Good day, readers: Welcome to The Station, your one-stop shop for all modes of transporting people and packages from point A to point B, past, present, and future. I’d want to draw your attention to two issues before we get into our weekly summary of news and analysis. The founder’s series kicked off this month with Anjali Jindal Naik, co-founder and COO of Cartken, an autonomous sidewalk robot company. Second, SXSW is approaching, and I will be in attendance. If there’s a talk or presentation you think I should see, or a person you think I should meet, please let me know.
It’ll be a quick excursion, but I’ll be on the lookout for anything interesting in the way of transportation. In addition, I’ll be moderating two panels: One is on sustainable mobility, with representatives from Arrival, Uber, and Selika Talbott, an autonomous car consultant. The other, in collaboration with Enel and Uber, focuses on EV charging infrastructure as well as the electrification of ride-sharing, corporate fleets, and service fleets.
Bah! How could I have forgotten…? This is huge since it means that we can finally have cars in the United States that don’t blind people! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published a final regulation that allows automakers to install adaptive driving beam headlights on new vehicles. These headlights adjust automatically as you drive. These systems have previously been implemented in Europe.
To express your ideas, criticisms, opinions, or tips, please email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com. You can also contact Kirsten directly via Twitter (@kirstenkorosec). Azeem Azhar, one of my favorite podcast and email hosts, has devoted an entire program to micromobility! Azhar featured micromobility specialist Horace Dediu on his most recent show, Exponential View, where he analyzes the impact of technology on business and society. They discussed the role of software in pushing micromobility adoption (a trend that some questioned and even chastised me for writing about a year ago), the merging of augmented reality and micromobility, and how big tech companies will integrate into micromobility.
There are a lot of companies aiming to fuel the micromobility revolution, so let’s take a look at a few of them. In the micromobility realm, Cogo is consolidating a less-publicized market: shared mobility aggregation. The company recently bought eScoot, another aggregator, to improve its ability to provide complete price comparisons for shared mobility. Users may compare prices, availability, and trip times across numerous operators in a single search. Surprisingly, Dediu has stated that huge internet companies, such as Google, have an opportunity to capitalize on this via Maps, so we’ll have to wait and watch how this type of service develops in the long term.
In a few markets, Bird is expanding its fleet and extending its permissions. It’ll stay in Long Beach, Portland, and Decatur for a little longer, and Durham, Isla Vista, and Arlington will get extra vehicles. Mundimoto, a firm that sells and buys motorcycles online, has secured $22.6 million to expand its platform beyond Spain and into the rest of Europe.
According to Lyft’s Q4 2021 earnings, the company is doubling down on its bikeshare business. This backs up Segway CEO Tony Ho’s prediction to TechCrunch last year that some of the “major ridesharing folks” would be “coming back to play.” Lightning Motorcycles is developing an electric motorcycle with a top speed of 250 miles per hour (!!!). It’ll require a rare metal called niobium, which is commonly found in rocket ships.
