- #movingpeople
- Posts
- Uber from rickshaws to buses, DoorDash and Walmart no more and the UK roadmap to level 4 AVs releases humans from responsibility.
Uber from rickshaws to buses, DoorDash and Walmart no more and the UK roadmap to level 4 AVs releases humans from responsibility.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedUber news in the US, UK, Australia, Belgium and Bangladesh with rickshaws, cars and buses. Waze cancles carpooling, Tier layoffs, Helbiz Q2 results, Share Bike out of Bristol, DoorDash and Walmart no more, People will not be responsible for level 4 accidents in the UK, ZF with new fleet management system, Tesla fans please don’t try to run over your children and a musical road in Hungary.
Ride-hailing, car sharing & DRT 🚙🚌
Uber suspended its CNG rickshaw service in Dhaka (Bangladesh) soon after its rollout, citing "mechanical faults." Initially protesting against the ride-hailing apps in the country, Uber and Pathao, by 2017 Rickshaw drivers tried to integrate into ride-hailing, but low smartphone usage among rickshaw drivers deterred the apps from onboarding the industry. In 2018 a new player, OBHAI, entered the market and began to distribute smartphones to drivers. OBHAI now has 12,000 CNG rickshaws on the platform. Now Uber might be going after that share of the market.
Uber will connect Belgium taxis to the platform. How it will be done is unclear - within the UberX app or in a separate app. A law in Belgium did not allow use of phones while picking passengers, which made Uber’s entrance into Belgium difficult. Now a new law will enable UberX to operate lawfully, and opening Uber to taxis is part of the transition.
Uber Charter, group transportation using buses and vans, launches in New York. The service is in partnership with U.S. Coachways. Uber charges $25 per order, on top of the price given by the partner. Uber launches car rental in the UK in a partnership with CarTrawler. Uber launches Uber Health, patient transport, in Australia.
Waze is shutting down its carpooling service. The service ran for six years in the US, Brazil and Israel. Carpooling has been declining over the past decades, in the US from 20% of people sharing rides in the 70s to 9% today. The pandemic gave carpooling another blow, and the hesitant return to office is not helping.
Chinese regulator summons ride-hailing platforms for operational rectification. 11 ride-hailing companies, inc. Didi, Gaode, T3 Chuxing and Meituan Dache, were called to address client and employee operational and data concerns. Also, a long(ish) read on ride-hailing competition in China: Didi getting weaker but is still the market leader; new entrants to the market including the rise of aggregator platforms (Huawei, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat); and price war.
Cape Town to end freeze on ride-hailing operating permits well before the original deadline of December 2023, as soon as early 2023. An increase in supply (drivers) led the city to freeze new permits back in February 2022, which led to the impounding of ±2,00o ride-hailing vehicles in the past year.
CarFirst (Pakistan) shuts down operations. The company, founded in 2016, was an online car dealer. No specific reason(s) was given in the LinkedIn post the company shared. Revel launches first V2G in NYC. DRT in Hertfordshire (video), branded as “Dial-a-Ride is a pivotal transport service for people aged over 75 or anyone with a permanent disability and provides crucial transport support, preventing social isolation”. TfL issues three-year private hire licence to Free Now. FlixBus completes first East Coast electric bus pilot program.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMicromobility 🚲🛴
💡Opinion: cities want micromobility to comply with public transportation standards and to be safe to all. Micromobility companies are businesses, with a goal to maximise profits, or, in the micromibolity case up to now, minimise losses. The story of San Diego combined with the losing financial results from Helbiz and layoffs from Tier (👇) all point to the fact that the current economics just don’t work. Micromobility is a public transportation good, the same as buses, and the economics of micromobility must change to fit the current public transport models.
San Diego’s regulations make it hard for scooters to operate. In May the city banned sidewalk usage, put in place strict parking regulations and required operators to handle complaints about their scooters within one hour. The city also decided to limit the number of operators to four, which sounds like good news for operators. Jump back to August, less than 25% of the planned 8,000 scooters have been deployed, and Spin & Link have not deployed at all. Lime just announced a pause on its operations, citing the too-tough regulation. For now, only Bird is operational in the city.
Tier laying off 180 people, 16% of staff. The CEO writes: “respond to the current economic and funding climate… reducing the number of projects and business lines… to accelerate our path to profitability”.
Helbiz published Q2 results: revenue growth, cash reserve dwindling. The company reported $4.4M in revenue from its shared rides (±60% of total), kitchens and Media businesses. Loss from operations was $16.4M, net loss $19.7M. Operational loss is >X3.5 of revenue. Also, Helbiz just won a tender to operate e-scooters in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Helbiz will supply 1,000 vehicles, 50% of the total volume, together with two other operators.
“We have more e-bikes destroyed in Bristol in one week than in all our facilities combined anywhere else in the world”. ShareBike letting the people of Bristol know they will no longer serve the city. In six months, 200 of the 400 e-bike fleet has been vandalised.
A study of 3,191 patients involved in either bike or scooter accidents in Oslo found that four in 10 of all injuries on scooters involved intoxicated riders compared with just one in 10 for cyclists.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDelivery 🍽🧺
DoorDash and Walmart end their partnership after four years of working together. Who initiated the move isn’t that clear, with DoorDash saying that the partnership “was no longer mutually beneficial” and that it wants to “focus on its long-term customer relationships”.
We know that DoorDash is developing DoorDash Drive, a B2B platform supplying drivers to merchants, and that this is piloted with Meta. We also know that Walmart acquired Delivery Drivers, a gig-labour management platform that is powering Spark, Walmart’s gig-economy delivery operations. This acquisition by Walmart joines other acquisitions (latest of Volt systems just a few weeks ago) that bring logistics management inhouse. We also know that GoLocal, Walmart’s last-mile delivery service, powered by Spark, has just reached 1,000,000 deliveries. To me it seems that Walmart is developing its own delivery business.
Chatfood (UAE) partners with Careem Express. This will help restaurants, who are Chatfood’s clients, access delivery services. Deliveroo expands partnership with Boots (pharma) to 125 stores and an extended product range. Uber partners with Rokt, e-commerce, to better tailor offers to riders at checkout. The partnership will initially launch with Uber Eats in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. Swiggy(india) delivery workers protest. Drivers are asking for fixed salary, rather than payment per order plus incentives.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAutonomous 🤖
The UK government presented a 2025 roadmap in which drivers won’t be liable for self-driving accidents - manufacturers would. Globally, up to now (Uber, Tesla), drivers were accountable when accidents occur. Granted, those were not and are not level 4 approved vehicles. A future in which corporations pay compensation for loss of lives. Sounds like a good idea for a book. Also, the UK government announced $150M investment to advance the AV sector.
SAIC Mobility raised $148M at a $1bn valuation. The funds will be used to scale its robotaxi service in China, in partnership with Momenta, a deep learning tech solution.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFleet Management 🚙💡
ZF presents SCALAR, a digital fleet orchestration platform. The platform allows live planning, routing, scheduling and dispatching solutions. ZF acquired BestMile’s tech in November 2021, after the company shut down. This new product joins ZF’s commercial fleet management solutions.
Geotab surpasses 3 million subscribers. Total Motion fleet management is increasing its online presence with Motom, a social marketing platform.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedIn other news 📰
A musical road (video). Very cool.
Somebody rode a bicycle path across Europe in the shape of… a bicycle. Picture. Unbelievable.