🚲 The New New VanMoof

Plus, Gogoro IPOs, Buttigieg owns an ebike, and Tier grabs Fantasmo.

April 05, 2022

Welcome to the Micromobility Newsletter, an email missive about how small electric vehicles—scooters, ebikes, and such—are changing the way people and packages get where they need to go. (Other modes of urban transport—buses, bicycles, trains, ridehail—are cool too.) Each week we curate the best news and analysis for curious minds in mobility. Enjoy 🤗

Before We Dive In…

Micromobility Europe is less than two months away, and if you haven’t registered yet, you have until this Friday to save +60% by using the Visionary ticket special.

It is going to be two lively days of meetings and talks with industry-leading founders, investors, and policymakers, diving into core issues: the ebike boom, 15-min cities, instant commerce, scooter profitability, post-covid street spaces, the oil crisis, and more.

Don’t miss Azeem Azhar (tech seer of Exponential View fame), Taco Carlier (ebike upstart behind VanMoof), Katherine Sanford (leader to on/offroad utility motorbike brand UBCO), Georgia Yexley (chief of Tier’s UK & Ireland ops), and many more.

What You Need to Know This Week

  • Today VanMoof unveiled its redesigned premium electric bikes: the full-sized S5 and the smaller A5. Reimagined display, more accessible sizing, all-new engineering, but prices now approaching $3,000 due to chips shortage. “Only a handful of parts remain from our previous models, the S3 and X3,” says VanMoof CEO Taco Carlier.

    • Salivating to get into the saddle of VanMoof’s latest ebikes? Join us for the first public test-rides of the new models, only at Micromobility Europe. (Not to mention, your chance to try out all the other coolest new toys—electric scooters, bikes, boards, buggies—from the most innovative companies).

  • USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirms he owns an ebike, calling it “a really important step that shortens distances.”

  • Shared micromobility firm Tier is acquiring Fantasmo, a US-based computer vision startup that has developed a technology that can identify when an escooter is parked illegally or irresponsibly.

  • The German government is slashing the price of a monthly public transport ticket to €9 in an effort to reduce dependence on Russian oil.

  • Most of the top micromobility services in the world get their scooters from two manufacturers.

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  • With everyone using such similar hardware, how do the escooter and ebike startups differentiate themselves for users? This in-depth guide makes the case that, as micromobility consumers become more sophisticated, strong customer support will be essential to growth. Key quote from our own Oliver Bruce: “Consumer expectations are changing. The era when you could just sell a scooter or ebike and not provide assistance is quickly coming to a close.”

  • Cake, a Sweden-based company that makes e-motorbikes, is launching a program called re:CAKE that offers certified pre-owned bikes to customers.

  • London’s Santander Cycles is on fire lately. Since September 2021, the municipal bikeshare system has set a new ridership record every month.

  • With 6.4M ebikes sold in Europe and North America in 2021, the ebike market has nearly doubled in three years.

  • Relatedly, ebike sales propelled Pon.Bike’s turnover to $1.42B in 2021.

  • Niu’s electric moped sales are soaring overseas but virtually flat in China.

  • A group of guerilla urbanists is going around Los Angeles and painting new crosswalks.

  • UPS is trying out “eQuad” electric bikes for urban deliveries in Europe, and soon, the US and Asia.

  • Google is offering employees a free Unagi escooter subscription to bring them back the office. It’s an interesting move, betting that workers will be more willing to return to HQ if their daily commute doesn’t revolve around rushing to catch a train or getting stuck in soul-deadening gridlock every day.

  • Giant’s bike sales shined last year, rising 17% to hit record profit levels.

  • Gogoro, the Taiwan-based EV moped and battery-swap platform, debuted on the NASDAQ today following a SPAC merger. The company expects to receive about $335M in cash proceeds from the deal.

  • Curious how Gogoro’s battery swapping system actually works? This 29-second video explains.

  • Swappable batteries are making it cheaper and easier for companies like Tier and Dott to operate kick scooters also. But such companies have little desire to give up their own battery technology in the interest of standardization, which would enable large public swapping stations where consumers could swap out their own batteries.

  • Oregon is considering creating ebike-lending libraries in low-income communities.

  • The argument for why a city’s bike network should be as dense as its road network.

  • Stromer reached a deal to merge with Spanish ebike brand Desiknio.

  • How to build a household bike generator.

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  • Ebike manufacturer Ride1Up closed a $6.5M Series A. Led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund.

  • Injured escooter riders are 150% more likely to be hospitalized if they were struck by a motor vehicle.

  • “Clown pedaling” is when you pretend to pedal a high-speed ebike so as to create the illusion you are not using a (possibly illegal) throttle-based motor. “For any single human,  pedal output at this speed is almost meaningless… however, it is a great idea for legal protection to appear as if you are pedaling and not just motoring.”

  • Lithium prices have soared 500% over the last year. Will this kill the demand for electric cars and/or spur the adoption of smaller EVs?

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  • Bird claims its propriety battery technology offers the Bird 4 escooter a five-year pack lifespan.

  • Cargo bike owners are showing off how much stuff they can haul using the delightful Twitter hashtag #CarryShitOlympics

  • Projects advancing micromobility, public transit, and supply-chain logistics are set to receive up to $142B in funding through the new US infrastructure deal.

  • Which begs the eternal question: Why does transit infrastructure cost so much in the US?

Jobs to Be Done

Welcome to our jobs board, where every week we post open positions in hopes of connecting our talented 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.

Comodule (hybrid/remote):

Dance (Berlin, unless otherwise noted):

Superpedestrian: Communications Manager, EMEA (remote, UK)