Optibus growing, Gorillas fading, Cruise accidents and Amazon partners with GrubHub

Volvo invests in Optibus, Uber relaunching in Israel, Flixbus and Cabify going electric & hydrogen, Cruise experiencing accidents and shutdowns, Amazon partners with GrubHub, DeliveryHero and Glovo under anti-competition investigation by the EU, Yandex robots leave Tel-Aviv’s streets, Gorillas leaves Italy and closes Street Fleet, GM invests in UVeye and more in this week’s #movingpeople. Let’s start. 

Ride-hailing / Bus / TaaS 🚙🚌

Volvo Group VC invests (an undisclosed sum) in Optibus. So far Optibus raised $260M, a $100M of that in May, just two months ago. Keywords in a rather vague PR release are: “better software infrastructure” between the two companies, and “accelerates the digitalization and electrification”. My take: Volvo buses to integrate with Optibus tech on the manufacturing line. 

Uber relaunches taxi operations in Israel. Ride-hailing isn’t legal in Israel, so Uber has been a taxi-only player since it came to the market. Competition from local Gett and later Yandex, and Uber’s inability to deliver on its global ride-hailing promise, have placed Uber a distant 3rd in the market. Uber’s new interest in taxi cooperation combined with a weaker SPAC-cancelled Gett, led to Uber’s relaunching efforts. 

Careem acquires Denarii, a money transfer technology platform for an undisclosed amount. Careem Pay will use Denarii’s money transfer technology to connect customers and Captains with remittance services. 

Flixbus launches its first intercity e-bus service in Portugal. The company is trialling a Yutong bus in Portugal and MCI buses in the US. A former BYD experiment in Germany has been stopped due to challenges. The company is also looking at Hydrogen buses, as an intercity use case justifies that. Cabify launches a hydrogen fleet in partnership with Toyota. The vehicles have a range of 550km and refuelling time of 3-5 minutes. 

Zum awarded a $400M contract by the LA Unified School District. The LAUSD is responsible for 650,000 students across over 1,000 campuses. Bolt launches ride-hailing in Finland. Bolt opens an African head office in Nairobi, Kenya, to serve as a regional hub. Ride-hailing Ola is preparing to lay off up to 500 employees of its 1,100 workforce. New DRT service in New Lubbesthorpe, by Vectare. SIXT and Jyrney partner to increase SIXT’s taxi and ride-hailing proposition. 

Autonomous 🤖

Cruise robotaxis started first fully driverless, commercial robotaxi service and then blocked San francisco. More than half a dozen cars stopped for hours in a junction, and had to wait for employees to manually move them. Cruise has not shared the reasons. It is now published that a few weeks before a Cruise vehicle was involved in an accident in the same junction. The accident, which registered minor injuries, is under investigation. 

A long read of a Waymo autonomous truck accident back in May and how government and law enforcement isn’t ready to deal with the technology, by TechCrunch. A Waymo autonomous vehicle, with a safety driver, was attacked by a pedestrian in Arizona. The safety driver has been injured.  

Delivery 🍽🧺

Amazon partners with Grubhub, which will offer restaurant delivery services without a fee for Amazon Prime members under the Grubhub+ membership service. The deal sent DoorDash (-11%) and Uber (-4%) stocks down. 

Delivery Hero finalises Glovo’s transaction. The EU Antitrust regulators are investigating anti-competitive practices by the companies, under an article which prohibits cartels and restrictive business practices.

Gorillas is exiting the Italian market. The company has not succeeded in selling its local operations (the same way it recently did in Belgium) and is now beginning the shut down process. The company is reassuring its focus on Germany, France, the UK, Netherlands and NY city (expanding into New Jersey), citing that 90% of revenues come from these markets. Gorillas owned rider platform Street Fleet lays off more than a 100 riders and is preparing to shut down at the end of July. The platform matches rides to delivery services, and has recently experienced protests  by unpaid riders. A long read by Wired on the crumbling of Gorillas and others. 

Car-sharing, micromobility, delivery and quick-delivery. The playbook has always been the same: rapid expansion by multiple players leading to high competition fueled by VC money; IPO-season; and then pullouts and consolidations leaving 2-3 players in each market. But is that new level of competition enough to make companies profitable? Judging by examples so far - no. 

Getir is planning to cut 14% of its workforce, some 840 people. In addition, Potanin, a Russian oligarch who through Winter Capital investment firm invested in Getir, has been sanctioned by the UK and his assets frozen. Getir is reassuring that Winter Capital has only 0.45% stake in Getir, and anyway is currently not affected by the sanctions. 

Yandex had an autonomous delivery robot pilot in Tel Aviv. The service, running on city streets, was blocking streets and receiving many citizen complaints. It turns out that the service wasn’t approved by the city, and has now stopped. 

Brazilian Mottu, a motorcycle rental business for couriers, raises $40M in equity and debt. Starting in early 2020, the company has over 10,000 motorcycles. Mottu doesn't just rent motorcycles, it provides credit, insurance, maintenance and 24-hour support for its renters.  

Manufacturers 🛺

Ola Electric slips to 4th spot as electric two-wheelers registrations fall amid fire fears. Rivian into e-bikes? A recent hire suggests so. 

In other news 📰

UVeye, an automated inspection system for vehicles, received an (undisclosed sum) investment from GM Ventures. This is not the first strategic investment UVeye, which has raised >$100M, received, with Huyndai and Toyota backing the company in the past. Money will be used for R&D and roll-out of the tech to GM dealerships. 

Aurora Labs,  AI vehicle intelligence software, raises $63M.