Volkswagen Group is launching a car-sharing service called WE that only uses electric vehicles, following the lead of rivals such as Daimler and BMW that have operated their own on-demand car rental services for years.
VW’s car-sharing service will launch in Germany next year and then expand to major cities in Europe, North America and Asia beginning in 2020. The entire fleet will be electric vehicles, VW Group said Wednesday.
“We are convinced that the car sharing market still has potential,” Jürgen Stackmann, Volkswagen’s board member for sales said in a statement. “That is why we are entering this market with a holistic single-source concept covering all mobility needs from the short journey that takes just a few minutes to the long vacation trip.”
The German automaker’s WE business is designed to do more than car-sharing. The WE vehicle-on-demand platform will initially focus on car sharing. But eventually it will include other modes of transportation such as scooters.
Volkswagen showed off two electric concepts in March, an e-scooter it calls the Streetmate and Cityskater, which the company describes as a “last-mile electric street surfer.” Volkswagen sees the WE platform helping connect customers to car-sharing service, rent one of these micro-mobility vehicles, or even pay for parking.
Volkswagen introduced these mobility concepts in March 2018. The Streetmate, on the left, and Cityskater.
The automaker also sees the WE platform connecting to MOIA, the automaker’s mobility company that has launched a ride-sharing service with an all-electric shuttle vehicle. The all-electric car, which made its debut at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin in December, is designed to provide space for up to six passengers.
The vehicle-on-demand services available on the Volkswagen WE platform will be managed by UMI Urban Mobility International, a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG that began operating in 2018.
Source: TechCrunch
Food delivery startup Deliveroo opened its first shared kitchen in Paris earlier today. Deliveroo first launched this concept of shared kitchens called Deliveroo Editions in London last year.
As the AFP reports, the company is starting with 12 kitchens in a warehouse in Saint-Ouen, right next to the north-western part of Paris. So far, 8 restaurants have agreed to make a deal with Deliveroo.
You’ll find top restaurants on Deliveroo, such as Blend, Petit Cambodge, Tripletta and Santosha. Restaurants can choose to pay a rent or get started for free and pay higher fees.
Deliveroo customers currently pay €2.50 per order for the delivery in Paris. But the company also gets a cut of the total order amount — customers don’t realize that Deliveroo gets a cut from both sides. It can be as much as 25 or 30 percent of what you order. It’s unclear how much Deliveroo is asking for those new kitchens.
But it makes sense for restaurants that can’t expand indefinitely. Deliveroo lets you accept orders without any additional table.
Gérard Julien / AFP / Getty Images
While there are multiple Blend or Petit Cambodge restaurants in Paris, they can’t deliver everywhere around the city. But opening a new restaurant also represents a huge investment.
That’s why those Deliveroo kitchens can be a good compromise. You can hire a handful of people and see if there’s enough demand in the area. It’s also a good way to differentiate Deliveroo from UberEats and other compatitors.
This is the first site in France. Let’s see if it gets out of control like in the U.K. The Guardian reported that Deliveroo Editions are now tiny containers with no window on car parks. It gets hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and you can hear a ton of mopeds getting orders from those metal boxes.
Deliveroo first started with the idea of helping regular restaurants accept online orders — not just pizza places with existing delivery persons. But containers on a car park don’t sound as attractive.
Gérard Julien / AFP / Getty Images
Source: TechCrunch
Makoto Igari pays tribute to the country’s unique pyrotechnics.
Source: Wired
Draper Esprit, the publicly-listed VC firm based in London, is putting down further roots across Europe in cooperation with German VC Earlybird.
The “strategic partnership” sees Draper invest an initial €18 million in the latest Earlybird Fund VI (which closed this week at €175 million, above its initial target, apparently), with a commitment to invest a further €17 million or so per annum over the next four years.
The tie up will also mean the two VCs will work together beyond Draper simply being an LP in Earlybird, such as sharing deal-flow and investment resources. In addition, Draper is taking a minority stake in the management company of Earlybird Fund VI via the issuing of new Draper Esprit shares to Earlybird partners.
By putting money into Earlybird Fund VI, Draper has also indirectly acquired a minority stake in a number of startups that have already received investment from the fund. They include Shapeshift, Everoad, Movinga, Fraugster, Medidate, Xain, and Crossengage.
However, explained Draper Esprit CEO and co-founder Simon Cook in a call this morning, the partnership is really about the two firm’s leveraging the brand recognition of their broader and respective portfolios.
In aggregate, both firms say they count 100 “high growth” companies across Europe in their respective portfolios. They include the likes of Revolut, Graze, UI Path, N26, Transferwise, Ledger, Graphcore and Peak Games.
Meanwhile, in a European VC market where almost every local early-stage VC is becoming “pan-European,” the two firms met to discuss how they might work together. As the conversation progressed, it became clear that a more formal partnership fitted the ambitions of both VCs as they both attempt to have a larger presence across the continent.
In a corresponding blog post, Draper Esprit reiterates that it invests in series A, B and beyond, whereas Earlybird is focused on seed stage to series A. So, whilst there is some overlap, it won’t be hard for the two firms to divvy up deals and Cook told me Draper Esprit will share all relevant deal-flow with Earlybird and where it makes sense a partner at either firm will take the lead.
“We invest from offices in the U.K., Ireland, and Paris. They, from Berlin, Munich, Istanbul. We raise money via the public markets and through our EIS and VCT funds, they from traditional private LPs,” adds the VC firm.
Source: TechCrunch
French venture capital firm ISAI just raised a new $175 million fund (€150 million) called ISAI Expansion II. This fund is designed for later stage investments.
The firm says that it managed to raise this fund in less than three months. This is a growth fund and the team plans to invest between $6 million and $35 million per deal (between €5 million and €30 million).
ISAI first started with a seed fund back in 2010. The company raised a $41 million fund (€35 million) and invested in BlaBlaCar shortly after that. The firm has raised a growth fund and another seed fund since then.
If you include today’s new fund, ISAI has raised over $350 million in total (€300 million). So ISAI Expansion II is by far the biggest fund to date.
Limited partners include dozens of successful tech entrepreneurs as well as institutional partners. Many existing investors invested once again in ISAI’s new fund. Some entrepreneurs joined the list for the first time.
With the previous ISAI Expansion fund, the firm invested in nine companies over five years. And ISAI already sold its shares in two companies, Hospimedia and Labelium.
ISAI also says that it can help entrepreneurs using owner buy-out transactions. By creating a holding company, this type of operations lets entrepreneurs cash out, buy shares from existing minor investors and work with a new investor.
More interestingly, ISAI doesn’t necessarily want to focus on Paris-based tech startups. The firm is also looking for investments in more traditional companies that aren’t yet taking advantage of digital opportunities.
Source: TechCrunch
Silicon Valley insiders tell the BBC about social media’s deliberate addictive qualities.
Source: CNET
They won’t be Switching him any time soon.
Source: CNET
The BBC hopes YouTuber Ali-A will get kids liking and subscribing to Auntie again.
Source: CNET
People’s reaction to Tesla’s cessation of the brake-and-roll test is more than a little overblown, and here’s why.
Source: CNET
Since 2015, photographer Niko Kallianiotis has chronicled the beauty and flaws of his adoptive state of Pennsylvania.
Source: Wired