Bird's Europe flu, e-scooter rebates, axes of evil
Also links!
Scooters!
Back in August, Travis VanderZanden promised investors that Bird, still chasing its first profitable quarter, would review the cities it operated in after the summer ended and ‘rightsize’ that footprint “based on where we anticipate positive pricing and profit per ride in fiscal year 2023.”
On Tuesday, with summer faded into fall, Bird made good on that promise, announcing plans to fully exit three European countries—Germany, Sweden, and Norway—as well as to “wind down operations in several dozen additional, primarily small to mid-sized cities across the U.S. and EMEA.” Bird BRDS 0.00%↑ blamed its inability to “build an economically viable business” in these markets on unfavorable regulatory rules that it said resulted in an oversupply of scooters, crowded streets, and “a high but frequently rotating number of competitors.”
This is no small move for Bird. Nearly half of the European cities the company operates in (44%, to be exact) are in Germany, Sweden, and Norway, according to a map published on Bird’s website. Leaving those markets will take a significant chunk out of Bird’s European footprint, and that doesn’t even include whatever other small to mid-sized European cities Bird might choose to wind down as well.
Bird’s first European venture was Paris in August 2018, followed by Brussels, Antwerp, Vienna, Zurich, and a pilot in London. The company continued to grow its European footprint through 2019, and then in January 2020 cut a deal to acquire Berlin-based rival Circ. The Financial Times reported at the time that Bird was looking for a European operating partner that would help it win licenses in European cities. While deal terms weren’t disclosed, Bird has since revealed in corporate filings that it paid $190 million in stock in exchange for Circ assets that included $68.7 million in cash. That may well go down as Bird’s best deal ever when you consider that Bird essentially got all that cash for stock that has since lost most of its value (worth about $5.1 million as of yesterday). Circ, on the other hand, is probably wishing it had kept the cash and sold for parts.
Despite finding a European partner, Bird struggled to gain a foothold on the continent. At a panel I moderated in June, Maxim Romain, co-founder and COO of Dutch-French scooter competitor Dott, outlined where he thought Bird had gone wrong. Romain pointed to Bird’s choices to franchise its operations through “fleet managers” and to swerve the swappable batteries favored by most other rental scooter providers. Then he addressed the regulatory climate:
The fact that they have outsourced most of the operations, especially in Europe, means also that they really struggle to win the key tenders. If you look at it, within the key tenders in Europe, they have not won I think a single one… It seems that Bird is in a very difficult spot because they cannot access the big protected markets, which are going to be the most profitable.
Five months later, with Bird bowing out of much of Europe specifically in response to regulatory hurdles, that analysis looks pretty spot on.
Rebates.
Denver can’t get enough of e-bike vouchers:
A new program in Denver offering rebates for electric bikes has become so popular, you’d think the city was giving away free Broncos tickets.
Residents this month scooped up the latest lot of 400 vouchers within minutes of them becoming available on the city’s online portal. It was the fifth round of the monthly program, which was first launched in April. Even Grace Rink, the city’s chief climate officer who touts the program as a way to help Denver reach its climate goals and reduce air pollution, was surprised by how much of a hit the rebates would become.
The Mile High City is having a micromobility moment, between its wildly popular e-bike rebate program, a huge summer uptake in shared bikes and scooters usage, and ongoing efforts to build out cycle lanes across the city. As of Oct. 10, Denver had handed out 4,156 rebates for regular e-bikes and heftier e-cargo bikes, and city officials say funding that was originally supposed to last three years may now have to be topped up after just one. Vouchers give $400 to $1,700 off an e-bike purchase at point of sale, rather than as a tax rebate, making them simper and more straightforward to use, especially for low-income riders. By next summer, the city also anticipates completing all 125 miles of new cycle lanes that its mayor promised in 2018 to deliver over five years.
The recent e-bike frenzy has led some to worry that Denverites are converting to micromobility faster than the city can keep up with, especially when it comes to sharing the road with regular (i.e., non-motorized) cyclists. This is a valid concern—segmentation by speed is something cities will increasingly have to think about as more people take up light electric vehicles like scooters and bikes—but overall it’s a good problem to have if the goal is getting people out of cars. Also, now that I’ve lived in the UK for a few years, I couldn’t help but notice on my trip to Denver last month just how wide American roads are. Compared to Europe they’re enormous! I mean seriously. If European roads that barely fit two lanes can make space for bikes, then American ones certainly can.
Oops.
Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer, who once predicted in a Medium manifesto that most Lyft rides would be in driverless taxis by 2021, now says robotaxis won’t replace human drivers on the platform for at least 10 years:
“I can’t imagine anytime in the next decade-plus where we would need any less drivers,” he said, noting that he envisions autonomous vehicles handling anywhere from 1% to 10% of rides in the future.
“What we do in our industry represents maybe 1% of vehicle miles traveled,” he said. “There’s much more room for growth of our overall business.”
That same Zimmer post, which incidentally was published right after Lyft raised $1 billion in funding led by General Motors and signed GM as a strategic partner on driverless technologies, also featured one of my all-time favorite axeless charts, or as FT Alphaville calls them, “axes of evil.” I mean look at this great and terrible beauty:
Zimmer had already walked back his initial predication earlier this year in an interview on CNBC, where he said just 5% of Lyft trips might be done with driverless vehicles in the foreseeable future. I said at the time and still have to wonder whether anyone—investors, analysts, GM, Zimmer himself—ever believed that Lyft would actually phase out human drivers by 2022 or if it was all the sort of mutually assured hype-building that tends to power these kinds of venture deals.
Other stuff.
Instacart shelves IPO plans. Waymo cafeteria workers vote to unionize. Uber Plans to Advertise to You At Every Stage of Your Ride, Using Your Own Data. Airbnb CEO warns most dangerous part of remote work is loneliness. Lyft hikes service fee for rides as insurance costs rise. Uber scales back in Pakistan. Turo expands car-sharing service to Australia. Lyft testing new pay algorithm to lure drivers. Amazon plans more ‘micromobility hubs’ for deliveries in European cities. Starship Technologies partners with Grubhub for robotic deliveries on college campuses. How Companies Treat Stock Options When Tallying Cash Flow Perplexes Investors. How Cities are Deciding Where Electric Vehicle Chargers Should Go. Battle Over Wage Rules for Tipped Workers Is Heating Up. Inside the Bicycle’s Conquest of Amsterdam. London resumes construction of cycle lanes after TfL funding deal. The Kroger-Albertsons supermarket deal is uglier than you might expect. Alarm over Airbnb listings in coastal England and Wales. How to Make $3,000 a Month Citi Biking. Lyft Parking. Uber Eats Market. Airbnb Downing Street. "The rats don't run the city. We do."