#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business  - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility".  This week highlighting the Anti-Bias Strategy Review solution. Let’s talk. 

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Pango acquires Gett for  $175M. Pango, an Israeli company, is a digital parking services app, offering a range of services related to parking and vehicle services, such as rescue and fuelling. Gett, founded in 2010, went through the highs and lows of the mobility industry; raised a total of $928M; and its highest confirmed valuation was $1.5 billion. In 2022 the company came close to going public via SPAC, but the overall macroeconomic situation, and the lost revenue after the company exited Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion, shut down that effort. The deal is still awaiting approval by the Israeli Competition Authority. I was a part of that deal, and I believe that Gett’s future is bright. 

Also Gett to Hungary, in partnership with a local taxi company, Taxim.  

Uber is still profitable, operationally. The company released its Q1 reports, and while it had a net loss of $654M, its operational profit was $172M. The loss is attributed to interest expense of $124M, and also to $678M in losses of “unrealised loss on debt and equity securities”: Uber lost $505M on its Aurora holdings, $123M on Grab’s holdings, and $69M on DiDi. Other positive figures are revenue growth, 15% YoY, and increase in Uber One annual run-rate, now exceeding $1 billion. Nevertheless, Uber missed analysts’ gross booking, which in addition to the net loss, sent stock down by 9%. For the full report. 

Lyft also published its Q1/24 report, which sent the stock up, thanks to higher than expected gross bookings, revenue and profit. Gross booking up 21% YoY to $3.7 billion; revenue up 28% to $1.3 billion; loss from operations $63M; net loss of $31.5M. For the full report. 

Uber & Lyft stock performance, from January 2024 to today:

Bolt new in Hamburg. Bolt cuts back on its Nigerian operations, cutting the local team by half. In Sweden, Bolt is helping to pay for electric vehicles. InDrive officially in Nepal - after two years of operations - now starts charging a 10% commission. Arriva expands in Croatia. 

Travelier, formerly known as Bookaway, was founded in 2017 with the aim of enabling tourists to digitally & easily purchase transportation tickets in developing countries. Today the company connects over 8,000 operators that serve 13,000 cities in 100 countries. Last week the company acquired DeÔnibus, a local Brazilian ticketing platform. 

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Getaround Q1/24 report: gross bookings up 41% YoY to $44.9M; revenue up 49% to $17.2M; and while there are also improvements in profit margins, the company lost $31M, which is almost double its revenues. Getaround has recently seen a change in management, and was able to secure funding of up to $70M, which are meant to allow the company time to stabilise. 

Last week deep-dived into Turo’s numbers; to compare, Turo had $2.41 billion in gross bookings, $879 million in revenue, and a net profit of $14.7 million. Still a long way to go for Getaround. 

Hiyacar partners with North Middlesex University Hospital. 

I love meeting new people, learning about mobility innovation and exchanging opinions. Want to get-to-know and talk mobility? Let’s set up a half-hour coffee chat. 

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Bolt is hiring people for US scooter operations. Scotland might be piloting scooters. 

Delivery 🍽🧺

UberEats and Instacart partner on restaurant deliveries. Instacart is adding restaurants into its app, with Uber doing everything in the backend - from restaurant selection to tech enablement to delivery. 

Glovo leaves Slovenia. This is a part of a larger strategy work done at Glovo, which also resulted in the company leaving Ghana and suspending Albanian launch. Wolt will remain in Slovenia as the sole major player. 

KeeTa by Meituan surpassed foodpanda to become the market leader in terms of food delivery volume (number of) orders, taking 43% of the market in Q1/24. KeeTa launched a year ago, in May 2023, and invested heavily in promotions to become the market leader, surpassing Deliveroo back in November. In terms of order value, GMV, foodpanda still leads comfortably with 47% vs. KeeTa’s 27%. 

Amazon launched its first micromobility hub in Northern Ireland. A garbage collecting drone at Everest. Five facts about the Indonesian food delivery market: order volume showing YoY increase of 18.2%; 75% of orders come from small merchants; and more here. 

All quiet on the Getir front. 

Hope you enjoy reading #movingpeople. If you do, please share it with others so that they benefit from it too. Weekly suggestion: send it to a person you know in one of the companies I covered today.

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Wayve raises $1.05 billion to develop its self-learning system for autonomous driving. Led by SoftBank together with Microsoft and Nvidia, this is Europe’s largest ever AI investment. Funds will be used to get the product ready to be sold to OEMs. Importantly, this puts Wayve together with the other leading tech US/European players such Waymo, Cruise and Tesla; and in direct competition to Mobileye, which also sells its autonomous tech directly to OEMs.  

Motional, just receiving $475M from Hyundai, is pausing commercial operations and robotaxi plans as it goes through restructuring. Ceased operations include robotaxis in Vegas with Uber & Lyft and delivery service in Santa Monica with UberEats. Restructuring means a 40% cut, circa 550 employees. The new focus will be on advancing technology while waiting for the business case to build itself.  

TXAI is the autonomous operating brand in the UAE. WeRide powers the autonomous car operations; Baidu the autonomous shuttles. A detail of rides in both is in the links. 

Waymo on a bus lane - video. Waymo successfully navigates freeway - video. Waymo reacting to hand signals from a police officer - video. Waymo is doing 50,000 rides a week. 

Ush, by D'Ieteren, is working on a remote driving solution in Belgium, working with Vay. The focus is on remote delivery of car-sharing solutions. 

Flying cars 🚁

TNMT in a new analysis of AAM - this time focusing on regulation. 

Archer Q1/24 results: achieved 100 flights on track to target of 400 in 2024; on track to begin piloted flight tests of Midnight later this year; building commercial taxi operation in the UAE; over $520M liquidity. For the shareholders letter. 

EHang completes first passenger-carrying pilotless eVTOL flight in the UAE. U.S. Operator UrbanLink orders 20 Lilium jets. Lilium to open a manufacturing plant in France. 

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Tesla superchargers slowdown - rising competition, potentially unattractive profit margins and Musk’s focus on robotaxis all likely play a role in this bewildering story.

Tesla buys $2M worth of Lidars. Musk has fought the idea of Lidars, calling it “crutches”, opting for camera-based autonomy. At a price point of roughly $1,000, that is some Tesla vehicles riding around with Lidars. Is this a R&D experiment or preparation for the new robotaxi fleet? We’ll know in August, when Musk unveils Tesla’s robotaxi project. 

Tesla continues with layoffs. 

Fisker files for bankruptcy in Austria. Why Austria: because manufacturing contract management is done from Austria. In the US, Fisker is under regulatory safety probe over brake system issues. 

In Q1/24, Rivian lost $1.45 billion on $1.2 billion in revenue. And there are rumours of a potential partnership with Apple.  

In other news 📰

Flock is a new UK connected Taxi fleet insurance. Stella Automotive AI, provider of automotive artificial intelligence technology, raises $19.7M. Magic Lane, privacy-friendly & light maps, raises €3M. 

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

A quiet week in terms of new starts: 

Adam Wiltsher is the new Head of Customer Success @ IntelMotion Solutions (formerly Magenta). 

Allison Redmon is the new Project Manager @ Walker Consultants.

Alon Berger is the new Support Tech Lead @ Autofleet. 

Good luck to all!

I love meeting new people, learning about mobility innovation and exchanging opinions. Want to get-to-know and talk mobility? Let’s set up a half-hour coffee chat. 

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