As the first OEM, Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, has announced that every Volvo it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor, marking the historic end of cars that only have an internal combustion engine (ICE) and placing electrification at the core of its future business. No doubt the electric focus of its Chinese parent company, Geely, played a large part in this decision. Next week one of Geely’s other companies, the London Taxi Company, will unveil its new electric taxi.

The announcement by Volvo represents one of the most significant moves by any car maker to embrace electrification and highlights how over a century after the invention of the internal combustion engine electrification is paving the way for a new chapter in automotive history. “This is about the customer,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. “People increasingly demand electrified cars and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs. You can now pick and choose whichever electrified Volvo you wish.”

Volvo Cars will introduce a portfolio of electrified cars across its model range, embracing fully electric cars, plug in hybrid cars and mild hybrid cars. It will launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021, three of which will be Volvo models and two of which will be high performance electrified cars from Polestar, Volvo Cars’ performance car arm. Full details of these models will be announced at a later date.

These five cars will be supplemented by a range of petrol and diesel plug in hybrid and mild hybrid 48 volt options on all models, representing one of the broadest electrified car offerings of any car maker. This means that there will in future be no Volvo cars without an electric motor, as pure ICE cars are gradually phased out and replaced by ICE cars that are enhanced with electrified options.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car,” said Mr Samuelsson. “Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1m electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it.”

The announcement underlines Volvo Cars’ commitment to minimising its environmental impact and making the cities of the future cleaner. Volvo Cars is focused on reducing the carbon emissions of both its products as well as its operations. It aims to have climate neutral manufacturing operations by 2025.

The decision also follows this month’s announcement that Volvo Cars will turn Polestar into a new separately-branded electrified global high performance car company. Thomas Ingenlath, Senior Vice President Design at Volvo Cars, will lead Polestar as Chief Executive Officer.

• Volvo Cars will introduce a portfolio of electrified cars across its model range. Polestar will be Volvo’s new high-end performance company.

About two years ago the International Transport Forum (ITF) held its famous ‘Lisbon-study’ into the possibilities of reducing individual car-traffic and increasing shared transportation. It has now released a report that examines how cities can manage the challenges of geographical scale and of transition to shared mobility services.

The report explores how shared mobility can improve accessibility for users with impairments, and analyses the impacts of these services on the use of existing high-capacity public transportation and on access to jobs across the whole study area.

The report can be found here:

https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/transition-shared-mobility.pdf

‘Netflix of Transportation’ is a trillion-dollar market by 2030 – and this Toyota-backed Finnish startup is in pole position to seize it, says Nordic Businessinsider about MaaS Global. Guess who is in the lead?

Sampo Hietanen wants to do something un-Finnish, and dare to dream big. Really big. Since 2015, he has used his very own blueprint for the future of transportation, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), to build a startup in full-throttle.

Much like ordering movies on Netflix or music on Spotify, Hietanen’s company, MaaS Global, aims to fulfil customers’ mobility needs with a monthly subscription service. “What if you had ‘unlimited Europe’ – ground and air transport included – through one app that would be your companion wherever you go? Then you could truly be a global citizen,” Hietanen says, revealing the ultimate vision of his company.

Since last fall, MaaS Global’s Whim app enables trial customers in Helsinki to get from A to B using any preferred mode of road transportation. An Uber on steroids. Just two weeks ago, Maas Global closed a €10 million funding round from car giant Toyota to fuel international expansion of Whim. So could Finland under Hietanen’s lead export a global MaaS mobility revolution?

Hietanen, 42, is one of the fathers of MaaS, an idea he presented in a research paper in 2015 while heading a Finnish research body on intelligent transportation services (ITS Finland). With MaaS, Hietanen painted a ‘new paradigm’ for transportation; driven by mobility operators that gather all private and public transportation options in a city into a unified whole.

Two interconnected trends are in his favor: the spread of smartphones and the sharing economy. Together, he says, these will reduce the need for car ownership in urban transport, and open up demand for mobility operators like MaaS Global. “The technology is already here,” he quips. “Private car ownership will not be pleasant in cities for much longer: it is slow, expensive and environmentally unfriendly,” Hietanen said in the press release announcing Toyota’s investment.

MaaS is going to be a trillion-dollar market by 2030, according to an estimate by ABI Research. And now that he gets to put his concept into action, Hietanen told an audience at Cleantech Forum Europe in Helsinki recently, he “would be happy to capture a tenth of that”. Meanwhile, Hietanen says, “investors are asking, why would the solution that puts MaaS on the map come from tiny Finland?”

Thousands of people applied to be eligible for a limited launch of Whim in Helsinki last fall. “There were more applicants than what we could take on board to keep service levels acceptable,” Hietanen says, noting that it has all gone “better than expected”.

A few hundred Whim-customers in the Finnish capital have had options ranging from a 89 EUR basic package to 389 EUR premium, with unlimited access to taxis, public transport, car rental and bikes. Rental cars and bikes can be picked up from various pick-up points spread around Helsinki

When Whim-users enter their destination, the app optimizes travel options among more than 2500 vehicles. Think of it like searching for the best route on Google Maps, but instead of just route planning, you can order all those transport services with the monthly ticket that is available in-app. Whim also offers a pay-as-you-go option, where you pay for each trip. “We cannot promise that everything will be taken care of, but it lets you try Whim.”

It’s a work in progress, to say the very least.

“Our starting point is: what is our customers’ dream? Once we’ve figured out the dream, then we can start tweaking and adding services,” Hietanen says. MaaS Global’s challenge is not only to build a working app, but to bring onboard all the local partners.

Helsinki partners include public transport company HSL, local car rental company Veho, in addition to Finland’s largest taxi dispatch company Taksi Helsinki – which came onboard in May. “We cannot thank our partners enough. They have been very open minded and ready to try this.” Whim is expanding into European cities during 2017. Hietanen says that there has been no need for outbound sales – “interest towards MaaS Global has been organic”. He is tangibly elated, and frankly surprised about the roaring interest he has attracted with his young company.

Read more: http://nordic.businessinsider.com/the-29-coolest-uk-female-startup-founders-2017-5/

• Hietanen is “tangibly elated, and frankly surprised about the roaring interest he has attracted with his young company.”

Toyota Financial Services (TFS), together with its Insurance partner announced today that it has made a significant investment in the Finnish company MaaS Global Ltd. MaaS Global Ltd was established in April 2016 to provide multi-modal transportation services. Best-known investors so far are public transport company Transdev and Turkish bus constructor Karsan.

Through its ‘Whim’ App, MaaS Global enables customers to purchase a monthly subscription package that is tailored to their transportation needs (currently this includes public transport, e-hailing and car rental). The App is already operating in Helsinki with plans this year to expand to three other major cities in Europe and then expand to other cities around the Globe.

TFS is investing to explore a co-operation model for multi-modal mobility solutions, including the necessary technology. TFS will help MaaS Global accelerate market entry and build a long term and loyal customer base.

“We are very pleased to partner with MaaS Global and work together on the development of multi-modal mobility solutions”, commented Mr. Inuzuka, CEO of Toyota Financial Services.

“The vision and business model of MaaS Global marries with Toyota’s strategic objective to serve the mobility needs of our current and future customers”

“We are really excited to start working with Toyota, and the opportunities our collaboration will bring”, added Mr. Sampo Hietanen, CEO and founder of MaaS Global. “We at MaaS Global admire the dedication of Toyota to customer and quality and want to bring the same experience to digital era with our Whim app.”

• Toyota invests in MaaS Global Ltd.

Travis Kalanick stepped down Tuesday as chief executive of Uber, the ride-hailing service that he helped found in 2009 and built into a transportation colossus, after a shareholder revolt made it untenable for him to stay on at the company.

Mr. Kalanick’s exit came under pressure after hours of drama involving Uber’s investors, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked to remain anonymous because the details were confidential.

Earlier on Tuesday, five of Uber’s major investors demanded that the chief executive resign immediately. The investors included one of Uber’s biggest shareholders, the venture capital firm Benchmark, which has one of its partners, Bill Gurley, on Uber’s board. The investors made their demand for Mr. Kalanick to step down in a letter delivered to the chief executive while he was in Chicago, said the people with knowledge of the situation.

In the letter, titled “Moving Uber Forward” and obtained by The New York Times, the investors wrote to Mr. Kalanick that he must immediately leave and that the company needed a change in leadership. Mr. Kalanick, 40, consulted with at least one Uber board member, and after long discussions with some of the investors, he agreed to step down. He will remain on Uber’s board of directors.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/technology/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick.html?_r=0

• Travis Kalanick, founder and CEO of Uber leaves for good.

Global union federation ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) has told Uber that the ‘standing down’ of its CEO Travis Kalanick and resignation of David Bonderman gives it a chance to radically reform its working practices.

In a letter to Uber’s co-founder and chairman Garrett Camp, ITF general secretary Steve Cotton wrote: ‘The ITF welcomes the coming changes in the top leadership of your company and consider this as a timely opportunity to redress what we and countless others worldwide see as a shameless corporate culture. You now have the chance to fundamentally change how the company operates.

It is high time that Uber abandons its disruptive business model, which undermines or ignores workers’ rights and existing well trained and regulated transport operators, and seeks to sidestep regulations put in place to protect passengers and road users, and to promote safe, sustainable transport systems.

The ITF is not against the use of 21st century technology that improves our transport systems. However, it goes without saying that we will not tolerate the reviving of 19th century employment and working conditions via the so-called gig economy.

Uber is a transport company and its drivers are employees. These hard-working men and women are entitled to a minimum wage, social security and other employee benefits. They have the birthright to freedom of association and to bargain collectively.

The ITF offers Uber an opportunity, private or public, to assist its new top management in reforming its business model – a transition that its employees and the industry have long waited for. We are ready to help you achieve a fair and just transition from your current practices in order to achieve that aim.’

ITF president Paddy Crumlin commented: “At the UN, the European Court of Justice, in London, Copenhagen, New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and beyond it has been trade unions that have successfully challenged Uber’s business model. Now it is time for the company to take a deep breath and change for the better. With the recent departures, there’s never been a better chance to do so.”

• Unions tell Uber “it’s time to change”

Uber’s very bad year just got a little worse, reported Crain’s New York. An administrative law judge upheld a state Department of Labor ruling that three former Uber drivers were employees, not independent contractors. The decision was announced June 13, the same day that the embattled ride-hail giant’s tarnished CEO said he was taking a leave of absence.

The Department of Labor ruled last October that the drivers were eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. Uber plans to appeal the latest decision, but if it stands it could mark a major blow to Uber’s economic model. The e-hail service classifies drivers as contractors, which exempts the company from having to pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund. Uber has more than 50,000 drivers in New York.

The latest ruling marks another victory for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which had filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Labor after the drivers’ unemployment claims were initially held up for “executive review.” According to the alliance, once the lawsuit was filed, the Department of Labor began a review of the claims and found for the drivers. In overruling Uber’s objections to that decision, Judge Michelle Burrowes of the Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board said in her June 9 order that in addition to the three former drivers, “all others similarly situated” at Uber were also entitled to employee benefits from the company, going back to January 2014.

“We believe this affects all Uber drivers in the state of New York and will have a significant effect on other pending cases,” said Nicole Salk, staff attorney for Brooklyn Legal Services, which represented the three drivers. “Moreover, the Department of Labor must consider this decision for all new unemployment insurance claims by any Uber driver going forward.”

Salk said there were more than a dozen other pending hearings in which the Department of Labor has found that Uber drivers were employees and which Uber has appealed.

“The message here is simple,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, in a statement. “If you’re going to control the workers to maximize your profits off their labor, you owe them their rights and benefits under the law.”

The three drivers—Levon Aleksanian, Jeffrey Shepherd and Jakir Hossain—have already received their benefits. But it may be a while before Uber starts contributing to the state unemployment insurance fund.

Uber has until June 29 to file its appeal. Once the Appeal Board renders a decision, the next stops could be the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court and, from there, the New York Court of Appeals.

Read more:

https://qz.com/1005254/three-uber-drivers-were-ruled-employees-for-unemployment-purposes-by-new-york-state/

• Bhairavi Desai: “You owe drivers rights and benefits.”