Are e-cargo bikes the future of last-mile delivery?
Amazon pilots greener deliveries in London
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E-cargo.
Amazon is piloting a fleet of e-cargo bikes and on-foot delivery staff to replace thousands of delivery vans in London from a new micromobility hub in the Hackney borough of London. The company says the new delivery modes in combination with electric delivery vans will make more than 5 million last-mile deliveries a year in central London. E-cargo bikes and walkers will “directly replace thousands of traditional van trips on London’s roads and reduce traffic congestion,” Amazon says. The bikes will reportedly be operated by Amazon partners rather than the company itself.
The new e-cargo bikes look like tiny mail trucks but, per Electrek, “use an e-bike drivetrain for propulsion”:
That means the driver is actually a rider who sits on a bike seat and pedals the vehicle to engage an electric motor that magnifies his or her pedaling force. Ultimately, most of the power comes from an electric bicycle battery, though the rider does add a fair amount of pedaling power too.
The vehicles are usually limited to a maximum speed of 25 km/h (15.5 mph), which is generally sufficient for delivery purposes in crowded city centers.
Amazon is already making e-cargo bike deliveries in five cities in France and seven in Germany, and uses electric scooters across Italy and Spain. E-cargo bikes are considered a promising alternative to carbon-spewing cars, trucks, and vans. A 2021 report by climate change-focused group Possible found that e-cargo bikes deliver 60% faster than vans in urban centers and cut emissions by 90% compared to diesel vans and 33% compared to electric vans. Phasing out gas-powered delivery vehicles is especially important as commercial vehicles are disproportionate contributors to urban pollution and congestion. The World Economic Forum estimates there will be 36% more delivery vehicles in urban centers by 2030, leading to a corresponding rise in congestion and emissions.
Even if the new cohort of instant delivery startups collapses, it seems unlikely that our preferences for online shopping and delivery will change anytime soon, so the more vans and trucks that can be replaced with light electric vehicles like e-cargo bikes the better. And if Amazon is trying it, you can bet other delivery firms will follow.
Gorillas.
Things are not going great for ‘instant’ delivery startup Gorillas. After recently laying off 300 people and exiting several European markets, the Berlin-based startup is now planning to close Street Fleet, a platform it owns and employs delivery workers through in Berlin, at the end of July. The Street Fleet closure could affect more than 100 delivery workers, which Gorillas calls ‘riders,’ though the company told Sifted that it planned to hire a “sizeable number” of Street Fleet workers to its own teams.
Street Fleet riders also claim the company failed to pay them, in some cases for up to three months. Gorillas blamed the missed payments on a subcontractor and said it would issue an advanced payment of 60% of the missing wages to unpaid workers, but according to 10 riders Sifted spoke with, it’s chaos, with some getting the 60% and others receiving nothing. Several riders also told Sifted they weren’t given health insurance after starting full-time with Street Fleet.
Gorillas is among the best-funded instant delivery platforms, with $1.3 billion raised altogether, most recently $950 million last September at a $3 billion valuation. What did Gorillas do with all that cash?
After Germany’s rapid food delivery startup Gorillas Technologies GmbH closed a $1 billion funding round last October, the company launched its own record label and started plotting a move to a lavish office complete with vinyl decks and a mixer.
By the time it moved to a former brewery in Berlin’s chic Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood this week, just two years after it was founded, venture funding for tech startups globally had dried up and Gorillas management was focused on cost-cutting.
That is from a June 10 article in Bloomberg on Gorillas financial woes and free-wheeling spending. Faced with a cash crunch, the company has reportedly restricted policies that let employees take home MacBooks and AirPods without registering them and attempted to control the “suspected abuse of delivery promo codes.” Bloomberg also reported last month that Gorillas had explored options including a merger or sale amid the tougher funding environment and was working with advisers at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Gorillas is reportedly burning up to $80 million a month and has struggled to keep its delivery workers busy, forcing the company to cut hours for some drivers and hire others on a part-time basis.
Gorillas maintains that it plans to be profitable and that layoffs are all part of the plan. “We are not in a position to provide a definitive number on how many employees will ultimately be affected by our strategic shift to long-term profitability,” Gorillas spokesperson Melissa Largent told Wired this week. The company “says it believes its operations will be profitable in approximately three months and the company will be profitable at a group level in around a year,” Wired writes, which seems incredibly optimistic considering, well, everything.
Oops.
Cruise’s driverless taxi service had a major fleet mishap less than a week after launching fared rides to the general public in San Francisco. More than half a dozen Cruise robotaxis stopped working in the middle of the street, blocking traffic for hours in downtown San Francisco one night last week and allegedly disrupting a street sweeper. Cruise employees had to manually remove the cars to unblock the road. “We had an issue earlier this week that caused some of our vehicles to cluster together,” a Cruise spokesperson told TechCrunch. “While it was resolved and no passengers were impacted, we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced.”
Cruise received a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate a commercial driverless taxi service, initially from 10pm to 6am on designated streets.
Other stuff.
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