Uber and Tier exit Israel

Uber and Tier exit Israel, commercial flights to space start and the EU & NYC progress on gig workerRide-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐

Uber exits Israel - again. Launched in 2014, first exit circa end of 2019 was caused by local regulation prohibiting gig-employment, thus restricting Uber to work with taxis only, and eventually triggered by the pandemic. Uber returned to Israel in 2022 - but lack of a regulatory horizon in Israel, the low standard of service that local taxi drivers offered international travellers and trailing in market share behind Gett and Yandex have driven the company away yet again.

Bolt set to invest ±$8.7M (300M Baht) in Thailand expansion. InDrive applies for license in the Philippines. Yango Pakistan is now operational in Rawalpindi & Islamabad, following a launch in Lahore.

Uber launches in the Canary Islands. Uber has strong international demand, with tourists bringing in their Uber apps with them; last year 70,000 people (tried to) request an Uber in the Canary Islands. The Uber service focuses on the premium ‘Uber Black’ for regulatory reasons and there is a partnership with local OK Mobility to allow car rentals through the Uber app.

TADA plans layoffs. The company has yet to respond regarding numbers, local press estimates 50% of the workforce, roughly 45 employees. This comes a week after the news of a merger between TADA and i.M. In South Korea, Kakao Mobility has 90% of the market. Another player in the market is UT Taxi, a JV backed by Uber and TMap Mobility.

Even after a year and a half of being banned from app stores and not being able to take in new riders, Didi was able to keep 70% market share. Competitors Amap, a Alibaba subsidiary, and Meituan, two Chinese internet giants, have not been able to pose a major threat. There are a total of 309 ride-hailing companies in China,

New Delhi city is getting ready to impound bike taxis if Uber, Ola and Rapido do not comply with the ban instituted by the city, a ban which was enforced by the court last week. The government argues that bike taxis violate local city laws, while Uber argues that the ban hurts the livelihoods of its riders.

Careem Pakistan reduces ‘Go Mini’ prices. The ‘Go Mini’ service is the cheapest car-based service, featuring older and smaller cars with no AC (avg. day temp in the country is ±30 celsius / 86 fahrenheit).

Lyft’s drivers get more control over their trips. Drivers will be able to determine a radius for pickups and drop-offs; receive better visibility over future revenue on scheduled rides, on real-time airport conditions and where busy areas are.

FreeNow Poland paints taxis in rainbow colours and will provide educational webinars to drivers for the Pride month. A survey among riders and drivers showed that 73% of riders would enter such a taxi, with the rest refusing to do so; amongst drivers, 56% would agree for their taxi to be painted in rainbow colours, with the rest unwilling; and overall 48% said they have witnessed discrimination against a LGBT+ person.

Buser wins a legal case allowing it to operate in Paraná, Brazil. Buser is in and out of courts in different Brazilian states as its model is contested by traditional operators. Flix getting closer to IPO. Zeelo’s ‘taster’ program leads coach operators to buying EV buses.

Sharing/renting 🚗🛴

Friedel update on car subscription services, detailing MG & Arval, vibe moves you, casi.auto, Carve8 and more. Recommended.

Dribe is Denmark’s leading car subscription service. In the interview with the CEO we learn that Dribe franchises its brand and tech to enable dealerships to offer car subscriptions; more of his views in this 7 min interview.

Eni increases its car-sharing fleet in Rome with 100 new EV vehicles.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Tier exits Tel-Aviv. The city claims Tier’s operations were discontinued after multiple breaches, such as failing to provide availability city-wide, identify minors in a digital way and provide at least 75% of vehicles with helmets. Tier claims it is its decision, caused by high rates of scooter thefts. This leaves Tel-Aviv, a city of ±435,000 residents and a hub to more than a million employees, with Dott, Bird, Lime and Wind, each operating 1,800 scooters (the same number Tier operated).

Ryde ranked #1 in Norway tenders 4th consecutive time.

The correlation between happiness and cycling.

Delivery 🍽🧺

UberEats trails Deliveroo, Just Eat and Glovo in Italian food delivery, with ±7% market share, and so Uber has decided to exit the market. This is inline with Uber’s strategy to focus on sustainable markets, which usually means #1 or #2 player in terms of market share.

Uber expands its health division focusing on NEMT and prescription delivery, to include grocery and OTC medication delivery using UberEats.

Didi launches express delivery service in over 200 cities. The company partnered with Dada Express, Flash Delivery and UU Errands to provide a speedy local delivery service for small items, adding to current large items operations Did has.

Grubhub lays off 15% of its corporate workforce, circa 400 employees. In May 2023 the company had 9% US market share.

Aerial food delivery by Meituan. To facilitate delivery in dense urban environments, Meituan places kiosks across the city, and delivers to those locations, allowing a more planned, reliable and safe flight for its drones. In 2022, Meituan made more than 100,000 drone deliveries in Shenzhen.

Vertical integration in the delivery and restaurant industry is growing, and also toward POS. This time DoorDash and Cloudkitchens are partnering to create a moat.

Autonomous delivery robots map. Damien is not planning on updating it anymore so if anyone wants to take over, let him know.

Autonomous 🤖

Fernride, autonomous truck operating systems for use in industrial yards, raised $31M. The company plans to expand in Europe first and to the US by 2025 and to add between 50-80 people to its 120-strong workforce.

Cruise robotaxi appears to hinder emergency crews after mass shooting. Cruise denies, saying another lane was available and that an employee moved the car within half an hour (why move if it wasn’t blocking?). This wouldn’t be the 1st time autonomous cars are ‘lost’ when required to deal with clearing the way efficiently for emergency vehicles. Video.

EasyMile to deploy two driverless shuttles at the King Saud University (KSU) campus in Riyadh, covering a 2km route.

Flying cars 🚁

United Airlines and Eve Air Mobility partner to bring first electric commuter flights to San Francisco.

A Financial Times long read on which eVTOL will fly first. Bottom line circa 2025 for most. Aviation Week predicts slightly more than 1,000 deliveries of eVTOLs by 2030.

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Einride expands to Norway partnering with PostNord, Scandinavia's leading postal service. Six trucks will be deployed in the Oslo region this month but the goal is to reach 35 electric connected trucks by June 2024. Not autonomous.

Gig economy 💰

The EU is advancing in legislating gig-working rules, to the dislike of gig companies. There are an estimated 28 million platform workers in the EU, and current legislative draft could lead to 5 million of them classified as employees. The current draft classifies platform workers as employees if their work meets at least 3 out of 7 criterias: supervising the performance of workers through electronic means; restricting their ability to choose their working hours; restricting their tasks; preventing them from working for third parties; setting an upper limit on pay; setting rules on their appearance or conduct; and restricting their ability to use subcontractors or substitutes.

New York city raised food delivery minimum pay to $17.96 per hour, expected to grow to $19.96 on April 1st, 2025. This is up from an estimated average of $7.09 per hour. According to DoorDash, this could effectively mean a $33-per-hour rate while on delivery.

Simple economy tells us that increased costs are then moved over to the customer, increase in price leads to decrease in demand, leading to decrease in couriers, leading to better courier utilisation, leading to improved costs, leading to decrease in price, leading to increase in demand and eventually - equilibrium. TBC.

5 stars forever! An Oversharing article on gig-economy star-rating systems and why you should seriously avoid giving 4 stars or below rating to your driver / courier.

In other news 📰

Virgin Galactic starts commercial space flights. First flight to launch end of June, with a new flight every month.

A Verge long read on the ‘Kia Boys’, i.e. people who steal Kia and Hyundai cars. A design flaw led to models of these cars being particularly easy to steal, which has now resulted in Kia and Hyundai paying $200M in a class-action lawsuit settlement.

Uber leads a $20M round in India’s Everest Fleet, a Mumbai-based fleet management company that boasts over 10,000 vehicles running on rideshare platforms Uber and Ola throughout India, for EV expansion.

Trucksters raise €33M series B. The company divides long-haul delivery routes into smaller sections and enables semi-trailers swaps, allowing more truck drivers to sleep at home (and save on their pay).