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Uber 🤝Turo, Lyft 🛠️micromobility and Rapido $200M

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Rapido, India’s largest bike-taxi player, raises $200M in a Series E; post-money is now $1.1 billion. Funds will go toward expanding the company’s car (4-wheeler) offer, going head-to-head with Ola and Uber, and toward developing a quick-delivery offer.  

Yango reaches 1 million downloads in Ethiopia. There are circa 12 active ride-hailing companies operating in the capital; market leaders are Feres and Ride. Yango pricing is 30% lower than competition, with heavy rider discounts offered on first rides. The company also takes less driver commissions, only 7%, which supports driver recruitment. 

Gojek exits Vietnam to focus on Singapore and Indonesia. Local operations, which offer ride-hailing, food delivery and courier service, are said to have only 1-digit market share, and constitute only 1% of the company's total gross transactions. Commentary. 

Uber launches ride-hailing trial in Tokyo using car-share vehicles from Park24 Co (driver rentals) and taxi operator Royal Limousine (driver license to operate). In April the government lifted the ban on ride-hailing. 

American Transit, which insures roughly 60% of New York City’s more than 117,000 taxi and rideshare vehicles, went into insolvency. In Q2, it had over $700M in net losses. 

Uber Shuttle (bus) launches in Delhi. Uber offers a premium bus for commuters, tailored to their needs, using data Uber has from its ride-hailing operations.

In the UK in 2023, Bolt posted a profit of £8.3M, up from a loss of £47.6M in 2022. For the full report. Vinka, dispatch software, passed 10 million trips, in partnership with Finnish Menevä. FlixBus expands to South India. InDrive plans to expand its Philippines offer to include motorcycle ride-hailing. Hola Taxi is a new taxi-app in Ireland, offering a cooperative approach and lower commissions. Istanbul is setting up a new taxi app to deal with complaints against taxi drivers, particularly regarding route refusals, overcharging tourists, and denying short-distance rides.

Last week the court allowed Uber to operate from Cancun’s airport, and now taxi drivers are blocking Uber drivers’ way, forcing tourists who took Uber - to walk. This is the 2nd time taxi drivers are physically engaging Uber, 1st time was in January 2023. 

More than 50% of ride-hailing trips taken by surveyed riders in California replaced more sustainable forms of transportation or created new vehicle miles, according to a study from the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.  


 

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

Uber and Turo partner to bring Turo’s vehicles to Uber Rent - this comes a week after Uber closed its own P2P unit, Uber Carshare. Turo’s vehicles will be available on the Uber platform in early 2025. 

Coastr partners with Flexter to disrupt the world of truck and van rental. Zity launches in Boadilla del Monte, Spain. Leo&Go, a car sharing service in Lyon, a Volug initiative, is celebrating three years.


 

Micromobility 🚲🛴

Lyft restructures its micromobility business. In the past Lyft tried to sell its micromobility unit, but now is focusing on working with cities, working today with cities such as NYC, Washington and Denver. Key takeaways: 

  • New name: Lyft Urban Solutions (LUS)

  • Focus on docked bikes and scooters. No more dockless. 

  • Laying off 1% of workforce, roughly 30 employees

  • Partnership with Bird / Spin to remain as-is

Madrid bans rented scooters, canceling contracts with Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility, each deploying 2,000 scooters. The city says operators could not control safe riding and parking behaviour. 

Wunder Mobility acquires goUrban, both SaaS platform to manage micromobility and car-sharing operations. Wunder has players such as Forest and Green Mobility, goUrban counts Joco and others. 

Skarper raise an additional £4.5M. The company develops and markets a lightweight, portable drive system which connects to regular bicycles' disc brake rotors and transforms them into high-performance electric bikes

Londoners have a known secret - painfully known to scooter operators - the city is actually comprised of 32 boroughs - or 32 different administrations. Voi raised the challenge associated with this structure when threatening to leave London, and now the borough of Brent is threatening to cut off Lime, citing parking behaviour. The borough wants dedicated e-bike parking bays, the ability to remove inconsiderately parked or abandoned e-bikes, and to increase the penalty fine - or see Lime leave by the end of October. 

Ario launched in Auckland, NZ, in July 2024, introducing tele-parking capabilities. Now the NZTA has instructed the company to disable that feature, as it conflicts with the definition of a “wheeled recreational device” in the NZ law. 

Dott stops monthly scooter hire scheme in Bristol. The company is “reassessing the risks posed by the at-home charging model”. Voi reached 2 million rides in Southampton. Whizz, e-bike rental, expands to Philadelphia. 


 

Delivery 🍽🧺

UAE’s Mubadala, Abu Dhabi wealth fund, takes full control of Turkish grocery delivery Getir. Mubadala has been the key investor in Getir, “providing over 80% of the capital that has gone into the company since 2021”. Today Getir focuses on the Turkish market and its US activities via FreshDirect. 

In South Korea, Baemin has seen its market share dip below 60% for the first time in two years. Growth is coming from Coupang Eats, with ¹23% market share. 

Swiggy introduces incognito mode, erasing such orders from the user’s history. This can be useful, especially for those with a shared account, when planning surprises or just wanting to hide personal wellbeing items. 

Rappi, Latin America delivery, acquired the assets of Fountain9, an AI supply chain solution. Rappi will receive the company’s IP and integrate the existing team. 

Delivery Mates adds 40 cargo bikes. Gopuff to increase fees in the UK. 


 

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Vay introduces Teledriving-as-a-Service for B2B, created for OEMs, car share and rental firms, trucking, luxury, delivery and logistics companies. The company currently has similar partnerships with Peugeot and Ush & Poppy.

Waymo publishes a new data hub to increase transparency - Safety Impact. A lot of data, to convince the public AVs are safe, using human-driven numbers as the benchmark.



Waymo safety dashboard

 

Inceptio Technology, self driving trucks, completed delivery of 400 level-3 autonomous trucks to ZTO Express, a Chinese logistic operator. 

Tesla launches Actually Smart Summon (ASS), allowing vehicles to autonomously navigate their way through parking lots, after a two year delay. 

Holon to open its 1st US manufacturing plant in Jacksonville, Florida. Production of the fully electric and autonomous shuttles to begin in 2026. Glydeways in Atlanta, building a half mile path. Autonomous bus operations in Sleeping Bear Dunes. A New York Times article on teledriving; the article is mainly about Zoox. 

Tesla’s self-driving is still not working in Boring’s one-way tunnels.


 

Flying cars 🚁

TNMT continue their deep dive into AAM's 2024 landscape - this time on the fifth critical industry factor: the AAM ecosystem.

Volocopter’s CEO leaves while the company builds a new advisory board.


 

OEMs 🛺⚡️

BYD, Chinese EV maker, to buy German car distributor Hedin Electric. The move is a part of BYD’s strategy to increase its European footprint. Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath is stepping down amid flagging sales. BMW overtakes Tesla in European EV sales for first time. 

The long road of the EV Revolution.


 

In other news 📰

Swiftly, public transportation software, acquires Hopthru to add ridership analysis and NTD reporting to its transit data platform. Alerce acquires WeMob to strengthen logistics offering. Drift’s Autonomous yacht. Tesla is deleting old blog posts. 


 

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

Armin Fendrich is the new Head of Growth @ Magic Lane.

Carlo Iacovini is the new COO and Board Member @ Maxi Mobility. 

Elad Goldman is the new Senior Manager Startup-Ecosystem Development, Israel @ Continental. 

Marien Jomier is the new VP West Europe @ Dott. 

Maxime Siret is the new Chef de produit numérique transport.data.gouv.fr - Intrapreneur @ Ministère Écologie Territoires. 

Mohammed Radi is the new Chief Executive Officer @ Virtua Mobility. 

Stefan Koch is the new Managing Director @ Smart Parking Germany GmbH.

Congrats and good luck!


 

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