Waymo London, Lyft Chauffeur, Zepto $450M & Starship $50M

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business  - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility", focused on growth.

Top Story: Waymo coming to London

Waymo announced it is officially coming to London. I covered this back in August with a special #movingpeople edition - London Calling AVs - and now it is public information. 

What we know about Waymo London:

• This is Waymo’s 3rd international location - after the US and Japan (mapping only)

• Service will be available via the Waymo app

• Moove the fleet operator

• I-PACE Vehicles by Jaguar Land Rover (at least for the mapping period using US version, with wheels on the other side)

• Waymo lists circa 20 boroughs it will start mapping (out of 32+1). Takeaway: mapping is not limited to central London, but reaches out to further (more peri-urban) parts of London

• No, the borough I live in is not mentioned on that list

• Waymo in London is Waymo’s dedicated webpage for London

UK legislation and regulation build up is expected  to finalise sometime Q3/26. By then, we’ll see mapping and closed-group testing. 

I believe adoption of autonomous vehicles will do good for the ecosystem as a whole - read my interview with Zag Daily on the subject. To learn more about robotaxis coming to London: 

Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕

Lyft acquires TBR Global Chauffeuring for £83M in cash “plus additional contingent costs”. TBR works across 120 countries and 3,000 cities, with an asset-heavy model in London and a global network which is based on fleet partners, i.e. asset light. 

Chauffeur is the next ride-hailing frontier - Uber and Bolt are also actively entering the space, which up to now has been dominated by Blacklane and local chauffeur companies. I wrote about it in a recent blog post: 

Uber is building the next generation of its flexible work structure - the company released a new function, allowing its US drivers and couriers to earn extra money by performing “microtasks” to train AI models. Tasks include voice recording, image and documents uploading, and more. This puts Uber on the same playing field with the likes of Scale AI and Amazon’s Mechanical Turks. 

Wayve is in talks with SoftBank and Microsoft to raise an additional $2 billion, valuing the company at roughly $8 billion. Last year Wayve raised $1 billion, led bySoftBank with Microsoft on the cap table as well; and recently Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang announced plans to invest $500M in the company. 

Pony.ai and WeRide receive approval from Chinese securities regulators to go public in Hong Kong. Both are also trading on Nasdaq. 

Autofleet partners with InDrive to equip InDrive’s fleet partner managers with Autofleet’s fleet management platform. Uber introduces Delay Ride Guarantee - protecting drivers’ revenues when trips take longer than expected. Bolt partners with Network International, fintech, to improve driver pay in the UAE. 

DRT, Bus-Based Mobility & AV shuttles 🚍🚌

Ohmio in the city of Turin; the driverless shuttle AuToMove can now board (non-paying) passengers from the general public. To the video. 

Aurrigo launches Canada’s first all-season autonomous shuttle bus. Max speed 50 km/h (30mph), during daylight only, with a safety driver, along a 5km route with 8 stops.

Fetti introduces new AI feature - built to answer real life demand by understanding peoples’ movements. The system is trained on real life data sets, and is able to predict future demand. Fetti is testing the solution in NFL stadiums and concert venues.  

Stellantis and Pony.ai partner to develop robotaxis in Europe. Testing will begin in Luxembourg (Pony’s HQ) with vehicles rolled out to European cities in 2026.  

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Carbar acquires HelloCars, in an Australian car subscription consolidation play. Earlier this year Carbar acquired Carly Car, another player in the car subscription space. Carbar keeps brands separate, with each brand targeting a different audience. HelloCars was a part of Loopit, a SaaS company providing a solution to manage car subscription / rentals; Loopit will now focus on its software business. 

Read an interview with the CEO of Ecov. A car-pooling service built like a public transport route - but using cars. This is very much PT operations - fixed routes and stops, average wait times of 4 minutes, no pre-booking required. The only difference (other than it being a car, and not a bus) is that it is classic car-pooling, i.e. the driver is not getting paid and the supply is based on people traveling along the route. That means one of the key challenges is creating an efficient marketplace of supply and demand. The solution is sold as part of the PT network - local authorities decide the pricing, which is similar to a bus ticket price. 

Drivalia will replace 650 electric vehicles of its free floating fleet. 

Last week I reported that TRIBBU, the leading Spanish car-pool platform formally known as Hoop Carpool, raised €1M - but in fact it raised €2M.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

In Singapore, HelloRide, bike-share, and Ryde, ride-hailing, sign an MOU to jointly launch a new Mobility Pass. The pass includes a 30-day unlimited HelloRide pass and S$20 in RydeCoins, for the price of S$22.90. 

Albania temporarily bans the use of electric scooters. The ban follows a rise in accidents, including fatalities; the ban will remain in place until new regulations are established. The minister was quoted: “I would also like to inform anyone who sees electric scooters as a business model for daily rental not to invest in this business. The permit… will only be valid for the personal use of these vehicles”. 

Lime UK 2024 revenue was £111.3M, up 75%. The UK is just over a fifth of Lime’s total revenue, which was £511M (or $686M). Lime is estimated to have 25,000 to 30,000 dockless e-bikes in London, making it the largest player in the capital, with Human Forest’s 20,000 bikes in 2nd place.

The Brno University of Technology partnered with the Czech franchise of Nextbike to introduce a technician bike distribution optimisation app. It takes into account work plans, weather, the nature of the location, availability of e-bikes, and expected demand - to accurately forecast future maintenance demand. 

Voi getting ready to launch in Paris. Powerful photo. 

Delivery - from bikes & cars to bots & drones 🍽🧺

Zepto raises $450M at $7 billion valuation - as Indian quick-commerce market heats up. The round was led by a US pension fund, next to existing investors. Zepto competes with Blinkit (by Zomato/Eternis), Instamart (Swiggy) and BigBasket (Tata), Flipkart and Amazon. Zepto claims to have 1.7 million daily orders, working from a dark store model. India is unique - to my knowledge it is the only market which saw the continuous boom of quick delivery. Please correct me if you know better.

Starship Technologies raises $50M to scale autonomous delivery across US cities. To date the company delivered 9 million deliveries; has a fleet of 2,700 bots; working with a wide range of partners. 

Waymo and DoorDash partner to use Waymo’s robotaxis for delivery in Phoenix. Compared to existing delivery bot models out there today, Waymo can carry much more load and drive longer distances. The main difference for customers - they will now have to go to the car to pick up the delivery, no more ringing at the door. 

Rapido adds flights, trains and hotel booking, as part of the super-app strategy. These new products are all in partnership with local players. 

Dubai Taxi Company (DTC) and Keeta partner for deliveries in Dubai. As a first step DTC will deploy 150 delivery motorbikes; in the future drones and bots could be included as part of the fleet.   

Amazon Air drone makes an emergency unexpected landing in Goodyear, Arizona. This happens only 10 days after Amazon restarted its operations, following an accident with a crane a few weeks back. 

Meanwhile in the UK, Amazon Air is pushing forward, obtaining permission from Darlington Council to build a launch pad.

AV Freight & Logistics 🚛🚜

Einride expands partnership with PostNord and Mars. 

FleetWorks raises $17M. The company develops a marketplace for carrier companies and goods that need to be moved to find each other - faster. Funds will be used for commercial expansion and product development.

In other news 📰

Waymo DDOS. Tech prankster rallies people and sends 50 Waymo robotaxis to a San Francisco longest dead end street. Once the Waymos arrived, nobody entered the vehicles, which, after roughly 10 minutes each, canceled the ride and charged a no-show fee of $5. Waymo retaliated by disabling all pickups and drop-offs within a two-block radius until the next morning. This took place in July but is surfacing in the media now. 

Archer won the bid for Lilium’s technology - 300 patents for the price of €18M. The round, issued by the bankruptcy administrator, also saw Ambitious Air Mobility Group and Joby bid for Lilium’s intellectual assets. During its time, Lilium raised over $1 billion before going public via SPAC. 

And also - Beta Technologies is looking to IPO and raise $825M in the process. Valuation will be roughly $7.2 billion.

Airbound raises a $8.6M seed round. Airbound is an Indian drone built for one-cent delivery (cost). Read inside on this new drone concept by a founder who started in 2020 when he was 15 years old!

The Podaris take on the UK DfT’s Connectivity Metric map (how well are people connected to different mobility solution, from walking to PT to cars) got a UI/X upgrade and is worth another look: 

Kakao Mobility launches a robot valet service, partnering with HL Robotics. How it works: a robot recognises cars parked in a specific temporary location by their license plate, and then valets them to a permanent parking spot. 

I love meeting new people and learning about innovation. Let’s get-to-know.

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Alexander Czeh is the new Mobility Lead, Associate Director @ Buro Happold. 

Arun Singh is the new Senior Brand Manager @ CHERY UK. 

Egor Smetanin is the new Chief Executive Officer @ Drivee. 

Elad Goldman is the new Senior Manager, Startup-Ecosystem Development Israel @ AUMOVIO, by Continental. 

Ferdinand Burgersdijk is a new Advisory Board Member @ NAPCORE. 

Gustavo G. de la Torre is the new CEO & President @ City Makers. 

Louis Tronel is the new advisor @ Ecov. 

Rob Rome is the new Deputy General Counsel @ Arrive. 

Steffen Axer is the new Tech Lead – Strategic Mobility Analytics @ Volkswagen Group. 

Congrats and good luck!

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