Movements | February 28th, 2020
Issue #84 - Brought to you by Michal Naka and Adam Feldman. Join thousands of others who receive this analysis and curation of emerging mobility news in their inbox every week — subscribe now.
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Micromobility
Tier is going multimodal in Europe with electric mopeds it acquired from Coup. | Techcrunch
Bird is testing ‘Bird Pay’ in Los Angeles. This allows riders to pay for items at local businesses with their Bird account balance. “Bird says it found that 58% of all the rides through its app start or end at a local business, and claims that businesses in all of its areas of operation — it’s now live in some 100 cities — say that the presence of Bird scooters outside their establishments have increased footfall.” | Techcrunch
Say hello to the new Scoot moped (i.e. Bird Cruiser). | Scoot Moped
The number of DAUs for mobility apps fell by 36% in China as the government imposed lockdowns for the Coronavirus. “Rental bikes were ranked (in Chinese) the safest means of public transportation during the epidemic by a popular health information app, Dingxiang Doctor.“ | TechNode
Lime released some Paris Stats: 2 million Paris users, 70% of rides are used to get to/from public transit during 8AM-6PM.
A Beam product manager explores the challenges of battery indicators for shared micromobility vehicles. “Users would like to see battery levels as high as possible and operators would like to only collect/charge scooters as close to 0% as possible, lest taking it off the streets and decreasing utilization rate.” | Mark Lee
Product Launches & Updates
VanMoof is expanding its leasing program in the Netherlands to include eBikes, starting at $79 euros a month. | Stephen Lambe
Lyft expands its ride product offering with ‘Lyft Preferred’ which allows riders to pay a little more for a newer car, more legroom, and top drivers. | Lyft
Ridehailing & Carsharing
Global ridehailing consolidation: Uber’s old rivals in Southeast Asia, GoJek and Grab, are rumored to be holding merger talks. “A major stumbling block to a deal is coming to an agreement on control of the combined firm, say the people familiar with the discussions.” GoJek has denied the report. | The Information
Ridehailing app Myle launches in NYC. | Engadget
The City of Vancouver, BC is concerned that Car2go’s pullout will lead to more car ownership. “Next week, city council will review new proposed policies by city staff that are designed to lower the cost of operating a carshare business in the city, while also making it easier for customers to use the service.” | Daily Hive
A deep dive into Lyft’s unit economics. | Modest Proposal
AAA will launch its free-floating carshare service “Gig” in Seattle, after the city lost Car2go, ReachNow, and Lime carshare over the last year. | Geekwire
The head of UberEats is stepping down. | Jason Droege
Uber inks a deal with AdOmni to put ads on top of vehicles. | Adweek
Waymo has doubled the size of its team over the past year| The Information
Investment & Deals
Tier tags on an additional $40 million to its Series B with a mix of debt and equity financing. | Techcrunch
Lyft acquired cartop advertising startup Halo Cars. | Axios
Grab raised $850 million dollars to expand its financial services operation. | Bloomberg
There have been merger talks among DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Postmates over the past year, just as DoorDash looks to go public. | WSJ
Cities & Policy
Phoenix becomes the first US City to install charger hubs for micromobility on the public right of way. | Downtown Devil
Lime talks about why it ceased operations in 12 markets: We pulled our scooters out of a dozen cities. Here’s what cities can learn from that. “It stands to reason that if they want to reduce car use, they’d encourage options proven to do just that. But many cities’ regulation of shared mobility hasn’t caught up to their goal of becoming less car-centric.” | Adam Kovacevich
There are some issues holding up federal approval of NYC’s congestion pricing plans. | Gothamist
Jobs
Token Transit is hiring for two exciting roles:
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