🛴 Liberté, Egalité, Mobilité
Mobility Tech in the 15-Minute City
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Introduction: The 15-Minute City
You're my Angell, You're my darling Angell
You Ornikar, You Ornikar, You Ornikar!
The Heetch-Hikers Guide to Mobility
MaaS[sive] Opportunity
Conclusion: Emancipation Reclamation
Introduction: The 15-Minute City
Living in a major metropolitan city like Paris or New York is truly a privilege. They are epicenters of culture, fashion, food and commerce: you have the entire world out your front door. Despite all the amazing perks, there are drawbacks. I'm not looking for sympathy here but as a city-dweller you have to endure, day in and day out, some of the less pleasant aspects of sharing space with millions of other people. Crowded metro cars among the sweaty masses, busy streets, sidewalks littered with dog poop (ok, this is mostly a Parisian thing), endless noise pollution, and a lack of green space. The constant grind required to survive (and hopefully thrive) in a metropolis is perfectly summed up by one of my favorite French expressions illustrating the grating monotony of trying to make it: metro, boulot, dodo (subway, work, sleep).
Many of us have come to accept this as our fate. Cities are big, crowded, dirty and at times dangerous. That's just the tradeoff for access to the most interesting people and best opportunities. But urban planners, progressive politicians and tech companies alike offer a different vision for the future of cities by asking the following questions:
Why is it that we've forked over so much of our urban space to cars, trucks and motorcycles instead of pedestrians?
How does this distribution of public space impact our lives?
Were cities always like this?
If we can change it, what might the future look like in dense urban areas?
Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, may just be the vehicle for implementing drastic change. Already a champion for reducing traffic and green-ifying Paris, the pandemic presented a unique opportunity to overhaul the city at record pace. Her long-term vision has been dubbed "The 15-minute City" — in which any resident has access to work, home and necessary amenities within a fifteen minute bike ride. During lockdown, we had a somewhat dystopian taste of this concept, restricted from leaving a 1 kilometer radius of our house. The city revealed how unequipped it really was to support this vision. Simultaneously, it's enabled deeper public discourse and supporting research to close the gap and make it a reality. To give you a sense of her commitment to the plan, Mayor Hidalgo has done the following:
opened linear parks on highways along the Seine River
phased out diesel cars in the city
Reduced the city-wide speed limit to 30km/hr (roughly 20mph)
opened bus lanes
raised parking meter prices
created 1000 kilometers of bike lanes
Eliminated cars from Rue de Rivoli (a major cross-town thoroughfare)
Proposed plans to pedestrianize the Champs-Élysées & plant an urban forest
Paris is already known for its walkability and culture of Flâneurs — but cycling grew 54% just one year after dedicated lanes were opened. Needless to say, the stakes are high. Transforming Paris sits at the intersection of climate concerns, class warfare (see: gilets jaunes), urban development and transportation. The sheer diversity of associated topics has drawn quite a bit of attention from the press and populace. In fact, Hidalgo has even announced a bid for the presidency in the upcoming election based on her successful agenda in Paris.
If the utopian vision for a 15-minute city comes to fruition, we may ask ourselves how we will get around. The micro-mobility & last-mile transport revolution is already here which will surely play a part. Will an uptick in cycling drive innovation in bike design and engineering? And what about the fate of cars and ride-sharing?
Today we'll explore the French startups touching mobility and transportation to gauge how the quest for the 15-minute city could stimulate innovation in mobility tech.
You're my Angell, You're my darling Angell
Apologies in advance for resurfacing the lyrics to Shaggy's 2000 hit "Angel" — I give you permission to watch the music video for some nostalgia before starting this section.
When thinking about micro-mobility in the 15-minute city, there are two options that immediately come to mind. Frankly, it's hard to miss them, they're everywhere. You've got scooters and bikes scattered throughout Paris (and virtually every major city that hasn't already banned the ride-sharing apps). The scooters are fun, but objectively dangerous. Plus, I would never in a million years buy one for myself. The public bike-share system (Vélib in Paris, Citi Bike in NYC) is practical, but there is always a non-zero chance you'll end up with a dud or find yourself at a station that is constantly empty due to unfavorable traffic flow. Owning a bike would be cool, but the constant vigilance required to prevent theft and the prospect of maintenance is a bit anxiety-inducing for me. If I were to pick a dedicated mode of transportation, however, it would have to be the Angell Bike.
The brainchild of Marc Simoncini, Angell Bike is what you get if you took a tech/design startup and told them to build a practical, user-friendly and eco-conscious city bike. I'll get to the bike in a minute, but I think it's important to address the founder first. Marc is currently a Partner at Daphni VC, whose motto is Build da City for Good. A self-proclaimed recidivist entrepreneur, he is still actively involved in the startup despite his role as a venture capitalist. As someone who follows him on social media, he is also the definitive zaddy of the French Tech ecosystem, sporting regular shirtless pics in places like Mykonos which begs a question (one I asked on Twitter to an underwhelming response):
Enough of my French Tech conspiracy theories. Let's talk about the product. The long and the short of it: the bike is f***ing cool. It's super-light (16kg), agile and armed to the teeth with tech. It's got a built-in touchscreen, pairs with your phone for navigation, handle-bar vibration for turns, anti-theft alarm system, GPS tracking and more. Did I mention it's electric? The ride support for hills is life changing (I've only experienced it on the Uber JUMP bike but it feels like magic). They've also got the Angell Care program for regular maintenance & fixes (hope Apple doesn't sue them…). The only downside: sticker shock. It's €2860 or €239/month if you opt for the buy now, pay later option. In the 15-minute city, this might be the best investment you could make.
You Ornikar, You Ornikar, You Ornikar!
In the US, your 16th birthday is a substantial milestone because it's the year you can get your driver's license. The act of getting your driver's license and the prerequisite training isn't exactly the fun part. If I recall, I spent hours driving around suburban St. Louis, Missouri with an ex-cop turned driving instructor to make sure I passed my test (and reduced premiums on my insurance). The real benefit is the "freedom" that comes with a driver's license. The freedom of movement and sense of independence (and a car, no matter how shitty it is…) is liberating, especially for a brooding teen. In France, the age limit is 18, but they get to start drinking wine at the dinner table in middle school, so they won't get any sympathy from me. One thing that France and the US have in common is a die-hard attachment to Freedom with a capital F. We express it in different ways (as pictured below), but the enthusiasm is there on both sides.
This brings us to Ornikar, an online driving school that brings together students and driving instructors to simplify and streamline the process of training for your license. They've effectively built the one-stop-shop for all things driving at a fraction of the price. When they first launched in 2014, the national syndicate of driving instructors wasn't thrilled. Independent driving schools had a vice grip on the market, setting prices and regularly incurring delays for students, of which there are 1 million per year in France. Early backers, including our old friend Xavier Niel and the aforementioned Marc Simoncini saw potential to turn the market on its head. It took some time, but now Ornikar owns nearly 20% of the market and has over €150 million in funding.
You may be tempted to ask: will a city without cars (or cars that move really slowly) impact Ornikar's bottom line? In the short to mid-term, my guess is no. There are 32 million passenger cars in France and while Paris might be adapting to greener policy, suburban and rural residents will have use for cars well into the next decade. My question is what happens when we make the switch to autonomous vehicles? The time horizon for a full transition is quite long, but one area of diversification they are already exploring is car insurance. So if you abstract away the explicit focus on cars, Ornikar really is a training, certification and insurance tech company. I'd bet they could pivot their expertise and infrastructure to support entirely different lines of business.
The Heetch-hikers Guide to Mobility
"The redistribution of public space is a policy of social redistribution. Fifty percent of public space is occupied by private cars, which are used mostly by the richest, and mostly by men, because it’s mostly men who drive, and so in total, the richest men are using half the public space. So if we give the space to walking, biking, and public transit, you give back public space to the categories of people who today are deprived."
— David Belliard, Adjunct Mayor for transportation and public space (Paris)
As we reflect on the implications of a 15-minute city, it's hard not to imagine an uptick in shared resources for transportation. Owning a car in the city can be a pain, but sometimes it's hard to avoid it: road trips, moving furniture, transporting kids etc. There's plenty of controversy surrounding ride-sharing and the gig economy as it stands today, but for a sustainable future, there will have to be changes. One such change is proposed by Heetch, a ride-sharing company that positions itself as the most fair option on the market: taking low commissions and supporting their chauffeur partners. They've expanded into 5 countries outside France in Europe and North Africa but it remains to be seen if they can take on global goliaths like Uber.
Personally, I don't want to live in a world where I'm the constant passenger. After all, I got my license for a reason. I like renting cars on holiday, but it's definitely not the "on-demand" experience I've come to expect with ride-sharing apps. That's the sweet spot that Virtuo is going after. On-demand, luxury vehicle rental with daily pricing and an option for home delivery, all within a mobile app experience. If renting becomes as easy as ride-sharing (and relatively cost-effective), then you can count me in. This is the very last "level" to unlock in the game of mobility access.
[MaaS]sive Opportunity
In the past decade, we've witnessed siloed growth among the top mobility companies equipped with the firepower, tech talent, resources and tolerant investors willing to take near-term losses. As we start to evaluate the good and the bad outcomes from the Uber-ization of our cities, there are plenty of alternatives with viable business models. Historically, they are pretty challenging to start (see above: huge resource demands). Which is why Vulog, a company building a platform to seed the shared mobility revolution, demonstrates huge potential.
Let's call it Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). All the time, R&D and lessons learned from launching mobility startups has been neatly packaged into predefined solutions so that new entrants can focus on customer value instead of route optimization or vehicle gateways. According to the company, every second a trip powered by Vulog is started. A platform like this should naturally spawn a whole new generation of shared mobility companies by lowering overhead, required capital and reducing the need for winner-take-all scale in a crowded market. I can see a company like this doing what Salesforce did for the Enterprise: deliver out of the box cloud services and see what companies can do with the extra time and energy put towards building meaningful solutions for their users.
Emancipation Reclamation
"I was obliged to have a car, the car was not an object of emancipation but of servitude. I could do nothing without my car. So evidently, we are asking them to pay ever more for something they are required to use. The question of alternatives is the fundamental question."
— David Belliard, Adjunct mayor for transportation and public space (Paris)
Just a decade ago, imagining a car-free city would be a fun thought exercise but far from reality due to the infrastructural, behavioral and technological constraints. That's changing and so is public opinion on climate change and liveable urban spaces. According to the polls, Hidalgo's chance of running the country is slim, but her progressive ideas on transforming urban centers to optimize for livability, pedestrians and ecological sustainability have caught the attention of the public. Perhaps a point of tangency with the tech community will give her a seat at the table with Macron should he win re-election next year.
Until then, I'll be enjoying the ever-increasing perks of a soon-to-be 15-minute city. Currently the average commute in Paris is 64 minutes, so there's a ways to go!
Anne Hidalgo isn't the only one who wants your vote 🗳
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