by Walther Ploos van Amstel
On-demand delivery startup Postmates raised $300 million in venture funding by Tiger Global to accelerate its growth. The deal values Postmates at approximately $1.2 billion. “We didn’t have plans to raise additional capital,” Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann told Term Sheet. “Tiger Global approached us and said it’s time to put some more gas in this machine. So we …
The I.D. Buzz Cargo van is a new entrant in Volkswagen’s I.D. lineup of electric concept cars. The transporter concept was presented at the IAA Commercial Vehicles conference in Hannover, Germany, as a progressive sibling of the I.D. Buzz, the all-electric, autonomous Microbus concept first unveiled at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show.
Statistics Netherlands reports that 29 percent of Dutch households ordered groceries at least once online in 2017, the most in the European Union, passing the UK at 28 percent. Dutch multinational Ahold Delhaize was the first to offer online groceries in the Netherlands, but the practice has kicked into high gear recently due to what …
Engadget presents Renault’s EZ-PRO as a ‘workspace, coffee truck and rolling post office’. Renault is trying to help us imagine a world with fewer cars. Earlier this year, Renault unveiled the EZ-GO concept, a sort of autonomous ride-sharing vehicle for the masses. The EZ-PRO is a last-mile autonomous electric delivery vehicle system.
Over a third (34%) of global retail business leaders admit that the packages they ship worldwide are at least double the size of the actual product inside. This is leading to 46 bln US Dollar in extra cost of transportation. A global study by DS Smith has revealed this.
Brookings is reporting about where will online orders get fulfilled? The changing local geography of e-commerce. Brookings: “As the brick-to-bits transition continues, it’s not enough to just count job and output changes. It’s equally important to know where e-commerce jobs are emerging, especially as it relates to more traditional retail locations”.
IKEA Group will transition to electric vehicles (EVs) for last mile home deliveries in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Shanghai by 2020. IKEA is one of the first companies to join The Climate Group’s EV100 corporate leadership initiative to accelerate the roll-out of electric transport.
Availability of loading and unloading zones is critical for reducing urban transport times and costs of last mile operations, improving planning, as well as for improving city sustainability, road safety, and livability.
Ducth PostNL will purchase e-bikes for all 18,000 mail deliverers. In this way, they can make longer postal rounds in the future. In urban areas with a lot of mail, it concerns electric cargo bikes, in quieter regions around normal e-bikes.
McKinsey presents an updated outlook for the last-mile delivery ecosystem, given the rapid development in technology. How will technological advances affect unit economics, customers, and competitive dynamics? McKinsey sees examples of technology piloting and testing across the globe. But they also see the beginning of series productions and scaling of technology deployment by several companies.