Grubhub is launching a pilot program with Jocoa coupled electric bike rental platform based in New York City, to provide at least 500 delivery workers with free access to electric bikes.
Making sure riders have access to high-quality electric bikes has been a major point of discussion in New York City after a series of battery fires. Grubhub’s partnership with Joco comes after the delivery platform issued a $100,000 grant to the FDNY Foundation to help spread awareness and safe practices for lithium-ion battery use.
Grubhub is also actively working to establish a battery recycling program for non-certified electric bikes, the company said.
“Delivery drivers are essential to thousands of communities and businesses, including Grubhub, and helping ensure their safety, and the safety of all New Yorkers, is a top priority,” he said. Amy Perlik Healy, Grubhub’s vice president of government relations, in a statement. “These new partnerships are an expansion of our ongoing work to address safe e-bike use and battery management by delivery partners, and we will explore any reasonable means to prevent tragic fires from occurring in the future.”
Grubhub’s pilot with Joco will begin in mid-June, according to the companies. Certain Grubhub delivery workers will earn Joco credits that they can use for partial, daily, or weekly electric bike rentals. Workers will have access to Joco’s 55 stations and 1,000 bikes in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Grubhub also plans to sponsor a Joco rest stop hub for delivery people in midtown Manhattan, where they can relax, use the restroom, charge their phones, swap out bikes with dead batteries for fully charged ones, and access the delivery team.
Joco says that their battery charging cabinets are flame retardant and have been tested at a nationally recognized testing lab. The batteries are certified to the IEC 62133 standard, the company says.
Joco was originally launched in New York in 2021 as a Citi Bike competitor. The startup tried to circumvent Lyft-owned Citi Bike’s exclusive supplier agreement with the Department of Transportation by placing its docked bikes in private parking lots, rather than on public property. However, Lyft sued the fledgling company, so Joco decided to pivot to target workers in the informal economy.
The initial pilot will run for six months and hopefully expand from there, according to Jonathan Cohen, co-founder of Joco.
“We want to help the delivery community as much as possible, and we want to make sure that drivers can easily get safe vehicles, which is not easy in today’s environment,” Cohen told TechCrunch.
—————————————————-
Source link