Musk’s anti-bike stance: It’s personal

Plus, Beidou beats GPS, Honda plans a mind-reading motorcycle, and Paris has a "Bermuda Triangle" of stolen bikes.

December 01, 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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What you need to know this week

  • Maybe this story is common knowledge already, but we hadn’t heard it before: Apparently the reason Tesla won’t make an electric bicycle is that Elon Musk was in a near-fatal motorbike accident when he was young. The psychological scar from Musk’s crash would help explain Tesla’s irrational avoidance of this multibillion-dollar market.

  • China exported over 40M bikes in the first nine months of 2020—nearly four times what the EU manufactures in a year. With production soaring, there aren’t enough containers available to ship all the bikes.

  • Usage-based car insurer Metromile is going public via SPAC with an equity valuation of $1.3B. The company’s pay-per-mile model essentially applies the market for miles thesis to auto insurance.

  • Honda has filed a patent showing that it’s working on a brain-wave-detection system to help future motorcycles know their riders’ intentions.

Will Honda’s brainwave detection patent lead to more seamless rider safety systems?
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  • Italy expects bike sales to increase 20% this year.

  • “They don’t have brakes, the tyres are gone;” Uber Eats is under fire in Australia for not inspecting couriers’ ebikes prior to approving them for work.

  • China’s Beidou positioning system outperforms American GPS in 165 out of 195 world capitals.

  • Will the subscribe-to-everything mindset rewrite micromobility’s business model? Catch Oliver Bruce’s interview with Richard Burger, founder of the Netflix-style subscription bicycle service Swapfiets, later today to find out. Sign up to unlock access.

  • Voi is betting big on the UK, with plans to triple the size of its scooter fleet there.

  • In Paris, bike thefts grew 62% between January and September compared to last year. Locals are calling the 19th arrondissement the “Bermuda Triangle of Stolen Bikes.” 

  • On the verge of opening the world’s largest electric moped factory in India, Ola has appointed a GM veteran to lead its manufacturing division.

  • A sustainability report produced by the World Economic Forum and the German government argues public transit and bikes must be the primary modes of transportation in 2050 in order to meet our climate goals.

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  • According to new Streetlight data, bike ridership peaked in the US in June with 26% YoY growth. Cycling rates tapered off over the summer, although they were still 11% higher in September, even as driving rates were down 6.5%. Interestingly, the data shows the American bike boom is being led not by the largest metros but by small cities.

  • Anyone who finds an abandoned Lime scooter in Germany can now use What3Words to report its location.

  • Brexit is set to unleash a flood of cheap Chinese bicycles into the UK. Local players, like Brompton, are preparing for the worst.

  • Tire shed from driving is a massive contributor to pollution: “28.3 percent of microplastics in the ocean come from tires, landing them in the top seven contributors.”

Pod people

bolt-electric-scooters.jpg

Leading European ride-hail player Bolt is building a sleeper micromobility business to challenge the market leader, Tier.

On the eve of a $100M expansion, Oliver Bruce talks to Bolt’s micromobility head about whether their MaaS move can overcome their opponent’s first-mover advantage.

Jobs to be done

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