Cruise halts while Waymo & Uber partner, Arriva sold, and Rapido expands to cars

Rapido expanding to cars, DB sells Arriva, Drive Lah raises, Providoor relaunches in Australia, Deliveroo and KFC no more, Cruise stops driverless in the US, book Waymo via Uber, Neom invests in Pony.ai, Ola Electric raises and more with Gojek, Didi, InDrive, Yandex, Circuit, TRC, Bolt, Bird, Tier, Zipline, Yandex, May Mobility, BP Pulse, Yango, Laka, Drovo and Uber hot air balloons. Let’s start #movingpeople. 

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Rapido, bike-taxi in India, is expanding into cars, entering the segment dominated by Uber and Ola, with new entrants BluSmart and InDrive. A pilot is now being run in Hyderabad, with services expected to expand soon. Rapido is also looking at offering intercity bus tickets, in partnership with Zingbus. 

Deutsche Bahn AG (DB) signed an agreement to sell the entire Arriva Group, including its operating businesses across 10 European markets, to I Squared Capital, US PE firm. The deal is said to be worth €1.6bn, less than the €2.7bn DB paid for Arriva back in 2010. DB will now focus on German rail operations. I Squared Capital, which in 2022 had an unsuccessful attempt to acquire First Bus back in May 2022, is commiting €2bn to expand and electrify Arriva’s fleet

A new survey by CCN reveals that 95% of the UK's DRT services are running at a loss. Remember that current services are based on government subsidies (Rural Fund) and were designed by councils to be a public good, an answer to reduced commercial bus routes - statistics show that 1 in 4 commercial buses has vanished in the past decade. So it makes sense for those services to be loss-making. The CCN calls for more central government subsidies for public transport.  

Is Gojek on its way to exit Singapore? The company reduced driver commission from 15% to 10%, in a move that raises questions. Remember that Grab is set to acquire a local cab company (pending regulatory approval) and the foodpanda operations in Singapore, in a move that will solidify its position in the country. 

Didi increases investment in Peru, with intent to increase driver supply by >30% and to double the volume of passengers. InDrive adds dLocal, cashless payment solution, to its Brazilian portfolio, simplifying the way payments are managed. InDrive seeing “exponential growth” in Nigeria, as fuel subsidies are removed and fuel price has tripled (yes, X3). Yandex registered a legal entity in Uzbekistan, following government demand for the company to start paying taxes by December 1 - or be blocked. Uride expands in Canada. On-demand scheme, run by Circuit and Toyota in Texas, extended. In Ohio, TRC partners with Optibus to deliver a microtransit service. 

I love meeting new people, learning about new companies and exchanging opinions. Want to get-to-know and talk mobility? Let’s set up a half-hour coffee chat. 

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

Drive Lah, car-sharing, receives $5M investment, with Comfortdelgro leading with a $2M ticket. In Australia, Comfortdelgro will supply Drive Mate, the local Drive Leh brand name, with 3,000 vehicles. 

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

An interview with Bird’s new CEO on in-house operations, profitability, the SPIN acquisition, NYSE trading status and more.  

Bolt and Bird are looking to meet with Matta’s transport minister to find a “balanced solution”. It appears that a week before the ban there was a meeting with transport officials, in which the ban was not discussed, and the companies were noticed through the media. 

Tier is launching 200 e-scooters in Braintree, UK. Winter is coming, and Canada’s scooters are leaving and leaving. 

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

Australian food delivery Providoor relaunches, coming out of liquidation. Delivery companies have a hard time in Australia, with Deliveroo, Delivr, CoLab and Milkrun all ceasing operations. Providoor’s chef-prepared meals will be delivered in partnership with UberEats. 

KFC and Deliveroo end delivery partnership. KFC will focus on its own platform, KFC Delivery, as well as its partnerships with rival delivery aggregators Just Eat and Uber Eats. It’s all about the commercials. 

See the world's largest autonomous drone delivery system - a 24 hour display of Zipline’s operations in Rwanda. Worth a click. 

Hope you enjoy reading #movingpeople. If you do, please consider sharing it with others so that they may benefit from it too. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCruise halts driverless AV Operations 🤖🚗

California ordered Cruise to remove its driverless cars from state roads, calling the vehicles a “risk to the public” and saying the company had "misrepresented" the safety of the technology. As a result, and a precaution, Cruise decided to pause driverless operations across the US. 

What led to this? On October 2nd, a human driver struck a pedestrian which landed in front of a Cruise vehicle, which then continued to run the pedestrian over. It is now said that the Cruise vehicle, not knowing how to manage the situation, dragged the pedestrian and inflicted unnecessary injuries on her. There is also evidence of other incidents in which Cruise vehicles mismanaged pedestrian interactions. 

What will this mean? In my opinion, not too much. In the short term Cruise will add safety drivers to existing operations, and wait a couple of months before relaunching fully autonomous operations. It will struggle more in San Francisco, where it wasn’t wanted for quite some time. Strategically, this is just a bump, similar to the Elaine Herzberg incident. The AV race is on and will not stop. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published(More) Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

And while Cruise suffers, the AV world continues to move forward. 

Waymo and Uber announce the launch of a partnership that sees Waymo vehicles available through Uber, starting first in Phoenix. 

Neom invests $100M in Pony.ai. 

Yandex completes first ever empty car driving test

The German government will fund autonomous ride-pooling in Hamburg, dedicating €26M to the cause. The autonomous consortium, led by Hamburger Hochbahn, PT operator, also includes the on-demand service MOIA, and the Holon and Volkswagen commercial vehicles. 

In Oslo, an autonomous project uses NIO SUVs with Mobileye’s autonomous software. 

Liftango and May Mobility launch autonomous vehicle enabled microtransit service. 

“We are decades off having self-driving cars that have the freedom to go anywhere” - Oxa’s CEO in interview.  

Want to bring something to my attention? Don’t want to be too involved? Send me an anonymous tip and I’ll follow up on it. 

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

BP Pulse is buying $100M worth of Tesla’s superchargers hardware, making it the first company to purchase DC fast-charging equipment from the automaker for use in a third-party charging network.  

Ola Electric raised $384M, $240M of which in debt. The company valuation is now $5.4bn, and so far has seen $1.6bn invested into it. 

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

Yango criticized for unfair working practices in Ghana, setting high daily goals and consequently locking phones for driver snot reaching those goals, for them to pay fees to be able to continue driving. 

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

Mobility insur-tech firm Laka raises €7.6M and acquired French e-bike insurance broker Cylantro. London’s transit advertising firm Drovo raises €3.4M. 

Uber offering hot air balloon rides in Turkey.