In this episode, Oliver interviews Frank Reig, CEO of Revel, an e-moped sharing system in NYC/DC that has just announced a $27.6m raise to expand to 10 new cities.
It’s a fascinating interview as shared e-mopeds have a number of key operational improvements over the more popular kick scooter/electric bike shared systems that we’ve seen.
Specifically we discuss:
- Their recent raise and plans for the next 12-18 months.
- Their origin story from Frank’s experiences in Argentina and his background in the electric vehicle space
- The financial, infrastructural and operational advantages of using e-mopeds over normal kick scooters, and how that drives them to consider themselves more like a parallel to the carshare industry than the kick scooter industry.
- Their fleets in NYC and DC, and the experiences they’ve had working with regulators in both.
- How they deal with parking, and why they believe that is part of Revel’s ‘special sauce’.
- A deeper dive on both their vehicle longevity and their swappable battery advantages.
- Why they’re able to finance all their vehicle, and how that improves the capital efficiency of the operations.
- How they think about competition, especially from larger players.
- How their full time labor model changes regulatory conversations with cities.
- How their vehicle type lends itself to longer trips, and the role that they play as a transport option in a suburb with relatively low connectivity options.
- How they’re able to end up being a cheaper operator than both Bird and Lime in some markets.
- How they were able to learn from Scoot and it’s lessons from San Francisco
- Reflections on their safety and insurance practices
- Other form factors that would make sense for them to expand into in the future
Thanks to this week’s sponsor Particle. Particle provides an end-to-end IoT platform, from device management to connectivity to hardware for connecting micromobility vehicles to networks and reducing complexity as operations scale. For operators that I’ve talked to, they’re a godsend in the world of highly complex and competitive operations.