Su$tainable Mobility: Heatwaves, hackers and flight bans
Vol 37
This bi-weekly newsletter aims to separate the signal from the noise for making money in sustainable transportation: Electrification, mode shift, active and public transit, and mobility aggregation, across both people and goods movement.
There is no Deep Dive this issue. Later this month, I’ll be in SF for Hyundai CRADLE presents Orchestrating Ecosystems on Sept 22. And I’ll be speaking at Move America on Sept 27 on two topics: Accelerating mobility startups from 0 to 100 and Promoting zero emissions through curb management programs. If you’re at any of these events, drop me a line so that we can meet up!
QUICK HITS: Notable news from the last 2 weeks
👺 In Moscow, hackers caused a massive traffic jam by manipulating the ridehail app Yandex. Keep this in mind next time someone tells you that self-driving taxis in dozens of major metros are just around the corner. Uber also had some hacker mishaps this week.
🌴 In California’s massive heatwave, EVs weren’t a grid strain and might be part of the solution going forward. As always, reporter Joann Muller at Axios opts for more insightful reporting.
🇮🇱 Israel is banning 4-engine planes over climate concerns. This is a largely symbolic step, as there are no current passenger flights using 4-engine planes, but it sets an important precedent for other airports to consider.
🇫🇷 France is cracking down on dark stores. Everyone wants convenient, rapid goods delivery, but nobody wants a warehouse nearby.
🇨🇳 China ambassador warns the US not to create a more self-sufficient EV supply chain. The key threat here is “to disconnect from the world’s largest market”; Ambassador Qin Gang is implying that if the US becomes more self-sufficient in the EV supply chain, GM will lose access to the Chinese market.
🏴 Scotland is offering a restructured interest-free loan program for e-bikes. The last attempt didn’t quite succeed.
🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco and Geely may invest in a majority share of Renault’s legacy internal combustion engine business. This is one of the inevitable steps of dismantling the deeply troubled Renault, but it will set a precedent for other automakers like Ford who might be tempted to spin off their legacy operations.
🤝 Rivian struck a deal with Mercedes-Benz to partner on light commercial vehicles (LCVs) in Europe. This is a coup for Rivian and yet another headache for Renault, whose once-prominent LCV business needed a deeper partnership with Mercedes to fend off e-van competition from Stellantis and Ford/VW.
📱Apple may offer a new "Clean Energy Charging" setting for the iPhone, to “optimize charging times for when the grid is using cleaner energy sources.” The same underlying technology can be applied to EV charging…
📦 Amazon just put a huge last-mile data set in the public domain to spur better routing solutions. When you're as far ahead of folks as Amazon is, sometimes leaving bread crumbs ensures that people follow your trail rather than take a unique path.
👨🏽🏭 Tesla may build its own lithium refinery in Texas. I expect many car companies to resort to similar measures to secure capacity during the rapid scale-up of EVs, even if most might be spun off once we reach a steady state in the EV market.
🤖 Uber is partnering with Nuro for autonomous food delivery in California and Texas. Autonomy continues to scale first in goods movement, not people movement.
🎯 GM is hitting a sweet spot in pricing its new EV. Tesla dominates the premium EV segment, but the value segment is still up for grabs despite prior efforts by both GM (the Bolt) and Nissan (the Leaf).
🚶🏾♂️A new study shows that e-scooters most often replace walking. In better news, owned scooters are more likely to substitute private car trips than shared scooters.
🤔 A new study from Imperial College London looks at how oil industry employees psychologically process how their business model is not compatible with the Paris agreement. Useful qualitative framing to keep in mind when oil & gas companies hype up the hydrogen economy.
🤳🏽 Y-Combinator held its Summer 2022 Demo Day, with only 11 of 229 companies in the summer cohort tagged “climate.” Of the 223 presenters, only Fetii (Vol 24) and Seaflight seem to fit sustainable mobility.
STARTUP WATCH: Sustainable mobility startups (generally pre-seed or seed) to keep an eye on
Deftpower (Netherlands): White label EV charging software
Optiyol (California, USA): Route scheduling for fleets of people movement and goods
Smove.City (Belgium): Micromobility data provider for cities
Vi&Go (Spain): A B2B subscription for micromobility batteries as a service
FUNDING: Capital raises from startups previously featured in Startup Watch
Zero Emission Services (Vol 25) secured 50M EUR from the Dutch government’s green fund (Nationaal Groeifonds)
