Ebike sales catching up to cars in Europe

Hello and welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, a weekly missive about mobility, mostly mobility in cities that is enabled by small electric vehicles. 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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What you need to know this week

• Estimates project that the ebike market in Europe will triple to 7-10M units per year by 2025. For reference, that is somewhere between half and two-thirds of the total number of new cars that were registered in the EU and EFTA in 2019.

• Weezy, a British on-demand supermarket that delivers groceries within 15 minutes, raised $20M in a Series A round led by Left Lane Ventures. Platforms like Weezy are attempting to reverse-engineer a delivery-based version of the 15-minute city in which everything a person might need can be brought to them in about a quarter hour.

• President-elect Joe Biden is offering $20B for public transit, or about 1% of the $1.9T Covid relief bill he plans to push through Congress in the first days of his administration.

• Cyclists are worried about getting doored by streateries.

• If you’re active on Mobility Twitter, then you probably know the debate about whether shared scooter and bikes are actually “green” can be contentious. This Thursday on Zoom, Amy Lewin, deputy editor of Sifted, will convene a great mix of entrepreneurs and regulators—including the founders of Voi and Beryl—for an important conversation about how micromobility startups are working to decarbonize their operations and, in doing so, boost the sustainability of cities. Register here.

• Ford, Bosch, and Trek are collaborating with Michigan-based Tome Software on a new safety technology that will allow bikes, e-scooters to “talk” to cars using Bluetooth 5. While this technology sounds interesting, bear in mind this same consortium has been touting the idea since at least 2018.

• Israeli ride-hailing startup Gett raised $115M in a round led by Pelham Capital Investments.

• Renault’s plans for the future include seven new EVs and a new division called Mobilize, devoted to car-sharing, ride-hailing, and vehicle-charing. Among the new additions, the automaker teased a 7.5-foot-long pod intended for sharing in dense urban areas.

• Electric bus maker Proterra will go through with a deal to be acquired by ArcLight Clean Transition Corp for $1.6B in reverse merger.

• Bird launched a new skid detection feature that is aimed at both improving safety and monitoring reckless behavior.

• Carbon emissions fell across all sectors in 2020 except one: SUVs. Last year, these fuel-hungry behemoths grew to 42% of the global car market.

• And cars are getting more expensive. According to research done by Cox Automative and shared by Reilly Brennan, 24% vehicle nameplates were priced below $30,000 in 2020, down from 54% in 2012.

• A company called Lanterne is aggregating all micromobility permits/tenders in Europe into an open list.

• GM wants to electrify last-mile deliveries with its new commercial-focused brand Brightdrop.

• Related: Swedish last-mile app Budbee raised $63M, led by AMF, after approximately doubling its annual revenue during the e-commerce spike last year.

• Next month LeMond will launch what it claims is the lightest electric bicycle on the market. At 26 lbs, the Prolog is certainly much more shoulderable than your average ebike, which starts at around 40 lbs. But at $4,500, it’s also about twice the price of most entry models.

• … for slightly more money, you could buy Sondor’s new 80-mph electric motorcycle. The $5,000 bike breaks new ground in affordability for the e-motorcycle category.

• All two-wheel categories, including motorbikes, scooters, and ebikes, saw double digit sales growth figures in Italy last year.

• BMW is ending the subscription service it launched three years ago in Nashville.

• Location software startup Fantasmo made a deal with Tier to clean up micromobility parking in Paris by using Fantasmo’s “Camera Positioning System,” which the company claims is 10x more accurate than traditional GPS.

• Tel Aviv, probably the largest shared micromobility market in the Middle East, is making helmets mandatory for scooter riders.

• Snap acquired location data startup StreetCred.

• Uber is expanding its EV and public transit services to 1,400 towns and cities in North America, up from 14 in September.

• Speaking of Uber, the ride-hailer has another spinout in the works. Postmates X, the robotics delivery division Uber acquired when it bought Postmates, is looking to become its own company.

• Saudi Arabia wants to build a linear city, despite the concept’s poor track record.

Jobs to be done

Welcome to our jobs board, where every week we post open positions 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.

Hit reply if you have a job that you’re interested in listing.

• Firmware Engineer @ Acton (remote US/Canada)

• Sales Expert and Mechanic Technician @ Cowboy (Berlin)

• Senior Hardware Engineering Manager at Dance (Berlin)

• Actively recruiting @ PBSC (Montreal)

• Senior Backend Developer @ Taur (London)

• Head of Product @ Unagi (Bay Area)

• B2B Growth Marketer @ Zoov (Paris)

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