Attention: the way #movingpeople reaches your inbox is about to change. 
Today, the email sender is “Barak Sas”, that’s me. Soon, the sender is going to become #movingpeople. I am giving advance notice, change will occur toward the end of March. 

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Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕

Momenta, Chinese AV tech, filed confidentially for an IPO in Hong Kong, aiming to raise $1 billion. Back in 2024, the company explored a US IPO; that didn’t materialise. The previous funding round was in 2021, with the company raising $1.3 billion in several Series 3 trenches across 2021. 

A Waymo blocks an ambulance on the way to a mass shooting site in Austin. The vehicle, unable to complete a U-turn, took over 1:30 minutes to clear the road, and was able to clear the road only after being directed manually by a police officer and after disengaging from autonomous mode and driven remote. No harm was done this time. 

Preliminary findings on the Waymo school accident; “The Waymo vehicle was traveling north at 17 mph (27 km/h) when it braked and struck the student… (the) investigation will scrutinize the automated driving system’s intended behavior in school zones and surrounding area”. 

CyberCab - on one hand, Tesla accelerates production and gets ready for volume production in April. See drone filming of 25 CyberCab units in Tesla’s Texas facility. On the other hand, Victor Nechita, Tesla’s CyberCab Vehicle Programme Manager, is leaving Tesla after 9 years. 

Taking a step back: learning from Zoox’s journey (no wheel, no pedals) and from Tesla’s Austin performance, there is zero chance that Tesla will run anything more than a very limited and constrained pilot on US public roads. Which raises the question - what is Tesla planning? And where? Vehicles are manufactured for a reason, and the US public roads is not the answer.. 

Pony AI says it achieved robotaxi unit economics breakeven in Shenzhen (now) and Guangzhou (last year). On a per day basis, net revenue exceeded costs, with an average 23 daily orders. Note: this is in no way indicating better unit economics compared to a human driver (as some posted on LinkedIn). 

Elmo sets new remote driving record: 157 km/h from 3,300 km away. This was performed on the F1 circuit in Barcelona, with 5G connection. 

ComfortDelGro (CDG) is considering bringing autonomous vehicles to London. This follows pilots in China and Singapore. 

Uber explores subscription-based models for drivers. 

Lalamove aims to double its registered ride-hailing drivers to 20,000 by Summer of 2026. Taking into account all drivers, including delivery drivers, Lalamove has 35,000 drivers; so this is essentially a move aimed at convincing delivery drivers to commit to ride-hailing.  

Tamas Gabor turned my attention to this article about the taxi market in Budapest, Hungary: 

In the Czech Republic, a new law mandates that all taxi drivers pass a Czech language test. Taxi numbers went up during the last decade from circa 5,000 to 16,000 today, with many taxi drivers foreigners, many from Ukraine. Bolt has initiated a language program; rule is to take effect from January 2028, ample time to get ready. Dobře se učte!

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

Autonomous Shuttles, DRT & Bus-Based Mobility 🚍🚌

Self-driving shuttles in Punggol, Singapore, to open to the public from April 1st. Routes are operated by Grab and by ComfortDelGro; AV tech by WeRide. 

Newark airport to test self-driving shuttles, using Oceaneering (ZF vehicle), Ohmio and Glydways vehicles. Testing, limited to a few weeks and closed to the public, will help the airport decide on its future; RFP is expected next year, launch circa 2030. 

A thorough Roger French written review and a Geoff Marshall video of the autonomous bus trials in Cambridge, 

Studio Galilei launches L3 autonomous DRT in Suwon. 

Via numbers are improving, but the stock is going down. Via achieved 29% YoY revenue growth to $434.3M and improved its losses, but not by enough, and investors are pricing the company as a B2G transport player rather than a SaaS tech-company. My thoughts: vertical integration into operations and payments. Read my analysis here. 

SWVL is back to the US. Padam to operate expanded Surrey Connect (UK) services, for a 3 year period. . 

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Zeus Mobility acquires Superpedestrian Europe. Superpedestrian spun out of MIT in 2012, and in 2020, during the micromobility boom, introduced to the public a scooter brand, LINK. In late 2023 the company shut down, and in March 2024 the European operations were sold to Norway-based Surf Beyond. In July 2025 Superpedestrain declared another bankruptcy. It is now March 2026, and Zeus is acquiring the company. Zeus was founded in 2020 in Ireland. In August 2022 it acquired UK-based Zwings and in April 2023 Irish-based Zipp Mobility. Following the acquisition, Zeus plans to deploy up to 20k vehicles across 30 European locations over the next 12 months. 

London e-scooter data from TfL, dating to September 2024 to 2025, shows 54% ride increase from 1.3 to 2 million rides with utilisation increasing 50% from 1 trips per day per vehicle to 1.5 TVD. London has 4,000 vehicles operated by Voi and Lime. A third tender to operate e-scooters in London is being released these days. 

Joey Schaap, CEO of Fleetser, a used micromobility commerce platform, shared with me that they recently sold second hand e-scooters to Kai Ride in Senegal. By selling ‘Western’ vehicles, micromobility operators in developing markets have the opportunity to acquire quality vehicles at lower prices, making it easier to launch operations. 

ILUS Bike is an Estonian bike-sharing hardware company; Rico Jaanipere, the company’s CEO, shared with me that they recently debuted 3 new bike-sharing vehicles, fit for private and public use.

Ryde into Germany - launching 2,500 scooters in Frankfurt (2.000) and Aachen (500). Beryl in Bradford, UK, with circa 200 e-bikes and at least 41 docking station hubs. 

Delivery - bikes to cars, bots & drones 🍽🧺

Flink, quick commerce, raises $100M at a $900M valuation, in a round led by Prosus. To date the company raised $1.4 billion (yes, there were downrounds, at least one). Flink, which says it is EBITDA profitable, will use the money to expand in Germany and the Netherlands, its two existing markets. If the name Prosus rings a bell, it is because they recently acquired Just Eat Takeaway (JET). 

JET closes Denmark operations, after 25 years (!), citing “challenging circumstances”. This continues a trend of consolidation - also this week Keeta postpones launching Brazil operations, laying off nearly 200 employees; last week DoorDash announced it is leaving four international markets across Asia and the Gulf states; and a week before that foodora (Delivery Hero) announced scaling back from Finland.  

Rapido formally launches its standalone food delivery app, Ownly, across Bengaluru. Pilot began back in August 2025. Ownly business model: zero commission for restaurant, customers pay delivery fee. This business model differentiates Ownly from major competitors Swiggy and Zomato, both with robust partner restaurant networks, making it easier to onboard supply (restaurants).  

IKEA China launches commercial robovan delivery, partnering with Neolix. This follows a pilot which saw customer waiting times cut by two-thirds and halved transport costs.

Uber Eats deploys delivery bots in Philadelphia, in partnership with Avride. Some stats: speed of 5 mph (8 km/h) on sidewalks; carry up to 55 pounds (25 kg); use lidar, cameras, and ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles up to 200 feet away (60 meters); swappable batteries offering up to 31 miles (50 km) of range.

A debate on the safety of delivery bots. 

In Morocco, Glovo shuts down all seven dark stores, following an administrative closure in one of those sites. Moroccan regulators are in the process of enforcing new measures, such as a cap on restaurant commission and hourly delivery rider minimum wage. 

Grubhub settles class action lawsuit over misleading customer fees, pays $5M. And in a different lawsuit, regarding alleged driver employment misclassification, is moving toward a $24.7M settlement. It seems that Wonder is looking to clean the table and move forward. 

HungryPanda (HP): a dispute with workers in Australia sees HungryPanda contacting the Chinese police to complain about delivery riders, with the company accusing those riders of intimidation and blackmail. There is currently a riders’ campaign for better wages and conditions. Also HungryPanda takes heat in NYC from delivery riders, who went out in the snow to deliver, only to find out restaurants were closed, and received no pay for their work.. 

AV Freight, Industrial & Logistics 🚛🚜

Oxa raises a $103M Series D, bringing the total raised to >$350M. Half of the round came from the UK’s National Wealth Fund and Oxa expects an additional close toward the end of H1/26. Funds will be used to expand in the industrial autonomy category. 

KargoBot, spun out of Didi Chuxing, raises $100M Series B to expand its fleet to 1,000 “robo-tricks” by the end of the year, up from 400 (!) autonomous trucks KargoBot says it operates today. This number, if true, puts China wayyyyyyyy in front of US and European competitors, who operate trucks in the dozens. 

Aurrigo granted regulatory approval to handle cargo operations at East Midlands Airport. The company will operate two of its Auto-Cargo vehicles and one Auto-Shuttle. 

Toyota Tsusho starts public road demonstration tests of autonomous driving semi-trailer trucks between logistics hubs in Japan. Robotruck delivers the autonomous technology. 

Japan-based Macnica and Australian-based Applied EV partner to commercialise autonomous logistics and industrial in Japan. 

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

In other news 📰

Zeno raises $25M to speed up production of its battery-swap motorbikes.

umob, last of the B2C MaaS players, wins a B2G contract - to exclusively operate micromobility bookings in Eindhoven for 11 (!) years. 

Weego raises $1.1M to expand its MaaS platform across Morocco and Africa.

Hyundai eVTOL subsidiary Supernal lays off most of its staff - 296 people - in major restructuring; eVTOLs are not the immediate future for Hyundai. 

IQberry partnered with Optibus. IQberry helps PTOs integrate multiple platforms and data sources to achieve higher efficiency. 

WHILL, autonomous wheelchair airport operations, expands to its 15th airport. 

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Belen Romero is the new Senior Director, General Manager (Latin America) @ Uber. 

Benjamin La Trobe is the new Senior Account Executive @ Volue.

Bhaskar P V is the new Associated Partner @ MHP – A Porsche Company. 

Cameron Gieda is the new Data Broker / Fully Annotated Real World Long Tail Scenarios Database @ Bot Auto. 

James Craven is the new Director Business Development - AAMI at Advanced Air Mobility Institute.

Patrick A. BILOMBA is the new Fleet Director @ AnyVan.

Pejvan Beigui co-founded and is the new CEO @ Konboi, an AI Cruise Control startup. Good luck!

Raaghav Dawar is the new Head of Enterprise - Bolt for Business @ Bolt

Ran Yurist is the new Senior Regional Lead, Government relations @ Lime.

Scherezade Bejarano is the new Senior Tender Manager @ Bolt. 

Tamlyn Shimizu is the new Head of Markets & Partnerships - Global; Senior Communications Expert @ BABLE Smart Cities. 

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.