Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐
EQT and Kühne Holding acquire a 35% stake in Flix, for circa €1 billion, valuing the company at €3 billion. In 2023 Flix achieved revenue of over €2 billion with an Adjusted EBITDA of €104M. Funds will be used to grow internationally. With that sum, I would expect some M&A activity.
Revenue up 37.4% to €1.7 billion
Operating loss of €94.3M, or 5.5% of revenue, improved from a loss of €262.6 in 2022
Net loss of €91.9M, up from €72.2M in 2022
Ride-hailing brought in €1.4 billion (82% of revenue), rental (micromobility & shared cars) €155.1M and delivery €154.8M (both roughly 9-10%)
Benchmarking vs. Uber - mobility brought in 53.2% of revenue, delivery 32.7%
Europe accounts for 1.48 billion (87%), Africa €181.5 (10.6%) and RoW €39.5M
Ola switches to in-house maps, ends Google mapping partnership. It is estimated that Ola paid Google $12M a year for its mapping services. Bolt chooses TomTom’s traffic data to power its global ride-hailing and food-delivery routing.
Uber and Insurance: the company provides liability insurance to their drivers and limited collision coverage, and is developing features to promote safe driving and record trips. Blusmart to provide real-time feedback to drivers to prevent rash driving.
Uber expands boat services across Europe. First to Ibiza, Venice and additional locations in Greece. Uber is getting ready to cut Australian fare prices by up to 5% in an effort to grow demand. Drivers aren’t happy. Cabify partners with Polestar to expand its Spanish EV fleet, adding 100 vehicles to Barcelona and Madrid. Mariusz Zabrocki, Freenow’s UK GM, leaves after five years. A (very) long read on how DiDi adapted to the Latin American market.
The UK has a new Secretary of State for Transport, and this deserves a deep-dive:
What to Expect from Louise Haigh, UK’s New Secretary of State for Transport
A #movingpeople deep-dive
Car Sharing/renting 🚗
***Correction: a previous version published quoted a journalist detailing that BlablaCar mis-used the French "Energy Savings Certificates scheme" with certain financial implications for the company. As it turns out - it wasn't true. There has been no accusations against BlaBla, and no "mis-use" on its part.
It appears that the story originates from a court case that indeed did take place - but between the French government and Flix - in which the court did allow carpooling to benefit from the "Energy Savings Certificates" on the basis of a lack of documentation from the Ministry of Ecological Transition; this decision does not challenge the legitimacy of carpooling to benefit from these schemes. To the hard working people at BlaBla - I apologise for the mistake.
In Lithuania, Spark electric cars can be rented through the Bolt app.
An interesting napkin calculation of Voltio’s financials by Arthur Burnin - circa 20% operational margin per car, or €195.
Micromobility 🚲🛴
Lyft to raise NYC electric Citi Bike fares by 20%, to 24c per minute for members and 36c for non-members, citing increasing insurance and battery swapping costs. This is the second price increase this year.
Ario, three-wheeled e-scooter, launches in Auckland, NZ, joining incumbents Beam and Lime. Voi in the Isle of Wight.
Delivery 🍽🧺
Zomato relaunched Legends, shuts down Xtreme. Legends enables customers to order from renowned restaurants in select cities to other cities. This is the 3rd iteration of the service. Xtreme, an hyperlocal goods delivery service, was launched in October 2023, targeting both small and large merchants for delivering small packages intracity on existing 3rd party lines of services. The service failed to attract demand.
Swiggy launches 'Eatlists', allowing users to create and share food recommendations directly within the app. Think bookmarks and easier sharing.
Mano, a grocery and household appliances delivery company founded in 2020, is expanding to food deliveries. Orders can be made within a 10km radius of a restaurant.
Wing and Apian are working with Medtronic to provide medical drone delivery services to Blackrock Clinic and St. Vincent’s Private Hospital.
Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡
WeRide launches RoboBus shuttle service in Singapore. The 12-minute shuttle route spans 1.2 kilometers and includes four stops.
May Mobility and SouthWest Transit announce first AV microtransit service in the Minneapolis twin city region, joining forces with Spare.
Alvest Group and EasyMile launch joint venture, to manage the commercialisation of the EZTow autonomous tow tractor, targeting airports and industrial sites.
Beijing’s municipal government drafted new AV regulation, showing greater appetite for AV deployments in the city.
Flying cars 🚁
Eve secures $94M in Post-IPO equity from “large strategic industrial companies and diversified investors”, including Nidec Corporation (Japan) and Embarer (Brazil).
Archer raises another $55M from Stellantis, which is already the largest shareholder in the company.
ERC is a purpose built eVTOL, designed for the emergency medical industry. The company’s Charlie aircraft will carry a pilot, doctor and passenger up to 190 kilometers. Founded in 2019, the company intends to start commercial flights in 2029. Emergency medical & police are expected to be a leading use case for eVTOLs, so betting on the category is a good idea.
EHang partners with China Southern Airlines General Aviation (CSGAC) focusing on low-altitude flight services, such as tourism.
Watch Joby’s new taxi service software - focusing on building an holistic ecosystem.
June AAM Reality Index - Volocopter back to 1st place, EHang 2nd, Beta 3rd.
OEMs 🛺⚡️
Fisker asks bankruptcy court to sell its EVs at an average of $14,000 each, down from the starting price of $70,000. The remaining 3,231 vehicles, at $46.25M, are to be sold to American Lease, a NY company leasing vehicles to gig drivers. It is not clear what other assets the company has.
Volvo Car reduced its ownership in Polestar from 48.3% at the end of 2023 to 18% today. Polestar could be the next EV OEM to go bankrupt.
In other news 📰
Dodona Analytics raises undisclosed series A. Dodona helps companies plan electric vehicle (EV) charging networks. Roboat raises €550K for autonomous boat tech. The company focuses on urban waterway transport. Skarper wins Eurobike award - for turning any bike electric in seconds. First customer deliveries scheduled for Q4 this year. Universal Hydrogen, a Hydrogen powered airplane startup, shuts down. The company raised a total of $82.5M.
Best drone photos - by Hüseyin Karahan.
People 🧑🤝🧑
Manuel Serralha is the new Senior Global Operations Manager @ Bolt.
Paolo Manfreddi is the new Group CEO @ Drivalia.
Umar Zakir Abdul Hamid is the new Adjunct Associate Professor @ DRB-HICOM University of Automotive Malaysia.
Congrats and good luck!
Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like reading, please share this with your friends and colleagues. Weekly suggestion: on your company’s slack channel.
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