Musk’s anti-bike stance: It’s personal
Plus, Beidou beats GPS, Honda plans a mind-reading motorcycle, and Paris has a "Bermuda Triangle" of stolen bikes.
Hello and welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, a weekly missive about mobility, mostly mobility in cities by small electric vehicles like bikes and scooters. The reason you’re reading this email is that you signed up on our website or came to one of our webinars or events.
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What you need to know this week
Maybe this story is common knowledge already, but we hadn’t heard it before: Apparently the reason Tesla won’t make an electric bicycle is that Elon Musk was in a near-fatal motorbike accident when he was young. The psychological scar from Musk’s crash would help explain Tesla’s irrational avoidance of this multibillion-dollar market.
China exported over 40M bikes in the first nine months of 2020—nearly four times what the EU manufactures in a year. With production soaring, there aren’t enough containers available to ship all the bikes.
Usage-based car insurer Metromile is going public via SPAC with an equity valuation of $1.3B. The company’s pay-per-mile model essentially applies the market for miles thesis to auto insurance.
Honda has filed a patent showing that it’s working on a brain-wave-detection system to help future motorcycles know their riders’ intentions.
China’s largest on-demand company, Meituan, reported 28.8% revenue growth for the 3rd quarter compared to the same period in 2019.
Slow streets have emerged as a new front in our cities’ culture wars.
Dija, a British delivery startup founded by Deliveroo veterans, is close to securing $20M in funding in a round led by Blossom.
WertGarantie finds that nearly 50% of ebike service requests are related to technical issues with the battery.
European scooter operator Dott has expanded into electric bicycles.
Italy expects bike sales to increase 20% this year.
“They don’t have brakes, the tyres are gone;” Uber Eats is under fire in Australia for not inspecting couriers’ ebikes prior to approving them for work.
China’s Beidou positioning system outperforms American GPS in 165 out of 195 world capitals.
Will the subscribe-to-everything mindset rewrite micromobility’s business model? Catch Oliver Bruce’s interview with Richard Burger, founder of the Netflix-style subscription bicycle service Swapfiets, later today to find out. Sign up to unlock access.
Voi is betting big on the UK, with plans to triple the size of its scooter fleet there.
In Paris, bike thefts grew 62% between January and September compared to last year. Locals are calling the 19th arrondissement the “Bermuda Triangle of Stolen Bikes.”
On the verge of opening the world’s largest electric moped factory in India, Ola has appointed a GM veteran to lead its manufacturing division.
A sustainability report produced by the World Economic Forum and the German government argues public transit and bikes must be the primary modes of transportation in 2050 in order to meet our climate goals.
A new law in South Korea that lowers the minimum age to ride an electric scooter to 13 is getting pushback from an unexpected corner: the scooter companies themselves.
PBSC’s micromobility charging stations now support electric cars.
British ebike maker FuroSystems closed a $1M funding round, led by TSP Ventures.
Bird’s chief vehicle officer argues swappable batteries are “unproven.”
Following the signing a new vehicle partnership this week, Gogoro’s swappable batteries will power five of the seven major moped manufacturers in Taiwan. The company controls over 90% of the electric moped market in the country.
According to new Streetlight data, bike ridership peaked in the US in June with 26% YoY growth. Cycling rates tapered off over the summer, although they were still 11% higher in September, even as driving rates were down 6.5%. Interestingly, the data shows the American bike boom is being led not by the largest metros but by small cities.
Anyone who finds an abandoned Lime scooter in Germany can now use What3Words to report its location.
Brexit is set to unleash a flood of cheap Chinese bicycles into the UK. Local players, like Brompton, are preparing for the worst.
Tire shed from driving is a massive contributor to pollution: “28.3 percent of microplastics in the ocean come from tires, landing them in the top seven contributors.”
Pod people
Leading European ride-hail player Bolt is building a sleeper micromobility business to challenge the market leader, Tier.
On the eve of a $100M expansion, Oliver Bruce talks to Bolt’s micromobility head about whether their MaaS move can overcome their opponent’s first-mover advantage.
Jobs to be done
Welcome to our jobs board, where every week we post open positions in hopes of connecting our readers with professional opportunities in the burgeoning world of new mobility. Find out who’s hiring below and sign up for the newsletter to view fresh listings every week.
Hit reply if you have a job you’d like to list in the newsletter.
Business Development Manager at Zoba (Berlin)
Data Scientist at Zoba (Boston)
AI/ML Engineer at Luna (Dublin)
France General Manager at Felyx (Paris)
Marketing Manager at Zoomo (San Francisco)
VP of Product at Wunder Mobility (Hamburg)
Marketing Manager at Shift Transit (North America remote)
Electronics Engineering Project Manager at Cowboy (Brussels)
Big Data Developer at Wind (Barcelona)
Senior Operations Manager at Bird (Munich or remote)
Senior INS / GNSS Algorithms Engineer at Navmatic (San Jose or remote)
Product Design Engineer at Dance (Berlin)
Mobility Fullstack Engineer at Trov (North America, remote)
Senior Product Manager at Ubiq (Vienna)
Backend Developer at Bond (Brussels)