Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like what you're reading, please share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit from it too.

Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕

An unusual robotaxi launch - Verne debuted its robotaxi operations, the first robotaxi operations in Europe, powered by Pony.ai and Uber, covering an area of 90 sq. km. Why unusual? The haste and the financial deadline. I’ve covered this in my previous #movingpeople edition; Verne needed to launch a service to receive EU grant money; the current service has an unknown number of vehicles and comes with a safety driver onboard. It seems more like marking territory than launching a service. 

Waymo launches in its 11th commercial city - Nashville - in partnership with Lyft. Riders will be able to book via either Waymo OR the Lyft app (soon); fleet management will be carried by flexdrive, Lyft’s subsidiary. 

Waymo out of New York - the city has not renewed autonomous permits. It was the former Mayor’s decision to approve the testing, with the new Mayor said to be against; meanwhile State legislation has not progressed to allow testing. 

Waymo now is mapping potholes and sharing the information with a Waze for Cities app. I would argue that mapping potholes is a good step forward, but that the real challenge for cities is finding the budget & resources to fix them. AI isn’t able to pour tarmac. Yet.  

In Austin, a Avride autonomous vehicle ran over and killed… a duck. The vehicle was in autonomous mode with a safety driver onboard. The local community is outraged, Avride paused testing in the area. 

2025 California DMV’s AV miles and disengagement data - key takeaways: 

More on TADA’s expansion to New York: driver registration started early March; Beta expected in May; full launch in Summer. TADA’s model is a fixed-fee-per-ride, a better proposition to drivers than existing ride-hailing companies. But the real challenge is demand generation.TADA isn’t new at ride-hailing - it was established in Singapore in 2018, and to date the company recorded over 150 million rides across SE Asia. To be continued. 

In South Korea, Onda taxi members grew from 4.24 million in November 2024 to 7.95 million today. The Tmoney GO (same group) had 13 million subscribers last year, second only to Kakao and so according to their PR, in front of Uber. Bolt, pronounced “Hopp” in North America, expands into corporate travel in Canada. Belgium taxis are trying to have their own ride-hailing app, aiming for at least 10% of the market. Uklon registers autonomous brand. 

What will robotaxis change, by Bern Grush, from the WEF. 

Why people will own private autonomous cars, by Sam Lessin. I absolutely think car ownership in the autonomous era isn’t going away (albeit decreasing somewhat). 

A recent academic paper estimated that AVs will expand total miles driven by around 5% due to additional car journeys as well as robotaxi deadheading. From David Zipper. 

This week I attended the Institute for Driverless Transport (IDT) official launch. The IDT goal is to prepare policymakers, businesses, and communities for the consequences of the arrival of autonomous vehicles. Reach out to James Hutt and Tym Syrytczyk for more. 

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business - a consultancy focused on Innovation, Growth and Autonomy in the Mobility industry.

Autonomous Shuttles, DRT & Bus-Based Mobility 🚍🚌

In Stavanger, Norway, ADASTEC & Karsan received approval to operate without a safety driver. This is already a commercial service, i.e. with paying passengers, one of a few limited commercial public transport services globally.   

And Karsan’s e-Atak bus with ADASTEC AV technology approved to run autonomous operations in open traffic in France, following six-month testing in Paris with public transportation operator, RATP Group, in which the vehicle drove 3,000km. 

MOIA begin testing in Los Angeles, ahead of a launch with Uber in late 2026. Mobileye supplies the AV tech; safety driver to be removed in 2027. The ID.Buzz can seat 4 passengers, making it a hybrid between a van (or microbus, as some call it in the US) and a car. Will it serve as a DRT (microtransit) or a taxi? My bet is on the latter. To be continued. 

Fetti expands to Miami. Freenow has new on-demand service in Hamburg - a feeder service to a local train station. SWVL intercity rides are back. 

Interview with Sam Ryan, Zeelo’s CEO, for Frost & Sullivan. Key takeaways: de-urbanisation, struggling public transport services and increased awareness & action from employers fuel the ‘digital commute’ market. AI supports processes, not replacing those; and autonomous vehicles pose a future opportunity.  

Events to watch our for (& more in the link) in the next months:

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Aldin Cycles - Ghana’s first bike share service - goes electric. The company, which has 220 mechanical bikes, will now add 50 e-bikes to its fleet. 

Florence bans shared e-scooters, driven by safety concerns and the practical impossibility of enforcing Italy's new helmet requirement. Bird pivoted to private rental while it legally challenges the decision; Bit Mobility pivots to B2B. 

Belfast Bikes sees drop in rentals after price hike. 51,800 rentals were recorded between September 2025 - March 2026; down from 69,500 rentals the year before. This also might have to do with the introduction of a new operator, Beryl, which requires a new signup. 

Ryde recently expanded to Germany - read an interview with Tobias W. Balchen, Ryde’s CEO, on the German launch and managing in-house operations. 

Insurance economics by Shift Happens: rising insurance in the micromobility segment is a strain on companies, with an estimated cost of $0.05 and $0.20 per ride. The solution? Use tech that prevents accidents (and prove that to insurers).

Delivery - bikes to cars, bots & drones 🍽🧺

Just Eat and Starship Technologies launch delivery robots in Barnsley, serving an area of 11,000 households. 

GO Bots unmanned delivery vehicles launch in Belgium.

AV Freight, Industrial & Logistics 🚛🚜

EasyMile confirms strategic pivot - becoming a technology supplier for autonomous heavy-duty vehicles. Much like Oxa and Aurrigo before, EasyMile will now focus on airports and industrial logistics. These companies (& Navya) designed the very first autonomous shuttles - which with the rapid introduction of robotaxis and the takeup of autonomous robovans and buses - became obsolete. The pivot to operational domains answers a need in the market; the company has over 10 airports and over 15 logistics sites in which it operates. 

Mariana Minerals develops MineOS - a software first approach to mining. The company partnered with Pronto, off-road autonomous vehicles. The goal - digitising and automating everything that has to do with the mining process. 

Wojciech Siwik focuses on system readiness - it’s not only the tech, but the business proposition to the client (aka freight / fleet operator) 

I love meeting new people and learning about innovation in mobility. Let’s get-to-know / catch up.

In other news 📰

Zenzic, UK’s Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) ecosystem, announces the eight projects it will fund to explore how autonomous vehicles could benefit businesses and communities. Amongst them studies of commercial & operational viability of AVs in airports, in private-hire operations, of HGVs and of yard tractors. 

Tracsis acquires Vesputi, German ticketing company. The deal sees Tracsis paying up to €8.2M, pending KPIs.  

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Arvin Minocha is the new Principal & SVP Global Partnerships @ aetherEV. 

Cengiz Rahmioglu is the new Regional General Manager, Grocery & Retail, Central & Southern Europe @ Wolt. 

Chris Urban is the new Senior Director, Retail - Northern Europe @ Wolt. 

Ciarán Kelly is the new Head of Supply Product @ CMAC Group. 

Elin Kristin Skjølsvold is the new Regional Commercial Lead (WM), North @ Wolt. 

Mathieu Kury is the new Operations Programs @ ALSO.

Maria Burpee is the new Venture Partner @ Transatlantic Highway Ventures.

RJ Schmidt is the new Field Support Operations Launch Lead @ Uber. 

Syed Mohsin is the new Global Facility Manager @ Wolt.

Congrats and good luck!

Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like what you're reading, please share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit from it too.