Via 6,985. Tesla 160,000. Spin -10%. Rivian 14,317. Porsche >€92.

Via manages 6,985 rides per day. Moovit in a complex DRT launch in Japan. Thailand approves Robinhood and Grab. FreeNow in Greece. Lyft hiring freeze. Uber drug mules. Busy week in car sharing & pooling: GoTo quits Malta. Halo car in Vegas. Karos acquisition in Germany. Bolt expands to Latvia. Kyte expands in Florida. 

Spin layoffs. Zoomo layoffs. Paris is unhappy with scooters. Grubhub and Gopuff partner. Deliveroo opens a physical store. 

Tesla has 160K FSD customers. Cruise still stalling. Wayve light commercial vehicles autonomous. Wisk Aero introduces a new eVTOL. Joby Aviation having a hard time to meet production goals. Papaya raises to manage last mile EV fleets. Porsche IPO is looking good. Mobileye to IPO soon. 

Ride-hailing, car sharing & DRT 🚙🚌

6,985. That is the record number of daily rides Via manages. A simple X365 calculation shows that, in September 2021 - September 2022, Via had between 2 to 2.5 million rides. 

GoTo car-sharing quits Malta due to “lack of user uptake”, after four years in the market. The GoTo service was the only car sharing service in the Island, where there are 786 motor vehicles per 1,000 people, making it one of the most car dependent countries in the world (#10 according to Wikipedia). Bolt wants to use some of the now-available 450 parking spaces for e-scooters. 

Uber is growing in Brazil, from 2020 taking 7% market share from Didi, reaching 65% market share vs. Didi’s 35%. An almost reverse picture in Mexico, where, at the same time, Didi gained 7% to reach 56% market share, vs. Uber’s 44%. 

Moovit launches DRT service in Ishikari City, Japan, partnering with Marubeni. Two services are planned: (1) a commuter fixed-route pre-booked-only using buses and a (2) city flexible ‘classic’ DRT, with cash as a payment option. The pilot will run up to March 2023. Also: new DRT service launched in High Wycombe (UK), with Via; a long read on the service and one in Nottinghamshire. SWVL launches all-electric DRT service in Belp, Switzerland. Ioki electric in Kelsterbach, Germany. Via celebrates 500,000 rides in the three years it operated in Seattle. 

Lyft freezes hiring. The company has managed to avoid massive layoffs so far, but that could change should economic conditions continue to be unfavourable. 

Argo AI and Lyft are now officially offering public robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Kills me to know I was there last week and just missed it. Yandex launches taxi-hailing in Dubai. Yandex (under the Yango brand) joins Uber, Careem, Hala and public transport apps. Thailand authorised Robinhood and Grab to operate taxi and motorcycle taxi ride-hailing services. The companies join competitors Hello Phuket, Bonku and Asia Cab. Free Now expands to Greece, by merging its taxi app BEAT (which has been a part of Free Now since 2017 but now its brand is being ‘swallowed’ by Free Now) and partnering with e-bike provider RideMovi. 

Halo Car, car-sharing teleoperations (human remote control), raised $5M in seed. The company plans to launch commercial activities by the end of the year, which means Halo Car needs to get rid of the safety driver by then. Karos, French car-pooling, acquired goFLUX, German short-distance carpooling, accelerating Karos European expansion.  Bolt launches ‘Bolt Drive’, a free floating minute-based car rental service in Latvia. Kyte, car-rental, expands in Florida. 

Grab expands ‘Quiet Ride’ test in Malaysia. The test, running also in the Philippines and Vietnam, signals the drivers that riders wish not to talk. Easy Matatau received an investment from Renew Capital Angels to expand operations in Uganda. Uber adds emission data to dashboard for corporate clients, tracking emission savings from Uber Green / Comfort Electric / Planet services. Lyft expands partnership with Indeed to help job seekers back to the job market. Careem expands insurance partnership with MicroEnsure in Pakistan, offering captains life, health, and accident insurance products. Lyft expands commercial insurance partnership with Mobilitas, from 18 to 23 markets. Zeelo & Zenobe team on electric buses. 

New regulations in Andalucía, Spain, will allow ride-hailing companies to continue operations, but keep those services from busy locations unless pre-booked. Regulation is also making the booking process for riders less convenient, by making it impossible to see where vehicles are prior to booking. Also drivers will need to pass a taxi aptitude test, cars need to be black and of a certain size. Taxi are still not happy. 

Ride-hailing drivers stage go-slow protests in Kenya, in an attempt to lower Uber’s (25%) and Bolt’s (20%) commissions. This is not the first time drivers are striking. In June, state regulation capped commissions at 18%, but the companies have not adhered. To be continued. Is London getting a new ride-hailing app, that charges taxis 4-7%, less than the 20% charged today? 

Are Uber drivers being used as ‘drug mules’ while delivering packages’? Yes, but nobody knows how much. 

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

Spin, a Tier company, lays off 10% of its workforce, roughly 80 people, and is exiting Canada and Seattle. Zoomo, an e-bike subscription service to gig-economy delivery couriers, lays off 16% of its workforce. Both quoted slow demand, tougher macro-economic environment and harder access to capital. 

Paris gives electric kick scooters an ultimatum to come up with measures to limit ‘misuse’ such as reckless driving. The city has 15,000 scooters on the streets. Bird and Veo scooters arrive in Providence, RI; existing Spin will increase its fleet. Bird to remain in Decorah, IA. Albany to begin e-scooter trail with Bird and Beam. Voi faces safety concerns in Northampton (UK), after reports of scooter breakdowns leading to injuries. In New York, a scooter driver who hit-and-run and killed a woman just pleaded guilty to manslaughter.  Bird, Lime and Spin restrict parking in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighbourhood due to increased thefts of vehicles. Lime in Tampa, FL. Tier expands integration to Google Maps across 200+ cities; vehicles are available via the Google Maps app. 

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

Grubhub (restaurant food delivery) and Gopuff (grocery etc. delivery) partner on deliveries. Grubhub will include Gopuff locations in six cities, enabling Gopuff to reach more customers and for Grubhub to offer additional products. Orders placed on Grubhub’s marketplace will be fulfilled and delivered by Gopuff’s logistics network. 

Deliveroo is opening a physical grocery store in London in partnership with Morrisons grocery chain. Shoppers will be able to pre-book on the app or use on-location digital kiosks. DoorDash issues its own credit card, hoping to increase consumer loyalty. Gopuff launched a wellness brand, ‘Goodnow’. 

DoorDash to support food access by providing $1 million in Community Credits gift cards to 18 North American cities. In the UK, Getir are giving away promotional free pints of… milk, now that inflation has caused mlk prices to soar. Deliveroo expands partnership with Too Good To Go, a food saving app, adding new four cities. Glovo marks its one year of operations in Nigeria. 

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

Tesla has 160,000 customers running its ‘Full Self Driving beta’, up from 2,000 a year before. It is an impressive number of people who keep training the autonomous algorithms at Tesla. 

Cruise self-driving cars are still randomly stalling in San Francisco. None led to accidents, but there are numerous reports of such incidents. It takes 20 minutes for teams to pick-up the vehicles, which is now getting on people's nerves. A long New York Times read on riding Cruise in San Francisco. 

Waymo competed itself against a super-driver, to prove autonomous are safer. Super-driver is a simulation driver who is always alert with eyes on the road. The super-driver managed to avoid 62.5% of the simulated crashes and reduce the risk of serious injury in 84% of the situations, but ‘lost’ to Waymo, with 75% and 93% respectively, 

Hyundai Motor launches robo-shuttle autonomous 4 trials in Pangyo. South Korea. Wayve, UK autonomous software, claims it managed to ‘drive’ light commercial vans. Ocado, who invested in the company, wants to trial its deliveries with the tech. 42dot introduces an autonomous shuttle with a built-in DRT system. Apple adds 15 drivers to its autonomous vehicle program in California. The company now has 180 drivers and 69 vehicles. Waymo partners with Swiss Re for risk assessment. 

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

Tesla achieved a record 343,830 deliveries in Q3 - 42% increase vs. Q3/21 - and lower than analysts expectation, which saw Tesla’s stock down 8%. Tesla Cybertruck is also a boat. According to Musk, “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy”. There is no date for production of the vehicle. 

Rivian gets licence to sell in Canada. Rivian says it is on its way to meet production goals of 25K vehicles - after growing production 67% in Q3 - producing a total of 7,363 vehicles. So far in 2022 the company produces 14,317 EVs. 

Geely deepens partnership with Mobileye, planning to launch additional electric car models with Mobileye’s tech installed. Ola is not letting go of 200 engineers (10% of engineering workforce), but will move people to other projects, such as cell manufacturing and four wheel electric vehicles. 

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

Wisk Aero unveiled its go-to-market aircraft: a four-passenger autonomous air taxi. Wisk, a ‘spin off’ from Kitty Hawk who shut down operations a couple of weeks ago, will now look for government certifications. The vehicle is built without a place for a pilot, with remote operators taking over take-off and landing. 

Joby Aviation is struggling to meet production targets. According to this hedge fund’s report, Joby was better at presenting optimistic production targets than actually building the necessary infrastructure to do so.

Lilium aims to build 400 air taxis a year and is seeking government grants. Vertical Aerospace completed its first eVTOL flight. GlobeAir, a private jet operator, signed a deal with Lilium for 12 eVTOLs, to be used in the French Riviera and in Italy. E-Hang receives type certification from Chinese authorities for its 2-seater autonomous eVTOL. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFleet Management 🚙💡

Wunder Mobility, solutions for vehicle sharing operators, raised €12M. Papaya raised $3.5M to develop and commercialise fleet management for smaller EVs that are used in last mile delivery. 

PandaGo raised €4.7M to help businesses electrify their fleet. Funds will be used to expand further into Europe. 

Revvo Technologies integrates with Fleetio, to share real-time and predictive analytics tire-alerts. Saia invests in driver app to improve productivity

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

Porsche IPOed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at a €75M valuation / €82.5 per share. The IPO seems successful, as of 12:30pm BST the stock price is over €92. 

Intel’s Mobileye files for an IPO. Valuation is expected to be around $30 billion.