Movements | February 26th, 2019

Issue #36 — Brought to you by Michal Naka and Adam Feldman. Please forward this weekly mailer to friends and colleagues and encourage them to sign up!

Micromobility

Ark Invest dives into the latest scooter unit economics: “They will have many ways to contain unit costs, among them: the cost of the scooter hardware, the cost of charging/relocating them, maintenance costs, and credit card fees, as well as higher utilization rates and longer lifespans.” | ARK Invest

Lime hires former Morgan Stanley banker who helped Uber raise its funding war chest. “Lime plans to follow the Uber playbook of persistent private fundraising, in a bid to establish itself as the dominant player for electric-scooter rentals, Tobiason said.” | Bloomberg

How are scooters doing in the bike capital of the world, Copenhagen? Pretty dang good: 200 scooters, 1000 trips per day, and over 10,000 installs since Voi launched in Mid-January. | Thomas Hecker

Scooters for sustainable suburbs. | Medium

Mapbox released its guide to micromobility. | Mapbox

JUMP is proving to be more popular than Uber rides in Sacramento. “An October study found more Sacramentans were renting Jump bikes than using Uber’s car service by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin.” | The Sacramento Bee

City of San Jose is hiring a Micromobility Transportation Specialist. | San Jose

TNCs

Uber and Lyft to pay into a California state fund for wheelchair accessible trips. | SF Examiner

Didi looks to take on Uber in Colombia, Peru, and Chile. | Reuters

Uber Eats India is said to be in the final stages of selling to local food delivery competitor Swiggy. “The transaction is likely to be a share swap, sources said, giving Uber around 10% stake in the Bengaluru-based company last valued at $3.3 billion.” | Economic Times

Grab is integrating its food delivery service ‘GrabFood’ into its ridehailing app. “By our own estimates, an average user transacts 100 times a month, and the top two use cases are transport and food… So while the other players may view just one use case, we are looking at it from a totally different lens.” | The Business Times

Lyft starts discounting rides again in an effort to grab marketshare ahead of its IPO roadshow. | The Information

New Features & Launches

Transit launched an offline trip planner for public transit. Here’s a great behind the scenes look into how they did it. | Transit

Lyft launched its most affordable ride option yet with the “Shared Saver” product. Similar to Uber Pool Express and Via, Lyft Shared Saver allows users to save a few dollars by walking a few blocks to and from pickup and dropoff points. Lyft’s goal is to reach 50 % shared rides by 2020. | Venture Beat

Auto OEMs

Daimler and BMW are unifying their mobility investments as part of a joint venture. | Bloomberg

Cities & Policy

Oakland and scooter companies square off over liability issues. | GovTech

Why US cities are becoming more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. “Across the nation, cyclist fatalities have increased by 25 percent since 2010 and pedestrian deaths have risen by a staggering 45 percent.” | The Conversation

Uber is paying for WMATA to run an extra hour of service after Capitals games. | Fox DC

New Investments

Zoba raised $3 million to help scooter companies predict demand. | Techcrunch

China based “virtual kitchen” and food delivery startup Panda Selected raises $50 million. “China’s food-delivery market is already worth $37 billion dollars, according to the SCMP, which says 256 million people in China used online food ordering services in 2016, and the number is expected to grow to 346 million this year.” | Techcrunch