Uber launches bus commute, Share Now exits Copenhagen, and Hyundai making robotaxis and eVTOLs

Kakao Mobility expands; Uber Commute; HumanForest raises £5.7M series A extension; Delivery Hero and Glovo EU antitrust investigation continues; Relay raises $10M; Baemin (by Delivery Hero) to exit Vietnam; Ola forays into logistics; Hyundai and Motional start building robotaxis; Deliveroo riders are now workers; and more with BusCaro, Volkswagen, Moovit, Sharenow, Kinto, GreenMobility, Carlili, Free2mov, Bolt, Nextbike, Ryde, Ruter, Navit, Crisp, Chowdeck, Ola Electric and Bonnet. Let’s start #movingpeople. 

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Kakao Mobility to expand ride-hailing service to 5 more countries - Australia, Taiwan, the UAE, Jordan and Kuwait - bringing the total to 37 countries. Note that in most countries, Kakao does not establish its own operations, but integrates to local suppliers via its rider app. The company expects a similar expansion to the US with Lyft. 

Uber is launching a commute focused product - a bus service in Kolkata - starting with 10 vehicles.  

BusCaro, Pakistan-based digital commute, raised $1.5M, bringing total funding to $2M. BusCaro focuses on personal safety, targeting women commuters. According to the company, it has 20,000 bookings a day, and plans to become profitable in early 2024. 

Astypalaia is a 97 square km island with circa 1,500 residents - and a Volkswagen test ground. VW, through its mobility arm Seat:Code, launched astyMOVE, an on-demand taxi (/DRT) solution, and a shared scooters, bikes and cars solution. Starting a year ago, the project is marking 200,000 customer kilometres. 

Uber launching in Ibiza, with an initial 14 cars. Pricing will be inline with local island tariff, Uber will take 12% commission. Moovit expands its on-demand solution in Australia. The Routing Company contracts in Albany, NY.  

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. 

Sharing/renting 🚗🛴

Arriva Denmark closes car sharing company Share Now - now GreenMobility plans to increase Copenhagen’s fleet. And more in Copenhagen - Kinto adds bikes to their car-sharing offer. Carlili goes into receivership - but the company is fighting to climb out of its financial troubles. Free2Move shuts down in Portland. 

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

HumanForest secures £5.7M Series A extension, bringing total series A to £17M. Funds will be used to expand into Europe. Today the company operated only in London with 10,000 bikes and over 500,000 users. The company is operationally profitable, thanks to its advertising revenue stream. 

Mallorca, a Spanish island near the coast of Valencia, temporarily bans e-vehicles (scooters, bikes) from bus & train public transport. The big picture: these bans are already in place in many cities (London, Barcelona, Paris…) and the fire hazard presented by e-vehicles makes it likely for these bans to continue. This is bad news for privately owned scooters, but good news for shared providers. 

Bolt launches shared e-scooters in Nicosia, aiming to deploy 1,600 scooters. Nextbike to launch 2nd Romanian service. Berlin to reduce the number of e-scooters allowed in the central city area, from 24,000 to 19,000, and implement stricter regulation. Stockholm chooses Populus to manage its city’s micromobility operations. Bird exits Western Australia. Ryde, micromobility, integrates to Ruter, MaaS in Oslo. Tier partners with Navit, a corporate mobility solution. Scooters tender updates. 

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

EU widens investigation into food delivery cartel, once again raiding Delivery Hero’s and Glovo’s offices. The antitrust investigation deals with alleged no-poach agreements and exchanges of commercially sensitive information. Note that from December 2021 Delivery Hero owns a majority stake in Glovo, but antitrust rules are still applicable in this case. 

Baemin, a Vietnamese joint venture by Delivery Hero and South Korean Woowa Brothers, will shut down in December. This was expected. The move is attributed to “global economic difficulties and the stiff competition in the Vietnamese market”, and is a part of Delivery Hero’s withdrawal from Asian markets. 

Ola Cabs to partner with the ONDC to offer last-mile logistic services. ONDC is a state-backed logistic network, and details on the partnership are still unclear. Ola will use its electric scooters to supply deliveries via the ONDC network. This will put Ola in direct competition with Swiggy and Zomato. Ola had previous attempts at delivery - Ola Cafe, foodpanda, Ola Dash - but all were discontinued. 

Amsterdam-based Crisp raises €35M. Crisp focuses on next-day delivery, larger-baskets weekly shopping. Funds will be used to expand in the Netherlands and Belgium, and to move to enhance its sustainability offer. 

Relay, e-commerce focused parcel delivery, raises $10M to expand in the UK. Relay’s USP: end-to-end parcel delivery across the entire chain. 

Who will win Nigeria’s food logistics wars? The writer focuses on Glovo and Chowdeck; Gokada and ACE Logistics are some other notable players. 

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Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Hyundai and Motional (Aptiv-Hyundai joint venture) will jointly build IONIQ 5 robotaxis. Vehicles to be deployed in the US in 2024, replacing prototype vehicles currently on the road. The vehicle will be for human takeover, i.e. with steering wheel and pedals. 

Cruise will re-launch operations in one (unspecified) city. No date yet. 

J​​udge finds ‘reasonable evidence’ Tesla knew self-driving tech was defective, allowing a lawsuit concerning an incident from 2019 to continue to Florida’s court. 

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

Hyundai plans for its eVTOL brand - in partnership with Supernal - to be ready for flight in 2028. BETA approved for a $169M loan. 

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

Tesla introduces new fee to limit congestion at Superchargers. Ola Electric Limited changes name ahead of IPO. 

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

The UK’s Supreme Court ruled that Deliveroo’s employees cannot be represented by a trade union for the purposes of collective bargaining, since riders do not have an employment relationship with Deliveroo. “Riders are thus free to reject offers of work, to make themselves unavailable and to undertake work for

competitors… these features are fundamentally inconsistent with any notion of an employment relationship”. 

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

OVO acquires EV charging app Bonnet, which aggregates the availability of 27,000 public EV chargers across the UK. 

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