Covid is killing parking

“Corona cycleways,” scooter-less Brooklyn, and Maven’s downfall

April 28, 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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Founder Shield has a special panel lined up for May 6 at 1:00pm ET with experts from some of the leading companies in the micromobility space. They’ll be hosting Wunder Mobility, Maniv Mobility, Revel, ibott @ Apollo, and Tortoise for a roundtable discussion on the growth challenges micromobility operators face and how to overcome them.

Office Hours with Horace Tomorrow

Mobility was the first and most deeply affected sector of the Covid-19 crisis.

The global lockdown was accompanied by an unprecedented reduction in travel. Data from Apple Maps shows a 25-75% decrease in demand for transportation since the pandemic started. The data also shows that, of all modes, the single biggest victim of social distancing worldwide has been public transit.

As overall demand recovers, the decline in transit demand will be re-allocated. The crucial question is where will it go? In China, commuters are fleeing buses and trains for private cars; in Switzerland, they are flocking to bikes.

On the next Triple M webinar, Micromobility Industries co-founder and disruptive innovation analyst Horace Dediu will answer members’ questions about how transit demand is shifting, where it is shifting to, and what the new equilibrium could look like.

Become a member of Triple M, free for 30 days, to join the webinar live or download the recording after.

What You Need to Listen to This Week

In the midst of scooter sharing’s darkest hour, how is the world’s largest micromobility manufacturer holding up?

On a new episode of the podcast, Oliver Bruce sits down with Segway VP Tony Ho to discuss COVID-19’s impact on OEMs, the future of self-driving scooters, detailed company financials, and more.

Bonus reading: Prabin Joel got his hands on the Segway IPO document that Tony alludes to at the end of the episode, then translated and analyzed it.

What You Need to Know This Week

  • With more Americans working from home than ever, demand for parking is down 90% since mid-March. And like artists with blank canvases, entrepreneurs are putting empty lots to creative (and profitable) use, including by converting them into drive-in movie theaters, pop-up medical centers, and open-air grocery stores.

  • Didi’s bike-sharing division did not, in fact, raise a $1 billion. Instead, the company took in $150 million from SoftBank and Legend Capital. Another $850 million came from Didi itself.

  • Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, is leaving Lyft’s board.

  • The Covid-19 pandemic is making Americans realize how much space they waste on cars.

Art credit: Hariton Pushwagner

  • Safe streets roundup: Paris is readying 400 miles of bike lanes, including pop-up “corona cycleways,” to help commuters practice safe social distancing once France eases its lockdown on May 11; the UK is letting local governments speed up road closures; NYC’s mayor committed to opening 100 miles of streets; Milan is shutting down car traffic on more than 20 miles of roads; San Francisco is closing Golden Gate Park to automobiles; and Barcelona is augmenting its sidewalks and bike lanes.

  • GM is shutting down its car-sharing service, Maven.

  • Lime may have bought Boosted’s assets and IP, but a skate shop in the Bay Area called Last Mile SF snagged almost all of the startup’s remaining electric skateboards. The retailer plans on selling the last of the inventory and continuing to offer service to Boosted customers.

  • For 10 days this month, White Fox brought scooter sharing to Brooklyn for the first time. Then, last week, the company was served a cease-and-desist letter by local authorities and forced to pull out. Although Governor Andrew Cuomo legalized electric scooters earlier this month, the City Council has not yet approved their use.

  • “Bicycles are the new toilet paper,” as the global bike sales bonanza reaches Australia.

  • Gogoro announced its first-ever ebike will arrive in the U.S. next month, followed by Europe and the company’s home country of Taiwan this summer. Specifics about the bike are scarce so far and there is no word on whether it will be compatible with Gogoro’s network of battery-swapping stations.

  • Madrid’s municipal bike-share program reopened last week after temporarily suspending service due to the coronavirus outbreak.

  • More details have leaked about Suzuki’s electric two-wheeler, which is bound for India by the end of 2020.

  • Lyft extended free scooter rides for essential workers until the end of May.

  • NYC’s congestion pricing plan is “unlikely” to launch on time in January, 2021.

  • Bird’s workplace culture is coming under scrutiny after the company fired hundreds of employees over Zoom.

  • Research suggests that NYC neighborhoods where residents are more likely to commute by car have higher case rates of Covid-19 than neighborhoods where residents are more likely to commute by subway.

  • Uber’s Middle Eastern subsidiary Careem started a grocery delivery service.

  • In spite of a citywide lockdown, bike rentals for London’s Santander Cycles are higher than normal for this time of year. While the company is offering complimentary rides to NHS employees, these free users appear to make up only a small fraction of the new trips. The rest of the demand is coming from people who are trying to get exercise or avoid mass transit for errands.

  • Relatedly, while overall demand for mobility services in Berlin is down by more than half, bike rentals are up slightly.

  • Bird is demoing a new feature called “Warm Up Mode” that enables users to select a gentler acceleration option.

  • Populus launched a new tool to help cities design and implement temporary street closures.

  • After France went into lockdown, Pony shifted 40 percent of its shared scooter-and-bike fleet to personal rentals in one month.

  • German bike shops, which were required to close when the Covid-19 pandemic began, reopened last week.

  • The city of Memphis extended its free bike-share program for another month.

  • The dockless scooter boom has influenced cities like Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Nashville to expand bike lanes and other safe street infrastructure. Even if shared micromobility stalls out due to Covid-19, these improvements are unlikely to be undone.

  • How U.S. public transit can survive coronavirus.

Jobs to Be Done

Welcome to our jobs board. Every week we post new career openings in hopes of connecting our smart and talented readers with exciting professional opportunities in the world of new mobility.

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