5️⃣0️⃣ Reasons for Walkable Streets

Plus, Uber Eats devours Uber Rides, Veo snags $16m, and Ola’s moped sees Cybertruck-sized preorders.

July 20, 2021

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Don’t Miss…

People ask us: How can micromobility startups align their market entry strategies, with cities’ desired policy outcomes, to score coveted permits?To help them, Oliver Bruce, co-host of The Micromobility Podcast, is hosting an in-depth virtual panel next week—featuring experts from Particle and Superpedestrian—about policy, permits, and more. It’s going to be full of timely, practical info for operators.

The Longview

  • FastCo has 50 reasons why everyone should want more walkable streets. Reason #4: “Someone with a one-hour commute in a car needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, researchers found that if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.”

  • Sobering statistic on American road deaths: “In the last decade, fatalities for car drivers and passengers have increased by no more than 2 percent, but pedestrian fatalities are up almost 50%.”

  • Tesla has started selling its “Full Self Driving” package for $199 a month. The cars still don’t drive themselves, but FSD does point to a new and likely lucrative subscription model for ADAS.

  • Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicts Eats will be a bigger business than Rides in the long run. (Indeed, Uber added grocery delivery in 400 cities this week.)

  • Why “infrastructure” is such a tricky word to define.

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  • From the 1-min city (Stockholm) to the 1,000-min city (Turin), here’s an interesting look at how urban planners are tinkering with Paris’s 15-min concept.

  • What if employers that subsidize parking at work were required to offer an equal cash benefit (aka a “parking cash out”) to employees who don’t drive? “After employers offered the cash option, solo driving to work fell 17%, carpooling increased 64%, transit ridership increased 50%, and walking or biking increased 39%.”

  • The vast amount of user, traffic, and mapping data Didi collects is becoming a liability in China.

  • Used car prices in the U.S. climbed an insane 10.5% in June.

  • Do online shoppers really use their cars less? Maybe not. A study from China indicates that online shopping is more likely to reduce trips to the store among non-car users than car users.

  • Why is promoting active transportation crucial to meeting our climate goals? An Oxford researcher sums it up: “If all new cars sold were electric, it would take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.”

The Microview

  • Micromobility operator Veo has raised a $16m Series A round to fund U.S. expansion. Led by Autotech Ventures.

  • Ola is seeing a huge response for its soon-to-launch e-moped, reporting that more than 100k potential buyers placed orders on the first day of presales. However, you probably should take those Cybertruck-sized booking numbers with a grain of salt. The fee to reserve a moped, 500 Rs ($6.70), is a tiny fraction of the total price.

  • Superpedestrian has acquired Navmatic, a startup that helps detect and control unsafe e-scooter behavior by slowing or stopping the vehicle in real time.

  • A Fluctuo survey of 16 European markets found that, as cities shook off travel restrictions, shared scooter ridership increased by 200% since June 2020.

  • Traffic management platform NoTraffic has raised $17.5m in Series A funding to double the size of its team. Led by Nielsen Ventures.

  • India’s Zypp Electric unveiled a new heavy-duty electric moped designed for last-mile logistics and delivery.

  • Bird is requiring late-night riders to complete an in-app puzzle before unlocking a scooter in an attempt to discourage inebriated riders

  • Rad Power is out with a new version of its flagship e-bike, the RadRover. As the company’s most expensive bike to date ($2k), it features a bevy of important upgrades, including hydraulic disc brakes, a custom geared-hub motor, a new ergonomic frame, an improved LED display, and a semi-integrated battery.

rad power bikes radrover 6 plus

Jobs to Be Done

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