This ain’t our first rodeo: The turn of the century saw a rise in scooters, allowing freedom of movement for riders and sparking street usage issues for pedestrians. What’s old is new again.
Moped diet: Upcoming national weight restrictions for hugely popular electric mopeds in China increase sales due to expected higher costs while accelerating new battery technology adoption.
We review a Scoot scooter in San Francisco!
This new model has airless tires that aren’t solid rubber, but have notches in them to provide additional ride comfort over solid rubber airless tires, without the pitfalls of air tires (constant need for air pumping and/or punctures).
They also have locks, making them semi-dockless. Great for fleet management (helps against vandalism) and great for users, allowing the flexibility of dockless while removing dock anxiety.
Absolutely Populus! San Francisco-based startup Populus raises $3.1 million to expand platform to help cities manage shared scooters, bikes, and cars.
Social credit silver lining? Chinese bike sharing firm Hello Chuxing attributes significant year-over-year drops in bicycle damage to its social credit system, which evaluates user behavior and doles out rewards or punishments.
The gig is up? Scooter companies Bird and Spin begin hiring employees for fleet maintenance in several markets, potentially moving away from a gig economy model.
Mutually inclusive: Dockless bicycles seem be helping docked bikes, boosting ridership and suggesting a “raising of all boats” ecosystem for urban micromobility.
We meet up with ScooterMap’s founder in beautiful (any noisy!) Santa Monica to chat about the other side of the scooter experience, from the perspective of the chargers who recharge and rebalance scooters on a daily basis.
Pardon the background noise!
How can cities boost transit ridership? Add more bike share: Ridership is down on most U.S. transit systems. More bike share might help reverse those losses
JUMP bikes > Uber cars? JUMP bikes beat Uber car trips just 5 months after introduction in Sacramento – a first in a city with both services.
A Lime-y week: Lime hires its first CFO, drops “bike” from its name replacing bicycles with more popular scooters, and deals with wheel-lockups in New Zealand.
The wheels of Portlandia: This two-seater electric half-car is what Portland based Arcimoto believes will push the needle on climate change and better serve single occupancy driving. We’re big fans.
JUMP-starting slowing growth: As IPO approaches and growth for ride sharing slows, Uber proclaims self-disruption via micromobility as part of its master plan.
They wrote the book on biking infrastructure: How the first American design standard for protected bike lanes by NACTO helped spread bicycling in the U.S.
Tell us if the ELF isn’t one of the the most unique-looking vehicles you’ve ever seen??
It’s probably no accident that the design alludes to the Beetle, since founder Rob Cotter has worked on BMW and Porsche cars and has drawn engineering and design inspiration from Ferdinand Porsche, the designer of the original VW Bug!
How not to do bike-share: Grossly underestimated bike lifespans and nearly-free unlimited rides were just two of the causes for Chinese bike-share company’s failure. The story of Ofo’s demise.
Micromobility and so much more: Indonesia-based Go-Jek, a ridehailing platform for motor scooters, food, groceries, and even massages, raises $1 billion from Google, JD.com, and others.