Movements | February 20th, 2020

The scooter/city hype cycle, earn free transit rides by watching ads, and so much more!

Feb 20, 2020

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Micromobility

The International Transportation Forum released a safety report on micromobility. “A road fatality is not significantly more likely when using a shared standing e-scooter rather than a bicycle. The risk of an emergency department visit for an e-scooter rider is similar to that for cyclists.” | ITF
The Scooter/City Hype Cycle by Lime’s head of government relations. | Adam Kovacevich

Coronavirus and Shared Micromobility: Meituan Bike is asking riders in China to bring disinfectant wipes along for the ride. “Meituan said it has been blasting disinfectant on all bikes, including those belonging to other bike rental companies.” | | TechNode
A profile of Estonian micromobility IoT startup Comodule. “Last year we actually served only the scooter market. To date, we have connected some 180,000 vehicles worldwide in 45 countries andover 60 cities.” | FoundMe
Citi Bike’s e-Bikes finally return to NYC! | StreetsBlog
Coaster Cycles partners with DoorDash to deploy a fleet of cargo e-bikes in New York City. | Ben Morris
What will happen to Europe’s scooter startups in 2020? “In Germany, you can have a bad start and catch up; in France, you either get licences and they’re worth a lot — €100ms — or you don’t get them and you have to shut down your French operations.” | Sifted

Product Launches & Updates

Swiftmile is adding a digital ad product to its micromobility charging stations. | Techcrunch
UberEats is adding non-partner restaurants to its platform. | Harry Campbell
Transit directions are rolling out on Apple Maps in Europe. | iMore
Miami and Cubic launch a new mobile transit app that allows users to earn free transit rides for watching personalized ads. “travellers collect Stars points and then convert them into ‘transit value’ that they can use to subsidise or pay for transit rides — or redeem ‘for various in-app offers’.” | NFCW

Ridehailing & Carsharing

Uber is testing a new feature that lets riders call a 1-800 number to request a ride. “Uber was also explicit that the 1-800 number is not meant for general customer support inquiries, although it will certainly be used for that purpose.” | Techcrunch
Uber launches a new feature to let riders report non-emergency, safety issues mid-ride. | The Verge
GoJek purchased a $30 million stake in a Taxi operator in Indonesia. | Bloomberg

Investment & Deals

Tier acquires Pushme, a distributed recharge network for micromobility batteries. | Shared Micromobility
Grab’s micromobility arm ‘GrabWheel’ raised a $30 million Series A from Tawianese electric vehicle company KYMCO. “The partnership will enable both firms to jointly explore developing and deploying two-wheel electric vehicles, specifically KYMCO’s Ionex electric bikes, as well as the Ionex EV charging platforms in Southeast Asian cities where Grab operates.” | e27
Indian food delivery startup, Swiggy, raises $113m. | TechCrunch

Cities & Policy

The total outstanding debt Americans owe on their cars has increased for the 33rd quarter in a row. | Fronter Group
The fine folks at Transit interview Andrew Salzberg, Uber’s former policy head. There’s an interesting discussion of transportation data standards as well as this gem: “Maybe the best thing to do is to just make sure the buses run faster, and run on time.” | Transit
San Francisco’s 2020 curb management strategy. | SFMTA

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