With respect to the dozens of other companies that go by Kyte or Kite, the car rental via delivery startup Kyte looks like it may have hit a very bumpy road. Last week, Los Angeles-area customers received word the company was pulling out of the market — the nation’s largest for car usage — after about four years of local operations.
Intrigued, I headed to their website, where even earlier this week the homepage still touted their availability in other major markets like Chicago and Boston. But while those cities still have landing pages up, punch in a rental date after 11/7 and you’ll see that no cars are available. Other regions that seem to have lost service include Philadelphia, Atlanta, DC and Seattle.
It’s possible the company’s been hunting for fresh cash for some time now, despite closing on a $250 million debt facility in March. While the company’s reportedly been doing the rounds for traditional venture investment, it also seems to have kicked the tires on a crowdfunding campaign via StartEngine. Equity crowdfunding has a mixed track record, but at least with consumer-oriented, hardware-focused brands you can make the case that consumers are buying into a product they like and getting a physical reward out of it; Kyte’s investment perks are discounts on car rentals, that’s about as exciting as when the local little league team sells of those books of coupons to nearby businesses.
As I learned at Turo, renting and sharing cars is a tough biz, even the big guys like Hertz and Avis are facing slumping sales these days. Other upstarts have seen worse fates: Fluid Truck just filed for Chapter 11, Upshift — which also delivers cars to users — seems to be pivoting to fleet software (Greg shares more in the podcast.)
One big challenge for operators in this space is figuring out if you’re appealing to locals or travelers. If you’re going after travelers, you need to be available at the airport, and you plant the flag in tourist-heavy cities like Vegas and Orlando, even though they have smaller local populations. Kyte seemed more focused on serving locals, trying to get car-light denizens of coastal cities to use the service when they needed a ride for a special occasion.
Tune in to the podcast for more thoughts on why that’s so challenging a model. Greg and I also chat about the latest delivery battle between Walmart and Amazon, and then Placer.ai’s Head of Analytical Research R.J. Hottovy stops by to talk about other winners and losers, both on the retail brand level and in terms of metropolitan areas. Listen in!
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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
AVs accelerate: China’s Didi Autonomous Driving unit raises $298 million in Series C financing, aims to mass produce Level 4 AVs next year. Back on the other side of the globe, UK-based Wayve is expanding to the U.S. with a Bay Area testing program. And Waymo is offering riders a $3 credit if they start or end their trip near a metro station.
Midwestern transit: Indianapolis celebrated the opening of the new Purple Line BRT on the city’s lower income east side. Bus rapid transit has had a rough ride in Indiana as of late, with the state trying to kill off the city’s ability to dedicate lanes for buses; fortunately that effort failed.
New trains, worldwide: We’ll have bigger projects than BRT to look forward to, with CalSTA releasing $1.3 billion in funding for projects like LA’s Southeast Gateway Line, an extension of NorCal’s SMART train, and improvements to the LOSSAN corridor. On the other side of the country, the MBTA looks to pour $2.5B into tuning up its commuter rail system — can we get with the times and convert those babies to an S-Bahn? SF is reviving long simmering plans to build a subway down Geary, with price estimates coming in at $20 billion. (A 1995 plan was meant to cost $2.8 billion in current day dollars, to remind you just how bad our cost disease has gotten as of late.) And in a part of the world that still remembers how government is supposed to work — Nice and Monaco are planning a second rail link to relieve crowded service on the French Riviera’s main line. Estimates are a respectable $1.2 billion euros.
Red asphalt: New research confirms the obvious, wider streets are more dangerous for pedestrians. Longer than average ped crossings in the studied cities saw more collisions: up 15% in Paris, 23% in SF and 43% in Irvine. That makes it sound a bit like lipstick on a pig, but Bloomberg Philanthropies has put a call out for its latest Asphalt Art Initiative. Cities have until 1/31 to apply for $100k in funding to jazz up their intersections.
Why does New York City have parking minimums? While cities across the country are finally starting to ditch parking minimums, most of NYC still requires new development to come with gobs of car storage. The NYT explores how that impacts a particular new apartment in Brooklyn, and surfaces some comically right-wing pro-parking responses from Community Board reps across the city.
Cameras 1, cops 0: A new study highlights how much more effective automated cameras are at enforcing traffic laws, compared to human law enforcement officers. In Chicago, on roads where half the drivers are Black, Black drivers receive ~54% of camera citations, but make up ~70% of police stops. On roads where half of the drivers are white, white drivers get around half of the camera-based citations, but less than 20% of those issued by a human.
LA gets a capital plan: Good things come to those who wait; Los Angeles is set to finally get a capital plan, improving how the city allocates money to vital services like street repair. Congrats to Investing in Place, the non-profit that’s been pushing the city to do basic bookkeeping like this for years…
Meet MobilityVC: When I’m not geeking out on curb-news, some of you may know I hang my hat at MobilityVC (fka MobilityFund.) I’m delighted to share I just finished up a brand overhaul, meant to highlight all of the services we’ve added on lately, including fascinating work doing corporate VC for a Japanese OEM.
A few good links: NYCMTA finally adds benches to multi-billion dollar new transit hub. Nimble raises $106M for autonomous logistics. Don’t believe the lies behind Prop. 36. Austin home prices plummet, thanks to abundant development. Powerful new powder removes CO₂ from the air. Modii scores U. Buffalo contract. Nico Larco spits truth on the CitiesFirst Podcast. Tokyo Metro sprinkles perks ahead of successful IPO. Kern County OKs carbon capture. Dream job alert: Director, Venue Transportation for LA28. Debt service expenses may cut into NYCMTA operating budget. NYC launches e-bike trade-in program. Level 3 charging is taking off, as Terawatt opens a new hub near LAX.
Thanks again to everyone that came out to last week’s happy hour!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew
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