Lockdown hasn’t slowed Lime down

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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What you need to know this week

• The global ebike market is expected to reach $46B by 2026.

• China plans to phase out gas-powered cars by 2035.

• Lime hit 200M rides. It took the company 28 months to get to 100M rides, but only 13 months—during the middle of a global lockdown, no less—to rack up another 100M. Don’t count shared micromobility out.

• Amazon is rapidly expanding its last-mile division.

• The European Cyclist Federation has created an interactive leaderboard that ranks European cities by how many miles of bike lanes they’ve built or pledged to build during the pandemic.

• NYC released an RFEI for its long-awaited scooter pilot, scheduled to begin in March 2021. The program, which won’t include Manhattan, could attract upwards of a dozen applicants. Already Lime, Bird, Spin, Link, Voi, and others have signaled their interest.

• And in olde York, Tier is fitting its e-scooters with fake engine noises to warn pedestrians.

• After ramping its annual production from 2,000 to 50,000 units, Arcimoto has made a deal DHL to deliver its two-seat three-wheel electric vehicles straight to customers, bypassing dealerships.

• Harley-Davidson’s new ebike devision, Serial 1 Cycle, unveiled its debut model, a retro-inspired concept that appears to have a mid-motor drive and hidden cables. While the company has not released any pricing information or technical specs yet, it says the bicycle will be available to purchase in March 2021. (Related: Harley-Davidson stocks revved upwards last week after the company surpassed Q3 expectations.)

• The Italian electric motorcycle maker Energica expects US sales to almost double this year.

• Cannondale and Trek are adopting 100% recyclable packaging.

• Here’s a database of US state laws pertaining to bicycle travel.

• Italy’s BluBrake has raised $6M in Series A funding to develop an ABS braking system for ebikes.

• The Irish government is drafting legislation to legalize electric scooters next year. Hopefully the influx of scooters forces a national reevaluation of road safety for two-wheelers.

• Lithuania’s cash-for-clunkers program, which allows residents to trade old cars for at least €1000 ($1170) towards a bike, e-bike, scooter, or transit pass, has been expanded by popular demand. “Most of the money (€4.95 million) has been spent on escooters and bicycles, with €269,000 being spent on ebikes, €136,000 going on electric mopeds or motorbikes, and €50,000 being used on public transport tickets.”

• A similar program just launched in Madrid. In the Spanish capital, the government allows residents to swap old, polluting cars for €700 ($875) toward a scooter, bike, or moped, or €1250 ($1460) toward electric car or moped rentals.

• According to NYC officials, the fatality rate for Revel mopeds is 1.38 deaths per million trips, or 69 times higher than Citi Bikes. No word on how shared mopeds compare to cars on safety.

• Consulting firm Teague mocked up a more user-friendly e-scooter that it believes would attract a more diverse set of riders.

• Superpedestrian makes the case that swappable batteries are actually less sustainable than embedded ones: “The swappable model requires more than one battery per scooter. We only need 0.5 batteries per scooter because our batteries last over two LINK scooter lifetimes — about 5,000 trips. The impact of battery manufacturing is far greater than that of maintenance miles driven for charging, so from a sustainability perspective there is currently a clear benefit of embedded over swappable batteries.”

• Despite the bike boom brought on by the pandemic, sales in Shimano’s bicycle division were down about 4% in the first nine months of 2020.

• The average age of a US cyclist killed in traffic rose from 40 in 2007 to 47 in 2018.

• Lime partnered with SNCF, the national railway of France, to integrate bike and scooter rentals into the SNCF app.

• Voi reports it has resold 10,000 refurbished fleet scooters to date.

• When it comes to takeout, mopeds and cars produce 5 and 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions per meal delivered than bikes, respectively.

• Bike factory workers are in short supply in Taiwan as orders surge.

• Is the bike boom doomed to come to a screeching halt as soon as the pandemic ends? Not if the government steps in and makes cycling a national priority, says David Zipper: “To keep the current bike boom going, federal officials’ first priority should be to ensure Americans can cycle without fearing for their lives.”

• After launching two new sports models, the Swedish electric dirt bike company Cake is starting a racing league.

• Uber has launched a motorcycle-hailing service in France.

• British bike manufacturers are warning they face competition from a wave of cheap Chinese imports after Brexit as the UK abandons European Union anti-dumping rules.

• Indian ride-hail company Ola plans to open an e-moped factory in the next 18 months, pivoting from being a taxi aggregator to a vehicle manufacturer for the first time.

• The Italian government will provide €137.2M ($160.6M) to local authorities to build bike lanes and other cycling infrastructure this year and next.

• As America heads to the polls today, campaigns and candidates are dominating the headlines. But don’t forget, in more than 15 cities voters will also decide on at least $1.4 billion worth of transportation ballot measures, more than half of which would fund various types of public transit. 

Pod people

Is micromobility ready for a supercar?

On a new episode of the podcast, Damon Motorcycle’s COO Derek Dorresteyn talks to Oliver Bruce about how his lifelong passion for two wheelers—including stints at Alta and Boosted—led to a 200hp, 200mph electric "hyperbike" that can go 0-60 in less than 3 seconds.

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.

• Electronics Engineering Project Manager at Cowboy (Brussels)

• Senior Operations Manager at Bird (Munich or remote)

• Senior INS / GNSS Algorithms Engineer at Navmatic (San Jose or remote)

• Senior Data Scientist at Lime (remote)

• Product Design Engineer at Dance (Berlin)

• Mobility Fullstack Engineer at Trov (North America, remote)

• Senior Product Manager at Ubiq (Vienna)

• Wunder Vehicles Business Owner at Wunder Mobility (Hamburg)

• DACH Sales Manager at Electric Feel (remote)

• Fullstack Mobile Applications Engineer at Unagi (North America, remote)

• Head of Revenue at Invers (Cologne)

• Backend Developer at Bond (Brussels)

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