🌪️ Spinning-Off Spin?

Plus, NYC saves jobs by slashing parking, Ford makes Lightning-fast retreat from cities, and Citymapper crushes crowdfunding.

May 25, 2021

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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Micromobility America

Heads up: Due to pent-up demand for physical events, tickets to Micromobility America are going fast.

If you’d like to guarantee your spot at our San Francisco summit on Sept. 23, we recommend registering early.

We’ll be uniting micromobility’s top global builders, investors, and thinkers for an in-person gathering reflecting the unprecedented disruptions that have swept tech, cities, and transportation in the last year.

Plus, there are a limited number of Spring Sale tickets—worth up to 65% off the General Admission price—still available.

What You Need to Know This Week

  • Word on the street is Ford is considering selling or spinning off its electric scooter service, Spin, as new CEO Jim Farley whittles the company’s focus down to electric and autonomous cars. All signs point to a booming market for micromobility as cities reopen, but for incumbents like Ford, it’s always hard to resist retreating to their comfort zone, especially when that comfort zone just so happens to be at the high end of the market.

  • The world got a glimpse of Ford’s vision for the future of transportation this week when the automaker unveiled Lightning, its EV version of the F-150. After test driving the $40k clean-power pickup, Joe Biden quipped, “This sucker’s quick.” Maybe so, but the sucker’s also heavy. At 6,500 lbs, the Lightning weighs 35% more than the gas-powered F-150, or about as much as two Toyota Corollas put together. The problem with heavy trucks—no matter if they’re electric—is that they wear down roads, pollute our air, and contribute to worsening pedestrian safety. Big vehicles also have less appeal to commuters in dense, crowded cities. In conjunction with the rumors about Spin, the Lightning launch reveals much about how Ford sees its place in the growing urban market.

  • The number of regular bike commuters in the U.S. increased by 61% between 2000 and 2019. But before cyclists celebrate the dawning of a new golden age in safe streets, it should be noted that bike commuting actually peaked in 2014 and has been declining ever since. No data is available yet for 2020, due to the pandemic, but it will be interesting to see if the COVID-era bike boom reversed this downward trend.

The proportion of bike commuters peaked in 2014 — with pandemic-times figures unavailable.

  • New York City saved an estimated 100k jobs during the pandemic by allowing restaurants to convert 8,550 parking spots into outdoor dining areas. Imagine the economic impact the city could create if it rezoned its other 3m parking spaces…

  • Citymapper crushed its crowdfunding goals in a single day last week, raising more than $9m at a $268m valuation.

  • Naxicap Partners, a European private equity firm, has reached an agreement to acquire e-bike firm Stromer.

  • Piaggo, maker of the iconic Vespa, has unveiled a new EV platform that will be available in multiple power levels and battery capacities, ranging from moped to motorcycle.

  • Sidewalk Labs has launched a new sensor called Pebble that collects real-time data to help manage parking.

  • Nine towns in Slovakia and Hungary have banded together to form a cross-border bike-sharing network, allowing users to rent a bike in one country and dock it in another.

  • According to a new study from Miami University, riders of e-bikes exert less energy than traditional cyclists, but they still achieve the “moderate intensity exercise level” that is recommended to avoid or reduce the risk of serious health conditions.

  • ICYMI: The Micromobility Landscape, our attempt to gather all the companies that make up and enable the micromobility sector into a single, definitive guide, is now taking submissions ahead of our next big update. If you haven’t submitted your company yet, fill out this form.

  • European bike-sharing startup Donkey Republic went public on the Nasdaq First North today with the ticker $DONKEY.

  • Kymco, Taiwan’s largest moped maker, is spinning off its EV unit, Ionex, into a separate business, with plans to expand globally.

  • Microlino shared a video teaser of the second generation of its retro-inspired, two-seater EV.

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.