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  • Voi €132M & EBITDA+, UK DRT <=1.77, Uber returns packages

Voi €132M & EBITDA+, UK DRT <=1.77, Uber returns packages

Max of 1.77 people per hour on UK’s DRT; In New York, ride-hailing is 85% of the market (taxi 15%); FlixBus in Chile and Yango in Ethiopia; Carsharing to grow at 20.8% CAGR by 2030; Voi operating costs €1.3 per vehicle per day; Bird layoffs; Uber package returns; foodpanda news; Navya is GAMA; Cruise finds itself in another accident; ElectraMeccanica terminates Tevva merger; Dott battery 2nd life; and Ride-Co, Teksi Ride, Shuma, Yo!Taxi, ShuuFare, Ola, Via, Zeelo, MapUp, GoMore, Tier, Veo, DoorDash, Wingcopter, Wisk, Joby and more. Let’s start #movingpeople.

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) published its interim report on the Rural Mobility Fund (RMF). The RMF is a £20M fund to pilot DRT schemes across the UK, in which 15 local authorities were given money to run such schemes. It is a 95 pages report… that doesn’t have any conclusions, partly because there is high variance between the 14 services examined. On the bright side, it is extremely descriptive of those 14 services. Some takeaways:  

  • Number of passengers per “revenue hour” ranges from 0.14 to 1.77. That means the best service managed to get just less than 2 people an hour on the service. 

  • Percentage of unfulfilled journey bookings (bus no show) range from 13% to 18.9%.

  • Distance travelled without passengers is of a similar magnitude to distance travelled with passengers.

Is DRT better than traditional fixed route scheduled buses? We don’t know. Is there anything specific that needs to be done to improve these services? You won’t find it in the report. Roger French has his opinion (“absolute hopeless cause and a scandalous waste of public money”); I think that this is a wasted opportunity to try to figure out what a successful DRT looks like

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedInteresting ride-hailing and taxi statistics from New York & Chicago. Starting with NYC:

  • Market share of ride-hailing is 85%, taxis 15%. Of ride-hailing, Uber-Lyft splits 75%-25%

  • Taxis’ “number of monthly trips” is down from circa 1,200 in 2010 (>40 a day) to ±400 trips today (±15 a day). Uber drivers register ±200 monthly trips per vehicle, vs. ±100 with Lyft. 

  • Taxis put more time on the road: 8.4 active hours per day per vehicle vs. 6.5 for ride-hailing. 

  • Utilisation is the same - 1.8 trips per vehicle per active hour

  • Just over 92,000 unique drivers per month; average of ±65,000 drivers per day

  • In Chicago, taxis are tipped an average of 20%; ride-hailing ±%5.5

  • One can also see the effect the pandemic had on the market, which comes to life in every chart. For More. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe South African Taxi Council reached a partnership agreement with Teksi Ride, Shuma and Yo!Taxi, who today operate metered-taxis, to operate ride-hailing services. This move is designed to challenge Bolt (44% market share), Uber (26%) and InDrive (24%).  

RideCo wins bid to operate paratransit in Philadelphia, managing a fleet of over 400 vehicles.  FlixBus on the ground in Chile. Yango enters Ethiopia, partnering with local ShuuFare. This is Yango’s 13th African country. Ola launches its ride-hailing services in Jammu, India. Padam launches in Solent’s FTZ. Uride expands in Canada. The Routing Company expands in California. Via in Miami-Dade. Yandex Go faces potential blockage in Uzbekistan over tax compliance issues. Foreign tourists can use Kakao Taxi in South Korea. 

GoTo Gojek Tokopedia raises $150M to facilitate switch to electric. InDrive partners with MapUp to factor in toll costs into ride-hailing in the US. Zeelo partners with Mobilityways for commuter emissions tracking. 

I enjoy meeting new people, learning about new companies and exchanging opinions. Want to get-to-know and talk mobility? Let’s set up a 25min coffee chat. 

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

Carsharing is a growing mobility segment, set to reach $35.2bn by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 20.8%. The segment still needs to prove it can be profitable. A Fluctuo detailed review of carsharing in Madrid, Budapest and Amsterdam. 

GoMore raises “tens of million” to expand in Europe. 

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

Voi stats: 

  • Over the last three years, industry rides have grown at 120% per year.

  • Voi is the #1 operator in 76% of the European market in terms of rides and top two in 94% of the markets.

  • Operating cost per vehicle per day is down 50% from 2021, at ~€1.3/vehicle-day today.

  • Voi expects €132M revenue in 2023 and to reach EBITDA profitability. 

  • For more. 

Tier expands to four new cities in Finland, bringing total cities to 20. Veo plans to deploy 1,000 scooters in San Antonio this fall. Bird expected to go through a round of layoffs post its Spin acquisition. Tier UK partners with Big Issue Recruit,  specialist recruitment service supporting people who face barriers to employment, to recruit its operations team in the West of London. 

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

Uber is expanding its package delivery service, Uber Connect, to include returns, sending packages back to UPS, FedEx or the Post Office. Function is available in the US only. This is an attractive offer for drivers, who can batch multiple orders together and plan pickups in off-hours.  

Two weeks ago we learned that Delivery Hero is looking to sell foodpanda’s Southeast Asia region unit, to maybe Grab. And now: In the Philippines, foodpanda sells kitchen equipment to Fruitas Holdings Inc., a food and beverage kiosk operator. In Malaysia, the regulator found foopanda to be NOT dominant, signalling approval of the deal. Still, analysts expect antitrust approval to be the largest hurdle. 

There are other foodpanda territories, which are not a part of the deal. In Pakistan, is foodpanda shutting down? And in Hong Kong, foodpanda is in a new branding campaign. 

DoorDash tests a feature that rewards users for dining out, not ordering in. Customers can “check-in” while at restaurants and receive credits. Ola launches all-electric parcel services in Bengaluru, competing against existing Swiggy Genie, Uber and Dunzo. Glovo expands less-than-1-hour delivery with Carrefour Polska. Wingcopter begins grocery drone delivery in Germany. 

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 🤖℡

Austin emergency officials grapple with autonomous vehicles. Incidents, similar to the ones in San Francisco, are creating a challenge for emergency services. In San Francisco, a hit-and-run driver struck a pedestrian, tossing her into the path of a Cruise self-driving car that then drove over her. 

China-based companies are the 2nd largest group, after the US, running 10 of the 40 autonomous operating licences driving in California. Germany, Israel and Japan follow with 2 licences each. Licences went to Pony.ai (which was revoked due to safety concerns), WeRide, AutoX, DiDi, QCraft, Apollo (Baidu) and DeepRoute.ai. Companies with licences but no reported activity are Black Sesame, NIO, Pegasus Technology and XMotors. The article touches on national security concerns. 

Navya has been rebranded as GAMA, and will focus on five key markets – logistics, ports, airports, industrial sites and public and private passenger transport. 

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

Wisk Aero starts flight testing electric autonomous aircraft in Los Angeles.  Joby Aviation begins flight testing with a pilot on board. 

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedElectric ⚡️

Gig economy 💰

Uber has been found to have failed to comply with European Union algorithmic transparency requirements. This case is related to robo-firing, i.e. algorithms that terminate drivers’ platform accounts, in which the court found that 2 of 3 drivers were fired without Uber supplying the court with enough information on how the decision was made. The court was satisfied with the explanation Uber provided of the termination reason for driver #3. 

Grubhub settled with the city of Seattle to pay gig-workers $1.5M for violations of the “Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time” ordinance and the “Gig Worker Premium Pay” ordinance.

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

ElectraMeccanica cancels planned merger with Tevva. ElectraMeccanica claims there were “multiple incurable breaches of the agreement by Tevva” that brought the termination of the deal. Neither side was willing to elaborate. 

Dott makes use of old batteries by powering e-boats. 

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