Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐
Uber: In airports around the world, Uber introduces Uber XXL (one more X). Pricing sits somewhere between UberXL and Uber Black. In Hong Kong, Uber introduces cash payments for Meter Taxi. In South Korea, Uber is heavily incentivising drivers to use its platform; the company is implementing a loss strategy in order to obtain market share.
Lyft is rolling out rider verification across the US. Additional features include notifying drivers if the rider is on a bike or bus lane or if a route goes through a school or traffic enforcement zones. BlackWolf, an armed ride-hailing solution, is expanding across Texas.
SWVL announces sale of $4.7M shares in private placement. Ola Consumer gets ready for IPO. Namma Yatri launches in Mangaluru. DRT in Selangor, Malaysia, to expand operations. New car microtransit service in SouthPark with Freebee. Randy Marsh is expected to lead the team of drivers.
COMIN is a French ride-hailing player, launched in 2024. COMIN has recently been selected by STATION F’s “40 best-performing startups” award, introduced their 1st ad campaign and are launching a Rider Dynamic Pricing (or price setting / haggling) feature. This is a feature successfully implemented globally by InDrive and others, is now being introduced in Europe for the first time. In a short span, COMIN has attracted 6,000 drivers, representing 15% of the ride-hailing market in France and is in the midst of a seed round so ping the founder / CEO - Dany El Oubari.
Car Sharing/renting 🚗
Volug is betting on big mobility players - OEMs and larger rental companies - to lead the carsharing landscape with an offer that provides both software AND operational set-up, targeting inefficiencies that usually exist within large players. Remember that Volug is not only a leading carsharing software solution, but also operates Leo&Go in Lyon.
Zoomcar introduces a subscription model, allowing long term bookings, starting with a minimum of 7 days and extending beyond 30 days.
Hiyacar’s journey through the eyes of its departing COO. Interesting data point: the company processes over 200 bookings daily. Bolt and CityBee to (separately) introduce more rental cars in Tallinn. Greenwheels new in Dalfsen. Netherlands.
Micromobility 🚲🛴
Back in November 2021 Oslo decided to limit the number of scooters operating in the city from 25,000 to 8,000. Now, the city has decided to increase the fleet to 16,000. Most of the increase - all but 800 vehicles - would be outside “Ring 3”, i.e. outer Oslo, where demand seems to be strongest (see map). Voi, Ryde and Bolt are the winners - each increasing fleet size from 2,667 to 5,334 vehicles, leading to better economics.
Voi has taken over Zipp Mobility's contracts to operate shared e-scooter schemes in Buckinghamshire and Slough, UK. Bird to take over Lyft’s operations in Denver, following Lyft’s decision to discontinue support for dockless bikes and scooters schemes. Whizz, e-bike/e-moped vehicle ownership and financing options for delivery drivers, is growing. The UK Transport Secretary wants to legalise use of private e-scooters on public roads.
Micromobility.com’s Q3/24 financial report - key takeaways:
After selling Wheels and consequently leaving the US, the company operates in Serbia and Italy only. Serbia brought in 58% of revenue, Italy 42%.
Focused operations led to 37% reduction in revenue YoY to $775,000 - but also to an 80% reduction in operating costs which totals to 90% reduction in loss from operations to $584,000.
Net revenue $4.97M, due to “profit from discontinued operations” (leaving the US) in the sum of $6.63M.
Cash flow equals to $141,000
Buzzbike, a bike and e-bike subscription service, is closing down, following the collapse of its largest shareholder. Trump might mean bad news for the US bike industry, which is reliant on Chinese part imports.
Delivery 🍽🧺
Nuro deploys more test fleets in the Bay Area and Houston, with the aim of attracting buyers, following the company’s switch to a licence model a few months ago. Nuro’s new robots are able to drive at 35 mph (56 km/h) and are better at driving around construction or school areas.
Zomato launches ‘District’ app, a lifestyle app that consolidates dining, entertainment, and ticketing services. Rappi partners with Civitatis to launch tours and activities vertical.
Deliveroo partners with HURR to offer 20-minute luxury fashion rental delivery services in Central London. This replaces the overnight delivery service HURR had so far. DoorDash introduces a number of new features, such as importing grocery lists into the app and unified product search (rolled out to alcohol first). Foodinho, an Italian food delivery app, owned by Glovo, was fined €5M for unlawfully processing the data.
Wing begins delivering blood samples via drone in London. Airbound raises $1.7M to make drone delivery more cost-effective. Meituan is looking to launch its drone delivery services in Hong Kong.
Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡
This week’s news comes from the US, China - and Germany.
🇩🇪 Germany: Hamburg to test autonomous ride-hailing in a 37 sq. km area. The pilot, using up to 20 vehicles from Holon Mover and Volkswagen ID.Buzz AD, will use MOIA’s bookings app. On-road launch expected mid-2025, with final software, integration and regulatory approvals continuing up until then. This would be Europe’s largest on-road AV ride-hailing deployment. Last week saw the 1st trail run.
LOXO expands into Germany with a self-driving logistics subsidiary.
🇺🇲 USA: Trump is expected to ease federal self-driving rules; this bumped up Tesla’s stock, which has been going up from ±$250 a share to ±$350 (!), since Trump was elected on November 5th.
May Mobility expands driverless (“driver-out”) operations to 2nd US city. Bot Auto successfully completed hub-to-hub (H2H) driverless truck demonstrations in Texas.
🇨🇳 China: Pony.ai, soon to list on Nasdaq, is looking to raise $260M, up from previous target of $224M, at a market valuation of roughly $4.5 billion. Uber is said to be interested in investing.
Baidu cuts the cost of its mass-produced self-driving vehicle, Apollo RT6, to only $34,525 (250,000 yuan). The RT6 is also the only mass-produced self-driving vehicle in the world.
A story about Chinese AV: AVs run in 16 cities, with Beijing and Wuhan the most advanced. Largest fleet is Baidu in Wuhan - 400 vehicles. In Beijing, 900 vehicles from Baidu, Poni.ai WeRide and JD.com travel the city.
Flying cars 🚁
Volocopter hires Lilium’s CFO. Volocopter plans to transition from development to market entry in 2025, and will need additional cash to do so. Current CFO will transition to CCO. Note that the CEO is due to leave the company in February 2025. Geely is a potential buyer for Volocopter, which is in need of additional funding.
Honda might be debuting its secretive eVTOL soon, after getting FAA approval to fly a subscale prototype for research and development.
OEMs 🛺⚡️
If you haven’t seen the new JaGUar ad - you really must. It is either the best (worst?) value destruction in latest OEM history, or a genius move not yet understood by most. I (and others) think the former. Some think the whole thing was just bizarre.
The ad - obviously appealing to Gen Z, heavily risks alienating millennials (Gen Y) and Gen X, which are today’s Jaguar’s (or - as it is now - JaGUar 😵💫) target audience. Data shows that a current Jaguar owner is a male between the ages of mid-40 to mid-60, leaning toward 50+ (Bemer, Autocar, Bluehighways, also evident in other luxury cars, see motorsandwheels). Now, an “older” Gen Z was born in 1997, and is in his late 20s today. Can he afford a Jaguar?
Trump is expected to kill EV tax credits, leading to an estimated 27% decrease in demand and affecting willingness of US manufacturers such as GM and Ford (and others) to invest in vehicle electrification, also widening the EV technology gap between the US and China.
Ola Electric lays off 500 employees, roughly 12.5% of the workforce, as the company seeks profitability. VanMoof (🚲) restarts e-bike sales in the UK.
Gig economy 💰
David Risher, Lyft’s CEO, writes about gig-economy: 36% of U.S. adults have worked and earned on an app-based platform, and so Risher is calling for federal legislation “that preserves gig workers’ flexibility while allowing for the benefits and protections they want”.
Ride-hailing right to a union in Massachusetts, as was voted on Nov. 5th, is still an uphill climb, as Uber and Lyft intend to lobby for technical legislation changes throughout the implementation phase.
In other news 📰
Ample, battery swapping for commercial fleets, raises $25M, targeting a full round of $75M as the company moves from piloting to commercial contracts, such as with Free2Move.
Class8, previously known as FleetOps, trucking industry dispatch and data solution connected to OEM’s connected car features, raises $22M.
Revv, SaaS solution to empower automotive repair shops to deal with ADAS related issues raises, $20M. Funds will be used to grow the business.
Candela, an electric ferry boat, raises $14M, bringing the total raised in 2024 to $40M. The company just saw the construction of its 100th vessel. Funds will be used for scaling up production for the P-12
Flipturn, EV fleet charging and management, raises $11M.
Continuum, reverse logistics software company dedicated to B2B distribution and manufacturing, raises $4.1M.
Northvolt files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US. Numbers are staggering - Northvolt. Which raised more than $10 billion in equity, debt and public financing since its setup in 2016, needs roughly $1.2 billion to keep going. The company has $30M in the bank right now - which is enough for only one week. It has $5.8 billion in debt.
Bolt, Vay, tomtom and 10 other mobility companies and organisation call the EU for Modern EU-wide regulations.
NYC congestion pricing is back! Well, almost. It still has some court approvals to go through and regardless Trump is threatening to terminate the plan once in office. To be continued.
Zomato published a Chief of Staff role - stating no salary for the first year and a Rs 20 lakh charity donation fee (±$23,667) for the selected candidate. This has obviously sparked debate, and since we learned that the fee was never a serious requirement, and that it was put on the ad as a filter to find candidates “who had the power to appreciate the opportunity”. Zomato received 18.000 applications.
People 🧑🤝🧑
Archana (Archie) Umaparameshwaran is the new Director of Growth & Partnerships @ Mayten.
Carlo Mocci is the new Chief Business Officer @ Deliveroo.
Chris Cukar is the new Director, Billing Operations @ WeDriveU.
Claudio Bacalhau is a new Council Member @ the Australian Logistics Council.
Dimitrios Merkouris is the new Commercial Manager - Fleet Telematics & User Experience @ Volvo Cars.
Drew Reynolds is the new General Manager (VP), US Carshare @ Getaround.
Elie Luskin is the new Vice President, India and China @ Mobileye.
Jorge Alonso Pinar is the new Head of Ops Strategy (Global) @ Stuart.
Petar Georgiev is the new Vice Chair of the Policy Committee @ ChargeUp Europe.
Philipp Lesemeister is the new CPO @ Carvolution.
Victoria Markewitz is the new Director of Business Development @ INIT Group.
Congrats and good luck!
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