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Autonomous Buses Will Move the Needle

Robotaxis receive much more attention, but it is buses that carry far more people, and that’s where autonomy will have the real impact.

My guest article for The Driverless Digest looks at two major challenges public transport faces when seeking to adopt autonomy: removing the driver and creating a sustainable procurement model.

Top Story: Uber’s Pursuit of Delivery Hero Continues

Back in May 2026 we learned that Uber is trying to take over German-founded Delivery Hero - now going head to head with Prosus - which acquired Just Eat in February 2025. 

Prosus had a 26.3% stake in Delivery Hero, but one of the EU anti-competition terms to complete the Just Eat deal was to dilute its Delivery Hero stake, with Prosus still holding 16.8% today. As of now, the dilution requirement is paused, in light of Uber’s attempted acquisition of Delivery Hero and the wish to leave Delivery Hero under European ownership.

Two stories from this week potentially shed new light on the deal’s status:

1) Uber Eats pauses European expansion to 5 out of 7 European countries. In February 2026 Uber announced expansion to Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Czech Republic, Greece and Romania. Now the company is pausing all but Finland and Denmark, where expansion efforts have already begun. The official statement from Uber claims the company wants to “focus on continuing the momentum” rather than seek more expansion. 

Obviously we don’t believe that statement. This goes back to… Delivery Hero, which is present in all of these markets. The logic is clear: why invest funds in expansion, when Delivery Hero is already present in the market? 

2) Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi resigns from Grab's board as “the company continues with its effort to complete its proposed acquisition of foodpanda’s Taiwan business”. Wider context: 

To be continued. 

Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) informs AV companies that it is unacceptable for their vehicles to interfere with first responders or law enforcement. In the letter, the NHTSA administrator writes: “This is unacceptable. To state it bluntly: an AV that cannot safely interact with first responders is a danger to the general public… let me be clear: the inability to detect and appropriately respond to such situations represents a functional insufficiency, emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases.’ and calls for solutions by the end of the month. While this letter is aimed at all companies, Waymo is top of mind, because of the sheer size of its fleet, which generated the most incidents so far. 

The 4th of July (US 250th birthday) firework celebrations in San Francisco bring Waymos to a halt. More than a dozen vehicles were towed after running out of battery; Waymo said that this was a result of a combination of major traffic disruptions, unusually high travel demand, and unplanned road closures that led to severe congestion. 

Waymo removes safety drivers in Las Vegas, with Denver, San Diego and Tampa to follow. Services are not open to the public yet. 

Tesla rolls out robotaxi service in Miami. The Robotaxi Tracker isn’t registering the fleet size yet. 

Back in May 2025 Uber acquired Dantaxi, a local Danish taxi company, following a similar acquisition by Bolt and to be able to access the heavily regulated Danish market. The deal is now under inspection by the competition authority. Uber is offering to amend the acquisition by letting go of Dantaxi’s app, phone number and brand name to facilitate the sale.

JéGO is an African company focusing on the EV transition. It provides the vehicles, infrastructure and fleet management software to facilitate ride-hailing, and is an active Uber partner today. The company recently partnered with GoCab, a financing company, to deploy 6,000 vehicles in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria over the next 24 months. 

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business - a consultancy focused on Innovation, Growth and Autonomy in the Mobility industry.

Electreon allows vehicles to wirelessly charge, saving on space, eliminating accidents & misuse, and also vandalism & theft. Electreon supports vehicles ranging from 10 kW passenger cars to 300 kW lorries, and is particularly relevant for fleets facing space constraints, requiring opportunity charging or preparing for autonomous operations.

In the picture - four types of vehicles - charging simultaneously. 

Autonomous Shuttles, DRT & Bus-Based Mobility 🚍🚌

Clever Solutions raises to manage autonomous vehicle fleets for transport operators. Clever Solutions targets transport operators, public transport authorities, and private operators that want to deploy autonomous vehicles without building up their own operations.The funding round is led by Autobus Oberbayern and Geldhauser Linien-und Reiseverkehr, two of Germany's most experienced bus companies.

The Ultimate 2026 Mobility & Electrification Events Calendar

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Hiyacar, UK peer-to-peer car-sharing, partners with Bolt in London. Since Zipcar and its 3,000 car fleet left the capital at the end of 2025, a gap existed. Hiyacar has some activity in London, which it hopes to pick up with Bolt generated demand. 

Green Mobility H1/26 results: 

Revenue guidance for full 2026 lowered due to delay of new vehicle arrivals as a result of the Strait of Hormuz closures; migration to a new software platform; local road closures and increasing competition from the taxi sector. 

Vay reaches 100,000 trips in Las Vegas. Launched two years ago, Vay now has 175 vehicles in the city. 

Pikyrent, Italian car & moped sharing, chooses Invers for its B2B solution. So did GoCar in Ireland. Leo&Go, car-sharing in Lyon by Vulog, achieves 10% EBIT. Microlino, microcar manufacturer, and Mobility, Swiss car-sharing, launch a 3 car pilot in Zurich.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Lyft to acquire Serveo's bikeshare unit in Spain (subject to customary closing conditions). Serveo Spain runs operations of the bikeshare systems in Barcelona, Bilbao, Valladolid & Zaragoza and provides the contract management and local support for the systems in Madrid, La Coruña & Rivas-Vaciamadrid. Lyft, which will continue its existing role as the technology and hardware provider across all of these programs, supplies technology and hardware to 55 systems across 14 countries, 18 programmes of which are in Europe. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Lime acquires and takes over Neuron’s Canadian operations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Voi expands in Sweden. France and Germany. 

Donkey Republic restructures debt. 

Brompton Bicycle launches a floating bike hire service in London. The company, which operates more than 100 static hire locations across the UK through stores and lockers, wants to bring bikes directly to riders. 

Delivery - bikes to cars, bots & drones 🍽🧺

Manna focuses on the US - and announces its central operations to be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Over the next three years, the company has also announced that it expects to create more than 1,000 jobs in Tulsa, across aviation and flight operations, commercial operations, customer support, manufacturing, maintenance and business functions, with plans to build its US manufacturing base in Tulsa to power its American expansion”.

Manna is an Irish company - and these jobs could have stayed in the EU - had there been favorable regulatory conditions for delivery drones. But there aren’t (exc. Finland & Iceland), and so companies set up operations in the US. These jobs and knowledge leave the EU, which is another brick in the great European wall of regulatory burden and innovation stagnation. 

Also in the US - Wonder and Zipline partner to bring drone delivery to Dallas. Operations to launch in early 2027 with selected locations, with the goal of deploying in all 100+ Texas locations by the end of the year. 

The Curbivore interviews Matternet’s CEO Andreas Raptopoulos, interview highlights: 

Avride is officially on the ground in Miami, in partnership with Uber Eats. This is Avride’s 6th US city. 

AV Freight, Industrial & Logistics 🚛🚜

Port of Felixstowe expands Westwell autonomous truck fleet to 100 units. 

I love meeting new people and learning about innovation in mobility. Let’s get-to-know / catch up.

In other news 📰

Bidbus raises $15M to build a digital used car marketplace. The differentiation? Bidding. 

Forterra, US builder of autonomous vehicles, revealed that more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs have been deployed in conflict zones in Ukraine for the past nine months. 

Kakao Mobility and Renault Korea signed an MOU to jointly develop next-generation in-vehicle technology, combining Kakao Mobility's mapping and software expertise with Renault Korea's vehicle platforms.

World’s first commercial vertiport approved for air taxi operations in Dubai. Flights to follow as soon as planes receive certification. 

Blue Origin reportedly raising $10 billion at a $130 billion valuation. Not a trillion-dollar valuation, but still substantial

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Cosimo Calciano is the new Product owner - Parking and Ancillary Services @ Enilive. 

Erran Hussain is the new Principal eMobility Consultant @ Piper Maddox. 

Filip Cindrić is the new Director of Country Operations & Strategic Partnerships @ Verne. 

James Cox is the new Director @ Town & country taxi tours. 

Sebastian Yee is a new Independent Consultant @ WeRide. 

Sören Heinze is the new Key Account Manager | Corporate Mobility & betriebliche Mobilitätslösungen @ AMS Gruppe. 

Tobie Pryce is the new Client Relationship Manager @ Horizon Parking. 

Congrats and good luck!

Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like what you're reading, please share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit from it too.