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I’ll be at MOVE London this week (both days). If you want to catch up / get to know, DM me at Barak Sas | LinkedIn.

Ride-Hailing & Robotaxi 🚙🚕

Toyota acquires a 1% stake in Tier IV for roughly $6.2M (P¥1bn), and even more importantly signs a MOU on technology collaboration. The first step is fitting Toyota's e-Palette shuttles with autonomous technology. Toyota’s long term plans have to do with the benefits from accessing Tier IV’s open source tech and partner network. 

UK tax authority (HMRC) wins a £190M court appeal against Bolt. The case, whether Bolt is liable ⁠to charge VAT on ​its margin (as if did), rather than on the entire fare ​(as HMRC sought), has direct implications on Uber, which has already deposited disputed tax sums of £1.446 billion. These numbers, along with 2023 revenue figures for both Uber and Bolt, suggest that in London, Uber is X7.5 larger than Bolt. In terms of market size, this would give Uber roughly 70%, Bolt +10%, with the remaining ±15% split between Freenow and other players. 

AmiGo receives approval for Level 4 operation - with safety driver, but hands-off. Operated with Apollo Go (Baidu) RT6 vehicles. Commercial services are planned for 2027. 

Bolt, Stellantis and Pony.ai launch autonomous vehicle test program in Luxembourg. The testing phase will begin with five vehicles in Bissen, with a planned expansion to 30 cities and Luxembourg City planned for later stages. 

Waymo launches its loyalty program: Waymo Premier. For $29.99 per month, members receive 10% cash credits on every ride, 5 free ride cancellations per month, priority pickups, and early access for new cities. Looking at the competition with Uber: the program won’t be available in cities only bookable via the Uber app (Austin, Atlanta); and costs X3 Uber’s loyalty program, which is  $9.99 per month.   

Waymo buys Apple's abandoned self-driving car proving ground for $220M. The 5,500-acre (22.26 square kilometers) land in Arizona was bought by Apple for its own program, back in 2021, from Fiat Chrysler. The fact that even after decades of R&D, existing (smaller) test centres, and 4,000 vehicles on roads, Waymo needs this test centre - indicates the complexity of launching autonomy of scale. 

Tesla gets FSD approved in Belgium, joining Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark. WeRide is getting ready to launch in Slovakia in the next few months. Dubai’s RTA signs with Pony.ai - the company joins WeRide and Baidu (Apollo Go) in the region. Uber and Wayve launch London robotaxi waitlist. Waymo lobbying in Australia. 

Bolt expands to Italy - starting with Milan. Italy is a heavily regulated taxi market. For example, Milan, with 1.3 million residents and many more tourists, has roughly 4,850 taxi permits. 

Bolt ceases its Chauffeur service. 

#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 🚍🚌

MINIEYE, a Chinese autonomous driving technology company, signed a deal to supply more than 100 autonomous buses and associated services. The company has had commercial projects since 2025, and is operating over 40 autonomous buses across over 10 different projects. 

Uber launched a $1M Uber Transit Innovation Fund, to accelerate projects that complement public transport, such as affordable / subsidised services for non-profits and underserved communities, and overflow solutions for microtransit and public transport programs. The concept is clear: use Uber as a supplementary solution to the public transport network. So far nine cities have been announced; 11 to go. 

Zum, US school bus TaaS, is heading for an IPO. 

Shuttlers celebrates 10 million completed rides and integrates to Google Maps.  

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Brussels bans shared e-scooters from the city - in effect from January 2027. Bolt and Dott are the service providers in the city. With this, Brussels joins Paris, Madrid, Prague and Barcelona - all with a similar e-scooter ban. 

Barcelona will not renew dockless e-bike licenses. This was well anticipated - the tourist-focused dockless bikes scheme was poorly structured - with seven (!) different operators each operating 500 bikes - and is against the political will of “adjusting” tourism. Read the full analysis on fluctuo, also with a report on České Budějovice, the first Czech city to operate a bike-share service through its own public transport company.

Voi and pony have been selected by Ville de Marseille to operate 750 ebikes each; they replace Lime who operated a 1,000 ebike service under the former tender. Also Lime rolls out an additional 14,000 vehicles for the FIFA World Cup and Lime and Westminster City Council strike new deal on data sharing

Delivery - bikes to cars, bots & drones 🍽🧺

Last week I wrote of Uber’s attempts to buy a controlling stake in Delivery Hero - and this week we learn that Saudi q-commerce startup Ninja is interested to curve out and acquire HungerStation and Talabat, two brands active in the Middle East. It is more likely that we’ll see a bid for HungerStation, with a bid for Talabat depending on additional players joining Ninja. 

Zepto, Indian quick-commerce, updates its IPO prospectus: the company hopes to raise $1 billion in the IPO process. 

Gopuff partners with SpaceXAI (Grok) to build an AI food ordering tool, focused on natural language usage. The video looks nice, but the product still needs to deliver (no pun intended). DoorDash isn’t behind - it is also launching its own AI chatbot. 

Walmart and Wing to expand service to San Diego later this year. Also Walmart and Subway partner to offer fully customised subs via the Walmart app. Glovo exits Bosnia, after entering in 2021. 

AV Freight, Industrial & Logistics 🚛🚜

Gatik and PepsiCo expand partnership on autonomous trucking. Gatik has been operating over 40 driverless trucks for PepsiCo across Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas since their relationship started in 2022. The focus is on regional freight movements between facilities, i.e. middle-mile. 

Einride began trading on Nasdaq (after de-SPAC). On its first day (Wednesday, June 10th) the stock soared 74%; by Friday it traded slightly under the opening price. 

Venti Technologies, autonomous logistics vehicles, reports over 500,000 miles travelled and over 340,000 containers moved. 

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

In other news 📰

Evotrex, hybrid RV, raises $30M. Clear Robotics raises $1.75M to build the world's largest fleet of zero-emission autonomous ships. 

Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority selected Moovit to power its multimodal transport solution. umob expands in Germany, adding emmy sharing vehicles 

BYD, Baidu and other companies (inc. Alibaba) were added to the US Section 1260H list - the list of firms with alleged Chinese military ties. While this does not mean any civil sanctions (companies on the list are banned from any defence contracts), it does pose a threat to their US expansion plans, as established companies will be less inclined to commit to long term partnerships. 

Wireless charging by Electreon - a video covering a 3 year deployment in a bus depot. 

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Florian Preusse is the new Senior Project Manager @ ioki. 

Oumarou Abdou Danneto is the new Maintenance Director @ GoCab.

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.