Mobility Startup Failures

EV startup that burned $900M without shipping a production car

The Ocean SUV launched into a sea of defects and dealer disputes

Spanish e-scooter startup acquired by Getir as a market entry strategy. When Getir exited Spain, Blok's operations vanished with it.

GM's $15B robotaxi bet — ended by one car dragging one pedestrian 20 feet

GM's $10B robotaxi bet collapsed after a dragging incident and a cover-up destroyed trust.

The autonomous driving startup that raised $220M targeting highway self-driving — shut down in April 2024 after failing to find an acquirer as the AV industry consolidated around Waymo and Tesla

Europe's most-funded e-scooter startup raised €200M and merged with Dutch rival DOTT in a distressed deal when both ran out of runway.

The teen prodigy's lidar company — from $8B SPAC to near-zero in three years

May Mobility's autonomous shuttles averaged 5 riders a day — not even close to commercial viability.

From $1.4B SPAC darling to 97% stock collapse in three years.

The MIT-founded scooter company that built the safest vehicle — then ran out of money

The electric truck startup that tried to IPO on crowdfunding

Rockwell paid $530M for an autonomous robot company then shut its consumer division a year later.

Hydrogen trucks that existed only on slides

Fourteen years of pivoting from consumer to B2B ended in a quiet asset sale to VW.

The peer-to-peer car sharing platform's European operations collapsed as insurance costs and owner churn destroyed the model

Richard Branson's airborne rocket company ran out of cash 10 weeks after a catastrophic launch failure

The hydrogen truck startup that reported 87 vehicle deliveries and had actually delivered about 20

America's leading electric bus maker — backed by Amazon, Daimler, and the Biden administration — bankrupt in August 2023 when component shortages and fixed-price contracts created an unsurvivable cost squeeze.

The world's most advanced luxury EV company loses $200,000 on every car it makes

Electric pickup truck SPAC built on fabricated pre-order numbers

EV unicorn that went public at $13B and never shipped a van

The original e-scooter unicorn raised $776M and went public via SPAC at $2.3B—then filed for Chapter 11 in December 2023 having burned through nearly all of it.

The Finnish startup that invented Mobility-as-a-Service — and discovered cities aren't ready to pay for it.

The electric delivery truck startup ran out of cash 25 months after its $800M SPAC

Canadian single-seat EV maker listed on NASDAQ raised $140M to commercialise the three-wheeled Solo EV—then shut down production in 2023 having sold fewer than 500 vehicles.

The UK's largest all-electric car subscription service. 50,000 drivers. Then the fleet couldn't be refinanced.

The German solar car startup that raised €150M, IPO'd on Nasdaq, and never delivered a single vehicle

GM's $10B robotaxi bet suspended after an accident, a cover-up, and a California license revocation

Sleek bike-parking pods couldn't survive the brutal economics of city hardware.

$2.5B for scooters with a 28-day street lifespan.

Fastest startup to unicorn status in history (3 months). Also one of the fastest to prove scooter unit economics don't work.

Remote-controlled rental cars sounded futuristic until one teleoperator per car killed the economics.

15,000 scooters parked forever — when tourism mobility hits a regulatory wall.

The electric delivery van maker that lost the biggest postal contract in US history

EV battery swapping startup raised $160M from Shell and Repsol—then shut down operations in August 2023 as automakers standardised on fast charging over battery swap.

The $2.1B autonomous delivery robot that delivered groceries to almost nobody

The private aviation membership club that democratized flying private. Then Delta flew in to save it.

Built the safety net for self-driving cars, but the cars never arrived at scale.

VW lost €50M discovering that Rome's parking culture is incompatible with EV car-sharing.

UK's e-scooter operator grounded by the country's failure to legalise private scooter use

Bird burned $700M+ discovering that losing $1.38 per ride doesn't scale into a business.

Brazil's car subscription platform for gig drivers stalled when rising vehicle costs and insurance claims eroded every unit of margin

Ford's $100M scooter bet folded after five unprofitable years.

Russia's Google of rides forced into a Kremlin-controlled $5.4B divorce.

The lidar pioneer that invented the technology — then got destroyed by Chinese copies and had to merge with its rival to survive

Anthony Levandowski's post-conviction comeback in autonomous trucks was a road to nowhere.

Smart parking, dumb supply chain.

An electric delivery van startup that went public via SPAC just nine months before filing for bankruptcy — with founders under SEC investigation for buying shares at a discount before the deal closed.

Campus robot shuttles were a cute pilot — not a venture-scale business.

Shervin Pishevar and Brogan BamBrogan raised $450M to build Elon Musk's vacuum-tube transport vision. Nine years of tests. No government signed a commercial contract. Richard Branson renamed it Virgin Hyperloop. All staff laid off November 2022.

When your customers are dying car-share giants, your connected vehicle platform dies with them.

The $153B electric truck IPO discovered that valuation and production are different problems

Israeli ride-hailing unicorn. B2C failed vs Uber. B2B pivot. Still struggling.

South Africa's carpooling dream died on the altar of car culture and load-shedding.

Didi defied Beijing to IPO on Wall Street—and paid with its existence.

Japan's micro-mobility pioneer was strangled by traffic laws built for the automobile era.

Cairo's bus revolution listed on Nasdaq at $1.5B. Fired 32% of staff on listing day. Delisted 2023.

Korea's car-sharing king IPO'd at the worst moment and lost two-thirds of its value in 90 days.

Ukraine's own Uber survived Maidan but couldn't outlast Mariupol's fall.

Wind Mobility got blown out of Europe by regulations its business model couldn't survive.

China's Uber. $73B IPO. Chinese regulators destroyed it in 48 hours.

Uber's self-driving dream became a $2.5B nightmare after its car killed a pedestrian.

Greek ridesharing app Beat entered Latin America in 2016 and became the leading challenger to Uber in Chile, Colombia, and Peru — acquired by BMW/Daimler's Free Now in 2019 and shut down LatAm operations in January 2021.

Mexico's electric scooter unicorn hopeful. It ran out of money before running out of sidewalks.

Two fatal crashes in 24 hours ended Revel's moped business in New York City forever.

Ford's 'AWS of urban mobility' absorbed into its parent and killed by internal restructuring.

LATAM's mobility super-app was destroyed by COVID before it could reach critical mass.

The Uber of car subscriptions burned through SoftBank cash faster than customers could drive.

MENA's super-app dream sold to Uber for $3.1B before it could fully bloom.

China's third largest bike-sharing unicorn tried America and retreated in under a year.

Beautiful electric scooters. Terrible timing.

South Korea's Uber-killer was itself killed by a law named after it.

Mexico's first e-scooter unicorn, merged with Yellow and imploded in 18 months.

Bangladesh's ride-hailing hero dissolved in Singapore before completing a single ride.

Survived a decade, killed in months after being absorbed into a sinking acquirer.

Brazil's scooter and bike unicorn merged and vanished in two years

Indonesia's super-app giant couldn't conquer India's hyper-competitive mobility market.

First fully driverless truck on a US highway — shut down six months later

PSA spent €100M on Parisian EV car-share only to discover vandalism and COVID make it mathematically impossible.

Won the permits, lost the war — the COVID killing blow for a nearly-there scooter startup.

Mexico's electric scooter pioneer merged, then went bankrupt together

India's office commuter bus. COVID emptied every bus. Never recovered.

Indian smart parking startup couldn't survive free municipal competition and hardware costs.

Built a revolutionary robotaxi from scratch, then sold to Amazon at a 60% valuation haircut.

China's premium dockless bike leader, acquired by Meituan for $2.7B and quietly wound down.

Flat-fee transit sounded like a deal, until it was.

John Doerr said "This will be bigger than the internet" — 19 years later, Segway had sold 30,000 units total before Chinese Ninebot discontinued production, the smartphone proving that self-balancing was more useful in your pocket

India's Y Combinator-backed car rental pioneer evaporated when COVID erased all travel demand overnight.

White-label car subscriptions for dealers collapsed the moment COVID shut showroom doors.

Skip ran out of road when San Francisco pulled its scooter permit in 2019.

The B2B bike-share that served every campus — until COVID emptied every campus simultaneously.

The machine that was going to change the world — it changed the punchline.

Latin America's largest micromobility company lasted one year

100 markets, zero revenue when every campus closed — COVID's most complete micromobility casualty.

Bosch's e-moped sharing venture died when the maintenance math never worked.

Stratolaunch developed a carrier aircraft to launch orbital rockets from the stratosphere, providing altitude and speed boosts to reduce launch costs.

Crowdsourced commuter shuttle acquired by Ford for $65M. Ford shut it 28 months later. "Changing urban mobility landscape."

Alphabet-backed parking data startup couldn't sell cities on its own infrastructure.

The Mexican taxi app that couldn't out-innovate Uber's war chest.

A SaaS platform providing instant dynamic shipping quotes and logistics digitalization for transportation companies through API integration with freight forwarders.

Argentina's first peer-to-peer carsharing startup — shut down in 2019 as ridesharing apps flooding the Buenos Aires market made private car ownership less necessary and carsharing a harder sell.

Yellow bikes everywhere. $2.2B raised. 12M users formed a refund queue that never moved.

Boeing allegedly stole Zunum's tech then left the electric aviation startup to die.

China's brightest AV startup destroyed itself in a catastrophic public co-founder war.

Panamanian ride-hailing startup outspent into oblivion by Uber's global war chest.

Stanford's AI self-driving spinout became Apple's talent acquisition after burning $77M.

Costa Rica's EV taxi startup ran out of charging stations before it ran out of enthusiasm.

Colorado's maglev transit dream evaporated when Series B funding never arrived.

San José electric bike sharing raised $400K — COVID eliminated downtown office workers, MOPT regulated e-bike speed to 25km/h with special registration, bike theft in peripheral zones, monthly subscription model collapsed

$60M parking sensor pioneer sold for pennies after hardware costs gutted its margins.

Parking app swallowed by its own merger after Google entered the space.

Bridj provided dynamic bus-sharing routes powered by mobile app technology.

The ridesharing startup that pioneered peer-to-peer rides before Lyft — raised $38.5M, invented features Uber and Lyft copied, and sold its assets to GM for $2M

Battery-swapping EV network raised $850M and failed to get one carmaker to commit

$10 flights, zero amenities. Then oil hit $100/barrel and Skybus ceased operations in 11 months.

The low-cost airline that disrupted air travel — until Flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades.

Spain's electric scooter startup run over by Lime with a $750M war chest

Uber for boda-boda motorcycle taxis in Kampala that exited Uganda under pressure from Bolt.

India first self-drive car sharing app raised $105M, listed on NASDAQ, then collapsed as car owners stopped getting paid and the platform became functionally unusable.

The transportation revolution that became a mall cop joke

Pakistani mass transit startup raised $85M to bring air-conditioned bus service to Lahore and ran out of capital when the 2022 funding market closed.

Premium rideshare startup employing professional drivers as W-2 employees and offering curated music, merchandise, and premium SUVs as a luxury alternative to Uber

Colombia's first taxi-hailing app acquired by Easy Taxi and dismantled in the Uber wars.

Gokada built Lagos biggest motorcycle ride-hailing app and was growing fast — then the Lagos government banned commercial motorcycles overnight with 48 hours notice

On-demand car servicing and maintenance at your door

Ghanaian gig platform for skilled workers that could not crack unit economics

GM's car sharing startup that COVID and negative unit economics closed simultaneously

Venezuela's ride-sharing startup killed by hyperinflation before it could scale

Colombia's second attempt at homegrown ride-hailing that InDriver and Cabify had already settled

Colombian motorcycle ride-hailing app grounded by Bogotá's mototaxi ban enforcement

Autonomous shuttle pioneer that arrived a decade too early and ran out of road.

Hamburg shared mobility platform software sold to SIXT at deep discount after raising €20M

Ljubljana's e-scooter startup couldn't outlast the global mobility giants

The Swedish e-scooter startup that raised 300 million dollars to make micromobility sustainable and never got there

Ghanaian electric motorcycle startup could not build enough volume to reduce unit costs

Latin America's top carpooling app was swallowed by BlaBlaCar then shut down within months.

Barcelona electric scooter sharing startup grounded by municipal permit battles

Estonian founders raised $100M to give underbanked South Africans car subscriptions — then global interest rates destroyed the economics

European e-scooter startup that raised $150M and sold to Bird at a fraction of its peak value.

Israeli B2B ground transport platform that raised $650M and shut down its consumer app to survive.

Estonian car-subscription startup backed by Sequoia that raised $100M to offer cars to credit-excluded consumers in South Africa and Mexico before rising interest rates destroyed the debt-funded model.

Ecuador's ride-hailing startup that Quito's taxi lobby kept off the road for two years

The Indonesian used motorcycle marketplace raised $52M from Alpha JWC and Northstar to digitize a 4 million unit annual market and had to slash 50% of its workforce within 18 months.

The Grin-Yellow scooter merger raised $160M and then collapsed when COVID wiped out micro-mobility demand across all 15 cities simultaneously.

UAE car subscription startup that raised $15M to let Gulf consumers swap cars monthly before rising debt costs destroyed the fleet-financing model.

A LINK scooter network backed by Qatar sovereign wealth and Spark Capital that shut down after years of failing to crack micromobility economics.

Europe's largest P2P car rental platform absorbed and effectively killed by Getaround.

CAKE built the most beautiful electric off-road motorcycles in the world — then went bankrupt in 2024 because beautiful hardware at tiny volume is not a business

Commercial EV fleet SPAC went public at $2B, bankrupt two years later with vehicles nobody wanted at its price point.

Colombia's last-mile delivery startup that Colombia's labor code bankrupted

Data-driven express bus startup raised $11M from Ford and shut down after partnership talks failed

eVTOL startup backed by Korean defense giant Hanwha went bankrupt before its aircraft left the ground.

Brazilian used car marketplace raised 30 million reais to simplify peer-to-peer car sales before Kavak entered Brazil with a billion-dollar war chest and made the local competitor economics structurally unviable.

The Ola-backed dockless scooter app raised $100M and shut down when COVID exposed the fatal flaw in its unit economics.

Dominican Republic ride-sharing competing against Uber (70%) and InDriver (25%) with a 6-month INTRANT authorization and $50K bond

London's taxi-hailing app raised $100M but was crushed by Uber's war chest and merged into MyTaxi.

France's peer-to-peer car sharing startup raised €7.5M and was acquired by SNCF's OuiCar, then had its brand discontinued as the larger platform absorbed its users.

Guadalajara bike-share trapped by infrastructure gaps and global operators

Honduran ride-hailing startup unable to build density before global platforms arrived

Guatemala's ride-sharing startup beaten by a Russian platform that understood Latin American bargaining culture

Brazilian corporate taxi app squeezed out by Uber for Business and COVID-driven remote work.

The Colombian motorcycle ride-hailing app that built a passionate user base and was killed by the government banning moto-taxis

Autonomous convoy trucking startup wound down after carriers chose incremental over revolutionary.

El Salvador's ride-hailing startup that Uber entered and immediately ended

Bishkek's ride-hailing app was overwhelmed when Yandex Taxi and InDriver entered Central Asia

Dominican Republic's ride-hailing startup that InDriver disrupted with the same playbook it used across LatAm

MIT spinout autonomous shuttle startup raised $50M and was sold to Magna for parts before reaching commercial scale

Tbilisi's ride-hailing startup was outcompeted by Bolt's aggressive Caucasus expansion

France's Uber alternative rebranded to Kapten, was absorbed by the BMW-Daimler FREE NOW joint venture, then quietly killed.

Bangladesh ride-hailing and delivery super app backed by Go-Jek that raised $10M before Bangladesh's motorcycle taxi ban and COVID eliminated both its core businesses.

Colombia ride-sharing competing against Uber (legal since 2021), InDriver (40%), Cabify (Spain), and Beat (Daimler) in the same Bogotá market

Peru ride-sharing building against Uber's 80% share and InDriver's rapid Lima expansion while mototaxis (500K vehicles) were legally excluded from apps

Costa Rica's electric shared scooter service was grounded by regulatory uncertainty and Uber's ride-hailing dominance

Solar-powered EV startup raised $150M via crowdfunding and IPO, then cancelled its only car.

The Berlin direct-to-consumer electric scooter maker that raised 50 million euros and filed for insolvency in April 2020

French late-night rideshare convicted then acquitted, hobbled forever after

Mexico City shared commuter van startup that formalized informal transport routes before COVID and remote work permanently ended its demand thesis.

Algerian super-app that raised $193M and hit regulatory barriers attempting to expand across North Africa.

Peru's ride-sharing startup squeezed between Uber and a Russian startup that changed the rules

Indian dockless scooter sharing startup that raised 105 million dollars and had to shut down its shared mobility business entirely to pivot to selling electric vehicles.

El Salvador's second ride-hailing startup in a market InDriver had already won

Phantom Auto raised $76M for a human-in-the-loop fallback for autonomous vehicles — then the AV market stalled and the fallback nobody deployed never became a product