🏌️ Not Your Grandparents’ Golf Carts

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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The Longview

• The heavy rainfall that flooded New York City’s subway system last week will become increasingly common with climate change, posing major challenges for mass transit in the future.

• The average price globally to ship a 40-ft container has quadrupled in the last year.

• Solid conversation about the intersection of last-mile delivery, online grocery, and micromobility (register to download).

• Tesla is offering Chinese customers a cheaper Model Y with shorter range. The vehicle, which lists for $42,600, is an attempt by the U.S. automaker to compete in an EV market that is dominated by small, budget-friendly models, such as the Wuling Mini.

• It’s true millennials are more multimodal than past generations of commuters. The question is, will this trend continue as they age?

• The online shopping boom is pitting cities vs. delivery vans.

• Take a trip inside Simulation City, the virtual world where Waymo tests its autonomous vehicles.

• Canada plans to ban the sale of gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035.

• Electric cars become net cleaner than gas cars only after they cross 13,500 miles, according to a Reuters analysis, due to the fact that building an electric car generates more emissions than an ICE car.

• In Micromobility America news: ICYMI tickets to our flagship summit, Micromobility America, are 50% off for the month of July. Join us, alongside a lively mix of public and private decision-makers, in SF on Sept 23. Reserve your tickets now.

The Microview

• Meet the e-scooter double standard: On a per-mile basis, shared scooters are taxed 50x higher than private cars in Miami, despite the immense benefits they offer in terms of sustainability.

• Bosch predicts half of all the bikes sold in Europe will be electric by 2025. (The market is already well on its way to this milestone; last year e-bikes enjoyed a staggering 52% increase in sales.)

• Manufacturers report sales of golf carts have skyrocketed by as much as 2x during the pandemic, spurred by growing popularity among an unlikely demo: non-golfers. “The buyers driving this surge aren’t traditional golf cart customers—retirees looking for a way to get from tee to tee—but rather a new, younger clientele who are using their carts for neighborhood trips. And the vehicles they’re buying aren’t their grandparents’ golf carts. Many sit more than half-a-foot off the ground, with seating for up to six, peak horsepower approaching 30, and a price tag often north of $15,000. An increasing number also come with lithium-ion batteries like those found in full-size electric cars. Together, the arrival of lithium and the rise of off-course uses are transforming the golf cart industry from a niche supplier of a sport in decline to a growing part of the micro-mobility revolution.”

• Revel unveiled an EV fast-charging superhub in Brooklyn. The green infrastructure launch was praised by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm at a ribbon-cutting event.

• Micromobility operator Fenix is launching a 10-minute delivery service in Abu Dhabi. In between swapping batteries and managing operations, workers will pick up fresh groceries from the company’s network of dark stores and transport them on e-scooters to customers’ doorstep.

• With the bike drought showing no signs of letting up, Shimano plans to invest nearly $300m to expand production in Japan and Singapore.

• Data and AI startup Lacuna announced it raised $16m in Series A funding to help cities develop digital twins for transportation planning. Led by Xplorer Capital Management.

• BMW confirms its futuristic electric moped will arrive in 2022 with a hefty price tag: $12k.

Pod People

On a new episode of the podcast, Donkey Republic CEO and co-founder, Erdem Ovacik, reveals the company’s differentiated approach to the market as the first shared micromobility operator to go through an IPO. A few topics we cover:

🤝 Business shaped by regulation: Why Donkey sees government integration—and subsidies—as key to micromobility’s future

💸 No funny money: How too much VC funding can create hurt your startup

🧐 $DONKEY IPO: An overview of Donkey’s business fundamentals, public market debut, and why Erdem thinks the company’s stock is a bargain.

• Hawaii has seen a noticeable decline in pedestrian deaths since 2019, thanks in part to the humble raised crosswalk.

• Stockholm-based scooter operator Voi is demoing a computer-vision pilot at scale in Northampton, using technology from Irish startup Luna.

• Paris will impose an 18 mph speed limit on nearly all roads starting in August.

• Electric bike seller Fazua is now offering users the option to buy monthly insurance, covering theft and damage, through an in-app partnership with Comodule.

• A New Zealand study highlights the e-bike’s potential to reduce the gender gap in cycling.

• On the emergence of the “parts-as-a-service” model (tires, batteries, etc.) in the micromobility business.

• Singapore is requiring e-scooter riders to pass an online theory test.

• Indian ride-hail app Ola announced it raised $500m from Temasek and an affiliate of Warburg Pincus as it readies for an IPO. But that’s not all. The company’s EV division, Ola Electric, banked another $100m in debt to start producing its electric mopeds, perhaps as early as this month.

• About that forthcoming electric moped: Ola’s fast charger is expected to power its battery up to 50% in 18 minutes. At full capacity, the vehicle’s range is estimated at 93 miles.

• Bird-owned Scoot is in hot water in subcontracting its workers in San Francisco in violation of local labor regulations. The incident has sparked a broader dialogue about micromobility’s reliance on the gig economy all over the world.

• Inside Harley-Davidson’s second crack at the electric motorcycle market.

• Seoul will start towing illegally parked e-scooters, charging micromobility operators a $35 impound fee and another $.61 for every 30 minutes the scooter is held.

• Big tech meets micromobility: Yandex, the Russian internet search giant, has launched a scooter service in Moscow.

• How DTC e-bike brand Rad Power shortened its supply chain by about 54 days.

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.

• Dance:

  • Senior Mechanical Engineer (Berlin)

  • Senior Supplier Quality Engineer (Taiwan)

  • Senior Firmware Engineer - Hardware (Berlin)

• Joyride: Academy Manager + Hardware Partnerships Manager (Toronto)

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