Ride AI

This week, Oliver interviews Jameson Dietweiler, CEO of Fantasmo.

Fantasmo has been around since 2014 to build maps for machines, and has been working specifically on micromobility since the earliest days in 2017. With the recent announcement that they’ve partnered with Tier to roll out an innovative phone based parking verification technology Oliver was excited to have a chance to bring them on the show. They use camera based positioning to better locate vehicles like scooters and ebikes in cities where often GPS is an insufficeint technology to provide highly accurate location data.

They talk about the pivots that the company has made and why their ultimate goal is to own the basemaps that are used for positioning in cities all over the world, using micrombility as the first step.

At Micromobility Industries, we’ve been long excited about companies that are building software layers to the micromobility experience. It also provides a good answer to regulators and city officials who ask how hard it is to enforce parking solutions for shared operators across cities, which as we know was an early issues with shared schemes.

It can be a little hard to visual, so we would recommend that you check out the short video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPsXU0Vbctg].

Specifically, they dig into:

- The origin story of Fantasmo and how Jameson came to be working on ‘maps for machines’

- The details of the pivots that they’ve made as a company - on-device to parking on phone via cloud etc.

- They talk through the Tier pilot and what they’re seeing in the early data.

- How they think about the move of computation into mobility, and where it’ll sit (discussing Horace’s thesis that these vehicles will become computing platforms)

- They discuss how defensible the moat for a company like Fantasmo is vs. Google or Apple opening up an API for this based on their mapping tech

- How the the funding environment is for a software company in the boom-bust Micromobility industry.

This week, Oliver interview Joseph Brennan, co-founder of Zoba, an analytics company working on optimizing micromobility operations. It’s a pretty nerdy topic, but the topline is that their clients have seen up to 74% more rides per scooter simply from operational tweaks that Joseph and the team have suggested. As micromobility operations get more sophisticated and cities get stricter on operators and rule enforcement, services like what Zoba offers will become even more important.

This was originally published as a video on our Youtube channel. Check it out here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79ipNkpCEN4.

Specifically, they dig into:

- The history of Zoba and how Joseph and his team came to found the company.

- The variables that they’re working with, and how they engage with customers

- A discussion on the benefits of new technologies coming down the pipe, including swappable batteries.

- The biggest operational challenges for both operators and governments

- How has their business fared in the boom/bust of the wider sharing industry, and what are they seeing now?

- The challenges and opportunity for raising money in the software-for-micromobility space and what he’d recommend to other entrepreneurs.

We're excited to bring you this interview with Carson Brown, co-founder of TAUR Scooters who are building one of the best designed and coolest looking scooters we've seen on the market. With their team based in London, it’s an excellent discussion about the role of design in micro, and why these new vehicles reflect the culture and environment that they’re designed in. We really hope that you enjoy it. 

This was originally a Youtube video for Micromobility Industries - if you’re keen to check that out, check out the link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elwybg1Vmeo

Specifically they dig into: 

- Carson's background working on electric unicycles

- Why they decided to chase after personally owned scooters

- The importance of design in owned objects

- What does their development process look like, and what were the design decisions they had to weigh up.

- How they thought about the TAUR brand from the get go.

- How they think about the 'hard' part of being in hardware, and what they're facing as a company when getting into production

- How they're thinking about support and maintenance 

- The irony of designing one of the most innovative personally owned scooters in a market (the UK) where ownership is banned. 

- His long term aspirations for TAUR.

This week, Oliver interviews Horace about the ‘Trillion Dollar Question’. With Arcimoto (who we’ve covered on episode 46) hitting a $1b market cap, and the recent article from RestofWorld covering the rise of low end Chinese micro-EV’s, we wanted to circle back to the question of what will heavy micromobility - those vehicles in the 50-500kg category - look like and why could they be where we find the defining vehicles of our time.

Specifically we cover:

- A quick summary of Horace’s research into carbon emission modelling for micromobility (more to come on this soon!)

- How Horace and Oliver both got into micromobility

- The rise of the Chinese low-end and what’s interesting about them

- How small cars like the Gordon Murray T25 or the golf cars sit in ‘no-mans-land’

- Why the criteria for disruption in vehicle type might sometimes require getting creative with the rules and being ‘unsafe’

- The rise of Arcimoto and their creative interpretation of the rules

- Why these vehicles will answer the ‘trillion dollar question’ when they emerge, and why they’re inevitable.

This week, we release the first of the many incredible sessions from the 2021 Micromobility World conference, wherein Benedict Evans and Horace Dediu discussed the disruptive potential of micromobility. It was an incredible conversation between two people who clearly have a lot of time and are excited by each others ideas. We hope you enjoy it!

Specifically they dig into:

- Why Benedicts background as a historian makes him a great analyst.

- The micromobiltiy disruption thesis - low end, the asymmetric nature of unbundling trips (market for vehicles vs. market for miles), the role of fun/enjoyment, speed of interaction

- Why micromobility is more interesting that autonomy

- The role of Marchetti’s constant in transport, and why that matters for micrombility’s unique capabilities

- What the rise of elevators can teach us about new urban transport technologies

- What the platform game will look like in this space.

- What the impact of COVID has been on how we think about transport

- How micromobility will enable Amazon logistics API to fulfil deliveries

- Tackling ‘Should the thing move, or the person move?’, and why that matters to micromobility.

- Why the low cost of micromobility platforms will allow real world marketing kickbacks similar to how ‘surfing’ on the internet works now - ’take me somewhere interesting’

- Why the rise of new forms of transport like automobiles enabled new crimes and the rise of Bonnie and Clyde

- Why cities will likely eventually move towards dynamic road pricing

If you prefer video, check out the video of it on the Micromobility Industries Youtube page here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAedjTudoQ

On this episode, Horace joins Oliver on the show to talk about what an entry by Apple into the mobility market would look like, and why a car is perhaps the wrong form factor to be looking at. They talk through the growth prospects for micromobility, and why Apple’s entry into the market would be a meaningful contribution to the world of mobility.

This is on the back of Horace’s post ‘Apple Computer’ published on the Micromobility Industries blog recently. Check it out here: https://micromobility.io/blog/2021/1/11/apple-computer

Specifically they dig into:

- The parts of the upcoming Micromobility World conference that Horace is most excited about

- The size of the car market vs the micromobility market as it currently stands

- Where the margins lie

- Why Apple has typically entered into industries that are still ‘embryonic’

- What a meaningful contribution could look like and what technologies would materially affect the user experience

- The constraints of infrastructure on useability and the ‘feel’ of a vehicle

- How computation becomes more personal over time, and why that will apply to vehicles too

- The revisit Microsoft’s decision in the 90’s to get into the lounge, and why that was the wrong question.

- Horace coins the term ‘smartphone-y’

Thanks again to the sponsors of this episode, Christensen Group.

Christensen Group, a lead player in the micromobility insurance category. As the micromobility space continues to grow around the world with a diverse spectrum of business models, Christensen Group continues to be a leader in the space servicing: e-scooter, moped, motorcycle, e-bike sharing operations along with: subscription & private based programs,  manufacturers, AI technology providers and more. They will have a virtual booth at this year’s Micromobility World event on January 27-29.  They invite you to stop by and have a chat with them about safety, fundraising, regulatory requirements, and trends in the risk and insurance marketplace, or whatever else is on your mind. They’re also going to have folks from Zagster, ZipCar, Ford Mobility, and others dropping by their booth to discuss litigation trends, regulatory missteps, fundraising and start-up strategies, and more.

Fun fact: Seoul, South Korea is the largest market for shared scooters globally, and Beam is one of the largest players there.

This week, Oliver interviews Alan Jiang, founder of Beam, the largest shared Micromobility operator in Asia-Pacific. Asia is one of the hotspots for micromobility given its home to the majority of the world’s population experiencing the growth, density and ensuing urban congestion where micromobility really thrives. We’re very excited to cover more of it in 2021. Alan has a great view over the market and it's nuances.

Speciflcally they dig into:

- Alan’s background at Uber and then Ofo

- how he’s seeing the market develop in Asia and Australasia

- Seoul - it’s the worlds biggest scooter market, and you're one of the largest players. What are the benefits to scale and what are they seeing?

- Beam’s unique commodity hardware strategy

- fundraising and what he’s seen change in the conversations over the last 12-24 months

- how Alan think of the ridehailing players, and whether Grab/Go-Jek/Didi are going to go hard into micromobility

Today on the show, Oliver interviews Puneeth Meruva, Associate at Trucks VC about their latest report: The Three Axes of Micromobility: Supply Chains, Distribution and Maintenance about the often unseen world of getting Micromobility into the hands of consumers. This is a topic that hasn’t received much coverage to date, so it was a fascinating conversation fully of nitty-gritty and relatively technical details about the opportunities for development and investment in the micromobility ecosystem.

Specifically they dig into:

- a recap of Trucks VC, their thesis and other portfolio companies in the Micromobility space

- Puneeths background and how he got there 

- what the research was about, and why Trucks undertook it

- key findings in the fields of components, distribution, maintenance etc

- Whether timelines for new product development are getting shorter vs longer and why

- Who the interesting businesses are in the distribution and maintenance space

- future opportunities in design and tech both in vehicles and business models (including a reference to www.nimbus.green - one of the companies Oliver is most excited about at the moment)

- A discussion about vehicle platforms, and whether Puneeth agree’s with Horace’s thesis that these vehicles will become computing platforms.

The report itself can be found here [https://www.trucks.vc/blog/the-three-axes-of-micromobility-supply-chains-distribution-and-maintenance]

This week Oliver interviews Chinmay Malaviya and Charlie Depman, cofounders of Ridepanda, about their efforts to build a better customer journey for purchasing owned micromobility. The platform is relatively new, but it hits on a very relevant need. Thanks to Reilly Brennan from Trucks VC for putting us onto them.

Specifically we dig into:

- Their backgrounds at Bird, Scoot and Lime and how that led them to starting this business.

- The core customer needs that they’re trying to solve

- The importance of trusted reviews and reliable servicing for customers

- What matters to customers, and why brand is far further down the list than expected

- What early traction they’re seeing

- How COVID 19 has impacted the buyers guide

- Their fundraising journey and what they’re seeing for Micromobility related startups in general.

This week, Horace joins Oliver for the podcasts 100th episode, and they run through what’s happened in the last 2 and a half years, and wonder aloud what will happen in the next two.

Specifically they dig into:

- Horace’s early theses

- The emergence of scooters and why they proved to be so challenging to Horace’s ideas about what vehicles would be most popular

- The biggest mistake that Horace thinks he made in his early theories

- What Oliver considers the biggest barriers, and where he over and underestimated progress over the last 2 years

- Where they expect to see development

- The pace of adoption, and why patience is needed.