Tag: Transportation

Posted on

Silicon Valley scooter wars

Electric scooters have become the hot new area for startups and “innovation.” For those who haven’t been keeping track, there are three main players in the Silicon Valley scooter wars: Bird, Lime and Spin. Bird first launched in Venice, Calif. before expanding into San Francisco in March. It’s worth pointing out that Bird, for now, is strictly an electric scooter company. That’s not the case for Lime and Spin, which both have their own bike-share services deployed throughout various parts of the country and world.

That same month — almost in complete lockstep — Lime and Spin deployed their own electric scooters in the city. Fast forward to June and the city of SF has placed a temporary hold on electric scooters until it can review permit applications. As part of a new city law, which went into effect June 4, scooter companies are not able to operate their services in SF without a permit.

Twelve companies (Uber/JUMP, Lyft, Skip, Spin, Lime, Scoot, ofo, Skip, Razor, CycleHop, USSCooter and Ridecell) have applied for permits in SF, but the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency will issue permits for no more than five companies during the 24-month pilot program. The program would grant up to 2,500 scooters to operate in total, but it’s not yet clear how many scooters each company would be allowed to deploy.

Uber and Lyft’s entrance into the electric scooter space was expected, given that Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told me in April that he had his eyes on electric scooters, and Lyft had reportedly been in talks with the SFMTA about its permitting process. But it became more official this past week when both companies applied for permits to operate in SF. Both Uber and Lyft, which have both recently announced public transit integration, are clearly vying to become the one-stop shop for all transportation needs.

The SFMTA said it’s aiming to notify companies of their permit status by the end of June. If issued a permit, companies must then pay an annual permit fee of $25,000, as well as a $10,000 public property repair and maintenance endowment. Companies must also share trip data with the city.

But the scooter moratorium in SF has little effect on the state of scooters as a whole. The last week alone has been filled with multimillion-dollar investments in electric scooter companies like Bird and Lime. Bird authorized a new $200 million funding round that could value the company at around $1 billion post-money, and Bird competitor Lime is also reportedly raising $250 million. 

Below, you can see where some of these newer players stack up in comparison to each other. This is just a look at companies that have deployed electric scooters in the United States.

Where the scooters at

California is the main hot spot for scooters in the U.S., but they have also popped up in Texas, Washington D.C., North Carolina and other states throughout the country. Unsurprisingly, regulation has proved to be an issue for many of these companies. In SF, the MTA is currently reviewing permit applications from electric scooter companies looking to operate in the city. The permit process came as a result of Bird, Lime and Spin deploying their electric scooters without permission in the city in March.

Over in Austin, dockless electric scooter startup GOAT says it’s working with the city to ensure its service meets the criteria laid out by regulators. Moving forward, GOAT says it’s actively working with other cities to pursue additional operating permits. In D.C., Skip, which is trying to differentiate itself by being more heavy-duty, worked with city officials and lawmakers to ensure it had the greenlight before launching.

Here’s an overview of where you can expect to see electric scooters throughout the country.

Outside of the U.S., Bird is looking at deploying scooters throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In February, Bird brought on Patrick Studener, a former international growth product manager at Uber, to serve as head of EMEA at Bird, according to Studener LinkedIn. Earlier this week, TechCrunch also spotted a job posting for a general manager in Europe to lead market management.

Meanwhile, a source sent us a Lime on the streets of Zurich, Switzerland. It turns out Lime is working with the city around some pilot programs with private businesses.

Building scooters

Many companies aren’t actually building their own scooters. Instead, they’re slapping stickers and logos on scooters that have been around for years. Lime, Bird and Spin launched using scooters from Ninebot, a Chinese scooter company that has merged with Segway. Ninebot is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Xiaomi and ShunWei. But Lime, Skip, Spin and Bird are looking to change that.

In May, Lime partnered with Segway to launch its next generation of electric scooters. These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, Lime CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch last month. Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles.

“A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.”

Lime scooter built in partnership w/ Segway

Bird is also experimenting with some new scooter models, but they seem to modified versions of a Segway ES2. When reached for comment, Bird said it didn’t have many details to provide. Meanwhile, Skip does have plans to build its own custom scooters but currently modifies the Speedway Mini4 63V 21Ah scooters.

Skip scooter deck

With Spin, the company does have plans to build its own scooters but isn’t ready to announce details. What Spin CEO Euwyn Poon would share with me is that the company has spun up a custom production line and supply chain.

GOAT, on the other hand, is deliberately taking the partnership route, having developed GOAT on top of a Segway scooter since the beginning.

“This decision was based not only on a superior quality scooter and the ability to maintain this quality at scale, but also our ability to work side-by-side with the Segway team in Changzhou, China and remotely here in Austin,” GOAT co-founder Jennie Whitaker told TechCrunch in an email. “We believe that it’s important to focus on what you’re the best at, which means allowing Segway to produce superior electric scooters while we focus on building technology to solve mobility problems for the world.”

A new side hustle

Just like ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft created new jobs, electric scooter companies seem to be doing the same. During some March public hearings in SF, companies touted how their respective services create jobs for people in low-income communities. Given that each player’s scooters need to be charged, they’re relying on everyday people to scoop up these scooters at night, charge them and then drop them off early the next morning.

Lime, for example, has its Juicer program. Bird has its Charger program, Spin has its Squad program and Skip has street team chargers. Spin pays $5 per scooter, Bird pays between $5 to $25 per scooter charged, depending on how hard it is to find the scooter. And Lime pays up to $12 per scooter, depending on the location.

In March, Harry Campbell over at The Rideshare Guy documented what it was like to be a charger for Bird. The TL;DR is that he had a good time and he could see how it would make sense for people looking to make some extra cash.

Scooter parking

Austin scooter parking

Moving forward, companies are looking at ways to ease some of its effects on sidewalk congestion, which has been a primary concern for city dwellers and legislators. In March, SF Supervisor Jane Kim said she didn’t envision handing out permits until the city could figure out a better way to dock the scooters. At the time, the SFMTA said the onus is on the companies to ensure proper docking and that it’s willing to work with each company around that process.

But over in Austin, the city has taken matters into its own hands. In May, the city adopted new rules that require riders to park in designated areas. This decision was inspired by some action Seattle took around dockless bicycles.

Each city will, of course, regulate in whatever way they think is best. But these designated scooter parking areas do seem like a solid way to ensure people aren’t tripping over scooters left in the middle of the street.

A fallen Bird in SF

In addition to figuring out a way to handle scooter parking, companies also have to worry about vandalism and theft. In SF, before the temporary ban, it wasn’t uncommon to see scooters with graffiti, cut wires or with dismembered parts.

Companies, of course, account for things like this and are keeping tabs. Lime told me lost scooters and vandalism affects less than one percent of its overall fleet across markets.

If you’ve made it this far in the story, I tip my hat off to you. Be sure to holler at me if you see scooters behaving badly, launching in new markets or yelling at people on the streets.

Posted on

Zoetrope effect could render Hyperloop tubes transparent to riders

An optical illusion popular in the 19th century could make trips on the Hyperloop appear to take place in a transparent tube. Regularly spaced, narrow windows wouldn’t offer much of a view individually, but if dozens of them pass by every second an effect would be created like that of a zoetrope, allowing passengers to effectively see right through the walls.

It’s an official concept from Virgin Hyperloop One and design house Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and in fact was teased back in 2016. Now the companies have shared a video showing how it would work and what it would look like for passengers — though there’s no indication it would actually be put in place in the first tracks.

A zoetrope is a simple apparatus consisting of a cylinder with slits on the sides and a series of sequential or looping images printed on the inside. When the cylinder is spun, the slits blur together to the eye but have the effect of showing the images on the inside clearly as if they are succeeding one another — an elementary form of animation.

Want an example? Here’s Pixar breaking down a zoetrope it built for Disney’s California Adventure:

The design concept shown is actually a linear zoetrope, in which the images are viewed not as a loop inside a cylinder, but in a long strip. You may have seen these before in the form of animated advertisements visible through the windows of subways.

In the case of the Hyperloop, the tube through which the “pod” moves would have portholes or slit windows placed every 10 meters through which the outside world is visible. At low speeds these would merely zoom by a few per second and might even be unpleasantly strobe-like, but that would smooth out as the pods reach their target speed of 1200 KPH (about 745 MPH).

The team simulated how it would appear in the video below:

Is it really necessary? You could, of course, just provide a faked view of the outside via LCD “portholes” or have people focus on their own little TV screens, like on an airplane. But that wouldn’t be nearly as cool. Perhaps the windows could double as escape or access hatches; as you can see above on the existing test track, there are already such holes, so this may be easier than expected to implement.

Of course, it all seems a little premature, as Hyperloop type transport is still very much in prototype form and existing endeavors to bring it to life may in fact never come to fruition. Nevertheless, it is a clever and interesting way to solve the problem of preventing people from thinking about the fact that they’re traveling at ludicrous speeds down a narrow tube.

Posted on

Uber and Lyft apply for electric scooter permits in SF

Uber and Lyft have officially put their respective names into the electric scooter competition. Uber and Lyft are among the 11 companies that applied to operate an electric scooter-sharing service within San Francisco city limits. The city, however, will only offer up to five companies permits to operate as part of a one-year test program.

Uber declined to comment, but confirmed that it has applied for a permit via JUMP, the bike-share startup Uber acquired for about $200 million in April. Once Uber is cleared to operate electric scooters, the plan is to integrate them into the Uber app and continue fleshing out Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s vision for a full-fledged multi-modal transportation platform.

Lyft also confirmed to TechCrunch that the company applied for a permit, but declined to share any further details. Here’s the full list of companies that applied, via the SF Chronicle:

  1. Bird
  2. CycleHop
  3. JUMP via Uber
  4. Lime
  5. Lyft
  6. ofo
  7. Razor (yes, *that* Razor)
  8. Ridecell
  9. Scoot
  10.  Spin
  11.  USSCooter

San Francisco’s permit process came as a result of Bird, Lime and Spin deploying their electric scooters without permission in the city in March. As part of a new city law, which went into effect June 4, scooter companies are not able to operate their services in San Francisco without a permit. The SFMTA said it’s aiming to notify companies of their permit status by the end of June.

For more information about electric scooter regulation in San Francisco, be sure to check out my previous coverage.

Here’s how SF wants to regulate electric scooters

The electric scooter saga in San Francisco

Posted on

Lime brings electric scooters to LA

While electric scooter startups are at a standstill in San Francisco, Lime is taking its scooter service to Santa Monica, Calif. — competitor Bird’s home turf. Lime was planning to launch its new model of scooter that it built in partnership with Segway in San Francisco last month, it’s now debuting them in the Los Angeles area first.

These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, Lime CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch in May. Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles.

“A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.”

On the safety side, Lime enhanced its night-light on both the front and back of the scooter, and has added a light to flash below the deck. Lime has also added an additional brake, to have one on both the front and rear wheels.

Lime, which also has its pedal-assist electric bikes out and about in the LA area, says this is the first multimodal transportation service in LA. This news comes following reports of Lime raising a $250 million round led by GV.

Lime, Bird and Spin have to temporarily remove scooters from SF

Posted on

Tesla Model X sped up in Autopilot mode seconds before fatal crash, according to NTSB

The National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report detailing the fatal crash involving a Tesla Model X in March. The crash also resulted in a fire and shut down two lanes of Highway 101 near Mountain View, Calif. At this point, the NTSB has yet to determine a probable cause of the crash and is continuing to investigate the accident.

The report says the Model X, while in Autopilot mode, sped up to 71 mph in the seconds leading up to the crash.

“At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected,” the report states.

Source: NTSB/S. Engleman

Tesla’s Autopilot mode is designed to match the speed of a slower vehicle traveling ahead of it. At the time, Autopilot was set to 75 mph, according to the NTSB.

A Tesla spokesperson declined to comment but pointed me to its March blog post, where the company describes how the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for the six seconds prior to the collision. The NTSB confirmed that in its preliminary report today.

“Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents – such a standard would be impossible – but it makes them much less likely to occur,” Tesla wrote in a March blog post. “It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists.”

Walter Huang, the owner of the car who died as a result of the crash, had previously taken his car into the Tesla dealership, saying his car had a way of veering toward the exact barrier his car hit, ABC7 reported. Tesla, however, previously said it has no record of Huang complaining about Autopilot.

Posted on

Lyft redesigns rider app to encourage shared rides

Lyft has revamped its rider app in an attempt to help people get where they’re going faster. Instead of first asking for pickup information, the app will now ask where you’re going, which Uber first started asking in 2016. The app is also designed to encourage more shared rides. Oh, and Lyft is now no longer calling its carpool feature Line. Instead, they’re simply shared rides.

“We’re updating [Line] to shared and you’re going to see a suite of options for shared as we evolve over time,” Lyft VP of Design Katie Dill told TechCrunch. “There are multiple different ways of sharing a ride. By calling it shared, we’re a lot more clear with our passengers.”

This new app will roll out to everyone over the next month.

Currently, 35 percent of Lyft rides are shared, but the goal is to reach 50 percent shared rides by 2020, Lyft VP of Government Relations Joseph Okpaku told TechCrunch. Through some early testing of the new design, Lyft says it has already seen a 5 percent increase in shared rides. This is not a direct apples to apples comparison, but in San Francisco, people share rides up to 50 percent of the time with Uber Pool.

“One of our focuses has been the idea of shared rides,” Okpaku said. “Getting people to share a ride with a stranger.”

Lyft has also made it easier to compare prices of its solo versus shared rides. The screen above, Dill said, is where Lyft has seen the five percent increase in choosing a shared ride.

To further promote shared rides, Lyft will notify those who opt to ride solo if there’s an available shared ride heading their way that doesn’t include any detours. The ultimate goal, Okpaku said, is to get more people in a smaller number of cars.

In the near-term, Lyft is launching transit integration with the Transportation Authority of Marin in Marin County, Calif. and the Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica, Calif. In total, Lyft has more than 25 transit partners throughout the country.

“We’ve been really bullish on the fact that transit and ride-sharing are inherently compatible,” Okpaku said.

Lyft isn’t sharing mockups of its transit integration, but the idea is that people will be able to get public transit trip details from within the Lyft app. For now, it doesn’t seem like payments will be part of the experience. Uber, on the other hand, recently announced a partnership with Masabi a mobile ticketing platform for public transit. Masabi handles ticketing for 30 transportation agencies worldwide, including Los Angeles’ Metrolink, New York’s MTA, London’s Thames Clippers and Boston’s MBTA. The idea is that as people will be able to book and use transit tickets from within the Uber app.

UberMasabi partnership

Lyft has also done some work with the city of San Francisco to reduce congestion on some of the city’s highly trafficked streets. Near Valencia Street, for example, Lyft has created a couple of pickup and dropoff spots for passengers off to some side streets. Over the last couple of months, Lyft says it has directed over 20,000 pickups to those side streets.

“This is something we’ve done here and there, but is now something we’ll systemize,” Okpaku said. “We will do this permanently on Valencia and will expand across San Francisco and other parts of the country.”

This redesign comes at a time when Lyft is looking into both bike-share and electric scooters. With the design, it’s clear to see how Lyft could easily add new modes of mobility.

Lyft reportedly wants to launch electric scooter service

Lyft is reportedly close to buying the company behind Ford GoBike and Citi Bike

Posted on

Self-driving robot delivery startup Starship Technologies raises $25 million

The robots are here and one company, Starship Technologies, has raised $25 million to bring even more to the mainstream. This latest round of funding includes a follow-on investment from Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. New investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others.

These autonomous robots can carry items, like groceries or packages, within a two-mile radius. The plan with the funding is to deploy Starship robots in neighborhoods, corporate and university campuses in both the U.S. and Europe.

Starship has also brought on former Airbnb business development lead Lex Bayer as chief executive officer.

“We are at the point where we are ready to start deploying our network of robots at scale,” Starship co-founder Janus Friis said in a statement. “This additional funding, and Lex’s appointment, will allow us to bring our services to market. Lex joins us with a proven track record of growing businesses that change the way we live for the better.”

But Starship is by no means the only company operating in this space. There’s Boxbot, a startup that recently received a permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver, and Nuro.

The race to build autonomous delivery robots rolls on

Starship has previously partnered with on-demand food delivery companies like DoorDash and Postmates to test out its robot delivery service. Last January, Starship partnered with the aforementioned companies for a pilot program in Redwood City, Calif. and Washington, D.C. To date, Starship robots have traveled more than 100,000 miles in 20 countries, across 100 cities.

Prior to this round, Starship raised $17.2 million in a seed round led by Mercedes-Benz Vans with participation from Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, ZX Venturers, Morpheus Ventures and others.

Posted on

Uber is bringing its Jump e-bikes to Europe

Dockless bike sharing startups — such as Ofo, Mobike and LimeBike — have flooded European cities with rides that can be hired at the tap of an app in recent years.

But fierce competition in the urban mobility space is not deterring Uber from peddling into the region, and attempting to put some shine back on a brand that’s still divisive — charged with all sorts of problematic effects from rising congestion and air pollution to having a damaging impact on workers’ rights.

It’s certainly true that the hangover from Uber’s legacy operational style of brash expansionism and thumbing its nose at regulators continues to cause the company problems in Europe.

Many cities have banned its p2p service, and last year — in a major upset — London’s transport regulator withdrew its license to operate.

Though under new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Uber has also been expanding in some European markets — where regulatory requirements allow.

Uber’s new chief executive has taken a strikingly different tone vs founder Travis Kalanick, saying he wants to work with cities and local authorities, rather than fight them.

Today at the NOAH conference in Berlin that emollient tone was on show again, with Khosrowshahi announcing that Uber’s Jump electric bike sharing service will launch in the city this summer.

“Here in Germany, I am determined to have a better dialogue with cities and various German stakeholders to discuss how we can shape the future of urban mobility together. Uber stands ready to help address some of the biggest challenges facing German cities: tackling air pollution, reducing congestion and increasing access to cleaner transportation solutions,” he said.

Other unnamed European cities are also slated to launch in the coming months. And bikes can’t be accused of exacerbating air pollution or road-based congestion.

Khosrowshahi also said Uber will also launch its all electric vehicle Uber Green service in Berlin by the end of the year, following a recent launch in Munch — saying that was Uber “playing our part in tackling air pollution”.

“I’m thrilled to announce two new products for Berlin that are an important first step in developing our long term partnership with Germany — our Jump pedal-assist electric bikes and the introduction of a fully electric Uber Green service,” he added. “The team is working hard to bring Jump to Berlin by the end of this summer and we also plan to launch in additional cities across Europe in the coming months.

“We’re particularly excited about bikes because they can provide a convenient, environmentally friendly ride even in dense cities where space is limited and roads can be congested.”

Uber acquired the Jump bike sharing startup back in April, paying around $200M according to a source close to the situation.

The Jump bikes use electrical assistance so renters do still need to peddle. On a full charge the bikes have a range of 30 to 40 miles.

Uber deploys teams to service bikes but its Help Center warns users “the bike you rent might not be at full charge” — so the rider can end up having to do work without assistance from the motor if the battery goes flat.

Posted on

Remote-control driverless car startup partners with vehicle manufacturers

Phantom Auto, a platform that can remotely control autonomous vehicles if something goes wrong, has partnered with Einride, Transdev and NEVS, formerly known as Saab Automobile.

Phantom Auto’s tech enables a remote driver to take control of an autonomous vehicle in the event the car encounters something it can’t handle on its own. The plan for NEVS is to use Phantom Auto’s technology to better ensure the safe deployment of electric, autonomous vehicles.

“Our AVs must be able to drive from any point A to any point B, which means driving through all edge cases they experience on the road, such as inclement weather, road work, and any other road obstructions,” NEVS CEO Stefan Tilk said in a statement. “Phantom Auto’s teleoperation safety technology ensures that passengers in our vehicles can safely and efficiently drive through any edge case, and that’s why I am excited and proud to call them NEVS’ partner.”

Phantom Auto, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., was founded just last year.

Posted on

Bird looks to bring scooters to Europe

Scooter startup Bird, which is headquartered in Venice, Calif., is looking to expand into Europe, according to a new job posting. The job is for a general manager based in Europe to lead market management and “raise the opportunities and concerns of the market and set the priorities that will grow Bird in your home country,” the listing states.

Responsibilities include “the successful launch of Bird in your home country in Europe” and expanding Bird by “launching new cities within the region.” Another new job listing seeks an executive assistant based in Amsterdam. TechCrunch has also heard Bird has brought on an executive to lead operations in Israel, but Bird says it doesn’t comment on launch plans.

Earlier today, Bird authorized a new $200 million funding round that could value the company at around $1 billion post-money. Back in March, Bird expanded beyond Southern California into San Francisco, San Jose and Washington, D.C.

The scooter market is on fire right now. Competitor Lime is also reportedly raising $250 million, while ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft are also looking to get into electric scooters.