ACLU: Tracking scooters is unconstitutional

Curfews strand essential workers, the RV boom is real, and Fuji ends bike sales to police.

June 09, 2020

Hello and welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, a weekly missive about mobility, mostly mobility in cities by small vehicles like bikes and scooters. The reason you’re reading this email is that you signed up on our website or came to one of our events.

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Last chance to register for the on-demand delivery panel tomorrow at 10am PT / 1pm ET hosted by Founder Shield. They’ll be joined by the CEOs of Urbanstems, Relay, Saucey, and ibott @ Apollo for a discussion on what it takes to be successful in the on-demand delivery space.

Scooter App Analysis, May 2020

By Prabin Joel Jones

After being struck by the one-two punch of the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing global lockdown in March and April, overall scooter app activity showed tentative signs of recovery last month.

The total number of new app store reviews shot up by 264% in May as cities relaxed their quarantines and people were allowed to travel more freely. This represents a major reversal from April, when the number of reviews slipped 86%. With Lime unfreezing its operations and returning scooters to many of its markets, its volume of app store reviews increased the most (787%), followed by Bird (452%).

Prabin Joel Jones is the COO of e-motionlabs, a European mobility technology company that provides connectivity solutions for light electric vehicles.

What you need to know this week

  • From over-policing to “defensible” spaces, America’s cities were designed to oppress black communities. Urban planners must confront this legacy of systematic racism in order to begin unraveling the structural inequity that is so tightly woven into our society.

  • Curfews implemented during the George Floyd protests shut down transit and ride-hail in many cities, stranding essential workers who don’t own cars. Minneapolis, New York, Houston, Chicago, and other metros banned nighttime bike-share rentals too, angering cycling activists. Food-delivery workers were supposed to be exempt from the curfews, but in many cases they were arrested anyway, forcing Uber to bail out its drivers.

  • Fuji suspended the sale of bicycles to North American police forces after its products were used in a violent crackdown against Black Lives Matter protestors. Your turn, Trek.

  • The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against LA over the city’s MDS requirement that scooter- and bike-share companies provide anonymized real-time location data. The suit alleges that MDS, the digital tool used by LA to track scooters, violates the Fourth Amendment and seeks an injunction to end the collection of trip data. “Renting an electric scooter should not give the government the right to trace your every move—where you start, where you end, and all stops, twists, and turns in between.” 

    • Reminder: Uber sued LA this spring on the grounds that MDS could violate the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The status of its suit is unclear now that Uber has sold its micromobility unit to Lime.

  • Volkswagen finalized a $2.6 billion funding deal with Argo AI. The German automaker and Ford now own an equal stake in the Pittsburgh-based self-driving car startup.

  • At 800 pounds, the world’s cheapest EV, the $1,200 Changli Nemeca from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is more golf cart than car. (Officially it is classified as a four-wheel electric tricycle, whatever that means). It’s also getting surprisingly good reviews.

  • New reports say Uber will donate 5,800 Jump e-bikes that were previously destined for the landfill to nonprofits. Welcome news, if true.

  • But in a replay of the Uber/Jump debacle, Bird is shutting down Circ’s Middle East operations and scrapping up to 10,000 scooters.

  • Helbiz became the first company to launch dockless scooters in Rome.

  • Facebook and Paypal have invested an undisclosed sum in Southeast Asian ride-hailing app Gojek.

  • NYC is spending money on ads to remind cyclists to practice social distancing. This is the same NYC that has no pandemic transportation plan and is lagging behind other global cities in building an emergency open-streets network.

  • Amazon is now the fourth-largest US delivery service.

  • Germany will require all fuel stations to provide electric car charging.

  • The coronavirus RV boom is real, according to peer-to-peer rental companies. Outdoorsy claims its bookings are up 2,645% since early spring; RVshare reports its rentals leapt 650% in April compared to March and then 1,000% in May.

  • As Europe emerges from lockdown, Voi, Tier, and Dott all report that demand for scooters is bouncing back fast. Not only that, but trips are getting longer (Tier says average ride duration is up 20%; Lime says 25%), which suggests riders may be using scooters as a replacement for transit trips.

  • Bars, restaurants, and cafes in Paris can now apply for “temporary pedestrianization” of the streets outside their businesses to create more space for outdoor seating.

  • Tembeci, which says it owns 80% of the market share in Latin America’s micromobility sector, raised $47 million to expand its docked e-bike services. The Series B round was led by Valor Capital and Redpoint Ventures.

  • Ride-hail watch: Didi’s trip requests are back to pre-pandemic levels. Careem doesn’t expect a full recovery until 2021, which is why it is focusing on its payment and delivery businesses. Lyft’s trip requests are up 26% month over month, but down 70% year over year. Uber, which is in the same boat as Lyft, notes that demand is returning during “party hours,” not rush hour.

  • Cowboy released the third generation of its e-bike. New features include a longer-lasting, carbon belt, theft alerts, and crash detection.

  • Sales of e-bikes are rising in Northern Ireland, but licensing and registration requirements pose an obstacle for new riders.

  • Uber isn’t the only company that’s hungry to acquire Grubhub. Two European suitors, Just Eat Takeaway and Delivery Hero, reportedly want to purchase the US food-delivery service too.

  • Shared e-bike company Bond acquired the vehicle connectivity startup e-motionlabs.

  • The French e-bike market could reach 1 million units a year by 2025.

  • For all the people looking to buy their first e-bike right now, we asked seven experts to recommend best pedelecs for beginners.

  • Lisbon is offering residents micromobility subsidies: €100 for buying a bike, €350 for an electric bike, and €500 for a cargo bike.

  • Hardware startup Superpedestrian started a new scooter service, Link, after raising raising $15 million in funding and acquiring Zagster’s “permits, software and other IP, and talent.” Link was quietly piloted in Florida over the last few months and will launch in four more US cities soon.

  • NYT: “E-bikes Are Having Their Moment. They Deserve It.”

Pod people

On the latest episode of the podcast, Ryan Rzepecki tells the behind-the-scenes story of starting Jump, from the wild-and-wooly days as Social Bicycles to the blitzscaling Uber period and beyond. It’s a great oral history of a seminal micromobility company whose fate is now a bit up in the air following the Uber/Lime deal.

Jobs to be done

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