🇬🇧 UK Decides: Should Scooters Stay or Go?

🌍 Micromobility World is coming on January 19th. Join the industry’s top global builders, thinkers, and leaders for a massive virtual gathering—including unparalleled networking, incredible talks, and the first-ever Rider’s Choice Awards ceremony. Tickets are free for a very short time, so register now.

What You Need To Know This Week

“I’m somebody who owns three electric bikes — one of them is a cargo bike.” Gabe Klein opens up on why ebikes are a necessary part of the American EV transformation, and what to expect from his newly created office at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.

After 30M trips, Britain’s two-year-old electric scooter trial is scheduled to end tomorrow, leaving individual municipalities to decide for themselves whether to continue service until May 2024. So far the results have been resounding, with most UK cities choosing to extend their pilots.

London is among the cities that will extend its scooter trial, although its cycling mayor expressed doubt about the economics: “What we don’t want is people becoming dependent on a model and then suddenly the venture capital runs out and it’s no longer there.”

Oregon is considering creating a rebate worth up to $1,700 off the purchase of an ebike.

On Tomorrow’s Webinar…

On tomorrow’s webinar, we’ll talk to European sharing economy experts about how you can sustainably grow your fleet, expand to new markets, and deliver the best CX while managing your expenses. Register now.

U.S. Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg on the proper role of automobiles in urban transportation: “An ideal future is one where cars are serving people in cities rather than the other way around.”

With the cost of living on the rise, a new survey shows Europeans are increasingly interested in ebikes as an affordable alternative to cars and mass transit.

Shared micromobility usage in Qatar is up 400% during the World Cup.

Why is it almost every other country is able to reduce traffic fatalities, but not America?

Clearly the U.S. has a long way to go on road safety, but there are promising signs that ‘Vision Zero’ policies are starting to have an effect.

Former CEO of VW says we have too many SUVs and too much car ownership: “To improve life quality in cities, small EVs with batteries only big enough for city rides, can play a major role.”

Remember those 2019 reports that showed the earliest shared scooters barely lasted a month in operations before breaking? A new lifecycle study suggests that modern hardware has improved greatly, with an average lifespan of 4.6 years.

London will expand its Ultra Low Emission Zone in 2023, requiring drivers to pay £12.50/day to drive older polluting vehicles.

Amazon continues to invest in electric cargo bikes with the opening of three more micromobility-based delivery hubs in London and Manchester.

No country has purchased more EVs per capita than Norway. But there’s a problem. The kinds of vehicles Norwegians tend to buy are really bulky, such as trucks and SUVs, and create safety and environmental risks. In response, the government is now trying to get people to buy smaller EVs by taxing vehicles by weight.

Dat Bike has raised $8M to put more electric motorbikes on the road in Vietnam.

How big of a market is Southeast Asia? “Electric two-wheelers could make up as much as 50% of the overall motorbike market in the region by 2030, compared with as low as 20% for cars.”

Tier is saying goodbye to mopeds so it can focus on ebikes and scooters instead.

Looking for an EV that costs less than an Apple Watch? This Indian company is making electric two-wheelers out of scrap and selling them for just ₹35,000 ($420).

Ola Electric plans to open 200 Experience Centers across India by the end of the year in a massive push to give more people access to the S1 and S1 Pro electric mopeds.

Lyft is recycling its ebike and scooter batteries with Redwood Materials.

Some exciting new micromobility innovations out of Nigeria: a toolkit for converting ICE 3-wheelers to battery power and a refrigerated cargo bike for helping farmers bring crops to market.

Three Wheels United is teaming up with Zyngo, India’s largest EV logistics platform, to boost electric tuktuks for last-mile delivery. (Video: How Three Wheels United is helping Indian couriers finance EVs.)

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

Pod People

5 Billion Riders - Why Horace Dediu thinks micro will be the biggest transport story of the next 20 years.

This week Oliver interviews Horace about the talk he did at Micromobility America on the Total Addressable Market for micromobility and the opportunity of the space.

This should be listened to in the context of the 5 Billion Riders talk Horace gave at the conference, which is now on Youtube. Here, we dig into Horace’s thought pattern and the significance of mapping out addressable markets in informing the debate and opportunity for the space.

Specifically, they dig into:

- The backstory for Total Addressable Markets and why these matter

- What has changed since Horace’s early work in this space

- The potential impact of 5 billion riders

- Why this matters for companies raising funds

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Instagram | Blog | Podcast