Abolish cost per mile 🔥

September 12, 2019

This week, cycling death are on the rise in the U.S., bike-sharing is on the comeback in China, and SUVs are under fire in Berlin, but first…

Achtung!

Micromobility Europe is less than three weeks away.

On October 1, we will be bringing the leading minds in (micro)mobility together at Radialsystem in Berlin for a full day of programming addressing all the BHAGs of 21st-century transport, from car-free cities to self-driving scooters.

Attending this event will offer choices between different main stage programming, breakout workshops, networking opportunities, and vehicle demos. View the agenda here.

As a reminder, if you haven’t purchased your ticket already, every Sunday this month Berlin prices are going to increase €50.

The next increase will take place this Sunday, September 15.

Get your ticket today.

Quick Question

Want this week’s tickets at last week’s prices? Join Triple M and automatically receive a €50 discount on tickets to Micromobility Europe.

Plus, members of our premium subscription service also receive a ticket discount to our U.S. conference, exclusive swag at events, access to our private Slack channel, and the ability to join monthly Q&A calls with our very own Horace Dediu.

Come be on the forefront of the movement to unbundle the car.

Cost ≠ Mile

Speaking of Horace, in his latest blog post he looks at how we have traditionally quantified the cost of a mile of car travel and then questions the whole paradigm.

Micromobility reframes transportation enough to imply that we should not charge for miles at all. Or minutes. It suggests bundling of miles and minutes into subscriptions. It suggests providing value “on top” of the utility of transport. Offsetting the transport of kilograms by the data and services that can be targeted to the user.

Read the full article here.

Own or Rent?

In a new interview on the podcast, Boosted Boards CEO Jeff Russakow makes the case that the owned model isn’t dead and that his company is bigger than the vehicle types for which it is known.

“We aren’t competing in the skateboard market. Or the scooter market. We’re competing in the multi-trillion-dollar micromobility market,” Jeff Russakow, CEO, Boosted Boards

Listen to the full interview here.

What You Need to Know This Week

Just how big was summer 2019 for European micromobility? Well...
- This week Lime announced that it had surpassed 1M scooter rides in Berlin alone. | Lime
- While its Berlin-based rival Tier shared that it had hit 10M rides worldwide. | Lawrence Leuschner
- And Voi revealed that it had also crossed the 10M milestone globally. (The Swedish startup marked the occasion by launching a traffic safety school for e-scooters.) | Fredrik Hjelm

6.8 in 100,000 Voi rides in Sweden result in an accident 💥🛴
— Micromobility (@MicromobilityCo)
5:01 PM • Sep 8, 2019

Politicians in Berlin are calling for an SUV ban in the city center following a collision involving a 4WD vehicle that left four dead. | Guardian

… but according to some in Germany, the real menace on the road is electric scooters. The head of a national physicians group says the two-wheelers are “just too dangerous, so get rid of them.” | The Local

New Orleans has cleared the way for ebikes to be integrated into its bike-sharing system. | Advocate

Lime has launched a “group ride” option in the U.S. and Canada in hopes of preventing people from riding tandem. The new in-app feature allows a single rider to unlock up to five scooters at once and share them among friends. | Electrek

Dublin has extended its bike-sharing program to the suburbs. | 98FM

As part of its tactical urbanism initiative, Spin has funded an intersection makeover in Salt Lake City to make the area safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and scooter riders. | Deseret News

A new British study finds that e-scooters, if legalized in the U.K., would be faster than cars for up to 70% of urban trips. (If that figure sounds familiar, it’s because Skip released data from San Francisco last week that revealed pretty much the exact same thing.) | Telegraph

… meanwhile, a new report by INRIX ranks the top markets for micromobility in the U.S., the U.K, and Germany based on how many short car trips people take. | INRIX

The Transit app is making multiple public transportation and bike-share providers, including Denver’s RTD, New York’s Citi Bike, D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare, Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, and the Cincinnati Metro, accessible and payable through its new “Transit Accounts” feature. | Transit

U.S. biking fatalities are up 25% since 2010 and 10% since last year, while all other traffic deaths are declining. | Vice

No assembly required: At least one IKEA, in Cologne, now carries electric mopeds by Vässla. | Chase Stubblefield

IKEA is selling micromobility. 🇸🇪
Can’t put your furniture together? 📦
Just wait till you try to build your own scooter. 😆
— Chase Stubblefield (@chasestubb)
8:32 PM • Sep 10, 2019

Mitsubishi is investing in MaaS Global, the Helsinki-based company behind the multimodal subscription app Whim. | Bloomberg

Jump is removing its ebikes from Atlanta, while its scooters will stay. | WSB

Oktoberfest has banned electric scooters from its festival grounds due to concerns over intoxicated riding. | DW

Meet the new, revitalized Chinese bike-share, featuring fewer vehicles, higher prices, and gobs of funding from internet giants like Didi and Meituan. | Pandaily

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