🗽 New York, At Last

NYC awards first scooter permits, Dott raises $85m, and Washington state votes to phase out gas cars by 2030.

April 20, 2021

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What You Need to Know This Week

New York’s status as the last major U.S. holdout against the dockless scooter revolution has come to an end. Last week regulators approved three micromobility startups, Lime, Bird, and VeoRide, to participate in the city’s first e-scooter pilot this summer. Although the initial program will only cover a small part of one borough, the Bronx, New York as a whole is one of the largest potential markets for micromobility in the world. Gaining a toehold now could eventually become quite lucrative for Lime, Bird, and VeoRide in the future.
Reporter John Seabrook has the inside story of how NYC finally caught up to the rest of the world on e-scooters and why micromobility keeps arriving in new cities. Our own Horace Dediu chimes in with his prediction for the future: “The next revolution in transportation will come from the bottom.”
Amsterdam-based micromobility startup Dott has raised a new $85m Series B round, a mix of equity and debt financing, led by Sofina. The company—whose founders described their disciplined, capital-efficient approach to scooter operations on a recent episode of our podcast—will use the funds to fuel European expansion and incorporate e-bikes into its fleet of 30,000 e-scooters.
How eSkootr is using high-speed electric scooter racing as a platform to promote micromobility as an environmentally friendly form of everyday transportation in cities.

Denmark is considering introducing “car-free Sundays” in its two largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus.
People biked more during lockdown. But with fewer people commuting, cycling growth was highest on weekends across the U.S., Canada, and EU.
Seoul, arguably the largest market for dockless scooters in the world by fleet size, will start impounding improperly parked scooters at operators’ expense.
Golf cart maker Club Car has been acquired by Platinum Equity from Ingersoll Rand for $1.7b.
Here’s a review of Vanmoof’s new range extender.

Danny Harris, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, on what steps the Biden administration can take to lock in and accelerate the COVID-era shift to micromobility.
An interesting story of how a bicycle tripled one Zambian woman’s income.
There are currently a whopping 800,000 shared bikes in Beijing, which is actually down 5% from last year.
Of the 30 people in the U.S. who have been killed while riding an electric scooter since 2018, 80% of them were hit by a car.
Why incorporating docked bike-share into transit might offer a path to stabilize both during the unpredictable post-Covid period to come.

Prosperity and urbanization have always gone hand-in-hand.
— Horace Dediu (@asymco)
9:08 AM • Apr 15, 2021

With more and more governments now offering financial assistance for e-bike purchases, Quebec is going a step further with a 25% rebate specifically for e-cargo bikes. The incentive is a big windfall for delivery workers, families, and anyone else who’d like to haul things around the city without a car.
Several cities in the Netherlands have launched a new transportation data standard as an alternative to MDS.
Washington state plans to ban sales of gas cars by 2030, which would put it ahead of California and Massachusetts as the first U.S. state to require new cars be electric.
Urban planner Janette Sadik-Khan calls on cities not to cede back street space that was taken from cars in the last year: “Surrendering Our Cities to Cars Would Be a Historic Blunder”

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.

Bunch Bikes: Chief Operating Officer (Texas)
Dance (Berlin):
Felyx: City Manager (Berlin)
Streetlight Data: Senior Product Designer + Product Manager, Massive Analytics & APIs (San Francisco)
Zoba: Data Scientist + Customer Facing Engineer (Boston)