Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐
Uber wants to onboard London’s Black Cabs to its platform, opens registration for a service that will launch next year, and will be subject to Uber’s pricing algorithm. Are taxi drivers interested? To be determined. An association representing 10,000 of the 15,000 taxi drivers in the city, commented they are not interested in “sullying the name of London’s iconic, world-renowned black cab trade by aligning it with Uber, its poor safety record and everything else that comes with it”; but taxi drivers are independent contractors, so it is a personal decision for each and every driver. Note, that London has plenty of apps, such as Gett and Freenow, that deliver app-based demand.
Also interesting to put this in perspective of news from less than a month ago - when Uber shut down “Local Cab”, its minicab-supply product, minicabs being a competitive product to taxis.
Dubai Taxi raised $315M in its oversubscribed IPO; market cap is circa $1.26bn; government to continue to hold on to 75.01% of capital. Dubai Taxi has a fleet of 7,000 vehicles and 44% market share.
De Renzi, Gett CEO’s, interviews with a taxi driver. Interesting fact: less than 3% of the Gett rides in London are under £10. Risher, Lyft’s CEO, interviews. Interesting fact: in the last couple of weeks, Lyft has managed 2.5 million airport rides, with only 72 cases of reimbursements for 10+ minutes lateness.
FreeNow and Karhoo partner to integrate FreeNow’s 200,000 vehicles to Karhoo’s demand channels. In Kenya, Bolt has dismissed 5,000 drivers in the past six months, in order to improve safety. Careem Pakistan further rolls out Flexi Ride, its price bidding option; this is in order to compete with Yango and InDrive who offer a similar pricing mechanism.
Nemi, DRT player, launches its first service in Portugal, as part of an EIT Urban Mobility project; and expands in Madrid to two new areas. Optibus chooses to highlight commute solutions (work shuttles) in its monthly newsletter. Addison Lee invests £30M to buy 600 vehicles from Volkswagen.
Sharing/renting 🚗🛴
Karos Mobility raises €17M to accelerate the adoption of short-distance carpooling. Founded in France, the company operates today also in Denmark, Germany and Spain. Funds will be used to grow in France and rest of Europe.
Getaround published their 2022(!) annual report - in short: there is a very good reason why the stock fell from SPACing at $10 in November 2022 to $0.17 today - Getaround is a money losing machine. Revenue for 2022 was $59.4M; loss from operations was $181M (X3 of revenue). The company spends $58.8M on G&A; $56M on ops & support; 34.5M on sales & marketing; $24.6 on R&D - it's hard to see a turnaround. For a more detailed analysis.
Interview with Nabogo, a Danish carpooling app. In 2023, the company facilitates 135K rides. What are cars if not small buses?
Micromobility 🚲🛴
Tier lays off 22% of its workforce - 140 employees - on road to profitability. Tier has managed to improve EBITDA from -63% in 2022 to -15% in 2023 (see benchmark), and the CEO states that the company in“ 2023… profitable on an annual basis for 80% of our markets”. I’m assuming he meant local operational profitability, which means some markets are not yet profitable on an operational basis. Most of their layoffs will be from centralised functions.
Micromobility for Europe, the coalition of all major micromobility players, releases paper on parking recommendations. It includes recommendations on mandatory parking in dense urban environments, using existing bike infrastructure, using technology for correct parking, processes for parking fees and more.
Wind, by Yango, is exiting Tel Aviv. The company cites high theft volume and high fees & commissions to local municipalities as reasons for exiting. Six months ago Tier announced its exit, and now the market is left to Bird, Lime and Dott.
Dott partners with Captur, AI company, to improve micromobility parking. The AI software will analyse parking vs. city requirements and inform riders in real time on incorrect parking. The feature is being tested in Grenoble, Madrid and London.
How much is Voi valued - over time. Today $369.3M, down from a high of $978.4M in March 2022. A new bike share scheme in Gdańsk, Poland, has seen 138K registrations in two months. The scheme is operated by software platform Urban Sharing and operated by INURBA Mobility. Beam replaces Bird in Perth Australia; now operates in all territories in Australia-NZ. Anadue offers micromobility operators a new revenue stream, by creating customised services with local businesses. For example, working with shopping malls to encourage footfall by discounting usage prices.
Delivery 🍽🧺
Mutares, Private Equity, acquires Stuart, an urban delivery player. Stuart operates in over 100 European cities, with €400M in revenues in 2022. It has been a silent player in an industry filled with PR, a trait that has seen to not play to Stuart’s disadvantage.
Meituan’s Q3 report warns of slowdown in meal deliveries; this is attributed to weak consumer spending and warm weather, which will see more people choosing to dine out. Meanwhile in Q3, sales rose to $10.7bn, up 22% YoY, and net income was $500M (X3 YoY). Also Meituan signalling it is not interested in foodpanda, reducing pressure of Grab’s stock price.
China's Alipay to sell its 3.44% stake in India's Zomato for nearly $400M. The company’s market cap is roughly $12.2bn. DoorDash partners with Best Buy. Deliveroo moves to DIY and beauty products.
Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡
GM to cut spending on Cruise. Cruise spent $732M in the first three quarters of 2023, so it seems there is where to cut from.
Ohmio, NZ electric autonomous shuttle manufacturer, moves HQ to California. May Mobility testing in Detroit. Pony.ai approved for “platooning” tests in China. Aurrigo trials in Milton Keynes, UK.
Flying cars 🚁
Lilium receives EASA design organisation approval. Eve and flynas, a Saudi low-cost airline, sign MOU to explore operations in Saudi Arabia.
OEMs 🛺⚡️
Sono Motors signs investor deal for its solar integration business, on its path to finalising restructuring. Background: Sono creates solar solutions for vehicles; and attempted to manufacture its own car. The company went into self-administration proceedings back in May, and now has been able to raise in order to restructure the company and allow a runway for 2024.
Luxor Capital Group acquires Volta Trucks. Volta went into insolvency back in October and Luxor was a lead investor in Volta’s series C raise back in February 2022.
Tesla sued Sweden’s postal agency after mail workers refused to deliver licence plates in solidarity with striking service auto workers - and won.
EMotorad, Indian electric bikes manufacturer, raises $20M. Fisker, EV car & pick truck manufacturer, cut its 2023 production target to 10,000 vehicles. In November 2022 the company targeted production of 42,000 vehicles. Unu, e-scooter manufacturer, declares bankruptcy.
Gig economy 💰
NYC: court denied appeals efforts from Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub on couriers’ minimum wage. This is likely to be the last of the appeals, and now companies are mandated to pay a minimum of $17.96 an hour.
In other news 📰
GoMetro, a smart transportation company, raised £9M, led by Zenobe, to launch EV fleet management solution focused on buses and trucks. GoMetro will develop on its “Bridge” solution, which links to telematics & connected car infrastructure to enable fleet managers a unified platform to manage their vehicles. GoMetro will use the funds to expand reach, aiming for X3 revenue and >50,000 vehicles onboarded in the coming year.
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