Ride AI

Micromobility data standards are the rails new micromobility juggernauts will be built on.

In this episode, Oliver interviews Sam Herr, Executive Director of North American Bikeshare Association (NABSA), and Heidi Gennin, Shared Mobility Product Manager at Mobility Data, about the Generalized Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) data format.

Admittedly, it sounds dry, and yet, it’s a fascinating episode, with Heidi and Sam doing a great job explaining both what it is and why something as simple as a data format can supercharge the development of non-car transportation in our cities.

Specifically they dig into:

- What is a Data format and why does it matter?

- What is the GBFS and how does it connect to NABSA, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the GTFS.

- How does the GBFS relate to the Mobility Data Specification?

- Which countries around the world use the data standards for their bike shares, and why this is a rapidly growing space

- What challenges they face in developing a global data standard

- How they’re thinking about future open vehicle protocols, including ride hailing and car share.

In the meantime, be sure to check out Horace’s upcoming keynote “Micromobility’s Moment” on the 10th of September at 12-1pm EST. It’s going to be amazing - an instant classic, with thundering narrative arcs backed up with detailed data about the State of the Micromobility World not just both before and after COVID, but in the wider context of our transport systems and a better world. Tickets are $20, and you can register here - https://vi.to/hubs/micromobility.

Exciting episode today with Oliver interviewing Raoul Stöckle, CEO of Bond. Horace and Oliver originally interviewed Corinne Vogel, their COO on as one of the first interviews in 2018 when the company was Smide, but with the recent announcement of a partnership with FreeNow and launches in a number of new cities in Europe, it was time to have them on again to discuss how their approach of high end shared Micromobility is going and why it’s different.

Specifically:

- The Bond model of high end Micromobility and why they chose that strategy

- How and why they decided to go for custom vehicles, and what that has entailed

- The operational efficiencies they’ve been able to unlock with smart incentives, swappable batteries and faster vehicles

- Why how far a customer is willing to walk determines a huge amount in terms of capital costs, and why that’s tied to a vehicles speed.

- What the impact of COVID has been on the business

- The high percentage of users who have integrated the service into their commute

- Why they charge on a per-km, not per minute, basis

In the meantime, be sure to check out Horace’s upcoming keynote “Micromobility’s Moment” on the 10th of September at 12-1pm EST. It’s going to be amazing - an instant classic, with thundering narrative arcs backed up with detailed data about the State of the Micromobility World not just both before and after COVID, but in the wider context of our transport systems and a better world. Tickets are $20, and you can register here: https://vi.to/hubs/micromobility

This week Oliver interviews David Hyman, CEO of Unagi Scooters about their new subscription service, Unagi All Access, as well as a wider discussion about the state of owned micromobility and the vehicles therein. It’s a great conversation - David’s got a great perspective on the industry, backed up with studies commissioned from the Haas Business School about the opportunity for scooters beyond just renting them via shared schemes like Lime and Bird. Hope you enjoy!

Specifically, they dig into:

- A quick review of Unagi scooters and their history as a premium ‘iPhone of scooters’ brand

- Why Unagi has chosen to pursue a subscription model and who that will open them up to

- What an end-to-end subscription needs to include

- Why subscriptions may offer one of the cheapest daily transport options for most people

- Why they have so many musicians and celebrities riding their scooters, and why Andrew Yang is a fan

- Why David can’t wait to give Annie Hildago, mayor of Paris, a scooter (anyone know her and want to help?!)

- Who David most respects in the Micromobility game

Apologies about the audio - we had an issue and needed to go to backup.

For those tuning in new, you might also enjoy this earlier conversation with David about the history of Unagi and premium scooters (Episode 45).

Also, as mentioned in the news, Mina Nada and the Bolt Bikes (now Zooma) team have raised an $11m Series A. Check the interview we did with them out (number 66).

This week Horace returns with Oliver for a great discussion about why what we measure in micromobility, and transport in general, matters so much. They also dig into the recent announcement of the T50 supercar from Gordon Murray, and explain why they, two micromobiltiy nerds, got so excited about a preposterously expensive car.

Specifically they dig into:

- The history of the rise and fall of infrastructures

- Why what we measure about transport - be it track length, unit sales, passenger kilometres or trips - determine how we think about planning, infrastructure spending, and all of these second order effects.

- The open question about Micromobility measurement, and what is up for consideration

- The origins of the Micromobility podcast, and it’s connections to Gordon Murray

- Why Oliver and Horace have both bought cars that Gordon Murray has recommended.

- The intangibility of maniacal focus on user experience, and why that matters as much in micromobility as it does in cars.

Check out the launch of the T.50 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKQ6uUUmsw

This week Oliver interviews Henri Moissinac and Maxim Romain, co-founders of Dott. Dott are interesting - they’ve done things differently since they launched, kept their head down and stayed relatively unknown in wider micromobility circles. That is until they won the tender for Paris and Lyon recently, and asserted themselves as a player to really be taken seriously in the Pan-European micromobility landscape.

In this interview they talk about:

- The origins of Dott, and Roman and Henri’s history together at Ofo

- The landscape to date for both funding and city tenders, and why Dott’s slow and steady approach has really helped them develop into a profitable business.

- Their plans for an Ebike, and how they’re thinking about hardware in general

- The importance of operational excellence, having internal employees and systems for learning.

- Why they have pursued a largely large-city-only approach

- What factors contribute to successful city permits

- Henri makes an impassioned argument for why Micromobility’s success is inevitable

- Bonus - Henri talks about his experience at the Micromobility Conference in Berlin and how it felt to him like the early days of mobile

This week Oliver interviews Skye Duncan, a fellow Kiwi who has gone on to lead the Global Designing Cities Initiative at the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Skye is a wealth of knowledge about how infrastructure and space allocation decisions get made on streets around the world, and how micromobility can impacts those habitats to achieve transport outcomes. It was a great conversation - they both really enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too.

Specifically they dig into:

* Skye’s background and journey from New Zealand, via Columbia and working with Mayor Bloomberg to heading the Global Designing Cities Initiative at NACTO. 

* What the Global Design Guide for Cities is trying to achieve.

* What micromobility/electric bikes/scooters offer to cities around the world, and how this intersects with he growth in urban populations that we’re seeing.

* Why the problem of parking, and parking entitlement, are such a big issue.

* What micromobility operators should be thinking about when talking to city planners and contextualising micromobility in the transport mix.

* how Skye encourages advocates of new micromobility vehicles to discuss them and their infrastructure.

This week we releasing a recent conversation between Oliver and Doug Gordon from the popular War on Cars podcast that we did as a Micromobility Membership (TripleM) webinar. Philosophically aligned, Oliver and Doug talk about COVID, urbanism and the intersection of infrastructure and technology. This was a fun conversation.

Specifically they dig into:

- What we’re seeing globally and in NYC in response to the COVID epidemic.

- How much (or not) COVID is an opportunity to further the micromobility agenda, both with local and national level programmes for infrastructure

- Oliver reveals some of the details of the research he’s been doing on modelling mode shift potential for Micromobility

- The impact that Citibike has had on New York

- Where the origins of sneakers came from, and how they gained such notoriety during the 1980 transit strike in New York

- Why bike parking is the next big opportunity for infrastructure builds

- Why micromobility helps in transport deserts that exist, even in places like New York.

- General questions from the audience about ebikes, cargo, electric vehicles and more!

Also, next week Oliver will be hosting a webinar with the team from Helium talking about their new global long range, low-power and low cost wireless network. You might think data connections to micromobility sounds boring but nothing could be further from the truth. How we keep micromobility connected reliably and cheaply is one of the biggest issues still to solve. Helium are one of the most exciting projects out there. It’ll be relevant to investors, hardware people and operators interested in what the bleeding edge is. Come and join us on Tuesday, 4th of August at 4pm Eastern, 1pm Pacific. Sign up at micromobility.io

This week Oliver interviews Laura Fox, Lyft's General Manager for Citi Bike in New York. Laura has an incredible background with stints in Qatar, working on Mexico cities planning regulations, time at Sidewalk Labs, and as editor for one of the best books on urban planning and economics we’ve found, Order by Design by Alain Bertaud, all of which is discussed, before digging in to the nitty gritty details of Citibike in NYC.

This was a great episode - Laura is an amazing thinker and you’ll get a lot out of listening to her.

Specifically we dig into:

- an explanation of the Citibike setup - its coverage, size (15k bikes!!), characteristics and relationship to the NYC DOT.

- How and why they price as the product as affordabiy as they do.

- a discussion about the docked system and the benefits/challenges of this vs the more common dockless system ie. bike valets, load balancing with large numbers locked up and how they create ’capacity valves’.

- the impact of electrification on the fleet - how the early data from bikes show both 2-3x utilisation, but also longer duration and distance trip durations.

- A wider discussion about micromobility and its intersection with urban form, infrastructure and other planning requirements

- How they think about discussions over kerbside allocation, the challenges of of competing with car parking and the data/storytelling needed to counter this.

- where Laura sees the future going with regards to MaaS, how she think about Lyft's play in that space and who has the power to be the forcing function to promote widespread adoption.

- How COVID-19 has impacted their operations, and the changes in ridership demographics and usage that they’re seeing.

The book that we mention is called Order without Design, and can be found on Amazon here [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BSYX83S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1]. Would also encourage you to check out Devon Zuegel’s great podcast with Alain and his wife Marie-Agnes about their lives as nomadic urban planners/economists here [https://devonzuegel.com/tag/order-without-design-podcast].

Something a bit different this week. Horace and Oliver host Anders Brownworth, co-host of the Critical Path, to talk about crypto, blockchains and markets for trust. Anders’ background working in telecom, finance and then crypto (developing USDC and now working at the Federal Reserve) give him a unique perspective. As Horace, Oliver and he break down what programmable trust can mean for markets, government and society.

This came out of a discussion following a Micromobility podcast recording talking about Apple was functioning as an arbiter of trust with all its new key and payment building blocks, and how ‘trust’ carries a market premium, which gave way to a wider conversation about how trust can be priced.

For those of you who aren’t that familar with the workings of Bitcoin/blockchain, Anders Brownworth has done a 101 video here (with more than 1 million views!) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8

Specifically, they dig into:

- The history of money, and why trust-minimised stores of value are so valuable.

- Markets for trust and how companies like Google or Uber are potentially threatened by distributed marketplaces/clearinghouses.

- How the overall valuation of Bitcoin is the NPV of all future trust that will be accumulated to the protocol.

- Why having immutable records is so important for the functioning of democracies.

- What areas of blockchains both Anders and Oliver are most excited about.

Finally, as mentioned in the news - here is the excellent NYT article on the reallocation of streetspace in New York, “I’ve seen a future without cars and it’s amazing” - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/sunday/ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html

This week Oliver interviews Andrew Salzberg, former head of Transportation Policy at Uber, and now a Loeb Fellow at Harvard about his work in radically decarbonising transport. Oliver worked with Andrew at Uber, and he’s been thinking about the intersection between climate, transportation and technology longer than most. It’s a great conversation touching on the challenge ahead and opportunities that abound.

Specifically, they dig into:

- his work at TfL, the World Bank and Uber and then now, focussing on decarbonising transport.

- the challenges and opportunities for decarbonising the transport sector, and where Micromobility might be able to help

- how can these modelling exercises actually get integrated into decision making processes and funded, and who in the US is talking about it.

- The intersection of landuse change, PT, EV’s and Micromobility and others, and how the conversation can be ‘unsiloed’

- Why Andrew doesn’t think that decarbonization is inevitable, but how the renewable energy sector offers instructive examples of how tech can change the conversation.

- The opportunity for ‘policy feedback’ in further accelerating and ratcheting up new technologies to reduce emissions

- how EVTOLS/‘flying cars’ represent an asymmetric risk to overall decarbonisation efforts

Editor note: Andrew’s audio got lost towards the end, so we reverted to the backup. Apologies.