Grab acquires Chope & cancels Trans-cab, Waymo $5bn & tests Zeekr, Vertical Aerospace successful flight and independent contractors in California

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

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Grab called off its proposed acquisition of Singapore's third-largest taxi operator, Trans-cab, following negative review from the competition authority. The deal, announced October 2023, was reported to be worth circa $75M.

Kakao’s founder was arrested for allegations of stock price manipulation, related to the company’s takeover of K-pop agency SM Entertainment in 2023. Kakao is a Korean conglomerate, founded in 2010, with revenue of $6 billion in 2023, which has been under increased scrutiny and criticism for monopolistic and immoral behaviour. One of the company's divisions deals with ride-hailing - Kakao Mobility - which has acquired Splyt in March 2023 and was in talks to acquire Freenow afterwards. An emergency management board has been set up. Kakao mobility did generate news this week - it launched an overseas car rental service, integrating with the likes of Hertz and Dollar and officially launched a new taxi franchise service, offering reduced driver fees. 

Citylink Shuttle, a Kuwait-based operator who acquired door2door’s technology post-SWVL, is expanding into Saudi and Dubai. Triple J Enterprises, auto dealership, acquires Stroll, Guam’s leading ride-hailing and mobility platform. Wayla is a new Italian transport operator, using ioki’s tech to deliver a ‘smart’ night shuttle service in Milan. The service will initially run from 7pm to 3am, using its own vehicles and drivers. Uber starts operating in Kelowna airport, joining taxi companies and Uride. Uber has been operating in the city since June 2023, but just now agreed to the $2 (Canadian) per rider fees. Freenow and bp partner on EV charging for drivers. Freenow and NIO partner to offer drivers benefits and discounts. An initiative in South Africa looks to modernise the minibus taxi industry. 

A blast to the past: In Senegal, ride–hailing is growing in popularity with apps such as Yango, Heetch and Yassir, while still in a legal grey area. Taxi companies complain that this has disrupted the market that there is no level playing field, with taxi companies paying licences and fees which are not paid by the new entrants. In an interview, the Commercial Director for Yango says they are “just a platform”. Now take “Yango” and replace it with “Uber”, and it's like 2009 back again.  

In Bogotá, Colombia, a court motion to restrict internet access to ride-hailing apps was filed by a local taxi company, claiming illegality and negative social and environmental effects of the services. The court rejected the motion. 

Rollee empowers lenders to underwrite better gig economy workers. From Auto to Consumer lending, companies addressing customers from Uber, Lyft, Fiverr, and many other platforms can easily share a simple link to collect their users' income information. For example, Rollee helps assess freelancers' income consistency to improve their chances of getting financial services. The company works with leading companies in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and is now expanding to the US. 

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Poparide, Canadian car-pooling player, published a white paper. Founded in 2015, Poparide has over 1 million members, in part as a result of deteriorating intercity services, with Greyhound leaving and other carriers going bankrupt. According to the company: 

• Average vehicle occupancy is 3.15. 

• 21% of intercity travel is done with Poparide. Add to that 9% of casual (non Poparide) carpooling and we reach 30% carpooling. Private car 11%, bus 17%. 

• 78% of members are under the age of 39

• 45% of members have upper middle and above income levels

For the white paper. 

INVERS white paper on North American car-sharing. Highlights: 

• Market size for the US, Canada and Mexico (exc. P2P) is roughly 35,000 vehicles and 2.4 million members 

• Increasing number of operators apply multiple business models (station-bases / free floating / P2P / ride-sharing)

• OEMs are largely out of the game, with the exception of Stellantis‘ Free2move and Toyota‘s KINTO

• In the US & Canada, many schemes are Non-profit, co-op and community car sharing

• Teledriving is generating interest, with players such as Vay and Halo as tech partners  

For the white paper. 

GIG Car Share, free-floating car-share founded in Oakland California in 2017, announced that it will be shutting down in December. The company wrote that “challenges due to decreased demand, rising operational costs, and changes in consumer commuting patterns” led to the decision. 

Zoomcar faces Nasdaq delisting over failure to meet minimum market value requirement. The company has 180 days to bring Zoomcar’s value to over $15M for 10 consecutive business days. Current value It is currently circa $10.7M. 

Avail shuts down D2C offering as it focuses on its new B2B offering strategy. 

South Korean Lotte Rental looks to expand to B2C operation car rental in Vietnam. 

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Napkin calculation of Voi’s business model. 

In Paris and for the Olympics, TIER-Dott is adding another 5,000 e-bikes to the 10K fleet in the city. Yulu enters Hyderabad, Its ninth city.

Delivery 🍽🧺

Grab acquires Chope, Singapore’s restaurant reservation platform. Chope has 13,000 restaurants listed on its platform, with operations in Singapore, Indonesia (Bali & Jakarta), Thailand (Bangkok & Phuket), Hong Kong and China - but Grab will not operate in the latter two. Grab has completed a similar acquisition, of HungryGoWhere, back in 2022.

After earlier this month Delivery Hero announced it may face an antitrust fine of up to €400M (up from previously estimated €186M), the EU announced the launch of a formal investigation into alleged Delivery Hero - Glovo anticompetitive, cartelistic, activity. 

“The Commission is concerned that, before the takeover, Delivery Hero and Glovo may have allocated geographic markets and shared commercially sensitive information (e.g., on commercial strategies, prices, capacity, costs, product characteristics)... the Commission is also concerned that the companies may have agreed not to poach each other’s employees. These practices could have been facilitated by Delivery Hero’s minority share in Glovo.”

There are rumours that Amazon is interested in Instamart, Swiggy’s q-delivery solution, ahead of the planned Swiggy IPO. Just Eat Takeaway announces intention to cease operations in France. 

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Alphabet (Google) invests another $5B into Waymo, in a multi-year investment. Wayno just marked 2 million paid riders, and today 50,000 rides a week. Also Waymo started public road testing of the Zeekr custom built robotaxi vehicle. The vehicle uses Waymo’s sixth-gen hardware, and for now is tested with a safety driver. Picture:

Cruise cancels the Origin robotaxi program. The Origin is purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals; Cruise will continue using Chevrolet Bols for its operations. Cruise says this will allow quicker and more cost-efficient scaling of its services. In the process, Cruise is writing down $583M of assets and restructuring costs associated with the program. Also Cruise plans the restart of autonomous operations in Dallas, Houston and Phoenix, for now with safety drivers. 

Kodiak is focusing on off-road autonomous truck deployment, partnering with Atlas Energy Solutions, a provider of proppant (i.e., sand) and oilfield logistics. The companies plan to launch the first service, run by two trucks, by the end of 2024 / beginning of 2025. 

Applied Intuition closes $300M secondary four months after raising $250M. The company develops simulator software to test autonomous solutions. Monarch Tractor raises $133M, bringing total to $220M, to further develop its autonomous (driver-optional) electric tractor. The company has over 400 tractors in use today. Funds will be used to enhance tech solutions and to grow sales. Saronic, manufacturing of autonomous surface vessels (maritime), raises $175M at a $1 billion valuation.

Vayu unveils One today, a LiDAR-free delivery robot that can drive 20 mph on city streets. The company says it has secured an order for 2,500 units from “a large e-commerce player.”

May Mobility goMARTI autonomous service achieves 10,000 rider milestone. 

A rundown of the use cases and plates in the autonomous industry - from robotaxis through trucking, delivery and agriculture and logistic use cases. 

Flying cars 🚁

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) accepted EHang’s application for an air operator certificate, which will allow the company to provide domestic air-transport services. EHang partners with KC Smart Mobility to enter Hong Kong. 

Vertical Aerospace successfully conducted the first piloted flight of the new, more advanced VX4 aircraft. Back in August 2023 the company suffered a crash to the older model. 

Lilium partners with Groupe ADP, global airport operator, to develop vertiports in airports Groupe ADP operates. Lilium, SEA Milan Airports and Skyports to launch Regional Air Mobility Network in Northern Italy (vertiports). 

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

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Rivian introduces first charging outpost near Yosemite National Park (US); has over 100,000 pre-orders for the R2 model; and will develop their own in-car system and will not support Apple’s carPlay. This will allow the company control over its user experience and satisfaction. 

Chinese car industry collaboration map. 

Gig economy 💰

California’s Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 22 is legal, meaning that, in California, gig-workers would remain independent contractors, not employees. This ends the legal saga which started with AB5 in 2019, continued to Prop 22 and ended up with the question of the legality of Prop 22 itself. While this ruling is likely to affect the wider US, by now the way politicians approach gig-economy has been directed elsewhere. Today the focus has shifted to ensuring sufficient pay during working times - as we’ve recently seen in Massachusetts, New York and Seattle. 

In Mexico, gig workers are switching from food to package deliveries, drawn by the high volume. 

In other news 📰

Indian battle of the maps - continued: Google is adding many more features to Maps in India, such as improved AI  navigation, train ticketing via the ONDC and EV charging information. This is Google’s response to the recent competition from Ola, which is bringing prices down. 

Tekion, automotive retail cloud, raises $200M at a $4 billion valuation. Peak Energy, sodium-ion battery systems, raises $55M. Funds will be used to begin pilot production of the sodium-ion. Coast, fuel cards and expense management software, raises $40M, four months after announcing a $25M venture round + $67M in debt financing. Addionics, components for rechargeable batteries, raises £30M ($39M) to grow teams across the world, expand manufacturing and improve construction of its planned US-based gigafactory. Alvys, logistics operating platform, raises $20.5M. ACEL Power, electric boats, raises $10M. Coldcart, provider of an orchestration and optimization platform for frozen and refrigerated parcel logistics, raises $6.5M. Itselectric, public curbside chargers, raises $6.5M. ReliON, operational monitoring and maintenance for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, raises Canadian $3M. 

Everything you wanted to know about train ticketing apps and on Figma. 

EVs are piling up in dealerships. 

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Not many people start new jobs in the mid-summer… congrats and good luck to Jamie Hodsdon for being promoted to Global Head of Regulatory and Public Affairs @ Oxa and to Nitish Purandare who started @ GoPool. 

Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like it, please share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit from it as well.