Superpedestrain shuts down, Cruise lays off 24%, Tesla recalls Autopilot and EU gig-worker close to completion

This week’s top stories: Superpedestrian shuts down in the US and explores EU sales; Jumia stops food delivery; Cruise layoffs and Delivery Hero getting ready to; Kakao relaxes grip; Tesla Autopilot recall; GreenMobility to focus on Denmark; Getaround’s Q3 more-positive report; and a new EU gig-workers directive that will sort the industry. 

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

Facing criticism from the government, and seeing the company’s monopolistic status in South Korea, Kakao reduced commissions down from 5% to 2.8% for Kakao Mobility’s franchise taxi business; will start sharing ad revenue with drivers; abolish its paid membership fees for unaffiliated taxi drivers; and change the current algorithm currently favouring own franchise taxis.  

Namma Yatri is a Bangalore ride-hailing app, launched in November 2022 and gained market share based on a 0% driver commission offer. Couple months ago the app started charging driver subscription fees and recently saw the exit of a major driver union from its app, after the company opposed implementing additional rider fees. For more. 

To lure London’s black taxi drivers, Uber is offering 0% commission for the first six months. Benchmark: Gett charges 20% and Freenow 15%. InDrive receives licence and gets ready to start operations in five cities in the Philippines. Bolt expands service area in the UK. Uride expands in New Brunswick, Canada. OSR Cruise is a new ride-hailing + car pooling + car rental + delivery platform in Nigeria. Chandigarh, India, is halting Uber and Ola operations due to licensing issues; this has to do with licensing fees.   

Data on US ride-hailing market share (Uber 75%) and monthly spend per customer (±$90 for both Uber/Lyft):

The Routing Company, together with Optibus, won a five-year contract with the Ohio Department of Transportation. Via wins a five-year contract with Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The City of Edmonton celebrates 1 million Via-powered rides; the program has been running since April 2021. WeMove wins Buckinghamshire’s (UK) Aylesbury DRT service, with Padam’s tech.

Zeelo, digital commute, and Fetii, group ridesharing, combine forces. Fetii’s Texas inventory will be offered via the Zeelo tech platform.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSharing/renting 🚗🛴

Getaround’s Q3 report: $69M gross booking -> $23.8M in revenue (±35% margin); revenue up from $16.7M YoY. Total revenue for the nine months = $54M (revenue for all of 2022 was $59.4M). These results show a good trend, but the company is still very deep in the red; Getaround expects an adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of ±$70M in 2023. 

GreenMobility to focus on the Danish market and close unprofitable markets - targeting profitability in 2024. In the meantime, the company intends to raise ±$3.8M to improve liquidity. 

Mevo, a New Zealand car-sharing service, launched a crowdfunding campaign. The seven years old company generated $4.4M ($NZ) in 2023, and targets profitability from early 2025, when it will reach a monthly revenue of $1.1M (or $13.2M annual, X3 from today). So far (true to 16/12) the company raised $3.7M. Interestingly enough. Just last week I reported that the Carbn Group acquired Zilch, NZ electric car-sharing, and I wonder if this crowdfunding campaign is related to that other acquisition.

Freenow partners with Traficar for a multimodality solution in Poland. In addition to taxis you can now book car-share via the Freenow app. Greenwheels adds vehicles in the Netherlands. Zipcar offers discounts for low-income residents in Philadelphia. Turo completed rebranding in France. Nantucket Airport issued a cease and desist letter to Turo. 

Friedel’s take on vehicle subscription: subscription services are becoming more a feature than a separate business line; companies are switching to SaaS; and to B2B; avoiding Tesla; and EVs in general. For more. 

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

Superpedestrain shuts down US operations and explores sales of EU business. This surprising step comes after 18 months ago the company raised $125M. Superpedestrian operates in 60+ cities in 11 countries. Will the company find a buyer for its European operations? 

Milan chooses new micromobility suppliers for the next three years: Bolt, Voi and Dott will operate scooters; Bolt, Dott, Lime, Ridemovi and Vento to operate bikes. The city will have 6,000 scooters and 10,000 shared bikes, in addition to 5,430 bikes from the 'station based' BikeMi scheme.

Drover AI’s Chicago and Helsinki safety case studies. In Chicago, the company found a clear correlation between introducing rider nudges and reduction of sidewalk riding / increase in bike lane driving. The same correlation was found in Helsinki, with an additional insight of the correlation between the city's infrastructure quality and rider behaviour (good bike lanes = people will use them). 

Dott published usage statistics - interesting figures: 2.46km avg. trip distance and 11:46 avg. trip duration - which comes to avg. speed of 12.5 km/h. Peak time is 17-19 on weekdays, i.e. evening commute. 

Post-pilot, Gogoro launches in India. The company brings in its battery-swapping abilities, and also introduces a new model designed for the Indian market. 

Helbiz Europe Ltd. (micromobility.com) lost €5.8M in 2022; accumulated ±€20M losses since 2019; and has a negative net worth. Tier adds 500 e-bikes (in addition to >2,500 scooters) in Bristol, UK. Velhop, Strasbourg’s bike-share scheme, to use Nextbike. 

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. 

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

Delivery Hero to close two global tech hubs (Turkey, Taiwan) and “conduct headcount adjustments” to its HQ. 

Jumia stops food delivery to focus on physical goods business. Food deliveries will discontinue in all seven African markets the company operates in. Food operations in those countries represent 11% of GMV, and have not been profitable. The company says that the path to profitability is in delivery of physical goods. In an interview, the CEO explains that the food delivery market has low barriers to entry and that competitors are still behaving “irrationally” - still preferring to lose money to gain market share. 

US restaurant food delivery market share:

InDrive expands delivery services in selected Indian cities. UberEats partners with Torchy's Tacos. Careem launches fleet of electric delivery bikes in Dubai. The move is designed to decrease carbon footprint while saving costs for its drivers. Wolt rolling out a new fleet of CityQ’s cargo vehicles in Oslo. 

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAutonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Cruise dismisses nine “key leaders”, inc. The COO and the Head of Gov. Affairs, and lays off 24% of its workforce, 900 employees out of the 3,800 total. Plenty has been written on Cruise lately, here for a rundown on key events, from March 2021 to today. I believe that in the long run, this episode will be a minor setback, and Cruise will remain 1 of the 2 leading industry players, neck to neck with Waymo.

Speaking of, Waymo starts curbside robotaxi pickup at Phoenix airport. Waymo has been operating a paid service in the airport since November 2022, but that has operated from/to a train station. Curbside is definitely more challenging. 

And on the other side of the AV world, China-founded WeRide gets permission to test autonomous buses / shuttles in Singapore and China releases new autonomous testing guidelines. The guidelines include different definitions of designated areas for buses, cars and trucks, safety levels instructions and mandatory audio & video data recording and reporting to government authorities. 

The US AV industry sends “an SOS” to the US Transportation Secretary. A letter was sent, warning that the US industry might trail after the Chinese one, prompting the government for favourable legislation. 

Elmo teledrove in snowy Lithuanian, from Tallinn, Estonia, located 600km away. Elmo’s CEO said “our system operated with the same latency and quality 600 km away as it does when in the same city”. 

The UK government funds four autonomous schemes.  

Tesla in a major recall designed to fix the system that monitors drivers using Autopilot. Nearly all vehicles sold in the US, more than 2 million cars, will be recalled via an over-the-air software update. Updates include making Autosteer unavailable outside of designated areas and stricker suspension rules. This follows a regulatory investigation which concluded that the system in its current form does not do enough to prevent accidents by efficiently alerting drivers. 

Autonomous Vehicles: A Guide For Cities. A 64 pages document for those passionate. 

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

A 1970 flying car video. It has been 53 years since. 

Volocopter completes test flights in Japan. Lilium regains compliance with Nasdaq listing rules - achieves a stock price of over $1 for 10 consecutive trading days. 

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

Rivian signs AT&T - its 1st non-Amazon customer. Lucid’s CFO resigns. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedEU gig-economy directive  🇪🇺

EU lawmakers reached an agreement over the bill concerning gig-workers’ rights that is likely to affect circa 5.5 million people. The original set of rules determining employment had been suggested back in December 2021, and according, a person is deemed an employee if meets two of the five: 

1. Determining/setting upper limit of remuneration

2. Requiring specific appearance, conduct or service

3. Supervising the performance of work or verifying the quality of the results of the work 

4. Restricting the freedom... discretion to choose one’s working hours or periods of absence, to accept or to refuse tasks or to use subcontractors or substitutes

5. Restricting the possibility to build a client base or to perform work for any third party

The full directive’s text will be published in the coming weeks, then we will know exactly how the EU structures the future of work. 

We do know that the rules will also reduce use of algorithms in decision making, such as requiring human oversight on issues such as dismissal; give gig-workers more insight into how the algorithm judges their behaviour; ban processing of personal data (religion for example); and block platforms from using employment intermediaries. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published(more) Gig economy 💰

Bolt Nigeria battles workers’ union. Other than the usual employee definition debate, there is pressure from drivers to further increase base far, in a country where gas prices soared X3 in the past months. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn other news 📰

⚡️ With many EV charging companies - more than 900 globally - the battle for prime locations heats. Expect future consolidation. The US moves closer to safety standards for lithium-ion batteries. Uber and Carrefour Énergies partner on EV charging points. Transdev invests €4.5M to expand Aveiro’s (Portugal) electric bus fleet, introducing 10 new buses. Zeelo’s electric coach trial switches two operators to electric. A year ago Zeelo and Pelican launched a pilot program with eight operators, of which two have decided to adopt an electric bus solution. 

Map of night trains in Europe has just been updated. You can find all of the world’s night train maps here. Good night! 

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