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China’s BYD further drives into Chile with 100 electric buses
Over the past few years, Chinese automaker giant BYD has been on a partnership spree with cities across China to electrify their public transportation systems, and now it’s extending its footprint across the globe. On Thursday, BYD announced that it has shipped 100 electric buses to Santiago, the capital city of Chile.
The step marks the Chinese firm’s further inroads into the Latin American country where a green car revolution is underway to battle smog. BYD’s first batch of vehicles arrived in Santiago last November, and the Warren Buffett-backed carmaker remains the only electric public bus provider in the country.
Chile is on the map of China’s grand Belt and Road Initiative, aiming to turbocharge the world’s less-developed regions with infrastructure development and investments. “With the help of ‘One Belt One Road,’ BYD has successfully entered Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay and other Latin American countries. As the region accelerates its electric revolution, BYD may be able to win more opportunities,” said BYD in a statement.
President of Chile Mr. Sebastián Piñera rides the BYD electric bus. / Credit: BYD
The 100 buses embarked on a 45-day sea voyage from BYD’s factory in eastern China to land on the roads of Santiago. They sport the Chilean national colors of red and white on the exterior and provide USB charging ports inside to serve a generation who live on their electronic devices.
The fleet arrived through a partnership between BYD and Enel, a European utility juggernaut that claims to make up 40 percent of Chile’s energy sales in 2017. Enel has purchased the fleet from BYD and leased them to local transportation operator Metbus while the Chilean government set the rules and standards for the buses, a BYD spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Local passengers graded BYD’s electric vehicles at 6.3 out of 7, well above the 4.6 average of the Santiago public transportation system, according to a survey jointly produced by Chile’s Ministry of Energy, as well as Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications. Respondents cited qualities such as low noise level, air conditioning and USB charging that the buses deliver.
Santiago currently has 7,000 public buses running on the road, among which 400 get replaced every year. A lot of the new ones will be diesel-free as the Chilean government said it aims to increase the total number of electric vehicles by tenfold by 2022.
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Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 raises $6M, expands in Africa
Jake Bright
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Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa.
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Nigerian trucking logistics startup Kobo360 has raised $6 million to upgrade its platform and expand operations to Ghana, Togo and Cote D’Ivoire.
The company — with an Uber -like app that connects truckers and companies with freight needs — gained the equity financing in an IFC-led investment. The funding saw participation from others, including TLcom Capital and Y Combinator.
With the investment, Kobo360 aims to become more than a trucking transit app.
“We started off as an app, but our goal is to build a global logistics operating system. We’re no longer an app, we’re a platform,” founder Obi Ozor told TechCrunch.
In addition to connecting truckers, producers and distributors, the company is building that platform to offer supply chain management tools for enterprise customers.
“Large enterprises are asking us for very specific features related to movement, tracking and sales of their goods. We either integrate other services, like SAP, into Kobo or we build those solutions into our platform directly,” said Ozor.
Kobo360 will start by developing its API and opening it up to large enterprise customers.
“We want clients to be able to use our Kobo dashboard for everything; moving goods, tracking, sales and accounting…and tackling their challenges,” said Ozor.
Kobo360 will also build more physical presence throughout Nigeria to service its business. “We’ll open 100 hubs before the end of 2019…to be able to help operations collect proof of delivery, to monitor trucks on the roads and have closer access to truck owners for vehicle inspection and training,” said Ozor.
Kobo360 will add more warehousing capabilities, “to support our reverse logistics business” — one of the ways the company brings prices down by matching trucks with return freight after they drop their loads, rather than returning empty, according to Ozor.
Kobo360 will also use its $6 million investment to expand programs and services for its drivers, something Ozor sees as a strategic priority.
“The day you neglect your drivers you are not going to have a company, only issues. If Uber were more driver-focused it would be a trillion-dollar company today,” he said.
The startup offers drivers training and group programs on insurance, discounted petrol and vehicle financing (KoboWin). Drivers on the Kobo360 app earn on average of approximately $5,000 per month, according to Ozor.
Under KoboCare, Kobo360 has also created an HMO for drivers and an incentive-based program to pay for education. “We give school fee support, a 5,000 Naira bonus per trip for drivers toward educational expenses for their kids,” said Ozor.
Kobo360 will complete limited expansion into new markets Ghana, Togo and Cote D’Ivoire in 2019. “The expansion will be with existing customers, one in the port operations business, one in FMCG and another in agriculture,” said Ozor.
Ozor thinks the startup’s asset-free, digital platform and business model can outpace traditional long-haul 3PL providers in Nigeria by handling more volume at cheaper prices.
“Owning trucks is just too difficult to manage. The best scalable model is to aggregate trucks,” he told TechCrunch in a previous interview.
With the latest investment, IFC’s regional head for Africa Wale Ayeni and TLcom senior partner Omobola Johnson will join Kobo360’s board. “There’s a lot of inefficiencies in long-haul freight in Africa…and they’re building a platform that can help a lot of these issues,” said Ayeni of Kobo360’s appeal as an investment.
The company has served 900 businesses, aggregated a fleet of 8,000 drivers and moved 155 million kilograms, per company stats. Top clients include Honeywell, Olam, Unilever, Dangote and DHL.
MarketLine estimated the value of Nigeria’s transportation sector in 2016 at $6 billion, with 99.4 percent comprising road freight.
Logistics has become an active space in Africa’s tech sector, with startup entrepreneurs connecting digital to delivery models. In Nigeria, Jumia founder Tunde Kehinde departed and founded Africa Courier Express. Startup Max.ng is wrapping an app around motorcycles as an e-delivery platform. Nairobi-based Lori Systems has moved into digital coordination of trucking in East Africa. And U.S.-based Zipline — which launched drone delivery of commercial medical supplies in partnership with the government of Rwanda and support of UPS — is in “process of expanding to several other countries,” according to a spokesperson.
Kobo360 has plans for broader Africa expansion but would not name additional countries yet.
Ozor said the company is profitable, though the startup does not release financial results. Wale Ayeni also wouldn’t divulge revenue figures, but confirmed IFC’s did full “legal and financial due diligence on Kobo’s stats,” as part of the investment.
Ozor named Lori Systems as Kobo360’s closest African startup competitor.
On the biggest challenge to revenue generation, it’s all about service delivery and execution, according to Ozor.
“We already have volume and demand in the market. The biggest threat to revenues is if Kobo360’s platform doesn’t succeed in solving our client’s problems and bringing reliability to their needs,” he said.
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Lyft’s pink-wheeled shareable bikes will be available to rent soon
Lyft has finally given us a glimpse of its forthcoming line of shareable bikes, which the ridesharing company says will be available to rent within its mobile app in select cities “soon.”
The news comes as the $15 billion company announces the final close of its acquisition of Motivate, the New York City-based mobility startup that owns a number of bike-rental services, like Citi Bike, Ford GoBike, Divvy, Blue Bikes and Capital Bikeshare. The transaction was reportedly worth some $250 million.
Lyft brought in $600 million in fresh funding in June from backers Fidelity Research & Management, AllianceBernstein, Baillie Gifford, KKR, CapitalG, Rakuten and others.
Now that its bike deal is complete, Lyft becomes the largest bike service provider in the U.S. That’s a big leap forward for a company that hopes to have the largest dockless bike fleet in the world — outside of China, of course, where companies like Mobike have deployed millions of bikes.
As part of the deal, Lyft will invest $100 million in New York’s Citi Bike, tripling the number of bikes available to 40,000 by 2023.
Lyft launched its first fleet of scooters earlier this year in Denver, hot off the heels of scooter-mania, which saw companies like Bird and Lime garner billion-dollar valuations and complete launches all over the world.
The company says the scooters have been a success thus far. In Denver, for example, 15 percent of Lyft rides in 2018 were taken on scooters. The company has also made scooters available to rent within its app in Santa Monica and Washington, DC — a list that will undoubtedly swell in 2019.
Here’s hoping Lyft’s bike wheels are actually pink. If not, I will be gravely disappointed.
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Watch Blue Origin’s most critical rocket launch right here
The launch is scheduled for 11:00 am EDT on July 18, 2018.
Blue Origin is about to perform a critical rocket test. For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company will send its New Shepard rocket to its red line at the edge of space and then fire the escape motor on the capsule that will carry passengers. If this test goes well, Blue Origin’s New Shepard program could become operational as early as this year.
This is the ninth mission for the New Shepard program and the third time this reusable rocket was used.
About 20 seconds (and 100 feet) after the New Shepard booster and the crew capsule separates, the motor on the capsule will fire with 70K foot pounds of thrust, sending the capsule 50,000 km higher than it has gone before. After the motor fires, parachutes will hopefully deploy, allowing the capsule to return safely to solid ground. Separately, the booster will hopefully return to Earth and land so it can be reused again.
Inside the capsule is a crash dummy loaded with instruments to measure the forces of the rocket launch. Bezos dubbed the dummy “Mannequin Skywalker” because even the richest man in modern history is a nerd. Mannequin Skywalker will experience around 3Gs during the launch, a Blue Origin representative said.
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Lynk & Co reveals the 02 crossover SUV and details European rollout plans
Geely’s Lynk & Co is one of the more interesting young automotive brands, with an approach to sales and marketing that more closely resembles modern gadget and lifestyle brand go-to-market strategy than traditional automaker sales. The Lynk & Co 01 SUV, designed to sit somewhere between Geely’s line on one end and Volvo’s vehicles on the other, debuted last year; now the company is revealing its 02, a more compact crossover SUV, again designed with mobility, connectivity, and the potential for shared use in mind.
The 02 was designed and engineered in Sweden, Lynk & Co says, by a team of international talent. It has a sportier look and feel when compared to the 01, but also clearly shares design traits with the original Lynk & CO. vehicle. The car is intended to capitalize on the rapidly growing crossover SUV model, which is particularly strong in Europe, where Lynk & Co is also finally revealing its market rollout plans after initially kicking off sales in China in 2017.
Lynk & Co will aim to start European sales of its vehicles in 2020, and will skip the traditional dealer model to launch what it’s calling “Offline Stores,” which sound in practice a lot like Tesla’s global showrooms: “Small, sociable brand boutiques in urban districts.” The automaker will also sell online via its Lynkco.com site, which is a trademark of its conception (again something seemingly derived from the Tesla playbook) and it’ll also have a rolling pop-up shop that can make visits to spots that won’t have a permanent Offline Store boutique.
Another bit of news from Lynk & Co this morning: They’re creating a design collaboration with online commerce platform Tictail . This will be a line of both clothing and home good that will be designed by Tictail’s designer community and sold via its platform, and it’s going to be called “The City Dweller Series.” It’s a bit heavyhanded, but it fits overall with Lynk & Co’s strategy of positioning itself as the brand of connected young professionals.
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Ford takes aim at Toyota’s hybrid market lead with its new SUV lineup
Ford detailed a bunch of its roadmap for the next few years at a special media event today, and one of the key takeaways is that it’s going all-in on hybrids with its SUV lineup. Ford estimates that SUVs could make up as much as half the entire U.S. industry retail market by 2020, and that’s why it’s shifting $7 billion in investment capital from its cars business over to the SUV segment. By 2020, Ford also aims to have high-performance SUVs in market, including five with hybrid powertrains and one fully battery electric model.
These will include brand new versions of the Ford Escape and Ford Explorer that are coming next year, and two entirely new off-road SUVs, including a new Bronco, and a small SUV that has yet to be named. There’s also that “performance battery electric utility” that will make up part of its overall SUV lineup, which is set for a 2020 release and will spearhead a plan to release six electric vehicle models by 2022.
With this big hybrid push on the SUV side, Ford expects to go from second to first-place in the U.S. hybrid vehicles market by sales, surpassing current leader Toyota by 2021, thanks also to the forthcoming hybrid Mustang and F-150.
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Volkswagen has locked down $25B in battery supplies for its electric vehicle push
Automaker Volkswagen’s ramping up for its big EV push, with $25 billion in committed battery supplies and plans to outfit 16 factories to build electric cars by the end of 2022, up from three with that capacity in the VW stable right now. Thus far, Volkswagen’s focus is on battery suppliers in Europe and China, its two largest markets, and likely the two that will be most important… Read More
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Tesla Semi does its first production cargo run with batteries on board
Tesla is putting its new electric Semi to work, with its first run as a “production” vehicle — for a familiar client. Tesla itself is the customer, as the trucks were equipped with trailers loaded up with battery packs fresh from the Gigafactory assembly line, heading to the Tesla Fremont car factory in California. Read More
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Volvo’s hybrid Polestar 1 available for pre-order next week
Volvo turned its race-tuning sub brand Polestar into its own company with a focus on electric performance last year, and at the Geneva Motor Show this week it revealed the Polestar 1 GT, a hybrid electric car that’s designed to go toe-to-toe with Tesla for performance-loving customers eager for alternative powertrain options. In person, the Polestar 1 is quite fetching, especially in… Read More
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Renault’s EZ-GO envisions walk-on, walk-off urban EV mobility
Renault’s EZ-GO is less concept car than a full transportation service concept design. The vehicle revealed at the Geneva Motor Show this week is a fully autonomous electric car that can’t travel fast, but that does fit as many as six passengers through a big, almost garage-like door that opens up to load people and goods easily. The EZ-GO is designed for use in urban… Read More
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