire ZF’s ADAS division for $1.5 billion. In 2024, the division made $3.3 billion in revenue. I like this commentary best.
Bosch wins Toyota’s ADAS contract - largest single ADAS order aimed at global markets.
And inside sources tell me that Mobileye’s 5% lay-offs is just the beginning.
HYPRLABS emerged from stealth with a new approach - Run-time Learning - earning directly from run-time experience - the robot interacting with its environment in real-time.
Treepz adds flight bookings to its offering. Treepz, once a corporate commute player, turned into a car-sharing business, is now a “Corporate travel solutions for employees and entrepreneurs”, offering anything from event and vacation packages to ground transport solutions.
Uzbekistan has a nationwide license plate surveillance system - and it wasn’t password protected. In the US, Flock left 60 security cameras exposed - without login or password - to anyone on the internet.
Map of European Sleeper Trains, December 2025 edition.
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