Micromobility

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

This week Oliver interviews journalist David Zipper about the quietly brewing war over mobility data that is being played out between cities and shared micromobility operators.

David is a Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a Partner in the 1776 Venture Fund, where he oversees investments in smart cities and mobility ventures. Following his tenure as director of NYC Business Solutions in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration in New York City he served as director of Business Development and Strategy for two mayors in Washington, D.C.

David has written a number of articles in Slate, Fast Company and The Atlantic covering, among other things, the rise of the Mobility Data Specification which we see as one of the building blocks to supercharge micromobility’s growth, and underpin the future operating systems for mobility in our cities.

In this episode, we dig into:

- What is the Mobility Data Specifications, and why are they significant?

- Who are the major players arguing for or against MDS?

- What are the implications of widespread adoption of standards in this space?

- What will happen in the event of the preemption bill AB1112 passing in the California Senate, stripping cities of the right to collect the data that MDS provides, including the city that is leading the development of it.

It’s a fascinating conversation about the politics playing out at the local and state levels as cities build new solutions. For a more detailed read, check out the article from Slate that David wrote: https://slate.com/business/2019/04/scooter-data-cities-mds-uber-lyft-los-angeles.html

Unfortunately the good quality audio on David’s side got cut off around the 30 minute mark, so we default to the Skype recording.

As always, let us know what you think on Twitter: @oliverbruce or @davidzipper

In this episode, we release the content from a recent MM Meetup call with Horace where he unpacks 'What makes Micromobility Disruptive?'.

This was recorded from a call for our paid subscribers via the Substack newsletter, and grants exclusive access to Horace to ask questions on a monthly basis. It helps support the work that Horace, myself, James, Chase and Luke do to generate content for you guys, and grants you exclusive benefits like discounts to Summits, exclusive swag, early access to content and a community of other micromobility enthusiasts. See more details below.

On the call, they cover:

- How the current phase of scooters are similar to the Motorola Razr of the mid-late 2000s.

- How dependent on infrastructure is Micromobility’s success? What can we learn from the deployment of both cellular and autonomotive infrastructure development?

- The difference between adoption and disruption. Why adoption will come regardless, and what about disruption is predictable? How can we use language to track adoption?

- What is micromobility actually disrupting? Why is it hard to convince others to see the market for something that is additive.

- What segments are existing OEM’s not serving with their car products, and what opportunities does this present to micromobility providers? How is this causing them to flee the low end?

- How disruptive are traditional electric vehicles? How is this different?

- Micromobility deserts - what will happen in exurban areas? How does this track with the trend of urbanisation?

- Christensen says that automobiles weren’t disruptive themselves, but the Model T was. Horace explains why.

In this episode, Oliver interviews Nick Lovett (@nicklovettnz), Transport Policy Planner at the Christchurch City Council in New Zealand. Nick runs the scooter trial with Lime, and has recently expanded the programme to Beam (Singapore) and Flamingo (a local competitor). As noted in earlier episodes, Christchurch has been widely praised for his progressive stance embracing micromobility. In this episode, we dig into the wider lessons both entrepreneurs and regulators can take from Christchurch’s example.

Specifically, we cover:

- The primary things that entrepreneurs need to understand when dealing with regulators

- How regulators like Nick are thinking about the rise of business models like Lime and the new leading programme from Bird

- The challenges with having cities adapt quickly to new transport modes, and what entrepreneurs need to watch out for.

- What regulators are balancing while seeking to embrace micromobility in their cities.

In this episode, we publish the Software for Micromobility panel from the Micromobility California Summit.

In this panel, Stacey Randecker Bartlett (Co-Host, The Flying Car) hosts a conversation with William Henderson (CEO, Ride Report), Tiffany Chu (COO, Remix), Alex Kirn (CEO, INVERS), Jake Sion (COO, Transit App), Victor Pontis (CEO, ScooterMap) about how software is enabling and empowering micromobility to be adopted into cities.

Specifically they cover:

- Whether they see the emergence of one app to rule them all

- How software is integrating these services into a multimodal solution that can replace the job to be done of cars

- How software enables the remote fleet management for shared assets

- The software that cities are adopting to manage both shared fleets, as well as planning for their roadspace

- What cities are starting to learn when they’re empowered with software

- How MDS is working and not working for cities and operators

- The challenges around privacy in software and open data standards

- Their take on the potential for autonomous micromobility

Be sure to get your tickets to Micromobility Europe (Berlin, 1st October), as well as sign up to the MM Newsletter at micromobility.io

In this episode, Horace and Oliver discuss Horace's visit to Christchurch, New Zealand for the ITSNZ T-Tech 19 conference. For those that don't know, Christchurch suffered a massive earthquake in 2011, levelling most of downtown and killing 181 people. The city has been rebuilt with great cycle/micromobility infrastructure, which has led to Lime Scooters and cycling as a modal being incredibly popular in the city.

In this episode, we unpack:

- why the concentration of political power in cities makes them more likely to be able to quickly adapt to micromobility changes

- how the earthquake parallels the expected increase in volatility in environment we're likely to see from climate change, and how this benefits micromobility.

- how sunk costs in infrastructure can and will hinder the adoption of micromobility, and why this is a mistake.

- How the conformability of small vehicles allows them to permeate further into the city substrate in a way that larger vehicles cannot

- How transport changes how we relate to cities, and the possibilities that we see with them.

- How asset-light models suit an experience driven culture, and how this is a reflection of new forms of status.

Be sure to check out micromobility.io for all the latest, sign up to our newsletter, and get tickets for Micromobility Europe which is happening on October 1st. Please also rate the show - it helps us get recommended to others.

Cheers and let us know what you think on Twitter - @oliverbruce and @asymco