Paris bans scooters, Lyft’s new CEO and Bill Gates rides autonomous

Paris overwhelmingly votes to ban scooters, Lyft has a new CEO, Cabify raises (sort of) $110M, Optibus partners with Stratio, shared mobility report by Fluctuo, Helbiz changes name to micromobility.com, UberEats limits virtual kitchens, DoorDash adds cash, Amsterdam and Paris want dark stores out of residential areas, Bill Gates rides autonomous Wayve, autonomous ‘hit-and-run’ problem, Lucid layoffs and more with Careem, Zeelo, Joker, May Mobility, Goggo Network, Ford, Didi, Venti, Archer, Lilium, Planet Aero, Lucid and Canoo. Let’s start #movingpeople. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedParisians ban scooters ❌🛴

Yesterday (Sunday) Paris voted overwhelmingly, with nearly 90% of votes (but only 8% voter turnout), to ban scooters in a city wide referendum. Since introducing scooters in 2018, Paris has long tried to manage scooters, limiting the number of operators, creating dedicated parking zones and imposing speed limits. In 2022, 500 people were injured and 27 deaths were related to scooters. Today, Lime, Dott and Tier each operate 5,000 scooters in the city, bringing total scooter numbers to 15,000. Their contract with the city ends on August 31st, and will now not be renewed. 

What are the consequences for scooters in Europe? Will cities, seeing the results, implement their own referendums? And should we expect similar results elsewhere in Europe? In the UK, scooter legislation has not been finalised with lawmakers hesitant; will these results affect lawmakers' decision? Many questions, but too soon to tell. 

The French government is planning a reform of its own, raising the minimum age from 12 to 14, adding licence plates and increasing fines. Scooter companies were quick to welcome the initiative. The French ministry of transportation was not for the Paris ban; the timing - a few days before the Paris referendum - was probably meant to give Parisians another choice rather than an all-out ban. It didn’t work. Will the results change public attitudes in the country? 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLyft’s change of guard 👨‍💼🚗

Lyft co-founders, CEO Logan Green and President John Zimmer, are stepping down and will be replaced by David Risher, a former retail executive at Amazon (many years ago) and the co-founder & CEO of a non-profit that encourages children to read. Risher is also a board member at Lyft since July 2021. The two co-founders will remain on the board. 

The new CEO Risher aims to make Lyft profitable by growing demand and making operations more efficient. Lyft will be a ‘price competitive player’; Risher is not ruling out expanding beyond ride-hailing but will keep ride-hailing as the base - i.e. no delivery but yes to multimodality. The company is said to drop shared rides and other features; also no international expansion to Europe. Watch a 9 minute interview with Risher. 

How did the market react? Lyft’s results have been mostly disappointing since the pandemic winded down and the company has seen its shares drop by 70% over the past year; after the announcement shares rose around 5%; but after Risher saying that the company is NOT for sale, shares dropped by circa 10%, to an all time low.

Strategically, Lyft is in a tough spot. The company has ±25% of the US ride-hailing market, down from ±40% in 2020; it doesn’t offer deliveries; only operates in North America; and in 2022 registered an operating loss of $1.45bn. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedRide-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Cabify (sort of) raises $110M to expand footprint, develop product and expedite EV adoption. Why sort of? Because of that $110M, part is a €40M loan from the European Investment Bank announced in December 2022 and part are funds from the July 2022 round. The remainder is part equity and part debt. 

Cabify is present in eight markets across 40 cities, in Spain and Central & South America, and wants to expand to an additional 25 cities with >200,000 population and triple revenues in the next three years. The company had an estimated revenue of $680M in 2022 and is growing, largely thanks to multimodality and delivery options the company had presented. 

Optibus partners with Stratio, a provider of AI predictive maintenance for transport operators. Optibus is present in >2,000 cities; Stratio’s client list includes the likes of Keolis, RATP, Transdev, Ford, Arriva and Go-Ahead. The partnership wants to bring cost-savings via better maintenance to more operators. 

Careem is looking for investments to diversify beyond ride-hailing. The company wants to expand into a ‘superapp’ - that includes multimodality, delivery and payments. Expect an announcement soon, and talks seem to be in high gear. Uber expands ‘Comfort Electric’, its premium electric vehicle offering, to 14 new North American cities. Yandex appeals against NASDAQ delisting. Ride DCTA, powered by Via, reaches 1 million rides in Denton County, Texas. Zeelo publishes its 2022 impact report. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMicromobility 🚲🛴

Fluctuo published its 2022 European Shared Mobility Index report. Highlights: in 2022 European operators brought in €3.1bn in revenue; there were 550 million trips on 850,000 vehicles, equating to an average of 1.5 million trips per day; roughly 1.76 rides per day per vehicle. Scooters are the most common (50% of daily trips) followed by Station-based bikes (30%), free floating bikes and cars (7% each) and mopeds (5%). For more interesting statistics and country zoom-ins, download the full report. According to Fluctuo (given before the Paris referendum), the industry's future is uncertain. The overall economic downturn hits riders’ wallets; there are challenges with raising new funds; and cities are voicing concerns. With the Paris referendum results, things just got more complicated.  

Helbiz changes name to “Micromobility.com” and refocuses its business. The company now has (1) an e-commerce retail arm with (2) physical locations to open soon; (3) a shared rides offer with Helbiz scooters and Mimoto mopeds; and (4) Wheels long term seater e-scooter rentals. The company is also performing a reverse stock split to try and be compliant with Nasdaq demands, which threatened to delist the company. Micromobility.com (very annoying new name) might have a new name - but it keeps all the challenges the company has - mainly cash flow challenges. That hasn’t changed. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDelivery 🍽🧺

UberEats is shutting down fake virtual (ghost) kitchens. There is nothing wrong with virtual kitchens and Uber itself encourages it, but in order to maintain quality and get rid of duplicates the company is implementing new guidelines, such as a minimum of 60% difference between the menus’ of virtual and physical locations and a minimum of 4.3 star rating for virtual kitchens. The move is expected to remove 5,000 out of the 40,000 virtual restaurants operating on the platform.

DoorDash is adding cash to ‘DoorDash Drive’, its restaurant white-label solution. Chinese restaurants and pizza shops have been early adopters of the feature, with as much as 20% of pizzas delivered paid with cash. Drivers also benefit from cash, being able to take home pay immediately and gain 100% of the tip. Drivers will be required to opt-in into the service, and can opt-out anytime without it hurting their ratings. So far 75% of ‘Dashers’ chose to accept cash.  

DoorDash is adding three new retail partners - Lush Cosmetics, Victoria’s Secret and Party City. The company is also adding more time options (one hour, two hours and up to five days in advance) and making choosing substitutions easier by enabling an in-app messaging service. 

Interview with Ralf Wenzel, the CEO of Jokr. During the past year the company has left all of its markets (US, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia) to focus only on Brazil. Wenzel focuses on supply side innovation to drive profits, creating agreements directly with producers, farmers, and brands, cutting out the intermediary distributors or supermarkets.. 

Swiggy’s valuation has been marked down to $8bn, from a previous $10.7bn. This devaluation by Invesco, who was a part of Swiggy’s January 2022 round (which set the $10.7bn number), occurred in October 2022, but we learn of it now. 

Getir begins redundancies. This was expected, as a result of the Gorillas merger. Some 300 employees are likely to be affected. Deliveroo launches two new rapid ‘Hop’ dark stores (delivery-only grocery) with Waitrose and Morrisons. This brings total Hop stores in London to 11. GoPuff is said to be using Uber and DoorDash to fulfil orders more than usual.  

Amsterdam city council to decide if dark stores would operate from business parks only. Paris wins legal battle to regulate dark stores; the city wants dark stores out of residential areas.  

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAutonomous 🤖

Wayve invited Bill Gates for a ride, resulting in a 2:45 min video and a dedicated Gates post on AVs. Wayve operates differently than most AV companies; its algorithm learns by example, using deep learning from lots of real world driving and simulations to interpret its surroundings and respond in real time, unlike most AV solutions that require complex robotic stacks that require highly-detailed maps and programmed rules. 

How did they manage to get Bill to come for a ride? I’m unsure if Gates has any direct or via VC investment in the company, but do know that Microsoft is a series B investor in the company. 

Navya, the French autonomous shuttle producer, is postponing its financial results to April 30th. The company's future will be determined soon, with the Commercial Court of Lyon setting April 4th as the date for the examination of takeover bids. 

Teens try to stop and climb a Waymo car and get scared away by the car. From the video interviewing the product management lead for the operations team, we learn that this use case has been thoroughly considered, which makes you think how many scenarios had to be thought of in the development process. 

May Mobility and Stantec, a design and engineering firm, partner to develop turnkey AV microtransit solutions. The companies will “collaborate on infrastructure developments and formally pursue opportunities to implement AVs across a range of commercial and municipal locations globally”. In plain English, the two companies are together trying to market AVs to B2B and B2G players. 

Autonomous vehicles have a ‘hit-and-run’ problem: human drivers are fleeing accidents scenes that they (humans) are responsible for. 36 hit-and-runs were recorded in 2022; so far 7 up to early March. This sometimes also happens when there are safety drivers in the vehicle. It seems that this is actually a wise tactic from the human drivers' side - as the tech companies are not in a hurry to start legal procedures. Maybe people just don’t know what to do, as there is no one in the vehicle to exchange information with. 

Goggo Network, autonomous mobility (as a service) specialising in last mile delivery, partners with Oxbotica to launch its autonomous software in Goggo’s operations in Europe, starting with Spain. Ford announced that it will no longer pursue a petition to the NHTSA to operate autonomous vehicles without human controls. Ford (with partner VW) recently closed Argo AI, and now Ford is focusing on level 2/3 ADAS. Didi starts commercial robotaxi operations in South China. Baidu (Apollo Go) robotaxis in Beijing. Waymo retires its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan after more than five years. The company is transitioning to all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles. Venti raises $29M to design autonomous vehicles for industrial and logistics hubs. 

A Washington Post long read on Tesla, Musk and the drive for ‘Full Self Drive’ (FSD). According to the article, the decision to get rid of radar; working at neckbreak speed to push FSD out at any cost; the Twitter focus and engineers moving between companies; are all contributing to an uncertain future for Tesla’s FSD solution. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFlying cars 🚁

United Airlines and Archer Aviation plan to have an eVTOL route between O’Hare International Airport and Vertiport Chicago, a 15 mile (24km) route. A 10 min ride, that could save up to 1.5 hours in traffic. The service won’t be with us before 2025, as eVTOLs (all of them) are still waiting for regulatory approvals. 

Lilium releases fiscal year 2022 shareholder letter. At the end of 2022, the company had €206M in cash, which means it needs to raise again. Lilium is also defending criticism over batter product design. 

Plana Aero, a South Korean eVTOL manufacturer, is coming to the US for FAA certification. Joby Aviation names former FAA administrator as director. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOEMs 🛺⚡️

Lucid to lay off 1,300 employees in restructuring. Also Lucid recalls hundreds of Air Sedans over risk of the EV’s motors losing power. 

Canoo agrees to $1.5M settlement with SEC. We don’t know exactly what the SEC was looking into, but we know it was related to the company’s SPAC in mid 2021. The pre-revenue company is looking to raise. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedGig economy 💰

Seattle’s council passed legislation that requires app-based delivery companies to provide paid sick time off to workers. The bill has been around since mid 2020 to protect workers from Covid sickness, but now has been made permanent. According to the law, a worker is allowed one sick day for every 30 working days, can accrue paid sick time, and get paid “safe time” for personal safety etc. reasons (close of school, domestic violence).

Ex-Grubhub driver wins 8 year legal battle in a California court to be classified as an employee and not a contractor - and gets… $65. While the ​​plaintiff doesn’t get much (he only worked at GrubHub for 4 months), the ruling is an important precedent over the gig economy question. 

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