🗳 Rider’s Choice Awards: Quarter Finals

🚨Is your team going to pass the Quarter Finals? There’s still time to qualify. The next Elimination Round of the Rider’s Choice Awards, which will see the bottom 30% of vote-getters removed from the race, is coming up this Thursday (Dec 15th). 

Make sure your candidate doesn’t get cut. Cast your ballot, and encourage your friends, followers, and colleagues to do the same, asap.

Streaming Live

For years, shared micromobility has been defined as much by explosive growth as devilish unit economics. This begs the q: How can the industry accelerate its pathway to profitability?Join Oversharing’s Alison Griswold along with the CEOs of Spin, Fenix and Zoba this Thursday (Dec 15th) for a deep-dive discussion on micromobility’s path forward toward profitability.

What You Need to Know This Week

Sondors, maker of electric bikes and motorcycles, has set the terms for a proposed $23M IPO.

The U.K.’s Transport Minister stakes out a sensible position on helmet laws: “The safety benefits of mandating cycle helmets for cyclists are likely to be outweighed by the fact that this would put some people off cycling, thereby reducing the wider health and environmental benefits.”

Shared micromobility outfit Spin is exiting 10 markets in the U.S., citing low demand, poor cost structures, and a messy confluence of under- and over-regulation. According to Spin, cities that are totally unregulated (i.e. do not have exclusive contracts, creating a free for all of scooters) can be as financially challenging as cities with mountains of regulations (curfews, no ride/park zones, etc), leaving operators in the lurch.

Getir, a Turkey-based delivery startup that relies on two-wheelers to bring groceries to customers in as little as 10 minutes, has acquired German rival Gorillas in a deal worth $1.2B.

Layoffs hit European micromobility operator Voi, which is cutting 13% of its workforce. 

Meanwhile, Seattle-based ebike maker Rad Power is letting go of 63 employees. 

Multilane arterials, known as “stroads,” are the most dangerous streets in America.

Amsterdam-based Cargoroo has raised $10.5M to expand its shared cargo ebike service across Europe.

Electric bikes are the most popular form of EV in Germany, according to a new Deloitte survey. The poll finds 18% of Germans already use an ebike, compared to 7% who said they use an electric car.

The first legal sales of marijuana in New York City will be likely be delivered on bikes and scooters.

Electric mopeds have become the majority of sales in Paris since the city introduced paid parking for internal combustion mopeds.

Barcelona becomes the first city in Spain to levy an “Amazon tax” on companies for the use of public space by delivery vehicles. Will this push ecom companies to experiment with using delivery vehicles that take up less road?

… Berlin-based Onomotion has raised $22.1M to scale up its micromobility-powered urban logistics, which is comprised of electric cargo bikes with rain covers and attachable containers.

Cycling levels in London are 40% higher now than they were before the pandemic.

How golf cart-sized vehicles can fill the gap between two-wheelers and cars in urban transport.

Scooter operator Woosh sees weak market debut after becoming the first Russian company to IPO since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Between 1977 and 2016, pedestrian deaths involving larger vehicles like trucks and SUVs went from 22% to 47%.

Which begs the question, is it time to outlaw SUVs?

Electric bike brand Vela will relocate its manufacturing from China to Detroit in response to supply chain disruptions.

San Francisco will keep about half of the slow streets that were created during the pandemic.

In response to a recent spate of fires caused by ebikes in NYC, Fordham University has issued a ban on all battery-powered transportation devices on campus. If colleges, businesses, offices, and apartments follow suit, the panic over battery fires will be the worst micromobility backlash since Department of Transportation leaders began impounding scooters in 2018-19.

Browse dozens of the best jobs in micromobility—and post your own—on our Jobs to Be Done board.

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