Big tech is stepping in to patch newly disclosed security flaws affecting almost every Intel chip since 2011.

Researchers on Tuesday released details of the vulnerability, known as ZombieLoad — or microarchitectural data sampling as its technical name — which can leaked sensitive data stored in the processor, such as passwords, secret keys and account tokens and private messages.

You can read our coverage here. In short, don’t panic — but you should patch your systems. Here’s how.

Apple released macOS fixes

Apple has fixes out for every Mac and MacBook released during and after 2011.

The tech giant said in an advisory that any system running macOS Mojave 10.14.5, released Monday, is patched. This will prevent an attack from being run through Safari and other apps, but warned that some Macs could face up to a 40 percent reduction in performance given the changes needed to fix the vulnerabilities.

The security update will also be pushed to Sierra and High Sierra versions. iPhones, iPads and Apple Watch devices aren’t affected by the bugs.

Google patches Android, will update Chrome

The search and browser maker also confirmed it has released patches to mitigate against ZombieLoad.

Google said the “vast majority” of Android devices aren’t affected but Intel-only devices will need to be patched once device makers make updates available

Chrome OS devices, such as Chromebooks, are already protected in the latest version and permanent mitigations will be pushed to devices in the next version.

And, the company’s Chrome team has a technical advisory out but said users should rely on patches for their computer. “Operating system vendors may release updates to improve isolation, so users should ensure they install any updates and follow any additional guidance from their operating system vendor,” said Google. In other words, make sure your Windows PC or your Mac is patched.

Google also rolled out patches to its datacenters, so cloud customers are already patched but should be aware of the company’s guidance.

Microsoft rolls out Windows update

Microsoft has released patches for its operating system and cloud.

Jeff Jones, a senior director at Microsoft, said the software and cloud giant has been “working closely with affected chip manufacturers to develop and test mitigations” for its customers. “We are working to deploy mitigations to cloud services and release security updates to protect Windows customers against vulnerabilities affecting supported hardware chips,” he said.

In a TechNet article, the company said customers may need to obtain microcode updates for their processor directly from their device maker. Microsoft is pushing many of the microcode updates itself through Windows Update, but are also available from its website.

Software updates will be released Tuesday also through Windows Update. Microsoft also has a page with guidance for how to protect against the new attacks.

Microsoft Azure customers are already protected, the company said.

Amazon and Mozilla did not return a request for comment. We’ll update if we hear back.

Read more:

• New secret-spilling flaws affect almost every Intel chip since 2011
• Intel announces hardware fixes for Spectre and Meltdown on upcoming chips
• Apple issues Meltdown fix for Macs running Sierra and El Capitan
• Google claims its Spectre and Meltdown mitigation results in no performance degradation
• Intel tried desperately to change the subject from Spectre and Meltdown at CES
• Intel CEO: Meltdown and Spectre patches will come to 90%+ of chips in the next week

On Wednesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will ask tech companies to sign a pledge called the Christchurch Call, as The New York Times previously reported. Digital ministers of the Group of 7 nations are meeting tomorrow to talk about toxic content and tech regulation.

The Christchurch Call is the first result on that work and a way to start involving tech companies with a nonbinding pledge. Named after the terrorist attack in Christchurch, the agreement should ask tech platforms to increase their efforts when it comes to blocking toxic content. In other words, democracies don’t want another shooting video going viral and also don’t want to block Facebook, YouTube or Twitter altogether.

According to people working for the French Economy Ministry, the Christchurch Call doesn’t contain any specific recommendations for new regulation. Countries get to decide what they mean by violent and extremist content for instance.

“For now, it’s a focus on an event in particular that caused an issue for multiple countries,” France Digital Minister Cédric O said in a meeting with a few journalists.

Companies that sign the pledge agree to improve their moderation processes and share more information about the work they’re doing to prevent terrorist content from going viral. On the other side, governments agree to work on laws that ban toxic content from social networks.

Tomorrow, a handful of countries are expected to sign the Christchurch Call. According to French government officials, members of the Group of 7 nations should sign it but the U.S. might not sign it. New Zealand, Norway and a handful of countries that are not part of the Group of 7 nations should also sign the pledge.

After that, it’ll be up to tech companies to side with those governments and say that they have heard their plea. It’s a nonbinding agreement after all, so I’m sure many social networks will see it as gestures of goodwill.

In addition to digital ministers and government officials, the French Economy Ministry says that representatives from Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Snap, Mozilla, Google, Qwant, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Web Foundation will be there on Wednesday.

So you can expect that some, if not all of them, will sign the pledge. The New York Times says that Facebook, Google and Microsoft have already agreed to sign the pledge.

Google today announced a major revamp of its travel planning tools on the web. After launching a similar set of tools on mobile last year, the company today announced that google.com/travel on the web will now let you see information about all of your previously reserved trips and easily switch between flight, hotel and package searches.

In many ways, this finally brings all of Google’s travel services under one hood — a process that has taken far longer than I would’ve anticipated after Google bought ITA nine years ago.

Google Trips is essentially the landing page for the new site and brings together your existing bookings and information about your destination. The service will then feed your travel information back into Google Search and Maps. To do this, Google.com/travel (which I think we can safely call Google Travel, even if Google itself doesn’t do so), will use the confirmation emails and receipts from your Gmail inbox to build the timeline of your trip.

Since both the web and mobile versions are now on feature parity, this also makes it easier to pick up your trip planning on any device. Like always, though, you won’t be able to make any reservations through Google’s systems. Instead, Google will send you to an airline’s or hotel’s reservation system to complete a booking.

The actual flight and hotel search engines are still the same, though if Google previously offered the ability to buy flight and hotel packages, it did a good job of hiding that. Now, this option gets first billing, together with the hotel and flight searches.

“Our goal is to simplify trip planning by helping you quickly find the most useful information and pick up where you left off on any device. We’ll continue to make planning and taking trips easier with Google Maps, Google Search and google.com/travel—so you can get out and enjoy the world.”

Sadly, Google hasn’t ported Inbox’s useful Trip Bundles over to Gmail yet, though, despite promises to do so before shutting down Inbox. For the time being, though, the new Google Travel site is a pretty good alternative.

It’s just over two years since Yext debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, and to mark the occasion, I sat down with co-founder and CEO Howard Lerman for an interview.

As Lerman noted, Yext — which allows businesses to manage their profiles and information across a wide variety of online services — actually presented onstage at the TechCrunch 50 conference back in 2009. Now, it boasts a market capitalization of nearly $2.3 billion, and it just revealed plans to take over a nine-floor building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, turning it into Yext’s global headquarters.

My interview with Lerman actually came before the announcement, though he managed to drop in a few veiled hints about the company making a big move in real estate.

More concretely, we talked about how Lerman’s management style has evolved from scrappy startup founder to a public company CEO — he described holding five-minute meetings with every Yext employee as “one of the best management techniques” he’s ever adopted.

Lerman also argued that as online misinformation has become a big issue, Yext has only become more important: “Our founding principle is that the ultimate authority on how many calories are in a Big Mac is McDonald’s. The ultimate authority on where Burger King is open is Burger King.”

Vowing that he will remain CEO of Yext for “as long as this board will have me,” Lerman ended our conversation with a passionate defense of the idea that “a company is the ultimate vehicle in America to effect good in the world.”

You can read a transcript of our conversation below, edited and condensed for clarity.

TechCrunch: To start with a really broad question, how do you think Yext is different now than it was two years ago?

Howard Lerman: One of the things that’s defined Yext over the years is our continuous willingness to reinvent ourselves. You started covering us in 2009 [at] TechCrunch 50, we were a launch company there.

And here we are now. One of the cool things about being public is: It’s a total gamechanger. It’s a gamechanger not just for access to capital, but it’s particularly important in global markets. And I’m not talking about capital markets, I’m talking about the markets in which we sell software. We have offices now from Berlin to Shanghai.

TechCrunch Sessions is heading to San Jose on July 10 and we’re thrilled to announce our jam-packed agenda, overflowing with some of the biggest names and most exciting startups in the transportation industry. With Early Bird ticket sales ending soon, you’ll want to be sure to grab your tickets after checking out this agenda.

Throughout the day, you can expect to hear from and partake in discussions about the future of transportation, the promise and problems of autonomous vehicles, the potential for bikes and scooters, investing in early-stage startups and more.

We’ll be joined by some of the most esteemed and prescient people in the space, including Dmitri Dolgov at Waymo, Argo AI Chief Safety Officer Summer Craze Fowler, Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson, Karl Iagnemma of Aptiv, Seleta Reynolds of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Ford Motor CTO Ken Washington.

We’ll also spend time discussing how cities will adapt to meet the new demands of this technology, an entirely new way to keep this tech secure, and what new once-unimaginable forms of transport are around the corner.

Our agenda showcases some of the powerhouses in the space, but also plenty of smaller teams that are building and debunking fundamental technologies in mobility. And of course, it wouldn’t be a TechCrunch show without some incredible startups demonstrating the latest groundbreaking tech.

We still have a few tricks up our sleeves and will be adding some new names to the agenda over the next month so keep your eyes open. In the meantime, check out these agenda highlights:

TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility
California Theatre, San Jose // July 10

9:35 AM – 10:00 AM
Building Mobility-First Cities with Avery Ash (INRIX) and Seleta Reynolds (Los Angeles Department of Transportation). 

What does it look like to move around the city of the future? We’ll be talking with Avery Ash, head of Autonomous Mobility at INRIX and Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to figure it out. More speakers to be announced

10:00 AM – 10:25 AM
Will Venture Capital Drive the Future of Mobility? With Michael Granoff (Maniv Mobility), Ted Serbinski (Techstars) and, Sarah Smith (Bain Capital)

Three leading early-stage investors will come together to debate the uncertain future of mobility tech and whether VC dollars are enough to push the industry forward.

10:25 AM – 10:45 AM
Waymo’s Way Forward with Dmitri Dolgov (Waymo)

We’ll talk to Waymo’s CTO about the state of AI, the company’s approach to developing, testing and validating its self-driving vehicle technology and what challenges remain for this Alphabet company and the rest of the AV industry.

10:45 – 11:05
Innovation Break with Softwheel Technology
Sponsored by Softwheel Technology

11:05 AM – 11:30 AM
The Last Mile: Challenges and Opportunities for startups with Stonly Baptiste (Urban Us) and Regina Clewlow (Populus). More speakers to be announced.

Populus founder and CEO Regina Clewlow and Urban Us co-founder Stonly Baptiste unpack what it means to be a last-mile innovation business, the dollars required for success, how data and technology will change how people move from Point A to Point B — and the hurdles that stand in the way.

11:30 AM – 11:40 AM
DEMO with Nils Wollny (Holoride)

Audi spinout Holoride will show how they aim to bring an interactive VR experience to the backseat of every car, no matter if it’s a Ford, Mercedes or Chrysler Pacifica minivan. Check out what this VR future in the car might look like.

11:40 AM – 12 PM
Delivering the Future with Dave Ferguson (Nuro)

Nuro is building a self-driving vehicle with a focus on local deliveries like groceries, food, and retail goods. We’ll talk with Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson to hear all about the strengths and challenges of their focused approach.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Break

1:00 PM – 1:10 PM
Demo with Jay Giraud (Damon Motorcycles)

Damon CEO and founder will bring a motorcycle on stage to demonstrate the company’s rider protection system that uses a combination of radar, camera and other sensors to track the speed, direction and velocity of up to 64 objects at a time.

1:10 PM – 1:35 PM
Bringing Ethics to Self-Driving Cars with Oliver Cameron (Voyage) and Clark Haynes (Uber)

When you hear the words ethics and autonomous vehicles, the age-old and often overused “trolley problem” thought experiment might spring to mind. We promise this isn’t about that. Instead, Oliver Cameron and Clark Haynes will discuss ethical decision-making in autonomous vehicles, and detail how robot cars are designed to prioritize some objects over others.

1:35 PM – 1:55 PM
Where Intel’s $15 billion bet is headed with Amnon Shashua (Mobileye)

In the two years since Intel bought Mobileye, co-founder and CEO Amnon Shashua has scaled up the business beyond ADAS with an eye towards launching an autonomous vehicle platform in 2021. We’ll talk to Shashua about his vision for the company, future business pursuits and a progress report on the AV program.

1:55 PM – 2:20 PM
Scooter Wars with Katie DeWitt (Scoot), Tony Ho (Segway-Ninebot) and Ryan Rzepecki (JUMP Bikes)

Scooters have taken over cities, and there’s no sign that these deployments are slowing down.Three leaders on the front lines of this battleground will dig into what’s next for scooters, the sustainability of a shared model, unit economics and more.

2:20 PM – 2:40 PM
Rebuilding the Motor City with Ken Washington (Ford Motor Company)

Hear from Ford’s CTO and Vice President of Research and Advanced Engineering how the historic automaker is rapidly changing its culture and processes while it prepares for an electric future.

2:40 PM – 3:00 PM
Coming Soon!

3:00 PM – 3:15 PM
Break

3:15 PM – 3:35 PM
Rethinking Urban Mobility with Erik Buell (Fuell)

Motorcycle racing pioneer Erik Buell is back with a new company and vision. We’ll talk to Buell, now chairman of EV startup Fuell, about the Flow electric motorcycle and the Fluid electric bicycle.

3:35 PM – 4:05 PM
Autonomous Robotaxis vs Shuttles with Karl Iagnemma (Aptiv), Alisyn Malek (May Mobility), Lia Theodosiou-Pisanelli (Aurora)

Some of the top minds trying to bring autonomous vehicle technology to the masses will debate what approaches makes the most sense, have the best chances for economic viability and what safety and security vulnerabilities and other challenges could throw these off track.

4:05 PM – 4:30 PM

The Future of Freight with Stefan Seltz-Axmacher (Starsky Robotics) and other speakers to be announced.

Trucking is the backbone of the economy; it’s also in peril. Startups and OEMs are scrambling to come up with the solution. We’ll debate whether autonomous trucks are the fix we need or if another near-term technology can pave the way to a more efficient and profitable industry.

4:30 PM – 4:50 PM

Uber Takes Flight with Mark Moore (UberElevate)

Uber wants to have flying taxis by 2023 and test flights are expected as early as next year. Mark Moore, a 30-year NASA veteran and engineering director of aviation at Uber, reveals what he and the ride-hailing company have been working on — and how they intend to take to the skies.

Save $100 with Early Bird Tickets ($195) when you book today before prices go up.

Startup Demo Packages (includes 3 tickets + a table) are still available here.

Students, grab your $45 tickets before we sell out.

The broader AR market is made up of a lot of hype and excitement, but fundamentally it’s all based around the promise that waveguide displays can continue to stay wafer-thin while getting better and cheaper.

Waveguide-maker DigiLens is aiming to stay aggressive in lowering the costs of the expensive component. It has just closed a $50 million Series C led by Universal Display Corporation’s venture arm alongside Samsung Ventures. The company had previously disclosed that Pokémon Go-maker Niantic and Mitsubishi were making a strategic investment in this round. This brings the startup’s total funding to $85 million.

The Sunnyvale, Calif. startup most recently raised a $22 million round in early 2017, with investments from Foxconn, Sony and Panasonic.

Waveguide displays allow projected images to be “loaded” in from the side of a sheet of glass, thanks to etchings that bounce the light around to form a complete image in front of your eye. This is ideal for augmented reality where you want as little hardware as possible directly in front of your eye. While optics that simply reflect an image onto a curved display are intensely cheaper, it’s going to take developments in waveguide tech to create consumer-friendly svelte designs that still showcase a high-definition image.

Aside from AR glasses, DigiLens is eyeing the automotive market as a market for its see-through displays.

In a statement, CEO Chris Pickett declared that his startup’s manufacturing process was building “the only waveguide that can get to a consumer price point..”

The startup will have to compete with major tech companies and other startups that are building their own technology. Magic Leap and Microsoft are designing their own waveguide displays for their latest AR headsets. Last year, Apple bought Akonia Holographics, a Denver startup building similar technology.

Security researchers have found a new class of vulnerabilities in Intel chips which, if exploited, can be used to steal sensitive information directly from the processor.,

The bugs are reminiscent of Meltdown and Spectre, which exploited a weakness in speculative execution, an important part of how modern processors work. Speculative execution helps processors predict to a certain degree what an application or operating system might need next and in the near-future, making the app run faster and more efficient. The processor will execute its predictions if they’re needed, or discard them if they’re not.

Both Meltdown and Spectre leaked sensitive data stored briefly in the processor, including secrets — such as passwords, secret keys and account tokens, and private messages.

Now the same researchers are back with an entirely new round of data-leaking bugs.

“ZombieLoad,” as it’s called, is a side-channel attack targeting Intel chips, allowing hackers to effectively exploit design flaws rather than injecting malicious code. Intel said ZombieLoad is made up of four bugs, which the researchers reported to the chip maker just a month ago.

Almost every computer with an Intel chips dating back to 2011 are affected by the vulnerabilities.

ZombieLoad takes its name from a “zombie load,” an amount of data that the processor can’t understand or properly process, forcing the processor to ask for help from the processor’s microcode to prevent a crash. Apps are usually only able to see their own data, but this bug allows that data to bleed across those boundaries walls. ZombieLoad will leak any data currently loaded by the processor’s core, the researchers said. Intel said patches to the microcode will help clear the processor’s buffers, preventing data from being read.

Practically, the researchers showed in a proof-of-concept video that the flaws could be exploited to see which websites a person is visiting in real-time, but could be easily repurposed to grab passwords or access tokens used to log into a victim’s online accounts.

Like Meltdown and Spectre, it’s not just PCs and laptops affected by ZombieLoad — the cloud is also vulnerable. ZombieLoad can be triggered in virtual machines, which are meant to be isolated from other virtual systems and their host device.

Daniel Gruss, one of the researchers who discovered the latest round of chip flaws, said it works “just like” it PCs and can read data off the processor. That’s potentially a major problem in cloud environments where different customers’ virtual machines run on the same server hardware.

Although no attacks have been publicly reported, the researchers couldn’t rule them out nor would any attack necessarily leave a trace, they said.

What does this mean for the average user? There’s no need to panic, for one.

These are far from drive-by exploits where an attacker can take over your computer in an instant. Gruss said it was “easier than Spectre” but “more difficult than Meltdown” to exploit — and both required a specific set of skills and effort to use in an attack.

But if exploit code was compiled in an app or delivered as malware, “we can run an attack,” he said.

There are far easier ways to hack into a computer and steal data. But the focus of the research into speculative execution and side channel attacks remains in its infancy. As more findings come to light, the data-stealing attacks have the potential to become easier to exploit and more streamlined.

But as with any vulnerability where patches are available, install them.

Intel has released microcode to patch vulnerable processors, including Intel Xeon, Intel Broadwell, Sandy Bridge, Skylake and Haswell chips, Intel Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake and Cascade Lake chips are affected, and all Atom and Knights processors.

But other tech giants, like consumer PC and device manufacturers, are also issuing patches as a first line of defense against possible attacks.

Computer makers Apple and Microsoft and browser makers Google and Mozilla are expected to release patches in the coming hours. We reached out to all four prior to publication. We will update when patches and comments are available.

In a call with TechCrunch, Intel said the microcode updates, like previous patches, would have an impact on processor performance. An Intel spokesperson told TechCrunch that most patched consumer devices could take a 3 percent performance hit at worst, and as much as 9 percent in a datacenter environment. But, the spokesperson said, it was unlikely to be noticeable in most scenarious.

And either Intel nor Gruss and his team have not released exploit code, so there’s no direct and immediate threat to the average user.

But with patches rolling out today, there’s no reason to pass on a chance to prevent such an attack in any eventuality.

Read more:

• Kernel panic! What are Meltdown and Spectre, the bugs affecting nearly every computer?
• Intel announces hardware fixes for Spectre and Meltdown on upcoming chips
• Apple issues Meltdown fix for Macs running Sierra and El Capitan
• Google claims its Spectre and Meltdown mitigation results in no performance degradation
• Intel tried desperately to change the subject from Spectre and Meltdown at CES
• Intel CEO: Meltdown and Spectre patches will come to 90%+ of chips in the next week

Twitter is finally modernizing its core APIs after 7 years of stagnation, and it wants early feedback from developers. That’s why today it’s launching Twitter Developer Labs, which app makers can sign up for to experiment with pre-release beta APIs. First up will be real-time streaming access to the Twitter firehose with the expansion of tweet filtering plus impressions and engagement metrics that were only previously only available in its expensive enterprise API tiers. Twitter will also be adding newer features Polls to the API.

Giving developers longer lead-times and more of a voice when it comes to rebuilding its APIs could help Twitter get more app makers paying for its premium API ($339 to $2.899 per month) and enterprise API tiers (even more expensive). It might also stimulate the creation of dev-made analytics, measurement, and ads businesses that convince brands to spend more money on Twitter marketing. The Labs program will roll out in the coming weeks, but people can sign up for developer accounts in the meantime to get prepped for access.

Twitter’s data and enterprise solutions product manager Ian Cairns acknowledged some of the whiplash Twitter has put developers through in the past, rapidly changing strategies and restricting rate limits in ways that made developers’ businesses unsustainable. “There are certainly times over the years when the ways in which we’ve managed our APIS . . . have changed and we know some of those have changed in ways that have been disruptive to developers. What we’re doing with the Twitter Developer Labs program is focusing on trying to use that as a vehicle to build trust and make sure we’re having a two-way conversation and that the voice of the people who use our platform the most are driving the future.”

The announcement comes two years after Twitter announced a streamlining of its APIs that also instituted the paid tiers. And this year, Twitter has made moves to crack down on API use for spamming and services for buying followers.

Developer Labs will act serve as the nerdy brother of the new “twttr” beta consumer app that launched in March to let people try out potential changes to how replies and the feed work. Twitter writes that “Our initial focus in Labs will be on developers who work with conversational data, including academics and researchers who study and explore what’s happening on Twitter, and social listening and analytics companies that build products for other businesses.”

Google today announced the launch of its Osaka region, its second cloud region in Japan and seventh in Asia Pacific. With this, the company now offers its users a total of twenty regions, all of which feature at least three availability zones.

In Japan, the Osaka region joins Google’s Tokyo region and will offer lower latencies for local customers, Google notes, though Tokyo and Osaka are obviously pretty close, so that’s likely not a big difference. For businesses in Japan, having two geographically separate regions is a major boon as far as being able to add additional redundancies and disaster recovery is concerned, though.

“We’re looking forward to the Osaka cloud region,” says Tatsuhito Chiku, Corporate Officer, General Manager, Information Technology Section at Asahi Group Holdings. “Using Google Cloud Platform services like BigQuery have enabled us to build a system with low latency and high resiliency, and the Osaka cloud region will further improve our system availability and achieve business continuity.”

It’s worth noting that Azure also currently offers two regions in Japan, though AWS only offers a single region at this time.

Like its competitors, Google continues to expand its data center availability across the globe. Kurian notes that the company has now spent $47 billion on its global infrastructure, which includes the likes of new data centers and dedicated links between them. Later this year, Google will also launch new regions in Seoul, Salt Lake City and Jakarta.

Voi Technology, the “micro-mobility” startup that operates an e-scooter service on the streets of a growing number of European cities, has unveiled a range of new scooters and a first e-bike more suited to rentals.

The company is also revealing plans to expand to another 150 cities and towns, having ratcheted up 2 million rides in eight months since launching. Voi currently operates in 18 cities in nine European countries — including Stockholm, Madrid, Copenhagen, Paris, Lyon and Lisbon — and with will open up in Germany, Belgium, Poland and Italy this summer.

In a call, Voi CEO and co-founder Fredrik Hjelm told me the new hardware rollouts are part of the Swedish company’s plans to become a broader micro-mobility play with a range of travel options that meet the demands of people living in urban areas and the sustainability concerns of city and town authorities. The new e-scooters have been designed and engineered in-house using data collected and other learnings from riders during Voi’s relatively short lifespan.

Voi’s main new model, dubbed “Voiager 2,” is said to be designed for maximum durability as well as future recycling (should and when it full apart or be superseded). The body is cast in one single piece of 5mm high-grade aluminium, coupled with performance enhancements thanks to a custom electric powertrain and 10″ wheels. There’s also a kickstand to prevent the e-scooter from falling over when parked (a common sight in some cities) and a three-wheel version particularly suitable for slippery conditions.

The Voiager 2’s display features “Advanced Rider Assistance System (ARAS) functions,” such as navigation support, alerts and notifications. The idea, explained Hjelm, is to avoid riders having to juggle looking at their mobile phone or to continuously stop to navigate. The Internet of Things (IoT) Telematics unit is integrated into the body of the scooter.

Hjelm says the Voiager 2 is Voi’s first scooter based on the Voi modular scooter architecture (VOI MSA), which allows for easy service, repair and upgrades. There’s also a swappable battery to reduce scooter downtime, as well as reduce the environmental impact and cost of charging scooters.

Overall, the design is not just intended to improve the e-scooter experience for consumers and city authorities but should go someway to addressing concerns around the questionable unit economics of micro-mobility services.

See also: Voi Technology, the European e-scooter rentals startup, raises an additional $30M

In a bid to launch at speed and test the market, companies have used off-the-shelf consumer-grade e-scooters that aren’t durable enough to withstand the battering they receive through shared commercial use and being left outside in varied weather conditions. They’re also not designed with rental logistics in mind and even something as simple as a hot swappable battery can reduce the cost of running an e-scooter service since more scooters remain in motion, potentially increasing revenue per scooter. There’s also a reduction in the cost of collecting dead batteries for re-charging as they are de-coupled from the scooter itself.

Voi Cargo

A second model, the new “Voiager 1” has been designed for the German market. This month the German government will green light e-scooters for use on its roads. Hjelm thinks Germany will quickly become one of the world’s biggest e-scooter markets and its new rugged scooter features brakes and indicator lights that meet strict German regulations, which the Voi CEO believes are likely to be adopted elsewhere.

Voi is also unveiling the Voi Bike and Voi Cargo. The former is an e-bike that has been adapted for sharing and meets European e-bike regulations. It can travel at 25km/h fully assisted and is suitable for longer distances than e-scooters. Voi Cargo is a three-wheel electric cargo bike that caters specifically to riders who have to carry bulky loads, such as groceries or children. The bike has a large box on the front which features three-point seatbelts.

Meanwhile, Voi isn’t the only European e-scooter startup developing its own hardware. Flash — the stealthy mobility startup from Delivery Hero and Team Europe founder Lukasz Gadowski has talked up its own hardware product plans, while Berlin’s Wind Mobility is also developing a proprietary model of electric scooters specifically designed for the sharing market.

Other competitors in Europe include Tier and Taxify’s Bolt. Silicon Valley’s Bird and Lime also operate in Europe.