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Movements | January 21st, 2020
Issue #79 - 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.
Welcome to another special edition of Movements. We want to welcome Alex Vickers as our guest DJ this week. Alex is a veteran in the shared micromobility space and has worked at places like JUMP, Uber, and Motivate. He even wrote an internal newsletter for Uber’s New Mobility division.
Alex Vickers here and I am pleased to guest-DJ this amazing platform. Like you, I religiously await the arrival of the Movements newsletter every week and rely on their curation to keep myself up to date on the mobility space. Thank you to Michal and Adam, and thank you to the readers.
Over the course of nearly a decade, I’ve had the privilege of working on the industry’s marquee projects at companies like Motivate, JUMP, and most recently Uber. I’ve supported the launch of over 30k micromobility vehicles and counting, in cities like New York City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Austin, and Los Angeles.
I recently moved on from Uber, and feel so privileged to embark on a brief sabbatical. I’m about to begin a mobility vision quest via Amtrak and riding across the US. I’ll be writing about it on my freshly minted newsletter, Drasienne. I just published my first article, a manifesto on the importance of taking a long view of two wheeled transportation’s 200 year old history. Subscribe to Drasienne here and feel free to reach out on my website, via email, on Twitter, or LinkedIn.
Micromobility
Lime, citing a move towards “financial independence” and profitability, exits 12 markets and laid off 14% of their staff. Lime President Joel Kraus claims Lime will be the first profitable scooter company in 2020. | Axios
Rachel Holt is leaving Uber to start a new venture firm, Construct Capital, after nearly a decade scaling the business. Rachel ran Uber’s New Mobility division and was formerly the GM for North America within the ride-hail business. | Twitter
Ryan Rzepecki, the founder of JUMP, is also leaving Uber, alongside other members of the JUMP team. | Business Insider
Product Launches & Updates
Segway sparked headlines last week at CES with a slew of product announcements. The Wall-E inspired S-pod is a new form factor for micromobility, an electric wheelchair that can reach speeds up to 24 mph. | Business Insider
Direct-to-consumer scooter brand Unagi has launched a new scooter with a user customizable design. Anyone want to order a purple scooter? | The Verge
Harley Davidson also had some CES reveals, including a line of electric motorcycles and a moped reminiscent of Bird/Juiced’s design. | Wired
Ridehailing & Carsharing
Lyft and Chase announce an unprecedented reward on Lyft trips - 10x points for every dollar spent. Chase Sapphire Reserve members also receive Lyft Pink, which includes VIP treatment for ride hail and 3 free micromobility trips a month. | Reuters
As CA’s AB5 has taken effect in the New Year, Uber has made a number of changes to its app to comply with the stricter labor regulations. David Zipper and Harry Campbell discussed at length on Harry’s Rideshare Guy podcast. | SF Chronicle
Investment & Deals
Bolt raises $56 million in venture debt from the European Investment Bank, a non-profit lending arm of the EU. | Techcrunch
Cities & Policy
Uber calls on United States Congress to boost cyclist, pedestrian safety. | Smart Cities Dive
Revel launches in Oakland after news of their permit leaked late during the holidays. Oakland is their first west-coast city and their fifth city to date. | SF Gate
Voi’s CEO Fredrik Hjelm pens an op-ed asking for smarter regulation of micromobility services and asks cities to bring order to the 10+ vendor chaos. | Sifted
Alexandre Gauquelin offers a deep dive into the Paris scooter RFP and offers some predictions on the winners. Some interesting tidbits: no seated scooters are allowed, MaaS collaboration is encouraged, and insurance is required. | Shared Micromobility
Curbed covers Lime’s withdrawal from Boston’s suburban dockless bike share pilot. There is only one dockless provider left in the pilot, but the docked system BlueBikes had its best year yet after expanding. | Curbed
Building on its equitable reputation, Oakland launched an adaptive scooter pilot w/ Lime to accommodate certain disabilities and create a more accessible micromobility system. | CBS
SFMTA shuts down GoX, an illegal scooter operator in San Francisco, for allegedly forging permits. The company owes $200k in unpaid fines after over 500 citations for deploying scooters in the right of way. | CBS