ioki more than DRT, Fantuan acquires Chowbus, Fin acquires Urb-it, and more info on the Cruise accident

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Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

ioki has a new product - “ioki Route” - intelligent navigation solution for public buses. This isn’t your DRT driver app, but a new solution, with its own control module, which helps public transportation companies direct their drivers on everyday routes. Initially developed in Germany with BVG, the solution is to be rolled out to Europe this year. What makes this product even more interesting is the mission statement behind it - to be “a digital house for road-based public transport”, no longer a pure DRT player. 

Freenow increases London’s metered black cab commission from 15% to 18%. Regardless of what goes on with Kakao, and it's bad, it seems that Freenow is ramping up its pursuit of profitability. 

InDrive Philippines was suspended by the government for violating the official fare matrix with its haggling pricing policy. For now. InDrive paused operations, but since price-bidding is at the core of InDrive’s offer, it will be interesting to follow on their next move. 

Uber France files a legal appeal against the city of Paris over VTC restrictions, which favors public transport usage during the upcoming Olympics. Uber adds $30M to lobbying efforts in California. 

Lyft reaffirms it will not go into delivery, focusing only on North America ride-hailing and the business’ basics. In an interview with Risher, Lyft’s CEO, we are also reminded that Lyft is still looking to offload its bike business, and that not yet all building blocks in electric vehicles have lined up. As of December 2023, Lyft has 25% US ride-hailing market share. 

Uber Canada is making changes to its driver processes. These include displaying estimated fare & location prior to job approval, identifying and ignoring rider false reports, ability to record using smartphone and seat belt reminders via the rider app. These changes are the result of feedback Uber got back from UFCW, a local private-sector (!) union it has an agreement with. There was, and still is, criticism by other unions on UFCW and the way it represents (or doesn’t) drivers. 

Blusmart adds $25M investment in debt and equity, to fund electric chargers expansion. This brings total funding to $233M. Gett and Octopus Energy partner on EV charging. Drivers will receive discounts on public and home charging, adding to the Gett’s driver incentive package. FirstGroup acquired York Pullman Bus Company, subject to regulatory approval. Studio Galilei is a South Korean on-demand (DRT) player. Last week I covered one of the company’s projects, and am now sharing all of Galilei’s on-going projects - 11 cities with more than 220,00 rides in 2023. 

If you're thinking about Mobility-as-a-Service - HopOn is a European MaaS player with over 1 million unique monthly users, providing multimodal route planning and payments (& more) in a white-label format. 

Check out our leading MaaS solutions and our recent implementation in Germany: Leipzig MOVE • HopOn. Reach out for more via this link. 

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Getaround raised  a new debt facility of $20M. Voltio reaches 100,000 users and 500,000 rides in its first year of operation in Madrid. Miocar, nonprofit electric car-sharing, expands in California. Traficar sums up 2023: increased fleet by 60% to 4,000 vehicles and saw 13% daily user increase YoY; has 1 million downloads, serves 18 cities in Poland; and integrated with Freenow. Delimobil, Russian car-sharing, to IPO in Russia. 

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Cityscoot’s fate will be decided on February 6th. The company went into insolvency in November last year. The court will decide between two takeover bids, by Spanish Cooltra, a competitor in the French market, and Bertrand Fleurose, founder & CEO of Cityscoot up until mid 2022 and founder of Steed, moped rentals. Fleurose wants to save the company, and is reaching out to investors to complete the financing required. 

Ola launches e-bike taxi service in Delhi and Hyderabad with plans to expand nationally. This follows a successful pilot in Bengaluru. 

New York City plans to launch “Department of Sustainable Delivery'' to regulate commercial micromobility delivery services. Today regulation is divided between a number of departments (Labour, Fire, Transportation departments etc.) and now the city is working on creating a new agency - similar to the one that regulates taxis and ride-hailing. 

Los Angeles: Lyft might win an 11 year e-bike tender in Los Angeles, which the company submitted a year ago, before Risher stepped in as CEO. But since then Lyft downsized its e-bike division, exited Minnesota and is looking to sell the entire operation - without much success so far. The vote on the winner - in the coming weeks. 

New York City comptroller, finds Citi-bike, operated by Lyft, to deteriorate in service. Citi Bike disputes. The comptroller recommends the city opens up the contract with Citi-bike to include stricter performance and data sharing standards. 

London: TfL is expanding the Santander Cycles e-bikes scheme, from 600 to 2,000 bikes, and setting up a new tariff structure. In 2022 e-bikes were added to the scheme, which began operating in 2010. 

San Diego wants to roll back its strict micromobility regulation, which caused the city to lose all the companies who operated in the city. Vote on the matter in the coming days. 

Nextbike expands to Portugal. Nextbike starts roll-out in Poland. 

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. 

Delivery 🍽🧺

Fantuan, who in December raised $40M, acquires Chowbus’s food delivery business, allowing the Chowbus to focus on restaurant SaaS and POS. 

London-based Fin acquires Urb-it. In December Swedish-founded Urb-it filed for bankruptcy. Fin will take over the Urb-it’s UK operations, but will discontinue operations in Spain and France.  

Taiwan: UberEats and Foodpanda head to head. It is interesting to look at the language distribution of the services: UbersEats in the chart below - but foodpanda is 99.2% traditional chinese!

Deliveroo trading update: FY23 saw GMV +3%, Adjusted EBITDA expected to be slightly above the £60-80 million guidance range

Swiggy to cut 7% of workforce, roughly 400 people, as it prepares for its IPO. Swiggy is still not profitable at a group level, needing to improve finance at Instamart, its grocery unit. Also Swiggy is experimenting with doubling its platform order fee, running a controlled pilot.  

Zomato gets approval to operate as an online payment aggregator, bringing the operations inhouse and saving on commissions. 

Drone Delivery Canada expands in Edmonton. Wingcopter expands LieferMichel pilot to deliver non-prescription medicines. 

Graphs and analysis on the Hong Kong food delivery market: Foodpanda vs Deliveroo vs KeeTa. Last week we touched on KeeTa’s rise to 2nd place shortly after launch, now comes the detailed analysis. 

Cruise’s October 2nd accident 💥🚗

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the law firm hired by GM to investigate the Cruise accident, published its findings in a 195 page report. The report does say Cruise leadership acted in good faith but the information about the vehicle dragging the pedestrian for 20 feet (6 meters!) was not conveyed “because Cruise assumed that by playing the Full Video of the Accident for its regulators and other government officials, they would ask questions and Cruise would provide further information about the pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging”, which in non-legal English translates to: we’ll show the video and see if they notice and if so explain and if not then not. 

BUT, alas!, “internet connectivity issues likely precluded or hampered them (regulators) from seeing the Full Video clearly and fully”. Which really doesn’t translate well into any language. 

And the report concludes: “The reasons for Cruise’s failings in this instance are numerous: poor leadership, mistakes in judgment, lack of coordination, an “us versus them” mentality with regulators, and a fundamental misapprehension of Cruise’s obligations of accountability and transparency to the government and the public”. 

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Kodiak, autonomous trucking, and Ryder, transportation & logistics, launch AV truckport in Houston, with the aim of establishing a network of launch and landing hubs for autonomous trucks, or “truckports”. 

Ohmio, autonomous shuttles, is moving from New Zealand to California. In an interview the CEO explains the move simply - there is a market for autonomous shuttles in the US, the company had a viable project in California and the state lured them to move. A simple read on how governments can incentivise new industries. A data point that caught my attention: “the company expects to sell them for $300,000 to $400,000 apiece”. 

Today, Ohmio AVs are on the road in New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Luxembourg and New York, and the company plans to expand to the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom. 

Bluewhite raises $39M to expand autonomous tractors. The company retrofits any compact or midsize tractor into a fully autonomous driving platform. farm-ng raises $10M to help small to midsize farms be more productive with their robot and AI tools. 

Apple postpones its electric car debut to 2028, also gearing toward “level 2+” autonomy (advanced ADAS) and not full level-5 autonomy. Aurora, autonomous trucks, cuts 3% of its workforce, roughly 60 people.  

Flying cars 🚁

Vertical Aerospace raised $50M from its founder & CEO. Funds will allow the company runway until Q2/2025, with key public flight demonstrations planned for 2024. 

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Arrival close to insolvency, in talks with EY to act as administrator in case of. The company is actively looking for additional funding. Lightship raises $34M for electric RVs. Canoo and Faraday Future are reducing pay / furloughing employees. 

Gig economy 💰

A news story about EU gig-economy legislation efforts, I’m quoted inside on the effect of legislation on drivers, learning from experiences in Seattle and New York (spoiler: for now drivers are better off). 

In other news 📰

ZF’s shift in autonomous strategy: from presence across the entire autonomous mobility ecosystem to becoming a leading technology supplier for autonomous driving.

Vroom shuts down its used-car business, focusing on auto financing and AI. 90% of the workforce, roughly 800 people, will be made redundant. 

Monta, ‘operating system” for EVs, raises €80M. The company has 600,000 charge points across its network. Carmoola, car finance, raises £15.5M equity. 

7 key transportation Industry trends by “Exploding Topics”. Wisdom of the crowd.