Flink $150M, Pony €23M, Oxa merges StreetDrone & Kiwibot acquires Nickelytics

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business  - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility".  

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Uber enhances driver safety and fairness, rolls out many new features, including a US-wide rollout of rider verification and the “Record my Trip” function; ride PIN verification; and blocking riders over low grades. An interesting finding from the rider verification pilot run in a “handful” of US cities: “(where) the majority of riders are verified, they tend to give drivers 5 stars more often. Riders who are verified also get fewer serious complaints from drivers.” 

In addition, Uber adds earnings transparency. 

Harry Campbell’s thoughts on the future of Uber and Waymo - Uber to use AVs to meet base-line demand, adding human-driven cars to meet peaks - allowing fleet financial efficiency. 

InDrive expands in Malaysia; introduces daily driver insurance.  InDrive introduces in-app calls in Nigeria. Yango launches in Dubai and Abu-Dhabi. CitySwift partners with TfW. Ascendal to focus on franchising in the UK.  

💰

I’m lucky to be able to work with good startups. As a result, I am aware of a number of equally good investment opportunities. It is tough to raise in this environment; money is not cheap and investors are overwhelmed by the number of reach outs. Are you an Angel Investor looking for opportunities? Drop me a line or set a short 15min call to go over existing opportunities. 

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Volvo suspended its subscription program in the US, Care by Volvo. ”The complexities of insurance, maintenance, depreciation, and intermediary costs make it difficult to offer at attractive rates compared to leasing or buying.”

Voltio exceeds 1 million trips in Madrid since launching in December 2022, and launches in Boadilla (Zity also recently expanded into the city). Hiyacar P2P in Leeds. Communauto announces hourly rate price increases.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Pony raises €23M to expand fleet and presence, allowing the company to “triple the size of its fleet to nearly 30,000 shared bikes and scooters by the beginning of 2027” and expand to 40 more cities. Funds will also support strengthening R&D and production capability of the company’s in house developed two-seater electrically assisted bicycle and moving production to Europe; continue integration with public transport; and branch into logistic services. 

Gogoro CEO resigns amid accusations of subsidy fraud in home-Taiwan. Gogoro allegedly lied, using cheap Chinese parts instead of the 100% made-in-Taiwan parts the company reported on.  

Lime takes a beating in the UK. From Brent to Oxford to Derby, the latter saw the company pulling out due to vandalism. This isn’t just Lime’s challenge; both vandalism and political calls for banning due to reckless driving and parking is a challenge shared by all other operators as well.

I love meeting new people, learning about mobility innovation and exchanging opinions. Interested in discussing mobility?

Delivery 🍽🧺

Flink raises $150M - equity $115M and the rest in debt - at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, down from the once $5 billion valuation. Mubadala, existing investor in both Flink and Getir and today the decision maker in Getir, participated in the round. Flink recently partnered with Just Eat to support on deliveries, and JustEat is rumoured to have participated in the round as well. Flink, one of the last remaining quick-delivery services operating in Europe, operates in 80 cities across Germany and the Netherlands. The company targets profitability by Q2/25. 

Kiwibot acquires Nickelytics, an advertising startup specialising in vehicle-wrapping. The $25M acquisition is designed to allow Kiwibot a new revenue channel. 

Rapido in talks with Zepto and other grocers for quick-commerce delivery. As of now, Rapido works B2B with only two partners and only on food-delivery - Swiggy, an existing investor, and the ONDC. The company, which has 700K drivers and handles 2.5 million orders a day, wants to enter the booming Indian q-delivery using the $200M it raised this past month. 

Amazon trials last-mile deliveries by tram. This is part of a wider research into train usage. In Frankfurt, vans deliver from out-of-city logistic hubs to the tram; once in the city, e-cargo bike delivery personnel will pick up the packages and perform the final last mile stretch. 

Madrid is piloting using the metro system for parcel deliveries during non-peak hours. Apian and Wing to start drone blood-test deliveries for the NHS (UK). Co-op (also UK) is launching a pilot for a 24/7 service in London, Leeds and Manchester, working with Deliveroo, JustEat and UberEats.  Glovo expands in Nigeria. Talabat’s early days.

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Oxa acquires/merges StreetDrone. From the PR: “StreetDrone’s expertise in industrial logistics, and proven drive-by-wire, vehicle integration and teleoperation technologies complement Oxa's self-driving software platform.”

Cruise restarts in California, first rolling out manual mapping activity, to be followed by supervised testing with five vehicles. It has now been almost a year since the Cruise accident, on October 2nd. 

In Israel, Imagery received a licence to operate an autonomous bus on public roads as an integral part of public transport, along a 8km route. Initially, with a safety driver. 

Remote operations (teledriving) is a part of each and every autonomous operation, used by the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox and all. This field is completely unregulated, with no licensing or reporting requirement from states. 

Waymo is said to be in discussions with Hyundai regarding robotaxi partnership. Today Waymo uses Zeekr vehicles, but those are becoming expensive due to US planned tariffs, which are expected to be promoted under both Harris or Trump administrations.

Michigan, California and Florida - are all launching autonomous services. Zoox publishes safety report; joins Alliance for Automotive Innovation; shows the vehicle to the public in SF. Motional’s CEO, Karl Iagnemma, is stepping down, to be replaced by the current CTO. 

Drivers are more likely to be distracted while using partial automation tech, such as the Tesla Autopilot or Volvo’s Pilot Assist. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that “drivers did nondriving secondary activities, looked away from the road, and had both hands off the wheel more often during the alerts and in the 10 seconds before and after them as they learned how the attention reminders worked. The longer they used the system, the less time it took them to take their hands off the wheel again once the alerts stopped.”

Flying cars 🚁

Vertical Aerospace H1/24 shareholder letter. The company is moving forward on testing and regulatory approvals. 

Joby to launch commercial flights in the UAE in 2025. 

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Chinese OEMs are taking over, and not just BYD. 

In other news 📰

United Airlines is adding free Starlink Wi-Fi to all of its planes. It is 2024 and not only do we not have flying cars or hoverboards, we barely can get internet in the air. Maybe that’s sorted now. 

ZeroAvia, hydrogen aeroplane, completes $150M Series C Financing. Aifleet, a technology-enabled trucking company, raises $16.6M Series B.

I love meeting new people, learning about mobility innovation and exchanging opinions. Interested in discussing mobility?

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

A week full of high-level new positions: 

Daniel Packenius is the new Vice President Europe North (DACH and Nordics) @ FlixBus.

Darren Gwynne is the new Chief Executive Officer @ Verne. 

Eike Bethmann is the new Vice President Strategy @ MOIA. 

Harry Maxwell Co-Founded Tracks, a loyalty program for sustainable mobility. 

Mark Preston is the new Director of Technology Integration - Industrial Autonomy @ Oxa. 

Mike Potts is the new Director, Autonomous Industrial Logistics @ Oxa. 

Rossano Procopio is the new business Development Manager @ Transreport. 

Sarah Boden is the new Sales Manager @ Spare. 

Shahar Zamir is the new VP Information Technologies | CIO & CTO @ freesbe. 

Steve Pyer is the new Director of New Mobility Technologies @ Connected Places Catapult.

Zach Greenberger is the new Chief Executive Officer @ Nexar. 

Congrats and good luck!

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