Cruise 2,783 paid robotaxi passengers, Arrival cuts deep - 50%, JOKR to focus on Brazil and GoTo Global acquires Fleyx

Uber and Padam in Greater Paris; Yango in Namibia; Colombia against ride-hailing; Getaround get delisting warning and lays off 10%’; Turo back in Asheville; GoTo Global acquires felyx; Lyft promotes docked multimodal micromobility; Lyon selected Dott and Tier; Wolt and Flink partner; JOKR raises $50M and focuses on Brazil; Delivery Hero + Glovo layoffs; DoorDash begins to accept SNAP welfare coupons for groceries; SF wants to slow (control) autonomous cars; CleverShuttle goes into autonomy; Arrival cuts 50%; and no more Wi-Fi on NYC buses. Let’s start #movingpeople. 

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Île-de-France Mobilités (transportation authority in Greater Paris) extends cooperation with Padam for another 4 Years. This is perhaps the world’s largest DRT scheme, covering 12,000 km2 with 120 vehicles. Per data from Padam, it transports 56,000 passengers a month, or roughly 17 passengers per vehicle per day. 

Also in France, Uber is working to get taxi drivers onto its platform, side-by-side gig drivers. Uber is offering €250 for taxi drivers that join the platform, and up to €1,000 for recruiting a fellow driver to the platform. Uber is in competition with G7, the leading taxi app in France. 

Free Now introduces a new mobility benefits card for businesses. This corporate card enables payment to services such as public transport, long distance trains and car rentals, allowing an easy mobility budget for employees. Yango launched in Namibia, making it the 11th African country it operates in. Yango offers free taxi rides as a part of its loyalty scheme launched in Dubai. 

The Colombian government is proposing a bill to block, or at least very much restrict (depends who you’re asking), ride-hailing companies. Drivers are protesting. In Colombia, the most popular apps are Cabify, Uber, Free Taxis and Pickup (motorcycles). In Guwahati, India, drivers are boycotting Uber, Ola and Rapido services due to increasing commissions. 

Would Grab acquire GoTo Gojek? One analyst thinks so. For those of you who are not aware of those names, it sort of as if Uber was to acquire Lyft. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSharing/renting 🚗🛴

Getaround receives a delisting warning from the NYSE (Feb. 1st) and lays off 10% of staff (Feb, 3rd). The delisting warning was delivered because Getaround stocks’ have been trading too low for too long. The company’s share is now at $0.64 per share, down from starting trade at $10 per share. The layoffs are not linked to the delisting warning, but are a part of the company’s pursuit of reaching profitability, 

Last week I wrote of Asheville airport’s lawsuit against Turo and now… it has been settled. Turo will pay the airport 10% of its gross receipts and hosts are to adhere to an operation agreement agreed by both sides, which includes more fees for them as well.  

US: the car rental business is highly consolidated with three companies - Enterprise, Hertz and Avis - controlling 95% of the car rental market. Enterprise owns Alamo and National, Hertz owns Thrifty and Dollar, and Avis owns Budget, Payless and Zipcar.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMicromobility 🚲🛴

GoTo Global acquires felyx’s operations in Germany. Felyx operates around 2,800 vehicles in Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Aachen. This acquisition adds to a similar one done in Oct. 2021, when emmy sharing was acquired. 

Lyft introduces new generation dockable e-scooter and updated docking stations - with the aim to convince cities on its multimodal station-based (and not free floating) approach. 

Beam partners with Drover AI to adopt Pedestrian Shield’, a detection unit aimed at understanding which path the scooter travels on: road, footpath or cycle lane) in order to enable control over scooters, such as determining speed limit. 

Voi partners with BILITI Electric to use electric tuk-tuks in the UK to manage field operations, such as battery swapping and maintenance. 

Lyon chooses Dott and Tier. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDelivery 🍽🧺

Delivery Wolt and quick-delivery Flink partner in Germany. Post a successful pilot, Flink's product portfolio can now be ordered via the Wolt app. This allows Wolt (DoorDash) to extend its product portfolio, while allowing Flink another sales channel for its grocery products. 

JOKR doubles down on Brazil, raises $50M in series C. The company recently left the US, Colombia and Chile, and still has operations in Brazil, Mexico and Peru - but is looking at ‘strategic options’ to be able to focus on the Brazilian market. Today ±50% of JOKR business comes from Brazil. 

Delivery Hero lays off 156 employees at its Berlin HQ; in addition, Glovo (by Delivery Hero) cuts 250 jobs, 6.5%, worldwide. Getir laid off roughly 100 US corporate employees. 

UberEats now allows you to view what access to your personal data delivery couriers have. 

DoorDash begins accepting SNAP/EBT (welfare program) as a form of payment for groceries deliveries. DoorDash and Chegg, education technology company, partner to offer free DashPass to Chegg’s ‘Study Pack’ subscribers. The DashPass program lowers service fees and eliminates delivery fees on restaurant orders above $12.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAutonomous 🤖

2,783 paid passengers. This is the number for Cruise’s robotaxi service for Sept.-Nov. 2022.  Waymo marks 1 million miles with ‘no human driver on public roads’. 

Meanwhile, San Francisco wants to slow the expansion of autonomous vehicles. During the past months there have been numerous reports on vehicles blocking traffic and obstructing emergency respondents. These vehicles even called 911 at the end of trips for unresponsive passengers, only for emergency teams arriving at the site to find out that… riders just fell asleep. 

Sometimes the most interesting news is in the ‘wanted’ section, which can give an outsider an inside look at future plans. Clever Shuttle is looking for a bunch of autonomous jobs, most likely for this project. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFlying cars 🚁

ZeroAvia successfully completes first flight of the world's largest hydrogen-electric plane. Elroy Air secures orders to its cargo eVTOLs. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOEMs ⚡️

Arrival to cut (a further) 50% of workforce, leaving the company with 800 employees. Arrival says it burns $30M a quarter, and has $205M in cash reserves. That means Arrival has a OPEX runway of 1.5 years, but that doesn’t count the estimated $100M required to build its US microfactories. 

Volta Trucks announces production orders of over 300 vehicles. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedGig economy 💰

The Spanish court ruled that Amazon violated labour law with its delivery app. Amazon ‘forced’ delivery drivers to use Amazon's app for scheduling work and payments while requiring them to use their own cars and cellphones on the job. The use of the app has been discontinued in 2021. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn other news 📰

Nexar partners with Cover Whale to offer its AI-powered dash cams as a way to alert drivers and manage insurance claims. Google lets car dealerships list their cars on the search engine. The MTA cuts free Wi-Fi from NYC buses. Usage has been low - only 33,000 people, or 2% of daily bus riders, used the service.