Movements | August 6th, 2018
Micromobility
David Sacks discusses his investment in Bird. “When (Travis) came up with this, everyone thought he was crazy. I initially told him the idea was crazy. And then I actually tried the product… it was much more magical than I thought.” | This Week In Startups
Scooter chargers are developing excel models to track expenses and net revenue. One charger reports his net income is $3.13 a scooter after expenses | Charging Model
Lime is leveraging city events like music festivals to build up hype in yet to be launched markets | Chicago Suntimes
DC residents are petitioning for 20,000 dockless bikes. Currently the cap is at 400 vehicles per operator. There seems to be a pretty significant disconnect between user demand and DOTs’ willingness to embrace this mode. | Washington Post
The former head of Ofo US, Chris Taylor, joins Bird as SVP of Field Operations | Forbes
Razor Scooters officially launched its own sharing service in Long Beach, CA. The question in our mind: what is Razor’s goal? Is it to build a sustainable service business? Or try and drive customers to higher margin scooter sales? | Press Telegram
Index Ventures backed electric bike startup Cowboy hits €1 million in sales in 3 months after a soft launch in Belgium | Adrien Roose
Bird is launching in Paris and Tel Aviv — let’s see how quickly they can scale! | TechCrunch
Didi and Ant Financial are looking into buying out Ofo for $2B. On the other hand, Ofo’s CEO suggests that even $10B would be too low. We’ll see how this plays out. | Reuters
An excellent writeup on scooters as they relate to AVs | The Information
TNCs
Didi tests in-ride video recording for passenger and driver safety | Technode
Grab raises $2 billion | WSJ
Uber adds ex-Northrop CEO, Ronald Sugar to board of directors | Bloomberg
Uber, Grab and Lyft continue to invest heavily in building out financial products. “While mass transit has long been seen as a potential catalyst for changing payment habits, it’s apps such as Uber, Grab and Lyft that are making the biggest difference.” | PaymentsSource
Waymo announced a series of partnerships that bundle free rides with their fleet into local retail and hospitality offerings | TechCrunch
Cities
Uber announces results of Phase 2 of their mobility pilot in Central Florida, where each city subsidized 20% of Uber fares that started in one of the five cities and ended within their respective city limits. “During the second phase, more than 185,000 trips took place with a cost of over $330,000 within the 10-month period.” | Apopka Voice
An impassioned argument to expand Citi Bike in NYC | Streetsblog
Bird pays the city of Portland a dollar per scooter per day, so why not do the same for cars? | City Observatory
LA Metro is looking into integrated payment systems that spans multiple travel modes| Smart Cities Dive
We haven’t dug through it yet, but Mass. DOT seems to have a ton of rideshare trip data available | Mass.gov
Product Launches & Updates
You can now order a Lyft directly from within the Southwest Airlines app to serve as a first / last leg solution for travelers. | Mashable
Lyft launches a program to test the value proposition of ditching your car in exchange for access to $550 worth of bike share, Zipcar, and Lyft each month. This is super exciting and the closest thing we’ve seen in the US to a mobility subscription offering. | The Verge