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- Getaround to acquire HyreCar, Bird meh Q1 report, Uber in BC and Lyft for sale
Getaround to acquire HyreCar, Bird meh Q1 report, Uber in BC and Lyft for sale
Treepz’s pivot to car-share explained; Liftango raised £2.5M; Shotl returns!; Uber (finally) gets a licence in British Columbia; Lyft shuts down pooled rides and is up for sale (+$3.1bn market cap, if you’re interested); Getaround to acquire HyreCar; Bird meh Q1 report; foodpanda + Airasia strategic partnership; Amsterdam (final decision) bans dark stores; Nuro lays off 30%; Cruise expands in Texas.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedRide-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐
More info on Treepz pivoting away from commuter bus-hailing to focusing only on car-sharing. Treepz’s commuter bus-hailing operations created a -5% gross profit; the final decision was made after Treepz launched a B2B car-rental operation, to discover that revenue from car-share is far greater. Read the history of Treepz, detailed by its founder/CEO; the journey Treepz has been on, from bus-hailing to covid-time logistics to B2B vehicle rental in 2022 to the B2C car marketplace concept launched last week.
Liftango raises £2.5M, bringing total funding to $14.6M. Maven Capital Partners, who led the January 2022 $10.4M Series A, put in an additional £1.25M, indicating good commercial achievement by Liftango. Just recently Liftango signed a five-year DRT contract with Transport for West Midlands, UK.
Shotl, acquired by SWVL in Mid-2021 and (almost) closed in early 2023, has been bought back by the founders, who are continuing Shotl’s services across Europe.
Uber will soon launch in Kelowna, Canada, a city of circa 144,000 residents. Thai is a big deal. Up to now Uber tried and failed to receive a licence to operate in British Columbia (a Canadian province). To tackle this challenge, back in September 2022 Uber acquired ReRyde, a local company with an existing ride-hailing licence. Now the transfer of licence has been approved by the local government, and Uber will join existing competition with URide, Lucky To Go and local cab companies.
Lyft is launching an airport pre-order feature, allowing you to book the instant you land with the app calculating wait times through the airport to match the right driver just-in-time. Uber introduces flight booking in the UK. The pilot is done together with Hopper, a travel booking app, and allows both domestic and international flight booking, including seat selection. Uber takes commission on each order, and in the future might present an additional fee.
Lyft shuts down shared (pooled) rides. This is a part of the new CEO’s strategy to increase customer experience, and shared rides don’t fall into that category, as they prolong riders’ journey. A good time to reminisce that once we thought ride-hailing would help decrease congestion and reduce wasted mileage.
And Lyft’s CEO says the company is ‘open to offers,’ but not pursuing a sale.
Who needs Lyft the most? Uber. Uber only has to lose from a monopoly status, as regulatory attention could do the company serious harm. Worker rights groups and legislators can claim that you can’t really have ‘independent contractors’ if there is only one player to choose to work for; antitrust may find that the combination of ride-hailing and deliveries is hurting competition unfairly in the delivery space and therefore Uber needs to break into two companies; and public sentiment generally dislikes monopolies, which would make it harder for the company to defend against unfavourable legislation.
Vanguard trims Indian ride-hailing giant Ola’s valuation by 35%, to $4.8bn from a high of $7.3bn at the close of 2021.
Yango starts testing in Lahore, Pakistan. The Routing Company launched in East Sussex, UK; a rural DRT solution using 10+ WeDRT vehicles. A Roger French long read on the FlexiBus service. HopSkipDrive, school transportation solution, expands senior leadership team. Careem introduces phone bookings in Pakistan, as mobile broadband services are suspended by the government. SWVL receives Nasdaq notification for late 2022 annual report. Spotlight on Australian shared mobility market. Bolt seeks to turn profitable next year and to IPO in 2025.
99, Brazilian ride-hailing owned by DiDi, plans to reach 1,000 electric vehicles in the next 12 months, more than doubling its current electric fleet size. The company wants to have 10,000 electric cars by 2025 and become all electric by 2030.
DRT criticism by Roger French, a transport professional. According to French, DRT funding in the UK received £100M government investment, but many schemes have withdrawn or failed due to low usage levels and a viable non-funded business model has yet to be found. French suggests a new framework, ‘Flexible Fixed Timetables’, which uses a fixed time but is flexible to address specific needs, such as Connect2 Wiltshire.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSharing/renting 🚗🛴
Getaround to acquire the assets of HyreCar, an asset light car-sharing for gig workers solution that declared bankruptcy in February, for the sum of $9.45M. HyreCar had strong demand, but was not able to build enough supply to meet that demand, and was overcome with debt. The news sent Getaround’s stock up from ±$0.34 to ±$0.8, still less than the $1 mark required by Nasdaq. By close of trade Friday 12th May, stock is at $0.48. Getaround SPACed back in December 2022 at $10, and has lost 96% of its value.
CarGari, a P2P car-share solution, to start in Denver International Airport, joining Turo and Avail. Business model: CarGari to share 10% of all revenue collected with the city. Interesting data in the article - in 2022 the city collected $2.5M and in January-February 2022 $1M (this is what it means for tourism to be back to normal!). Assuming Turo and Avail got the same deal, this means that P2P revenue in the first two months of 2023 were $10M! Think about that number in relation to Treepz’s strategic move.
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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMicromobility 🚲🛴
Bird published Q1 results and it doesn't look good. Revenue $29.5M vs. $35.4M YoY (which makes sense, since Bird left dozens of unprofitable markets); cost of revenue $24.5, meaning gross profit is $5M, or ±17%. The company also saw less rides deployed per vehicle per day, 0.9 vs. 1 YoY.
Bird was able to successfully cut operational cost: $40.6M in operating expenses vs. $100.2M. Net loss is $44.3M, free cash flow negative at $25.3M. As of March 31, 2023, Bird had $18.2M in cash and cash equivalents, $12.8M in unrestricted, which means that unless costs are dramatically cut, or new capital finds its way to the company, it might not make it to the end of Q2.
Brussels is looking to slash scooter numbers from 21,000 to 8,000 and is seeking just two scooter companies to tender for permission to operate from 2024-2027.
A Bolt survey in Germany, Portugal and Norway finds that: 38% of respondents in Norway, 34% in Germany and 27% in Portugal have tried e-scooters; most respondents are under 44 years old; people say public parking management has improved in the past years, but parking is still a major issue; people are for converting car parking, creating more dedicated parking spaces and implementing fines.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDelivery 🍽🧺
AirAsia and foodpanda strategically partner on ride-hailing + delivery services. AirAsia will bring its ride-hailing solution and switch its food delivery solution to a dine-in one; foodpanda will manage food delivery. Both apps will offer the other’s solution, in an integrated play. The companies will also look to collaborate on payment solutions, joint loyalty programs, and subscription plans.
Wolt launches in Austria, competing with Lieferando and Foodora (formally Mjam) and aiming for a 30 minute delivery offer. Wolt expands to Iceland. Glovo expands in Nigeria. Domino's Pizza teams with Goggo Network for a five robots autonomous delivery pilot in Madrid, Spain. Wendy’s will shut down remaining US Reef units. Ghost kitchens are not living up to their promise.
Amsterdam city council voted to ban ‘dark stores’ from residential areas. This vote marks the end of a year in which the city has limited the activity of dark stores, imposing various restrictions and disallowing new dark stores to open. Zapp has already withdrawn from the Netherlands; we will now see how Getir and Flink act.
Cornershop, an Chilean-founded Uber-acquired company, is laying off 11% of staff, circa 250 employees. Cornershop operates in Latin America and Canada, with the move affecting mostly employees in Chile.
Wingcopter, drone delivery startup, raises €40M from the EIB (total raised €100M). Funding will be used to further develop its hardware line and to kick off a new business in logistics and delivery services. Zipline, drone delivery, attracts new US customers across healthcare, restaurant and retail verticals.
Careem Food will now pay customers back for late deliveries in the UAE. During this 4 week campaign, money will be given back to the Careem wallet, allowing customers to use it with other Careem services. Drivers will not be affected by the move.
“Alexa, where is my food?” UberEats expands voice order tracking with Amazon Echo. This follows similar partnerships with Google and Apple’s Siri.
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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAutonomous 🤖
Nuro, autonomous delivery bots, pauses commercial expansion, delays production plans and lays off 30% of its workforce, roughly 340 employees. Back in November the company made redundant 20%, or 500 employees. These steps, brought by the tightening in the capital markets, will allow Nuro a runway of 3 years. The company will continue to operate existing commercial operations and continue R&D. Read message from founders.
Porsche partners with Mobileye to bring hands-free automated assistance and navigation functions to future sports cars. Cruise expanding to Houston and Dallas. Soon we will see vehicles, with safety drivers, starting supervised testing. Waymo adds safety alerts to protect exit door collisions with cyclists and other cars. Mobileye will use safety drivers in its German operations.
Self-driving cars are being put on a data diet. The increasing number of cars on road, improved sensors (more data) and tighter budgets force companies to prioritise data collection. Costs could be staggering, about $350,000 per car per year. Read what Waymo, Cruise, Aurora and TuSimple are doing.
Policemen try to stop a Waymo from advancing, with no luck but standing in front of the car. These incidents are not very rare - emergency services cannot redirect vehicles and autonomous vehicles don’t always understand sirens. A Guardian personal experience read on ride-hailing autonomous in SF.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFlying cars 🚁
Wisk Aero partners with Japan Airlines to bring autonomous eVTOL services to Japan. EHang to launch eVTOL manufacturing facility in Abu Dhabi. In China, multiple startups are in the race to launch commercial eVTOL services.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOEMs 🛺⚡️
Kia and Kakao Mobility sign an MOU for Kia to build ride-hailing purpose vehicles by 2025 with Kakao to consult and share operational data in the process. Specialty ride-hailing vehicles are a growing idea (see Uber and Arrival), as vehicles become driving digital infotainment boxes and ‘shared rides’ are growing in popularity. Didi to mass produce self-driving EVs in partnership with Chinese carmaker GAC. The joint venture, called AIDI, should start producing designed-for-ride-hailing cars in 2025.
Lucid’s Q1 results missed analysts' revenue expectations and reduced 2023 production goal, sending the stock down. Lucid’s cash flow is sufficient to last it to H2/2024. Rivian beat Q1 revenue expectations and saw stock rise. Losses narrowed to a net loss of $1.35 billion (in Q1 only!); Rivian has nearly $12bn in cash and cash equivalents. Rewe, German grocery retailer, to work with Einride to supply its supermarkets in the Berlin area. Seven fully electric trucks will deliver goods to around 306 supermarkets in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedGig economy 💰
Research reveals more than half of gig economy workers in the UK are paid below the minimum wage. On average respondents were earning £8.97 per hour – around 15% below the current UK minimum wage, which rose to £10.42 this month.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn other news 📰
Qualcomm acquires auto-chip maker Autotalks for $350-400M. Autotalks makes dedicated chips used in the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications technology for manned and driverless vehicles to improve road safety. The company was founded in 2009 and raised $110M.
UVeye, developer of automated inspection systems for vehicles (‘MRI for cars’), raises $100M series D, bringing the total to $200M. Funding will be used to expand in North America.
Google is driving deeper into the automotive world. The company is doing so with Android Automotive OS, expected to be available in around 200 million vehicles by the end of the year; and with Android Auto, an app that runs on the user’s phone and wirelessly communicates with and projects navigation, parking, media and messaging to the vehicle’s infotainment system.
Vast and SpaceX aim to put the first commercial space station in orbit in 2025. There are four seats available for the no-later-than August 2025 launch, so hurry up. 9 people are looking at this property right now.
Virgin Galactic aims for crewed flight at the end of May. This would be the company's 2nd flight to space, since the last (and 1st) one in July 2021. Ticket price of around $425,000 per seat, which is actually more affordable than I thought.
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