Movements | June 19th, 2020
Issue [#97] - 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
COVID is changing consumer preferences in a way that may benefit micromobility. | Comotion
An overview of the MIT autonomous bike project. “The project proposes that autonomous bicycles could serve as an alternative to current bike sharing models.” | MIT
The city of Madrid is moving forward with a plan to subsidize electric micromobility vehicles up to €750 euros. “The cap is determined by the type of vehicle. For scooters, it will be € 150; for bicycles €500; for mopeds, € 600; and for electric motorcycles, € 750.” | Madrid Secreto (Spanish)
Bird will be testing turn-by-turn micromobility directions in Tel Aviv and Paris with a new standalone app. “Bird Maps prioritizes bike lanes, wide roads or paths with less traffic and offers visual and, more importantly, audio directions to riders.“ | Techcrunch
JUMP founder Ryan Rzpecki is exploring building a charter city. “More and more people can work remotely and are not tied to existing cities, so there is demand to create new places for them to live, with new regulatory frameworks.” | Business Insider
Product Launches & Updates
Triumph, a 118-year old motorcycle brand, announced its first eBike to the public. | Triumph
Google’s experimental public transit next time arrival app, Pigeon, is quietly being shut down. | area120
Mahindra is shutting down its US electric scooter and eBike subsidiary GenZe. | Electrek
France’s national railway SNCF is integrating Uber booking into its consumer app. “Someone who does not have an Uber account but already has an SNCF Connect account will be able to make a reservation and pay via our app. It is a real turning point, a dense partnership, for which Uber has agreed to make an exception for a given country and company.” | Les Echos (French)
Lime has rolled out a suite of new pricing options called LimePass. | Lime
Day Pass - one-time purchase makes joyriding affordable with a flat fee for unlimited 30-minute rides for 24 hours
Monthly Pass - monthly subscription for a flat rate for a set number of rides up to 30 minutes
Unlock Pass - skip the unlock fee on every ride with this one-time purchase
Ridehailing, Carsharing, & Delivery
Following Via’s lead, Uber has decided to chase higher margin SaaS revenue by selling its software directly to transit operators. They’re working with Marin transit on an on-demand paratransit service, sharing public transit schedules in the Uber app, and offering discounts on rides to cover the last mile between transit and final destinations. | Bloomberg
Lyft commits to transitioning their entire driver fleet over to zero emission vehicles by 2030 | Lyft
Didi is testing grocery delivery. | TechNode
Investment & Deals
Splyt raises a $20m Series B from SoftBank and American Express to scale up their mobility integration platform. They will continue to enable cross-service integration of ridehail, travel, etc. into super apps and aggregators. | Splyt
Facebook acquires swedish crowdsource mapping startup Mapillary. | Techcrunch
Citymapper quietly brings on new investors as it looks for an acquirer. “It was going to raise funding on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube in April but the coronavirus derailed those plans.” | CNBC
Cities & Policy
Edmonton’s eBike rebate program ‘sells out in days. “The rebate offers to cover 30 per cent of an e-bike purchase up to $750.” | CTV
While Mayor Bill De Blasio’s handling of Covid-19 in NYC has been generally deplorable, this is a mobility newsletter, so we’re only going to focus on the transportation bit of it. The Economist has an excellent take on the special characteristics that make big cities like NYC so great, and how a lack of smart transportation policy from the mayor threatens them. | The Economist
Traffic deaths per 100 million miles have jumped 14% in March compared to the same year before, as drivers speed through sparse traffic. | Bloomberg
For today’s cringe worthy mass transit joke: sea turtles can carry more than 100,000 tiny animals on their shells. | pourmecoffee
Bosch, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers and eBike drivetrain makers, calls politicians for the expansion of urban bicycle infrastructure: “eBikes and bicycles are not only environmental-friendly. They also better suit today’s requirements for urban mobility than any other transport mode.” | Bike EU
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