📊The entire micromobility sector in one chart
Plus, Paris wants to be Amsterdam on the Seine, Uber wants to be in public transit, and Walmart wants more bikes to sell.
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 events.
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ICYMI, Founder Shield has put together the key takeaways from last week’s Ride-share & P2P leasing panel and made the recording available on demand.
Get an inside look at the industry from the leaders in the most impactful companies in the space. They discussed their growth, risk, and the future of shared mobility.
The Landscape Report: V2
Micromobility Industries is delighted to present the Landscape Report, a visual guide and database for making sense of the rapidly expanding world of micromobility at a glance.
For this edition of the survey, the second in less than a year, the landscape has more than doubled to include a total of 303 unique companies, a reflection of the astonishing rate at which the need for small, electric, and intelligent mobility solutions is growing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out the report below, and get in touch if you know a company we should add.
Our next guest is…
There’s a new front in the war on cars: the struggle to stop a carpocalypse post-COVID. On this week’s webinar, Doug Gordon of The War on Cars podcast will join Oliver Bruce for a conversation about how cities are dealing with the return of traffic.
Become a member—free for 30 days—to gain access to this and all future webinars.
What you need to know this week.
Changes in work and shopping habits caused by the pandemic will permanently reduce the number of miles Americans drive each year by 10%, according to a new study by consulting firm KPMG International.
European e-bike production shot up 60% between 2018 and 2019.
Voi raised $30 million at a valuation of just below $270 million. After breaking even in June, the European scooter operator claims it is on track to make an annual profit in 2021.
There’s a new twist in Jump saga. Earlier this month, a photo emerged on Twitter showing a fleet of brand-new Jump e-bikes sitting in a warehouse. While it’s not known when or where the picture was taken, what is clear is that the model of the bikes is the 5.8, an Uber-era prototype that features a swappable battery and firmware built into nearly every component. Could Jump’s new owner, Lime, be gearing up to deploy these state-of-the-art bikes on a large scale?
Related: After coming under fire for trashing thousands of Jump e-bikes, Uber is donating 3,000 to nonprofit “transportation libraries” in western New York.
Adam Neumann, the controversial co-founder and former CEO of WeWork, has taken a 33% equity stake in GoTo Global, an Israel-based MaaS provider that offers a full range of shared vehicles, including scooters, bikes, cars, and mopeds. Neumann’s investment is part of a $19 million Series B round that GoTo raised for a European expansion.
The UK government has approved Bird to join city scooter trials.
Anne Hidalgo wants to turn Paris into a cyclist-and-pedestrian paradise on par with Amsterdam and Copenhagen in her second term as mayor. Here’s how she plans to do it.
The global surge in new cyclists is not being matched by public investment in parking in many cities. In the first half of 2020, bike theft in NYC was up 18% compared to last year. Theft of bikes that cost $1,000 or more was up 58%.
Speaking of NYC, the MTA, one of the largest transit agencies in the world, apparently doesn’t have an org chart of its 70,000 employees.
As part of a push toward public transportation, Uber announced it is acquiring Routematch, a transit routing service, and rolling out mobile ticketing across 13 transit agencies in Ohio and Kentucky through a partnership with Masabi.
Similarly, transit tickets are now available on the Tier app in Helsinki.
And Dutch transit authorities are building a national MaaS platform.
On average, Lime scooter trips have been 34% longer in duration and 18% farther in distance since the pandemic started.
Bosch, a supplier known for making electric motors, teased a concept e-bike made entirely out of its own components.
The Trump administration has delayed implementation of NYC landmark congestion pricing plan by over a year.
British e-cargobike delivery service Zedify raised almost $380,000 from Green Angel Syndicate.
Revel landed a permit to bring electric mopeds to San Francisco.
And Taiwan’s WeMo, a sharing platform for gas-powered mopeds, is gearing up for an expansion in Southeast Asia.
Google Maps now shows end-to-end routing for docked bike-share systems in 10 global cities. Semi-relatedly, and perhaps more interestingly, Google says search interest for the phrase “bike repair shop near me” hit an all-time high in July—more than double what it was last year.
The Strategist picked out the best e-scooters to buy.
UK cloud kitchen startup Karmic Kitchen raised $317 million in a Series A round led by Vengrove Asset Management.
Food-delivery service Delivery Hero says it’s hungry for acquisitions.
It’s been a big week for Lyft’s bike-share systems: Biketown in Portland, Oregon, announced a major expansion that includes adding 1,500 e-bikes to its fleet; Divvy in Chicago unveiled plans to add coverage to the Far South Side; and Citibike in NYC hit 100 million rides.
McKinsey forecasts that, as a result of the pandemic, the use of personal and shared micromobility will grow (9% and 12%, respectively), and scooter-sharing will increase in profitability.
Citylab took a look at the legacy of the Segway PT, which ended its nearly 20-year production run last week: “For all the mall-cop gags and PR disasters, the original vision of the Segway seems newly prescient in an age of abundant e-scooters and e-bicycles. Indeed, as these newer products find their footing in the mobility ecosystem, they owe much to the dorky grandfather of urban micromobility.”
US city officials warn that, without federal aid, the nation’s transit systems could enter a “death spiral” as the pandemic drags on.
The self-driving industry is now focusing on long-haul journeys for trucks and passenger vehicles after failing at robo-taxis.
Are people really fleeing cities for suburbs because of COVID-19? The evidence is flimsy.
Walmart CEO Doug McMilion: “We are sold out of bicycles, we can’t keep them stocked.”
Pod people
Crypto episode? Sure, why not. Worlds collide on a special new edition of the podcast, as Oliver Bruce and Anders Brownworth try to sell a skeptical Horace Dediu on blockchains.
Jobs to be done
Welcome to our jobs board, where every week we post new career openings in hopes of connecting our readers with professional opportunities in new mobility. Find out who’s hiring below and sign up for the newsletter to view fresh listings every week.
Head of Marketing at Revel (Brooklyn)
EU Sales Manager at Acton (anywhere in EU)
Bike Mechanic at Bond (Munich)
Senior Sales Manager at Comodule (Nuremberg or remote)
Business Owner at Wunder City (Hamburg)
Various roles at PBSC
CMO at Civilized Cycles
Fleet Safety Program Manager at Together for Safer Roads (remote)
If your company is looking to make its next hire and would like to reach thousands of qualified candidates, hit reply to list with us. Free of charge.