Bird might be scootin’ to a SPAC

Plus, Bolt plots European domination, Strava rides the bike boom, and Hellobike busts into ride-hail.

November 17, 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 webinars or events.

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Thank you for reading.

Hello, world

We’d like to take a min to introduce an all-new digital gathering, Micromobility World (Jan 27 - 29), reflecting the unprecedented disruptions that have swept tech, cities, and mobility in the last year. The goal is to bring together vetted startups, transportation leaders, and big thinkers for three concise, focused days of original content aimed at understanding the real-time transportation revolution we are currently witnessing, including:

  • Visionary city planner Janette Sadik-Khan on how pandemic-proofing our communities is actually just good urbanism

  • Wayne Ting, CEO of Lime—alongside journalist Cory Weinberg of The Information—on the rise, fall, and remarkable comeback of scooters

  • Entrepreneur Bradley Tusk—in conversation with WSJ reporter Eliot Brown—on what micromobility can learn from the early days of Uber

  • Plus many, many more.

Hope to see you there.

What you need to know this week

  • Rumor has it Bird is exploring going public via SPAC with Credit Suisse Group. Blank-check companies have boomed to an all-time high this year. If the deal goes through, Bird would be the first micromobility company to join the party.

  • Giant has generated 27% of its total revenue with ebikes this year.

  • Strava raised $110M in a Series F round led by Sequoia and TCV. Driven partly by the bike boom, the activity and fitness app is touting a growth rate of 2 million new users per month.

  • Whales make a splash. Less than a week after Softbank revealed it’s backing Berlin-based Tier, Uber rival Bolt pledged to put $118M into its micromobility unit. The company aims to deploy 130,000 electric scooters and bikes across 100 European cities in 2021.

  • President-elect Joe Biden’s transportation plan could include up to $1.3T in infrastructure investment. Policy guru David Zipper wrote an action plan for how the administration could use some of those funds to sustain the bike boom.

  • Hellobike, one of China’s biggest bike-sharing platforms, is entering the country’s ride-hailing market aiming to take on Didi Chuxing. Is this the first time a company whose core business is micromobility has made a ride-sharing play?

  • As of October, around 625,000 electric scooter trips have been booked in South Korea this year—more than quadruple the total for 2019.

  • Geofencing lockouts. Bike thefts. Wayfinding woes. Sidewalk riding. Oliver Bruce dissects all the parts of micromobility that don’t work—and how to fix them—this Thursday on a live webinar featuring Unagi, Lyft, Synapse, and Knack. Register free here.

  • Net sales for Dutch bike manufacturer Accell Group grew 38% between July and October, year-over-year.

  • Pre-sale reservations have begun for Series 1 Cycles, the ebike brand recently founded by Harley Davidson. The initial lineup will include four high-end pedal-assisted city bikes, priced between $3,399 to $4,999, and be available in Germany and the US by spring 2021.

  • Patent applications reveal more details about Uber’s autonomous scooter.

  • Last week BMW teased a conceptual electric motorbike called Motorrad.

BMW Motorrad built an electric scooter fit for Akira
Brazil, broomstick scooter, harry potter inspired scooter, Brazilian duo, Motorised brook stick scooter, Harry Potter series, harry potter inspire broomstick scooter, broom stick scooter viral video, Indian express news,

  • What makes urban professionals tick? Northwest Arkansas has an interesting guess. The area is trying to lure remote STEM workers with offers of a $10,000 stipend—and a bike.

  • Usain Bolt–affiliated scooter startup Bolt Mobility is raising money through equity crowdfunding.

  • Comodule and Brose are working together to combine drive technology with an open cloud platform, enabling bike-share operators to view real-time data on the status of their vehicles.

  • Biking Biden.

  • Dense European cities are having more success at making the 15-minute transformation than sprawling, car-dependent US metros.

  • The Netherlands is replacing ash tray posts with ebike charging ports at train stations.

  • Israel-based Ride Safety raised $7M to build an AI-driven safety system to prevent motorcycle collisions. The Series A round was led by crowdsourcing platform OurCrowd.

  • Rad Power Bikes has a new solution to the perennial question of how do DTC brands provide reliable maintenance: a mobile bike shop in a van that drives to customers for one-on-one service appointments.

Coming attractions

If you’re planning on coming to Micromobility World in January, you should check out CoMotion LA in the meantime. The virtual conference kicks off later today and runs until November 19th, featuring an impressive lineup of micromobility experts, including from Lime, Tier, Tembici, and Segway-Ninebot. Learn more and register.

Pod people

Idealog-Tauranga_Innovation_by_Richard_Robinson_Photography-3000-1.jpg

Lamborghini started out making tractors, which begs the question, what technologies could commuter micromobility could adopt from agriculture? Oliver Bruce talks to Ubco CEO Timothy Allan on the podcast about the link between the farm and the freeway.

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.