Ebikes, Maps and Adword Dystopia

Oliver Bruce
Podcast
June 12, 2020

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This week Horace joins Oliver for a discussion about ebikes and the stateof micromobility, including which potential other potential players mightwant to get into the industry. This leads to a discussion about thejob-to-be-done of maps, and Horace’s dystopian warning that they will endup as the browser of the mobile era.Specifically they dig into:- How e-bike sales have been doing during COVID- The current structure of the industry for standard bikes and ebikes,including where the margins are- How this mom-and-pop style industry parallels the early days of the PCindustry- A discussion about the Taiwanese ‘golden book’ for bikes- Why distribution is one of the great unsolved aspects of e-bikes- Whether micromobility best parallels the computer industry or the earlyauto industry, and what implications are there for either framing- Which players are likely to get into building the next generation ofe-bikes, and why Amazon, Google or Apple are all potential contenders.- Why maps are so important, and why they might be the software layer thatmay start to drive the next Micromobility wave- The worry that Horace has about an Adwords approach being directed toGoogle Maps in the mobility routing, and the incentives that stem fromdistraction as we move from A to B- How and why micromobility operators should be aiming to participate inthe forthcoming mobility-as-a-service layers- The implications of what software enabled transport will enable.The Micromobility Industries blogpost outlining e-bike recommendations-https://micromobility.io/blog/2020/6/1/best-ebikes

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