Today's Profitable Mobility Startups Have The "Luxury of Optionality" Says Stifel's Florent Roulet

Today's Profitable Mobility Startups Have The "Luxury of Optionality" Says Stifel's Florent Roulet

It’s been a rocky road for new mobility startups these past few years. Late 2020 until early 2022 saw rock bottom interest rates fuel massive funding for all sorts of new companies: many raised far more cash than their fundamentals ever justified. When rates shot up, many companies languished on the vine. They couldn’t raise new cash, but they had enough in the bank to make their deaths rather drawn out. While that played out, the stronger players clawed their way to profitability. From ridehailing to food delivery, to micromobility and beyond, there are finally impressive transportation businesses growing in both footprint and profitability. That’s why, for this season of Zag Talk’s final episode, I sat down with Florent Roulet [https://stifelinstitutional.com/meet/florent-roulet/]. He’s Managing Director at Stifel’s Global Technology Group, where he puts together transactions across the mobility tech landscape, including interesting deals like Getaround’s recent merger [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stifel-ineurope_stifel-is-pleased-to-have-served-as-sole-activity-7457434049138135040-nj7h/] with GoMore. He and I talk about how the new mobility landscape has matured, why he thinks that today’s best startups have the “luxury of optionality” whereby they are fully in control of their destinies and what’s next for the sector. Wrapping things up: Greg, Athena and I also get into SpaceX’s IPO, ponder the fate of Mexico’s cheap new EV and revisit the biggest developments of the year thus far. Listen in [https://open.spotify.com/show/6chZGuL4zpopi6tbJOlccK]! HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP Hello London & New York: I’ll be in London and NYC the next few weeks. I’m at MOVE London right now — holler if you are as well! Startups and investors, we’ve got a few spots left at MobilityVC’s June 19 MobilityCafe [https://luma.com/055vexm0] in Shoreditch. Apply to attend [https://luma.com/055vexm0]. And for everybody in the curb-community — policymakers, regulators, startups, media, investors, tinkerers, corporate types, etc — please join us, alongside our friends at Electric Avenue, for June 25th’s NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour [https://luma.com/k3hjvunw], in Brooklyn. Driving the narrative: Waymo launched its first national ad campaign [https://www.wsj.com/cmo-today/waymo-readies-first-national-ads-as-rivals-and-critics-proliferate-dcc1fbdb], emphasizing its safety record as it enters ever more cities across the U.S. In an additional sign of product maturity, the company also launched a premium membership tier — Premier [https://waymo.com/blog/2026/06/waymo-premier/] — offering quicker pickups, 10% discounts and flexible cancellations for $29.99/mo. Don’t forget the other guys: Stellantis and Wayve are deepening their partnership, bringing L4 robotaxis to Uber’s network [https://www.stellantis.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/june/stellantis-wayve-and-uber-partner-to-scale-robotaxis-globally?adobe_mc_ref=&adobe_mc_ref=] across the globe. (This was a fun announcement from the stage of MOVE London.) Meanwhile, Uber’s deal with Lucid and Nuro is getting more concrete, with those robotaxis set to hit the highways of Houston [https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/uber-will-bring-its-premium-robotaxi-service-to-houston-in-2027/] in 2027, where they’ll compete head-to-head with Waymo. And surprise, surprise: Tesla is in trouble with European regulators, as it’s evidently been misrepresenting safety data [https://www.reuters.com/world/tesla-presented-misleading-full-self-driving-safety-data-european-regulators-2026-06-15/]. Bad sunbelt, bad! Smart Growth America released its 2026 regional rankings of pedestrian safety across the country [https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design/]. While the situation has improved a bit in the past three years, fatalities are still waaaay up since 2009: is it the smartphones or the giant cars? Our apologies to the poor peds in Memphis, TN — the country’s deadliest metro. Tudo bem? Think the food delivery wars are tough in America? Check out the situation in Brazil [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-10/ifood-keeta-99food-uber-eats-battle-for-brazil-delivery-market?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MTEyMzc4OCwiZXhwIjoxNzgxNzI4NTg4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUR0VTRFdLSUpIRjcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFOTMzQjZDMDIwNkY0NTg5QTg0Qzk5RDFBQzM2QTY1NCJ9.jYxbi65uixrltOAc4Xl4ptqofY9tgVxztZ8KcOTkkKM], where iFood, Keeta, 99Food and Uber Eats are all jockeying for pole position. Those are parts of European, Chinese, Chinese and American conglomerates respectively, giving this battle an interesting geopolitical flair. If you build it, they will ride: LA Metro officially opened its three new D Line stations on May 8th (see earlier reporting [https://www.thecurbivore.com/p/ride-the-d-to-the-transit-oriented]) and already the transit agency and riders alike are reaping the benefits. Systemwide ridership is up 9.5% YoY, with weekend ridership showing particularly strong gains. Goal! The World Cup has finally kicked off, and it seems like… everything has been going just fine, transportation-wise? In LA, a quarter of stadium-goers seem to be using the shuttle busses [https://www.torched.la/home-team-advantage/], while across the country, visitors are posting heartwarming appreciation [https://www.instagram.com/p/DZkUXawFiIi/?img_index=9] of our li’l trains to social media… What about putting those batteries… in more cars? Following a similar move by Ford, GM announced it’s going to start working in the grid-scale energy storage space [https://www.act-news.com/news/gm-enters-energy-storage-market/], combining its own sodium ion battery know-how with the infrastructural capabilities of Peak Energy. Back on the car side of things, GM just rolled out Energy Pass [https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/2026/jun/0609-meet-energy-pass.html], offering unified EV charging and payments across Tesla Supercharger, IONNA, Electrify America, and soon, ChargePoint and EVgo. Press plug: Thank you to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority for letting me share my thoughts about the future of ecommerce and delivery in the Garden State, for the latest edition of InTransition [https://intransitionmag.njtpa.org/articles/e-commerce-accelerates/]. A few good links: LA Metro picks Moovit [https://www.smartcitiesworld.net/mobility-as-a-service/metro-chooses-moovit-to-deliver-seamless-multimodal-mobility-12907?] for unified mobility app. MobilityVC port co HyLight presents their hydrogen inspection blimp [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7472356221736407040/] on the iconic Champs-Élysées in Paris!. AutoFlight brings eVTOLs [https://zagdaily.com/zag-air/autoflight-secures-indonesia-validation-for-evtol-cargo-aircraft/] to Indonesia. DoorDash-owned SevenRooms launches Channel Connect [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sevenrooms-launches-what-restaurants-have-been-missing-one-place-to-manage-every-reservation-302800039.html] to help restaurants integrate multiple reservation platforms. TNCs sue NYC over driver retention [https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lyft-uber-sue-new-york-city-block-driver-retention-law-2026-06-11/] law. XDOF launches robotic training [https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/collecting-robot-training-data-is-dirty-unglamorous-work-some-ai-labs-are-already-paying-xdof-to-do-it/] platform. Lyft Flexdrive’s Waymo fleet ops [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7470842758019039232/] go live in Nashville. BeepThroat — great name — investigates why Atlanta’s plan for transit on the Beltline [https://www.beepthroat.com/] has instead become a contract for Beep AV shuttles. See you in London [https://luma.com/055vexm0] or NYC [https://luma.com/k3hjvunw]! - Jonah Bliss [https://linkedin.com/in/jonahbliss] & The Curbivore [http://curbivore.co/] Crew This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecurbivore.com [https://www.thecurbivore.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How to Amortize an Ebike, With Wombi CEO Dan Carr

Far too many bike shops treat two-wheelers like they’re high-end sporting equipment: sleek and expensive pieces of hardware that are meant to be stored in the closet when not out bounding trails. As electric bicycling takes off, brands are finding they need new pathways to get consumers to treat these machines like something that can replace a car: take it to work, use it to run errands, and feel confident that when something goes wrong, it’ll be easy to fix. Dan Carr, Co-Founder and CEO of Wombi [https://wombi.us/], has been working to fix that, as he’s scaled his company across Australia, before taking it stateside. In today’s episode of Zag Talk, Jonah sat down with him in his Culver City bike-shop and HQ, and we get into what it takes to build the financial and operational layers to offer bikes on a subscription basis, how biking compares in the U.S. versus down under, how the bike industry has recovered these past few years, and the current fundraising environment. Jonah's had the pleasure of knowing Dan since he first started kicking the tires on a U.S. market launch, so it was a real delight that the team at MobilityVC could participate in Wombi's most recent funding round. Also on the pod, Greg and Jonah chat about Walmart’s expansion into 30-minute delivery (inadvertently predicting that they would soon start offering food delivery, we swear we recorded this a day before that news went live [https://moderndelivery.substack.com/i/201226874/1pd-walmart-adds-in-store-restaurant-express-delivery]) and tear into Matternet and SpaceX’s public listings, while Sela reports on the latest developments at Micromobility Europe. Listen in! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecurbivore.com [https://www.thecurbivore.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The McKinsey Center for Future Mobility’s Bold Claims About the Coming AV Revolution

As the world transitions to autonomous mobility, consumer uptake rests on four core pillars: affordability, accessibility, safety and sustainability. In a bold new report, Ani Kelkar and Darius Scurtu, from our partners at the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility [https://www.mckinsey.com/features/mckinsey-center-for-future-mobility/overview], argue that AVs will perform so well, that they will in fact be deflationary, driving down the cost of transportation and disrupting car ownership. In today’s podcast, Jonah Bliss chats with Ani and Darius, as they get into why they think this is the moment that robotaxis truly take off. And the three of them dive into the tricky downstream effects that could come along for the ride: would cheaper mobility just mean endless congestion? Are voters and policymakers ready for these sorts of massive changes? Also in the episode, Jonah, Greg and Athena analyze Q1’s financial reports, assess Lime’s pending IPO, discuss all the latest American transport trends headed to Europe and celebrate riding the D. Listen in! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecurbivore.com [https://www.thecurbivore.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Could a New Mayor Transform LA’s Streets, Housing and City Services? Councilmember Nithya Raman Wants a City That Works

Los Angeles has always been the city of the future, offering the world a vision of what’s to come, for both better and worse. Lately, while the region has still delivered on some audacious goals — building dozens of new transit stations, transitioning the nation’s largest municipally owned utility to green energy while maintaining reasonable rates — many feel local leaders have come up short when it comes to the day-to-day items that make a city feel livable. Streets, even when they have new bike lanes, are often pockmarked; permits for housing take forever despite the need to house a large homeless population; local businesses are struggling. The city is now at an inflection point, with voting in the first round of a mayoral election set for June 2nd. The three most viable candidates are Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor and a former congressperson; Nithya Raman, an urban planner turned city councilperson; and Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star who’s punched his way into the conversation thanks to high name recognition and money to burn. In today’s episode, we hear from Councilmember Raman, who currently represents District Four, stretching from the iconic Hollywood Hills to the beautiful San Fernando Valley. In her six years in office, she’s built a progressive track record, working to improve governance, build safer streets, create housing and push towards a greener economy. Before we get to the interview, recorded at Curbivore 2026, Jonah chats with Greg and Sela about the ITS European Congress, Helsinki’s glamorous new car-free bridge [https://zagdaily.com/urban/helsinki-opens-one-of-the-worlds-longest-car-free-bridges/], Amazon’s supply chain [https://moderndelivery.substack.com/i/196464791/logistics-amazon-opens-supply-chain-services-to-all-businesses] push, Spirit’s bankruptcy [https://www.newsweek.com/buy-spirit-airlines-viral-tiktok-campaign-shutdown-11910886], robotaxi pricing [https://open.substack.com/pub/curbivore/p/as-gas-prices-climb-commuters-truckers?r=n98q&selection=94685d13-c0f1-4cd1-8a90-0c3080872b72&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web&aspectRatio=instagram&textColor=%23ffffff&bgImage=true] and more. Listen in! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecurbivore.com [https://www.thecurbivore.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Reverse Logistics: So Hot Right Now! Uber's Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships Talks Returns Launch & 10 Years of Growth

Third party delivery has gone on a wild ride over the last decade, going from an urban niche to a worldwide must-have. Along the way, the array of items that consumers can get at the push of a button has grown from restaurant meals, to grocery items, to just about any SKU you can dream of: hardware, toys, liquor, electronics, you name it. Beryl Sanders [https://www.linkedin.com/in/beryl-sanders-06158653/], Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, has led that charge, scaling up Uber Eats into novel verticals with new merchant relationships. Jonah Bliss sat down with her, live at Curbivore 2026 [http://curbivore.co], to hear what’s next for the delivery and mobility giant, including its just-launched returns feature [https://www.uber.com/us/en/newsroom/uber-eats-launches-returns/] (reverse logistics: so hot right now!) Also on the pod, Jonah, Greg and Sela dig into the latest robotaxi news, share what’s working for micromobility operators in LatAm and Europe, and chew over Upshift’s pivot to tele-ops. Listen in! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thecurbivore.com [https://www.thecurbivore.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]