👋 Hello S-1

A Gogoro-Ola showdown looms in India, Go Sharing bags $60m, and Donkey Republic eyes IPO.

April 27, 2021

Hello and welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, a weekly missive about mobility, mostly mobility in cities by lightweight electric vehicles. 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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Micromobility America Is Back

Before we get down to business, we have some exciting news of our own to share.

Following a tumultuous year that has reshaped urban mobility on a global scale, Micromobility America will return in-person to San Francisco’s Pier 70 on Sept 23 (above) for a full day of non-stop programming with micromobility’s top builders, investors, and thinkers. It’s time to bring everyone back together. Learn more here.

This will be the first chance for the industry to reunite after a year of unprecedented disruptions. Between massive gains in EV adoption, the fiscal crisis facing cities and transit, a global bike boom and shortage, and a once-in-a-lifetime push to reclaim streets from cars, clearly there is much to discuss.

First-mover ticket deals are available now for up to 75% off the General Admission price. Be among the first to register and save big. Space is limited.

⌲ For sponsor, speaker, or press inquiries, contact us.

What You Need to Know This Week

Hello, China’s largest bike-share provider, filed an S-1 on Friday in preparation for its U.S. IPO. After three consecutive years of losses, the Ant-backed micromobility giant plans to raise as much as $1b through its public offering. This Twitter thread does a very good job of summing up the S-1’s key stats, but here’s a quick recap:

🚲 Hello’s footprint is unlike anything in the West. As of Q4 2020, it had 10m two-wheelers across 400 cities with ~100m active users in China.

📈 Last year it facilitated 5.1b bike trips, generating an average of $.17 each—more than doubling its revenue per ride since 2018.

🔋 … that’s in part thanks to the rising popularity of electric two-wheelers, which Hello can charge more for. As of 2020, about 1 in 5 trips were electric.

💸 The firm bagged $926m in revenue in 2020—more than 90% of which came from two-wheeler service—yet still faced a net loss of $176m, as its road to profitability remains murky.

Alibaba-backed Hellobike bags new funds as it marches into ride-hailing | TechCrunch

  • After blanketing Taiwan with a network of battery-swapping stations for e-mopeds in the last decade, Gogoro is partnering with India’s largest motorbike manufacturer, Hero MotorCorp, to do the same on a much larger scale in India. India is not only the world’s second-most populous country, it is the largest two-wheeler market—and these days the Indian government is doing everything in its power to slash pollution by persuading its people to ditch fossil-fuel vehicles for EVs.

  • This move puts Gogoro on a collision course with Indian TNC Ola, which wants to build its own nationwide charging network to serve the electric mopeds that will start rolling out from its massive Bangalore factory this summer. “The Ola Hypercharger Network will be the world’s largest, densest two-wheeler charging system, comprising 100,000 high-speed charging points in more than 400 Indian cities.” 

  • Bio-Hybrid, maker of a novel four-wheeled e-cargo bike, has filed for insolvency in Germany.

  • From golf carts to e-bikes, our own Horace Dediu gives his best estimate yet for how many microvehicles there are in the world (a whole lot)—and explains why things that are hard to count often have a disruptive advantage.

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  • Danish bike-share firm Donkey Republic is preparing for a listing on the Nasdaq First North with an IPO target of $16.25m. The company, which operates 13,000 bikes and e-bikes in 60 cities across 14 European countries, believes the bike-sharing market stands to grow at a rate of 15-20% annually for the next five years, which should carry it to profitability by 2024.

  • Study: 19% of all traffic accidents in Japan involve bicycles, with 51 % of these accidents being at road crossing intersections. 

  • The Hongguang Mini, the small, boxy EV produced by a joint venture between GM, Wuling Motors, and Chinese state-owned giant SAIC, continues to trounce Tesla in China, with 70,000 units sold in Q1. Now the joint venture says it will expand its product line to include a miniature electric convertible in 2022. According to the company, more than 70% of its buyers were born after 1990 and at least 60% were women. 

Wuling Motors unveiled a convertible model of its highly popular budget mini electric car at the Shanghai auto show in April 2021.

  • Joco, a station-based e-bike startup that’s backed by shared mobility platform Vulog, is launching a limited pilot in Manhattan this week with 30 stations and 300 e-bikes. It expects to triple its footprint by summer. What makes Joco different from New York’s dominant micromobility player, Citi Bike—and indeed, most docked bike systems—is that its fleet is all electric and its stations are exclusively located on private property, such as parking garages at the bases of apartment buildings, offices, and hotels.

  • Maybe we should stop calling the surge in micromobility sales set off by the pandemic a “bike boom.” Last year, the French bought 640,000 electric scooters, 34% more than in 2019.

  • Dutch micromobility provider Go Sharing has raised $60m (led by Opportunity Partners) to fuel international and multimodal expansion. The startup, which operates 5,000 EV mopeds across 30 cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, hopes to add electric cars and e-bikes to its app and extend service to the U.K., Germany, and Turkey.

  • Electric bikes are getting more people out of cars. According to a new poll of e-bike owners, respondents say 76% of their trips would have otherwise been made by car.

E-Bike Study Chart - Barriers

  • Shared mobility platform Wunder Mobility has unveiled a lending division aimed at giving micromobility operators a new option to access capital. Known as Wunder Capital, the subsidiary has been in stealth mode for two years, during which time it has helped finance more than 25 businesses. “Wunder Capital aims to become a one-stop-shop for shared operators looking for operational software, high-quality vehicles and the money to purchase them. [CEO Gunnar] Froh estimates that such a package deal would cost an operator about 40% of monthly revenue.”

  • Micromobility provider Helbiz plans to allow riders to purchase accident insurance for shared trips directly in its app through a new partnership with YOLO.

  • About 600 foldable electric bikes from Brompton have been recalled for repair by the U.S. government over a software bug that causes the motor to accelerate when the rider isn’t pedaling.

  • John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, hopped on an electric scooter to go home after an environmental summit last Friday.

  • Micromobility is evolving into a software game, as operators of dockless e-scooters, e-bikes, and e-mopeds turn to emerging tech to reduce operational costs and comply with new city regulations.

  • Case and point: While Ireland formulates its first regulations for micromobility, Dublin City University will host an AI-powered scooter research pilot in partnership with Tier, Irish tech platform Luna, the Insight SFO Centre for Data Analytics, and Smart DCU.

  • Lime chief executive Wayne Ting went long in a recent interview on what “Amazon of transportation” means to him: “If you look at Amazon's old mission, even when they only sold books, they were talking about an everything store, they were talking about disrupting shopping. And it seemed insane, in 1997… But over time, they’re building reliability, they’re building selection. And they were building a logistics back end, so that over time, you can actually shift all your usage and all your shopping onto Amazon. For us, scooters is our books.”

  • Ting also co-wrote an opinion piece this week about why we need to reduce vehicle miles in both gas and electric cars (more on that below).

Pod People

In celebration of Earth Day last week, Horace Dediu and Oliver Bruce had a data-driven conversation on the podcast about the intersection of climate and transport, and why electric cars alone cannot meet our urgent goals for reducing road emissions. As Oliver put it, “This is one of the strongest and most profound arguments for why micromobility matters.”

As a followup, the pair will host a Micromobility Pro webinar this Thursday, April 29th @ 1PM Pacific about why they believe micromobility is in a unique position to help us avert climate catastrophe. Horace has a bunch of important new research to share, and he and Oliver will be taking questions live.

Become a Pro member, free for 30 days, to gain access to this webinar and a 40-hour archive of other exclusive episodes.

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.