Ride AI

In this episode, Horace and Oliver host a live podcast recording at The Drivery, an incubator in Berlin in front of an audience. They discuss the upcoming Micromobility Europe conference, disruption of the German car industry and what will disrupt micromobility itself in the future. It was a great conversation! This week we discuss: - Germany’s micromobility explosion and why it’s different from other countries - Why we chose Berlin for the Micromobility Conference in Berlin - Why the intellectual interest in micromobility from the car OEM’s is a textbook disruption response - How automakers will eventually be forced to flee cities - What can we see coming along that will disrupt Micromobility in the future - What would businesses built on micromobility platforms look like? - What form factors we see emerging for colder climates - What the impact of new motors will be on vehicles - Why a marketplace for rides is coming, and what the impacts of these low cost rides will be. “A bit transfer cost has gone to zero. When a human transfer cost goes to zero, then what?’ Thanks to this week’s sponsor Particle. Particle provides an end-to-end IoT platform, from device management to connectivity to hardware for connecting micromobility vehicles to networks and reducing complexity as operations scale. For operators that I've talked to, they're a godsend in the world of highly complex and competitive operations. Visit Particle.io/micromobility to learn more and request a free IoT development kit. All podcast listeners will also receive a free consultation. Visit Particle.io/micromobility today.

In this episode, Oliver and Horace talk about cost-per-mile calculations for micromobility, and the implications of the recent blogpost that Horace published on the Micromobility.io blog (https://micromobility.io/blog/2019/9/9/the-cost-of-a-mile). In short - what happens when the marginal cost per additional km collapses towards zero with Micromobility. We think there are lots of lessons we can take from the telecom industry. Specifically, we cover: - The cost-per-mile calculations from New York for both Citi-Bike and taxis and how they compare to private owned cars - The comparison of shared vs. owned micromobility, and why Horace is far more bullish than Oliver on shared platforms - The jobs-to-be-done of shared vs owned micromobility, and why they’re in many ways different markets - What new behaviours and business opportunities we’re seeing emerge on shared platforms and why scooter trains validate our early thesis about why micromobility is disruptive. - Why Lime and Bird are likely to become the equivalent of Vodafone or Verizon over time - A discussion about whether the social layer for micromobility transport will sit on the vehicle or on the phone of the user. It’s a great discussion with lots of sparring. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it!

In this episode, Oliver interviews Martin Mignot, a general partner at Index Ventures and panelist on our ‘Capital in Micromobility’ panel at the upcoming Micromobility Europe conference in Berlin. Index Ventures were early investors in Bird, and have a long history of investing in the micro and macro mobility space over the last 15 years. Specifically, we dug into: - His thesis around investing in mobility companies, and why the smartphone/internet has proved so transformational - Index’s investment in Bird, and why their focus on design and brand differentiates them starkly from the competition - His investment in Cowboy, his bullishness on high end owned micromobility, and how software/hardware integration can create outsized value. - The evolving funding landscape for shared scooters, and how he sees that progressing over the two years. - Why Paris has been a model laboratory for how the market for shared operations will develop over time. - How the pointy end of micromobility tech has started to hit the hard concrete of infrastructure, and how it’s increasingly dragging him into debates about infrastructure. It’s a really fun interview - one of our best so far! Well worth a listen.

In this episode, Oliver interviews Jeff Russakow, CEO of Boosted Boards, makers of the famous electric skateboards and now scooter. Boosted focuses on vehicle-grade owned micromobility, which provides a refreshing counter to the hype around shared models. It’s one of our best episodes to date--highly recommend checking it out! Specifically we cover: - the origins of the company, and how it proves out Horace’s early thesis on the disruptive potential of modularized componentry. - Jeff’s history with lightweight electric vehicles and his eventual coming to Boosted - How they think through their role as manufacturing ‘vehicle grade’ vehicles in the micromobility space, and how this differentiates them from other manufacturers - how their customers use their products - hint: 82% of their customers use them for their commute. - How they think through shared services vs. the owned micromobility market, solving the job-to-be-done of travel and why they’re doubling down on personally owned vehicles - Why they consider their competition the car and not other scooter or board manufacturers. - How they think about safety, why shared scooters have given a lot of people the wrong impression about what micromobility safety can be, and the standards that they build their vehicles to. - How they think about infrastructure for these lightweight vehicles, and where the opportunities are for regulators to harness the benefits. - The challenges that they’ve faced scaling to being a global, growth stage electric vehicle company. - How the venture capital community have viewed them vs the hyped space of shared micromobility. - Hints at their product pipeline and what they find interesting. Key quotes: “What are your options? You can buy a vehicle like ours and you're down to two dollars a day for unlimited mileage and no parking. You can pay $2 a mile for scooter or car share, or you can take your car - it's 40/50 cents a mile between insurance and depreciation and then parking could be $30 a day. So quite literally buying a premium scooter is the cheapest thing you can do.” “It’s been fun for us with the scooter shares because somebody is spending a billion dollars of somebody else's money to put free demos on every street corner on the planet and educate people to the value of these vehicles. There's a bunch of people say, ‘this is great.’ I'm going to use sharing and that's awesome, and then there's a bunch of people who say I like this so much, I’m going to buy one. If they want a vehicle grade one, there's only one. So we're in an interesting market spot.”

In this episode, Horace and Oliver run over Horace’s insights from his recent research using UN data into city-level potential for micromobility markets globally. We run through the most interesting growth trends in 1800+ cities. Specifically we look at: - Contextualising the rapid growth in car-based urbanisation as part of a 5000 year trend - Why Africa is one of the most interesting potential markets between now and 2035. - The cities positioned for both the fastest growth and largest increase. - How the low-income demographics of new migrants to these emerging mega-cities necessitates the need for cheap micromobility transport - Why we should look at auto-ownership rates to understand the 'low-end' potential of micromobility. - The likely business models we'll see emerge with the confluence of autonomy, networking and new propulsion options. - How these vehicles will beat the current incumbents of petrol powered scooters in Asia The things mentioned in the episode are: - The blogpost that Horace has written on the micromobility markets by city. - The talk by Jeremy Grantham re: the majority of increase in global population coming from Africa between now and 2100 - https://youtu.be/cPCblFpqrkI?t=1635 As requested, if anyone has a suggestion for an interview guest for micromobility in India or Africa, please message me on Twitter @oliverbruce. Thanks!

In this episode, Oliver interviews Lawrence Leuschner, CEO and co-founder of Tier, one of Europe’s largest scooter operators with over 6 million cumulative rides to date. Specifically, we cover: - Lawrence’s background as a successful entrepreneur and his motivations for starting Tier - the landscape for micromobility adoption in Europe, and why Europe is better placed to adsorb these transport innovations - we unpack the reasoning behind their unique operational model and more recent moves into custom hardware - reviews of regulations and data standards across Europe, lessons from Paris and why he thinks Germany is the most promising micromobility market - capital efficiency of operations, and how/why European operators differ from Lime and Bird - current and future integrations with public transport systems, and where this is most likely to occur. All in all, a fascinating interview!

In this episode, Horace and Oliver discuss Donald Shoup’s work, The High Cost of Free Parking, and why micromobility offers such a compelling counter to the dominant mindset that has existed around parking for the last 70 years. Specifically, we cover: - the financial and spatial impact of parking minimums in the US - The Catch-22 of parking legislation - parking creates sprawled landscapes that increases the need for them to move around. - The importance of pricing parking appropriately - The odd behaviour that our misplacing of car parks has created in Japan and the US - the logical use case for autonomy in RV’s if we can’t better price/allocate roadspace - Why micromobility offers such a fundamental rethink of space allocation and parking requirements

In this episode, Oliver interviews Sampo Heitanen, CEO of MaaS Global/Whim on their mobility as a service subscription model they have in Helsinki and a number of other markets. Specifically we cover: - How MaaS Global came to be started - The unique context of Helsinki’s regulatory environment and the enabling factors that made it a great first market - The challenges and opportunities of scaling mobility as a service offerings - ticketing, API’s, regulatory barriers and walled gardens - The importance of docked and dockless micromobility in driving down the costs of the subscription model - Their customer demographics and how this has driven their choices around subscription packages - How he thinks about Uber’s walled garden efforts in the mobility as a service space - The role of governments/regulators in encouraging mobility as a service offerings It’s a great conversation about the shift of business models to mobility-as-a-service subscriptions, underpinned by micromobility.

In this episode, Oliver interviews Tiffany Chu (@tchu88), co-founder and COO at Remix to discuss the role of software in helping cities plan for better use of their streets and help them harness the benefits of micromobility. Specifically we cover:  - The story of Remix and how they came to found it. - The predominant use cases for cities in utilising their software, and how this helps break down silos within city governments. - The challenges she sees with the rapid growth of micromobility and cities ability to absorb these new vehicles. - How she sees us more rapidly deploying new micromobility friendly infrastructure, and how that pares with the existing political processes in a lot of places - An explanation of MDS and why it’s valuable for city officials - What they’re planning to do with their recent Series B raise - What she would recommend for entrepreneurs thinking of working with governments. Unfortunately we lost a bit of the better quality audio halfway through so have to revert to the backup recording. Apologies. Also, as mentioned in the episode, check out the great Slate article on the MDS debate from David Zipper: https://slate.com/business/2019/04/scooter-data-cities-mds-uber-lyft-los-angeles.html

In this episode, Oliver and Horace discuss a recent trip that Horace made around Continental Europe and reflect on the changing dynamics of shared micromobility business models. Specifically: - The core product, regulatory and operational challenges that are constraining shared mimo companies - The differences between being anti-car and pro-micromobility - The parallels in this market to the mistakes made by the Chinese bikeshare operators, and more historically, the clean tech boom of the late ‘00s. - Why Bird launching the Cruiser was predictable, what the likely next steps will be in terms of product design and how this tracks the early years of the phone industry - An update on Horace’s blogpost ‘The Three Eras of Micromobility’ - The three categories of operators we’ve seen emerge: Independent Mega’s (Bird, Lime), Corporate Parent backed (Jump, Motivate) and Independent Minors (Voi, Tier, Bolt, Circ, etc etc.) and how the capital constraints of each impact their ability to innovate. - How micromobility is not going to be a winner-take-all market As mentioned, the article on the Three Eras of Micromobility by Horace: https://micromobility.io/blog/2019/4/29/the-three-eras-of-micromobility