Apple and Amazon want you to bike more (at home)

Scooters will soon land in Japan, REI enters the e-bike game, and the “Vroom Boom” may not be legit.

September 22, 2020

Hello and welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, a weekly missive about mobility, mostly mobility in cities by small electric 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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Our next guest is…

All the new bikes and scooters on the road during lockdown have laid bare a sad truth about our cities: For the most part, micromobility infrastructure hardly even exists today.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the lack of parking, bike lanes, slow streets, and charging hubs is the single biggest obstacle preventing new people from trying LEVs.

Join us next week for a critical conversation with three urbanism experts—Anna Zivarts, Disability Mobility Director at Disability Rights Washington, Warren Logan, Policy Director of Mobility for the City of Oakland, Peter Deppe, CEO of Kuhmute—about building bold, ambitious micromobility infrastructure in cities.

What you need to know this week

  • Two of Silicon Valley’s biggest heavyweights are coming after Peloton with their own fitness services. First, Apple teased Fitness+, a new app for streaming workout classes with trainers, then Amazon announced its first-ever connected exercise product, Prime Bike. While both Apple and Amazon are focusing on home fitness for now, it’s interesting to see two of tech’s biggest companies thinking about what moves people to be more active.

  • Cowboy is bringing free crash detection to its e-bikes later this month. “The bike uses its sensors to watch out for potential falls. If it detects one, and you don’t confirm that everything’s okay within a minute, Cowboy can alert up to two emergency contacts.”

  • Vanmoof raised $40 million in Series B financing led by Norwest Venture Partner, bringing its total funding to $73 million. The Amsterdam-based electric bike company, which says its global revenue has grown 220% during lockdown, plans to use the new capital to expand its market share in North America, Europe, and Japan.

  • London Mayor Sadiq Khan was seen riding a Brompton electric bike on his way to work this week.

  • Following the uproar about abandoned rental bikes in China a few years ago, the country’s bike-share operators are trying to get better about recycling.

  • Speaking of which, oil and gas companies have been systematically misleading the public for decades into believing that used plastic is being recycled, when in reality, it mostly goes to landfills. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” said one former lobbyist. As the demand for oil for cars and trucks declines, and plastic becomes more central to big oil’s bottom line, expect the industry to intensify its efforts to make recycling appear viable.

  • Swedish startup Teleport Mobility is aiming to create a universal battery standard for e-bikes and e-scooters.

  • Bird is selling a new foldable scooter, the Bird Air, at Target. At $599, the new model costs significantly less than the company’s first retail scooter, the $1299 Bird One, placing it closer to the popular Segway-Ninebot Max in the mid-price category.

  • But that doesn’t mean Bird is giving up on renting scooters. This week the California-based company established its first real toehold in the UK in the city of Redditch.

  • Here is a rundown of the new subscription micromobility services that have emerged during lockdown. The leasing space is growing so fast, we devoted a section to it in the latest edition of the Landscape Report.

  • To keep up, Joyride just released a new service that allows shared micromobility platforms to rent vehicles by the day, week, or month.

  • Madison, Wisconsin, is swapping city workers’ pickup trucks for electric cargo bikes.

  • Is the “Vroom Boom,” or the supposed explosion in car buying caused by the coronavirus pandemic, even real? While US auto sales were slightly elevated this summer, that came after a gigantic downturn in new registrations in spring.

  • Uber pledges to shift to 100% EVs by 2030.

  • Former Tour de France champion Greg Lemond is starting a bike business. Its first two models will be e-bikes.

  • An increasing number of cities are requiring that rental scooters be secured to bike racks when not in use. Here are the pros and cons of lock-to requirements.

  • In the early days of the pandemic, the conventional wisdom held that the coronavirus preyed on cities first and foremost. But following severe outbreaks in rural and suburban areas, researchers now say that other factors, including “connections among communities, access to health care, and crowding within a small area,” are as important as population density.

  • Climate migration is accelerating. How will it reshape America?

Pod people

There are over 6 million auto rickshaws in India. And Cedrick Tandong has a plan to make them electric.

On a new episode of the podcast, Oliver Bruce sits down with the founder of Three Wheels United to talk about financing the LEV revolution in the world’s biggest tuk-tuk market.

Jobs to be done

Welcome to our jobs board, where every week we post new career openings in hopes of connecting our readers with professional opportunities in the burgeoning world of new mobility. Find out who’s hiring below and sign up for the newsletter to view fresh listings every week.