🇫🇷 Viva la Révolution

Plus, COP27 highlights micromobility, Bird struggles with finances, and VW motorizes the office chair.

November 15, 2022

🚨 Important update on the Rider’s Choice Awards: The first Elimination Round of the contest will take place tonight at midnight (Nov 15th), at which point the bottom 30% of vote-getters will be cut from the race. Make sure to cast your ballot, and encourage your friends, followers, and colleagues to do the same, to ensure your preferred candidate doesn’t get eliminated. Vote now! 

This week’s Micromobility Newsletter is brought to you by Eli Electric…

According to McKinsey, “the next big thing” in urban mobility is actually quite small. Eli Electric is ahead of the curve, pioneering new micro-EVs with the Eli ZERO. In the U.S., 50% of trips are under 3 miles. Eli has built a micro-vehicle to make those trips clean, convenient, and affordable. With more than 2,600 investors already on board and over $3 million raised, the company is ramping up small-batch production to meet surging demand in Europe, and to prepare for the 2023 pilot in the US.

What You Need To Know This Week

  • World leaders at COP27 will prioritize the mobility needs of the Global South with an initiative focusing on financing and infrastructure for 2- and 3-wheelers, which are already the most popular form of EVs in developing countries.

  • Why cracking down on ebikes is the wrong response to battery fires.

  • With its antitheft guarantee, subscription bike service Swapfiets is proving popular among Londoners.

  • Yikes. Bird overstated its revenue for two years and now says financial reports from 2020 and 2021 can “no longer be relied upon.” Even worse, without additional funding, the scooter sharing pioneer may not have enough money to continue operations for another full year.

LA Party Tomorrow

Are you heading to Los Angeles for CoMotion? Join us tomorrow in DTLA, alongside a lively mix of industry leaders and influencers, for networking and a happy hour. Automotus and Micromobility will be hosting a meetup at Angel City Brewery. RSVP now. Space is extremely limited.

  • “Right on Red” laws were originally enacted in the 1970s to help drivers save gas. Now cities are beginning to reverse these rules to save lives at the crosswalk.

  • Ebike subscriptions could be key to filling transportation gaps in the suburbs.

  • Viva la Ă©lectrique rĂ©volution. Scooter sales in France leapt 42% from 2020 to 2021 confirming that the trend is becoming a mainstay of mobility.

  • So why on earth is Paris looking at banning rental scooters? Local officials have soured on scooters, mostly due to quality-of-life issues like sidewalk clutter, which is unfortunate because in a single day last week the city saw 85k zero-emission trips thanks to shared scooters, according to fluctuo.

  • Aymard Vernay has clinched the championship at the inaugural eSkootr Championship, a high-speed electric scooter racing series.

  • The bike boom is continuing—but only in cities that stepped up and supported it.

  • Yulu, an Indian micromobility operator, raised $9M in debt to bolster its last-mile service.

  • Lime has launched a new program to upcycle old scooter and ebike batteries for other consumer products

  • Indoor micromobility? As a marketing effort, Volkswagen Norway has built a motorized office chair that features a top speed of 12mph, 360-degree collision avoidance sensors, party lights, a guided backup cam, heated seat, touchscreen display, USB charger, and tow hitch.

  • Amid geopolitical and economic uncertainty, Taiwan-based Gogoro announced it will delay plans to expand battery swapping in China and instead focus on growth in India and Indonesia.

  • 100 years ago, an American traffic engineer set a plan in motion that would result in the auto-centric infrastructure that we’ve normalized in the U.S. today.

  • Related: Battery swapping could be the technology that unlocks mass 2- and 3-wheeled micromobility adoption in India.

  • In the busy streets of London, paramedics are using bikes as emergency response vehicles to reach patients up to 10x faster than ambulances.

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

Micromobility Pro

For our next Pro webinar, Micromobility Industries co-founders Horace Dediu and James Gross will explore how shared micromobility operators can reimagine their business models and position themselves for long-term security.

Pro members unlock up-leveled benefits:

  • Webinars: Take part in regular virtual events, featuring original analysis and commentary from industry leaders.

  • Streaming: Watch 40+ hours of past webinars on-demand anytime in our archive.

  • Deals: Take an extra $50 off tickets to all our events, including Micromobility Europe and Micromobility America.

Pod People

This week Oliver speaks with Albin Wilson from Roam Motors, a company that is building electric motorbikes and batteries in Kenya.