Uber limiting ride-hailing & adding taxi, Cruise expanding to 15, Lavoie (McLaren) acquires VanMoof, and au revoir Paris

Gett wins Israel’s airport, Uber dispatching yellow taxis in NY and raising driver age in California due to insurance costs, Grab good Q2 results, Via wins RideCo in patent war, Paris scooters no more, McLaren acquires VanMoof, Uber E-bodas in Kenya, Getir downwards, Zepto raises $200M, Wing partners with Walmart, DoorDash AI voice ordering, Chinese AVs, AVs is SF and Cruise expanding across the US, Vertical Aerospace details crash, Glovo €200-€400 million potential pay to government over employment rules, and more with Padam, Snap E, Yango, Kite Mobility, Zoomcar, Doon, Ryde, Tier, Superpedestrian, foodpanda, Starship, Baidu, Momenta, Polestar, Mobileye, Navya, Oxa, Airspeeder, XPeng, Wiener Linien and the 1st ever metro in Tel Aviv. Let’s start #movingpeople. 

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Gett awarded a four-year contract to operate taxi services in Israel’s main international airport. This is the airport authority’s 3rd tender since 2017, with the past two being cancelled, leading to uncoordinated and high priced taxi service to and from the airport. Gett was the only submitter, with Uber leaving Israel and Yango deciding not to submit.   

In New York, Uber is dispatching yellow taxis via its app, partnering with Curb and Arro, two taxi consumer apps. Users requesting a ride via UberX might get a taxi instead, if more efficient. Also, in the near future taxis might also be the cheaper option, as NYC new congestion charges could potentially exempt taxis, but not ride-hailing. Pricing, and drive wages for these rides will be according to Uber’s pricing structure, and not according to metre price. For those who read my analysis on Uber growing via taxis this move makes perfect sense. 

In California, Uber, driven by high insurance costs, increased the minimum age of new ride-hailing drivers to 2025. The new age restriction does not affect existing ride-hailing drivers (even if under 25) and delivery minimum age stays 19. 

Grab published good Q2 results, getting closer to pre-pandemic ridership numbers. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $20M, net loss was $148M. The company forecasts adjusted EBITDA break-even in Q3, sooner than initially anticipated Q4. 

A DRT commute use case for Heathrow airport, established by Padam. Roger French details the operations, shuttling employees (but open to the public) from Dedworth to Heathrow, in a 20-30 minute drive, every half hour, for £2 a ride for Heathrow employees. DRT for commuting is a rare use case for DRT, and it will be interesting to see how this picks up. 

In the US, Via wins patent protection over its virtual bus stop technology, and intends to go after RideCo for infringement. New DRT in Busan, South Korea; spreading microtransit in Valley cities; expanding DRT in Buckinghamshire. 

Phuket (Thailand) airport now allows Grab operations. Japanese taxi drivers will no longer display their name and picture in their vehicle. This, following instances where disgruntled riders took a photo of their details to shame online. Snap E, EV ride-hailing in India, plans to increase its fleet from 400 to 1,000, add new locations and increase the number of women drivers. Yango appealed the Finnish data protection ombudsman order to stop transferring and processing customer's personal data in Russia - and failed in court. TBC. 

Lyft’s university statistics. Who is most romantic (Norfolk), who likes fast food the most (South Alabama) and who goes to the beach the most - all in this link. 

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

Kite Mobility, residential buildings car-sharing, raises $3.5M. Car-sharing firm GoCar will invest €10M to expand its services in Ireland, adding 280 vehicles to its fleet.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car will operate a car-share scheme in Watford, UK. Zoomcar, P2P carsharing, partners with Tata to promote EV adoption. Zoomcar will list and enable easier access to Tata’s EV infrastructure, making it easier for people with EV to go on the zoomcar P2P platform. Zoomcar partners with Air India, allowing people to use their Air India points with zoomcar. Doon is a new P2P car-sharing service in the Philippines. France 2023 and TotalEnergies to launch a car-sharing platform for Rugby World Cup 2023. 

“The Future of Shared Mobility in Europe'' – lessons from Fluctuo’s CEO who is interviewed by Invers. Some interesting takeaways based on 2022 data across 16 major European cities: e-bikes are used on average 2.9 times a day; followed by cars 2.6, moped 1.9 and scooters 1.7 times a day. While no details are given on time used, we can assume these vehicles are idle most of the day. Also notable, car-sharing grew 26% vs. 2021. For the full interview & stats. 

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 publishedMicromobility 🚲🛴

The Paris ban on shared scooters entered into effect over the weekend, and 15,000 scooters were taken off the streets. Operators - Lime, Dott and Tier - are planning to transition those fleets to e-bikes. 

McLaren acquires bankrupt VanMoof. To be more precise, the buyer is Lavoie, the electric scooter unit of McLaren Applied. Lavoie was tasked to develop premium micromobility solutions, which VanMoof’s knowledge and experience can contribute to. 

Uber rolls out electric motorbike (boda) fleet in Kenya, its first in Africa. A fleet of 3,000 electric motorbikes are expected to go on the road in the next six months, eventually becoming a fifth of the Uber motorbike fleet. Users are expected to pay 15-20% less per ride. 

Ryde launches e-bikes in Gutenberg and becomes multimodal. Tier to replace Voi in Bristol mid-September. In Baltimore. Spin and Superpedestrian stay, Bird not renewed by the city. Bird expands to south Miami. 

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

Getir continues its downward spiral. The company is letting go 11% of its workforce, roughly 2,500 people. Getir to continue operations in Turkey, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and the US - but in the Netherlands Getir closed 5 of its 20 Amsterdam dark stores and pulled away from six cities; in Germany reportedly withdrawing from 17 of its 23 cities; and in the UK trying to raise cash and sees top people leaving the company. 

Zepto, Indian grocery 10 minutes-delivery, raises $200M at $1.4bn valuation. Funds will be used to fortify presence in the seven metro areas the company operates. 

DoorDash has a new AI voice ordering service - meaning customers will be answered by an AI to pick their orders. DoorDash’s 2023 trend report states that 1 of 5 people prefer ordering via phone, with many calls going unanswered, so there is a clear gain for restaurants and hungry, impatient people.  

Alphabet’s Wing partners with Walmart for drone deliveries in Dallas. The service will operate in a 6 mile area covering 60,000 homes, offering up to 30 min deliveries. Walmart has similar partnerships with DroneUp, Zipline and Flytrex from 36 store locations, and has completed over 10,000 air deliveries. 

GoPuff launches advertising platform in the UK. Deliveroo launches advertising platform in Hong Kong. Glovo launches advertising platform in Kenya. 

Grubhub partners with Amazon to use Amazon’s cashierless Just Walk Out technology in university campus stores. Starship, autonomous delivery robots, now serve 50 US campuses with a fleet of 2,000 robots. The company is also introducing wireless charging and robot characters (voices). Foodpanda partners with Carrefour Pakistan for grocery deliveries. Foodpanda Malaysia launches Protect+, an insurance scheme. Oja, African & Caribbean grocery quick-delivery, shut down. 

July 2023 US meal delivery market share - Doordash leading with 64%. Swiggy resumes IPO preparations, eying 2024 listing. 

Hope you enjoy reading #movingpeople. If you do, please consider sharing it with others so that they may benefit from it too. 

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

Three main topics in the autonomous sphere: China, San Francisco and Cruise’s US expansion. 

China. Not commonly covered, China is extremely active in the autonomous scene, with players such as Baidu Apollo, Huawei, CUSC, Mogo, Pony.ai, WeRide, Momenta, Auto X, PlusAI and DiDi. ‘Easier’ regulation helps companies achieve milestones that are harder in the western world. For example, in Wuhan, Baidu recently launched an autonomous airport ‘taxi’ service. And GM, owner of Cruise, is now starting operations in China, in partnership with Momenta. It doesn’t seem likely that those vehicles will find their way to the US or Europe, for a multitude of national security, privacy and economic protectionism reasons, but the real challenge is future adoption in the GCC, LATAM, Africa and Asia. Who will will the race?

San Francisco. The battle over autonomous presence is ongoing. The San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) claims that Cruise vehicles blocked an ambulance, contributing to that person’s death. Cruise pushes back, saying while a vehicle did indeed stop in place, there were easy ways around it, that for some reason were not taken. Whatever the truth is (and there is a Cruise video out there), it is clear that the battle between SF officials and AVs will escalate. 

More of the sentiment around AVs in San Francisco: New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic, The Verge, and people are still putting cones on top of AVs. 

Cruise US expansion. Cruise is bringing its robotaxis to Seattle and Washington, DC. And to Nashville. And Atlanta. And Raleigh. In total, Cruise operates in 15 US cities across 10 states, plus in Dubai. Map + List. There is a clear message here - Cruise is on an expansion path to be the leading AV solution in the states. 

Polestar, Seidish EV car manufacturer, to feature Mobileye’s hands-off, eyes-off driving tech on its Polestar 4 model. The model launched in China last week and will debut in global markets in 2024. Schaeffler, VDL Groep and Mobileye partner on building self-driving shuttles. Oxa partners with Beep for the US market. Beep is an operating company, not a manufacturer of autonomous shuttles, so I guess this has to do with the ZF partnership both Oxa and Beep have. Or maybe Navya. 

The NHTSA investigation into Tesla’s FSD is continuing, now with the regulators questioning a new feature, known as “Elon mode”, allowing users to use FSD for extended periods of time without prompting the driver to place their hands on the steering wheel.

An opinion piece on why Jacksonville (Florida, US) should let go of its autonomous shuttles public transport plans. Honestly I don’t see how municipalities could think that autonomous shuttle solutions are ready to replace city wide public transport. 

Roger French rides the Darwin autonomous shuttle, powered by Navya. Three New York Times reporters get into a Waymo car. No joke here, just a longish read on their experiences. 

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

Vertical Aerospace in a LinkedIn post detailing its recent VX4 crash. Not to be too cliche, failure is indeed a step toward success. Airspeeder, a flying car racing technology company, adds Wisk’s former CEO, Gary Gysin, to its board. 

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

Minneapolis mayor vetoes minimum wage bill. Recap: local lawmakers wanted to instate a $15 per hour minimum wage and to make deactivating (firing?) drivers much harder, which caused Uber and Lyft to threathen they will leave the city. A similar bill in Minnesota (Minneapolis’ state) has been vetoed by the governor, so this veto is no surprise. The mayor struck a local deal with Uber, but not Lyft, in a move criticised by the local driver association and by the city councillors who approved the bill. 

Glovo could potentially pay €200M to €400M in legal costs related to the employment status of its couriers - as estimated by Delivery Hero, Glovo’s parent company, in their latest financial reports. This has to do with an August 2021 law in Spain regarding employment status, which has beenso far challenged by Glovo.  

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

Wiener Linien, Vienna public transport operator, researches parcel delivery service involving public transport users. Passengers take a parcel from a parcel delivery station as they enter public transport and hand it on to another station as they exit. Test to start in 2024. 

New first metro line in Israel launched in Tel-Aviv. The metro runs 24 kilometres (15 miles), with 34 stops from Tel Aviv’s southern suburbs through the city and out to its eastern suburbs, serving an area with a population of about 1.25 million.

XPeng, Chinese EV car manufacturer, buys ride-hailing Didi’s smart EV assets for $744M. This follows news that Volkswagen invested $700M in XPeng. The partnership will also see XPeng and Didi work together on marketing, financial insurance services, charging and international expansion. Chinese Zeekr and WeRide inch closer to US IPOs, in a move supposedly approved by Chinese authorities. 

Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom join forces to take on Google and Apple Maps. The companies recently released an open map dataset, with other partners joining the initiative. Google is THE dominent player in this ±$11bn revenue market. The initiative, Overture Maps Foundation, focuses on points-of-interest and transportation networks, where, again, Google dominates. While bid names are behind the initiative, its succeeds depends on the adoption of developers and businesses. 

Autobesity: more than 150 car models too big for regular UK parking spaces.

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