Ride AI

Horace and Oliver have a great discussion on the philosophical underpinnings of price signals going back to Freidrich Hayek and how price works to coordinate activity in society. They discuss how micromobility suffers from market manipulation for its infrastructure and manufacturing and how road space allocation is currently misaligned to how it’s valued as real estate. It’s Horace at his best - philosophical, paring theory to reality, and giving us all new frameworks to think about how the world works and will change. Specifically, they dig into: - The concept of using price signals to allocate resources in society proposed by Freidrich Hayek, where that came from as a concept, where it has been applied (free market vs. centrally planned economies), and why it’s interesting in the context of oil prices. - Why black/grey markets exist everywhere - Where it has and hasn’t used for road space allocation, and why that matters - What the impact on micromobility would be if road space could be more effectively priced. - Why minimum car parking is an unpriced externality, and how it came to be. - The geostrategic investment in the auto sector coming out of WW2, and why that has had an impact on city infrastructure - Sunk cost fallacies and the choice of what we continue to invest in in society. - Why clear price signals for real estate used for infrastructure would accelerate the adoption of micromobility. - A discussion about the use of economics in urban planning, including a short discussion of the excellent book Order without Design by Alain Bertaud. Thanks also to our sponsor for the episode, Populus.ai. Populus are building digital tools that assist government agencies to manage their curbs, streets and sidewalks with access to intelligent data and analytics tools. Last week, they announced their Open Streets Initiative to provide cities with digital solutions to identify and communicate slow and safe street policies. Oakland, California recently announced that 74 miles of streets would be closed to through vehicle traffic in order to make it safer for pedestrians, and small sustainable modes to travel for essential trips and create more room for social distancing. Populus works with cities around the world, from Buenos Aires to Baltimore - to help build trust between operators and regulators to see shared mobility become the big success that we think it can be. They run webinars and produce some of the best editorial content about the impact of micromobility on cities in the US that we’ve seen - if you’re looking to educate yourself better on the space, and/or are looking for tools to build trust with your local government to help take shared micromobility to the next level, check them out.

On this episode of the Micromobility Podcast, we publish an episode from the recent Micromobility Membership call where we had Axios Reporter Felix Salmon interview Kara Swisher, Editor at Recode about her pledge to go car-free for a year, and her thoughts about the development of the micromobility space. It’s a great discussion. Specifically, they dig into: - Her choice to get rid of a car, and how that’s gone over the last year. - The challenges of using Micromobility with a young child, and what options she’s considering - ‘I like to write about directional stuff and I think car ownership is over eventually.’ And how she thinks about autonomy and micromobility in that context. - The inevitability of new urban transport modes as cities evolve and grow. - Why e-bikes are attractive in the suburbs. - In the discussion about COVID-induced changes to urban design how much does it happen at a local level vs. state vs. national? - The technology of security for bikes and other micromobility vehicles. - How Kara thinks about the rebound of transit and car use, and how it’ll accelerate trends that were already happening. - Why Uber and Lyft enable the convenience of a car without the headache. - How the modularity of Micromobility competes against the incumbent car manufacturers. - Urban form in the majority of the US isn’t like SF, NYC or DC, which were all designed pre-car. Where is the capitalist incentive to reengineer the the majority of the US (and world’s) cities away from the car? - Why Kara thinks cars aren’t actually as sticky as everything thinks they are. - How do cities work with micromobility operators and whether Kara thinks that cities will end up subsidising them. - Why Kara would start with a network of tunnels if she started to rebuild a city from scratch. - Why Kara doesn’t think that the speed of streetscape adaptation is actually that slow. - A discussion with Horace about the nature of software in both micromobility and automotive vehicles. - A discussion about universal basic mobility, and why Kara is for it. - Why Kara is pro congestion pricing. Transcript of the call is available here: https://micromobility.io/blog/2020/5/3/kara-swisher-felix-salmon-end-of-car-ownership If you like this discussion, you can get regular access to this by signing up to TripleM at micromobilio.io. For $100/year you get access to exclusive calls with Horace and guests, discounts on conference tickets and access to the Slack community building the future of micromobility. Get your first month free when you sign up now.

This week, Oliver interviews micromobility industry veteran Tarani Duncan about her journey and views on the development of the micromobility industry. She’s a fount of knowledge, and this was a really fun discussion on the history of the space. Specifically we dig into: - Her childhood and study in New Orleans, and how that led her to studying transport - Her early days in operations fixing the early NYC Citibike system - Joining the team at Social Bicycles, which became Jump, including a discussion about social incentives and the acquisition by Uber. - Her experience at Mapbox building routing software for some of the largest delivery companies in the world - Joining Shared as the first operations lead - A discussion about the wide range of companies she’s advising in the space, including OurStreets, Tortoise, Karmic and DataContours - Why she’s the first member of the Human Scooting Association - The low hanging fruit for the shared industry - Why micromobility matters to her, and why she’s still very bullish on the space.

This week Oliver interviews Tony Ho, VP of Global Business Development for Segway/Ninebot. As the largest Micromobility hardware player globally across a whole heap of different verticals, Tony has a unique perspective on the space and how it’s developing. He’s a Clayton Christensen disciple as well - having studied at Harvard under him, so we get to unpack the theory against the practice of disruptive innovation and why Tony is excited about this space. It’s a great discussion. Specifically, we dig into: - Segway’s wide range of products, and how it conforms to our thesis that micromobility is not just scooters, but a whole range of sub-500kg vehicles. - We talk through how their operations have been affected by Coronavirus in the last 3 months - We talk about how the collapse of the international shared Micromobility industry has impacted the company strategy? - Why Tony sees micromobility as disruptive vs. other modes of transport, and how it conforms to disruptive innovation theory per Clay Christensen’s theory. - How does Segway of thinking of itself positioned alongside auto OEM's - How Segway is thinking about retail vs. shared - Where does Tony think the major growth potential is in terms of vehicle type and markets - We talk through robotics and what has become of the Loomo robot and T60 autonomous scooters - We talk about Segway's performance in the shared space, how they lost their early lead and how they’re responding to it. - How Tony thinks about Segways contribution to a possible Wall-e style dystopian future. - How does Segway think about infrastructure when developing new products, and does this nudge them towards advocacy for better/new bike lanes for your products - As the majority of the world doesn’t have much visibility over micromobility in China, Tony shares insights from there about vehicles, regulation etc - We talk about Segway’s plan to go public and how someone who is interested in getting a copy of their financials from their filing would go about that.

This week Horace joins Oliver to talk about the work of Nassim Taleb - namely, antifragility and asymmetric risk - and what connections there are to disruptive innovation theory and Micromobility. Oliver has wanted to record this episode for a while and it doesn’t disappoint. Specifically we dig into: - Taleb’s work and background, explaining concepts such as Black Swans, antifragility, Fat Tony, Skin in the Game, Extremistan vs Mediocristan and intellectual-yet-idiots - The attraction and danger of polemical thinking - The importance of understanding if you’re dealing with bounded or unbounded risk probabilities - How traditional MBA education has increased fragility in enterprises, right at the same time that they’re increasingly trapped by the innovators dilemma, how these two concepts are tied and why Apple’s paranoia from it’s near death experience parallel the investment strategy outlined by Taleb. - The role of job-to-be-done and the anti-fragility of the restaurant space. - The connections between antifragility and disruptive innovation theory - How micromobility’s characteristics of having a clear and easy job-to-be-done, relative simplicity, light weight, low cost and flexible production make it suited to taking ‘hits’ to its business model and thus, more likely to be resilient as a phenomenon.

This week Oliver interviews David Levinson, professor at the University of Sydney and popular blogger at transportist.org. David is not new to the world of talking about transport and disruptive innovation, having joined Horace on Asymcar many years ago. He brings a tempered view to the benefits and challenges of micromobility, including around infrastructure and the decision making timeframes that it typically has. Specifically, we dig into: - David’s background and research into toll roads, travel behaviour and urban form. - Whether David considers micromobilty a substantial new innovation in transport. - Constraints around deployment of larger vehicle fleets. - The challenges around parking, NIMBY-ism and political will in reallocating street space. - Comparable histories of new vehicle technologies making it into cities. - The intersection of political capital/structures and the likelihood of rollouts of specific transport infrastructure - The fundamental challenges with micromobility infrastructure - heft, vehicle density and decision-making timeframes - Examples of cities that have more proactively built infrastructure for micromobility, and historical examples of how companies have garnered community support to lobby for new infrastructure. It’s a great episode, if nothing else because it lays out the challenges/opportunities to widespread adoption of micromobility in sober terms.

This week Oliver interviews Mina Nada, CEO of Bolt Bikes, about their business leasing ebikes to delivery gig workers like UberEATS/Deliveroo/DoorDash in the UK, US and Australia. Given everything happening right now with COVID19 and the explosion in delivery based meal consumptions, this is a great interview. Specifically, we dig into: - Mina’s background at Bain, Deliveroo and Mobike, and how that prepared him for Bolt Bikes.  - The unit economics of their business, including 6 month paybacks, 3 year cycles and 66% residual value for depreciated bikes.  - How most markets are still allowing takeaway and delivery during COVID19 lockdowns.  - How couriers calculate the costs and tradeoffs of leasing vs owning their own vehicles  (ie. bikes, ebikes vs mopeds) and why the end-to-end and flexible nature of access positions Bolt well to solve the job to be done.  - Their plans for expansion and vertical integration into their own Bolt hardware - A discussion about ebikes and the future of the fleet, including e-mopeds and the newly released Arcimoto delivery vehicle.  - Bolt’s ability to raise debt capital to fund expansion - Why they plan to double down on B2B rentals, and not focus at all on B2C.  It was a great discussion - well worth listening to!

This week, Horace joins Oliver for a discussion about the impact of COVID19 on the world of micromobility, as well as taking questions from Twitter. Specifically, we cover: - Horace discusses the work of Nassim Taleb on anti fragility and tail risks, and how that applies to micromobility’s low-end disruption - Why financial stress, shorter distances being travelled in quarantine areas and the low-cost nature of micromobility position it to do well in the face of this crisis. - Examining this pandemic in the face of historical challenges like WW2 and earlier pandemics - The impacts and opportunities faced by shared micromobility operators in the meantime. - How brands can be ‘made’ in moments of crisis. - Whether the early movement for ‘emergency bike lanes’ to facilitate physically isolated movement will take hold, and how that could spread around the globe. NOTE: Apologies in advance for the audio quality. Things are moving very quickly, and even though we recorded this on Saturday, lots has changed since then. It’s not quite up the standards that we’d normally want, but we prioritised shipping it out sooner given how fast everything is moving.

This week, Oliver interviews Michael Granoff, partner at Maniv Mobility, an early stage investment firm specialising in transport technologies including micromobility. Michael has been around the mobility space a long time, and we had a great discussion about the boom and bust nature of new transport tech. Specifically, we talk about:  - Michael’s background, his journey through energy security and getting into electrification of mobility, involvement with Better Place, and subsequent founding of Maniv Mobility - How his thesis has changed over time from electric, to autonomous to micromobility - Discussion about their existing investments, including Phantom Auto, Bolt Bikes and one of our most popular episodes to date: Revel, and what was compelling about each.  - How to accelerate the development of infrastructure suited to micromobility.  - What he agrees and disagrees about with Horace’s thesis.  - Which city is the leader for micromobility and why New York is still undoing the mess from Robert Moses, the Power Broker who ran infrastructure from the 1920s-1960s in the USA. Note that this was recorded pre-the COVID19 outbreak. I’m looking forward to having him back on at some point in the future to discuss the impacts.

This week Horace joins Oliver to riff on a recent mental model for thinking about the job to be done of micromobility, involving escalators, elevators and stairs. It’s Horace at his best - conceptual, funny, insightful as always.  Specifically we cover:  - Which customers pick escalators vs elevators vs stairs, and what insight that might provide to the job to be done of micromobility. - The importance of ‘earning’ an experience - Why Horace thinks that customers who climb escalators are the best customers. - The importance of escalators in the architecture that they enabled. - How the impact of regulation will impact on vehicle design. - The importance of design and brand in solving the job to be done beyond simply A to B travel. - Horace’s travel tip for Terminal 5 at Heathrow.