Technology

Will blockchain be a game-changer for shared vehicles geolocation?

People who are not experts in blockchain (I’m included) would have imagined finding the first application of the technology within the shared micromobility industry in the payment process, where it is mostly used so far. It came back in the news for a different purpose when Helium, a US company developing a blockchain-based hotspots solution, …

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9 September, 2021

Technology

Wireless charging, the next step towards sustainable shared micromobility?

The recent history of shared micromobility took us from dock-based to dockless solutions. The latest option allowed a wider and faster adoption of those services across the world, not needing important investment and infrastructure work to set up stations. But as operators are now heavily working on optimising their unit economics, automatisation is a must. …

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19 May, 2021

General, Technology

The massive electrification of public bike-share

The 2020’s pandemic has been an impressive catalyst to bike adoption all around the world, and even more with e-bikes. Sales of privately owned e-bikes have skyrocketed in most countries, with the notable examples of Germany (+43%), Switzerland (+28.5%), the Netherlands (+30%)… and the USA (+145%)!! If most authorities were already aware of the potential …

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16 March, 2021

Business, Technology

The end of free-floating? Smart parking, smart riding and the evolution of micromobility

This article, written in collaboration with Dott, has been published in the Thinking Cities magazine from the Polis 2020 Conference. You can find the full online magazine here. Current shared micromobility services were born from the Chinese bike-share wave that landed in Western countries in 2017. Ofo and Mobike scaled up the free-floating model, disrupting …

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30 November, 2020

Technology

Shared helmets

Safety improvement is one major focus for all the shared micromobility stakeholders. As local authorities are willing to ensure riders’ safety, operators are investing and looking for innovative features to check the “safety” box and win more new markets. Improving helmet usage is one key development for shared e-scooter operators who are trying to find …

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17 November, 2020

Technology

Multimodal services and battery charging management

The urban mobility usage needs are infinite, and shared mobility operators have, therefore, to try to answer most of it by adapting their offer. Widening the range of vehicles is one way to do so, but it comes with multiples hurdles, and battery charging management is a major one. In order to optimize the service …

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20 October, 2020

Technology

Lock-to or not

The DC Council is working on an update of the bill setting the rules of e-scooter usage in the US capital. Aside from requirements for territorial equity or scooter rules signage, the Council is willing to introduce a “lock-to” requirement to solve the bad parking behavior issue. Lock-to history Lock-to mechanisms landed in our streets …

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17 September, 2020

Technology

Zoov, next generation

Zoov, the French bike-share start-up that you discovered in this blog a couple of months ago, just unveiled the first version of its charging station, a couple of new features on its e-bike, and pivoting its business model. A dense event that took place in Vanves, south of Paris, on July 1st, and that worth …

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9 July, 2020

Technology

Vehicles hibernation and batteries

The question was raised by a statement of Bertrand Fleurose, CEO of the French e-moped operator City Scoot, one of the few shared micromobility services still available in Paris after the COVID19 related lockdown : We cannot stop our service in Paris, Milan or Rome. If we do so, all our batteries will be damaged …

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29 April, 2020

Technology

Jump: the next battery-swap technology?

I already wrote about the importance of battery management in the past and made it a key point for the development of shared micromobility services in 2020. Today, Jump is going a step further to explore the possibilities: during the Cosmo Safety Tour in Paris, it unveiled its latest e-scooter model with the same swappable …

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10 March, 2020

Technology

A trailer for London bike-share program?

Diving into the bottomless pit of Google, looking for information about shared cargo-bikes, I found this: Wow. It is actually a student project by Jan Libera, a former London Royal College of Art student, who won the Transportation Award at the Core77 Design Awards in 2017. Jan chose to develop a shared bike trailer because …

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28 January, 2020

Technology

How IoT Tech Can Help Save the Fledgling Scooter Sharing Industry

This article written by Jeffrey Lee was first published on IoT for All, on December 6th. I publish it with the kind authorisation of Jeffrey. Municipalities are taking back their streets and sidewalks with new rules that require companies to meet city compliance ordinances and data sharing standards. These new governmental regulations have forced many micromobility companies …

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10 December, 2019

Technology

Micromobility is diversity

Since 2018, e-scooters have put the light on shared micromobility solutions, but also convinced many commuters to switch to owned light electric vehicles (LEVs). The feedback loop is being completed as the wider and wider range of LEVs now inspire operators to launch news services and vehicles, or simply improve their existing ones. What are …

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3 December, 2019

Technology

Zoov, a disruptive bike-share solution

As I am often writing, I see the future of bike-share as a hybrid between dock-based and dockless solutions and including e-bikes, to allow the coverage of wider territories with different usage patterns. Such solutions remain rare and are still handicapped by the stations’ costs and implementation constraints. With its CEO and founder Arnaud Le …

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26 November, 2019

Technology

The power of Bike Angels

I read through this article from Daniel Freund on how algorithms can improve bike-share operations, and what strucked me was the power of the Bike Angel program : 30% of NYC CitiBike balancing is done by the users ! It really shows the power of gamification to have users balancing the fleets. In NYC, Boston, …

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5 November, 2019

Cities, Technology

Minneapolis micromobility experiments

Minneapolis is a really dynamic city in terms of mobility. Although the harsh winter is not in favor of light mobility, it is where one of the first US public bike-share system launched in 2010. Since then, the city has been flexible to follow and test the technological changes in the micromobility sector. Station-based bike-share …

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8 October, 2019

Business, Technology

The battery management problematic

Going forward, step by step. In order to improve unit economics, operators of free-floating mobility services are working hard to improve their product: development of sturdier vehicles to improve lifespan and resistance to vandalism, and adoption of a new paradigm toward battery charging – as we are more and more talking about electric vehicles. Charging …

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1 October, 2019

Technology

Autonomy in shared micromobility

According to the Godwin law of mobility, ” As a mobility discussion grows longer, the probability of broaching the subject of Autonomy approaches 1″ 😉 . With multiple recent announcements in the micromobility sector, it is getting an even bigger place in the discussions around shared services. 2019, an autonomous year My first real meeting …

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18 September, 2019

General, Technology

Micromobility, the forum for mobility data privacy

The introduction of the MDS by the LA DOT in april 2019 started a war between the Army of Mobility Defenders and the Army for Data Privacy. Why is it all about? First… … what is MDS? Let’s start with a short explanation of what MDS is. From the GitHub page: The Mobility Data Specification …

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4 July, 2019

Business, Technology

Why docks are part of the future of micromobility

Two of the main drawbacks of dockless shared e-scooters are public space use, and the operators business model non-profitability. An answer to both is the introduction of docks and the evolution of the technical solution toward a mix of dockless and dock-based. While free-floating might be a sustainable solution for very dense areas, docks are …

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19 June, 2019

Technology

The form factor evolution

In shared mobility solutions, you know what bicycles look like. What e-bicycles look like. And you know very much how e-scooters look like. Well, the range is not limited to this and is extending with simpler and sturdier vehicles. Pogo sticks? No way! To joke or not to joke, that is the question… Cangoroo, a …

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5 June, 2019

Business, Technology

How VOI wants to conquer Europe

Taking another path from Bird toward profitability, VOI, the Swedish e-scooter operator, organised a press conference to communicate on its strategical choices for the coming year. Those who came have not been disappointed. Expansion plans VOI will stay focused on Europe. Already operating in 9 countries and 18 cities, is planning to launch in 4 …

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20 May, 2019

Cities, Technology

Should operators share their data with authorities?

Since the early development of dockless mobility solutions, staring in 2016 with bikes in China, the question of data usage has been central. As the ridership of these vehicles in exploding, as well as the number of cities were it is available, the need for a clear regulation towards data management and sharing with the …

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6 May, 2019

Business, Technology

Dock-based bike-share systems do not feel threatened by dockless ones

Recent news are backing the theory that dockless and dock-based bike-share solutions are complementary more than rivals. Even if some cities, frightened by the failure of some Asian operators in 2018, have adopted total or partial restriction towards dockless bike-share, in places where systems are cohabiting the competition seems positive for both systems. More bikes …

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19 March, 2019

Business, Technology

Car-makers are definitely moving towards micromobility!

Let’s go to the Geneva Motor show. Strange isn’t it? Actually, it has been the stage of interesting discoveries of new micromobility vehicles from car-makers. Two small german ones, Audi and Volkswagen, released their vision of micromobility with their own form factors. I would describe the Audi E-tron as an electric skateboard with a joystick-style …

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12 March, 2019

Cities, Technology

Citibike expands its ebike fleet to 4000!

Lyft/Motivate released a couple of hundred bikes in the streets of the Big Apple in August 2018. Caroline Samponaro, Head of Bike, Scooter & Pedestrian Policy at Lyft, published an article providing some interesting conclusions from this pilot. Ebikes have been used for 15 rides/ebike/day, vs 5 rides/regular bike/day! Wow, 3 times more. It confirms …

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4 March, 2019

Technology

Veoride introduces swappable batteries on shared e-scooters!

We would have expected these big news from historical scooter manufacturers such as Segway-Ninebot or Xiaomi, or even big players of e-scooter sharing such as Bird or Lime. But no… the first e-scooter dedicated to share-use and including a swappable battery has been unveiled by Veoride, the small (they are currently operating only in universities and …

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13 February, 2019

Business, General, Technology

A takeaway from the Micromobility Conference

This article was initially published on Urban Mobility Daily, the blog of Paris’ Autonomy show. The Micromobility Conference, a unique gathering of international micromobility actors, was held on January 31st in Richmond, California. I decided to travel from Paris to California to check it out and to better understand the trends and challenges of …

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7 February, 2019

General, Technology

Where is the parking spot? About indiscriminate parking.

Every reader here already knows the main problem that cities want to address when dockless shared-mobility operators are coming in its streets. Angry drivers lost in a sea of scooters and bicycles, yes, but most of all: indiscriminate parking! The trend is clearly going towards securising and organising the parked vehicles. It has been emphasized …

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9 January, 2019

Business, Technology

Oribiky, the french solution for shared E-bikes

Understanding the local environment and its constraints is a must for bike-share operators to be successful. Therefore, small companies building their own product and offer have a competitive advantage, even in front of the sector giants. Oribiky, a french start-up based in Villetaneuse, 12km north of Paris city-center, is willing to use it.   Oribiky …

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4 December, 2018

Technology

A block-chain based project launched in Zug (Switzerland)

Small cities can be innovative as well. Zug (Switzerland), 26000 inhabitants, has developed a unique economic environment, not only thanks to its very favorable tax policy but also thanks to its territorial strategy:   Zug’s startup enterprises, fintech incubation firms, and governmental authorities all seem to have open lines of communication; regularly collaborating with the …

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22 November, 2018

General, Technology

A solution to improve E-bike-share operation

Let’s take two evident contemporary trends:   The future of bike-share will include more and more E-bikes! The economic situation implies that bike-share schemes will get less grants or subsidies, and will therefore have to become more financially efficient.   The equation seems hard to solve as E-bike fleets operation is of course more expensive …

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15 November, 2018

Business, Technology

Meet SharingOS, the future of shared-mobility

This is a sponsored article. If you would like to sponsor an article to be published on shared-micromobility.com, please send an email to: contact@shared-micromobility.com.   Amidst the fast-changing mobility industry that is being disrupted by revolutionary technologies, it is also important to pay attention to those companies providing the underlying technological innovations. This is where we …

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11 October, 2018

Technology

Jump is testing charging stations!

Are Jump Bikes turning to a dock-based solution??? Yes and no. In order to better manage the battery charging of its bikes, Jump designed a docking station allowing to return and charge the fleet. It kind of goes against the “dockless” option but …   We can see with Citi-Bikes, Vélib or Capital Bikeshare, that …

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9 October, 2018

Technology

Mobike launched its E-bike (chinese version)

At first glance, it looks like a real innovation. Faithful to its spirit, Mobike is proposing a singular design for its pedal-assisted bicycle (E-bike) launched on july 5th, with futuristic lines and ever more integrated components. In comparison to Lime’s Lime-E, the development process is clearly not the same… Mobike chose to use a central …

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14 August, 2018

Business, Technology

Bikes Vs Cars, Uber version

The battle of Bikes Vs Cars have been highlighted in 2015 in the famous documentary from Fredrik Gertten. Now Uber is giving its own version of the match, E-bikes VS Cars! Remember Uber’s investments in 2018: acquisition of JUMP Bikes for US$100M in april, then investment in Lime for a part of the total US$335M.   JUMP …

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7 August, 2018

Business, Technology

A dockless bike-sharing review

The last days and weeks have seen a lot of interesting information popping out about dockless bike-sharing companies’ strategy. Each of the major Asian and US ones have taken important decision, either on the markets they are working on, or on the solutions they offer.   Spin decided to stop bikeshare, and will now focus …

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12 July, 2018

Business, Technology

Lime is willing to launch “electric transit pods”

Everybody, even outside the world of bikesharing knows Lime (formerly Lime Bike). The company is one of the most developing in freefloating systems operation: they started with human-powered bicycles, then electric-assisted bicycles and electric scooters (their last important and strategic launch being in Paris on june 22nd). Well here is the big news: Lime is …

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24 June, 2018

Business, Technology

Big news from Motivate

We already knew that Motivate was working on a dockless solution, as they applied for an operation permit in New York, for exemple. Well, a Tweet on june 1st released the first photos of the bike, and announced at the same time its launch in North San José, extending the Ford Go-Bike area. Exciting development …

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8 June, 2018

Technology

Superpedestrian enters the bike-sharing game!

If you are a bicycle geek like me, you already know Superpedestrian, the MIT spinout company behind the Copenhagen Wheel. This famous product basically turns any bicycle into an E-bike, as the wheel integrates the motor, the battery, charged by back-pedalling, all the electronic and sensors. So famous that it has been shown in a …

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29 May, 2018

Technology

Hackers attacked Bycycklen in Copenhagen!

Maybe a first in bike-sharing? Copenhagen’s Bycyklen system has been hacked during the night of may 4th, by a still unidentified person or group! The attack, qualified as “primitive” by the operator, has been performed “by a person with a high level of knowledge of the IT structure of our system”. As a result, all of the …

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19 May, 2018

Technology

oBike innovates with its EVS E-bike

I wondered… but NO, it’s not a shared E-bike but a classic E-Bike that oBike offers for sale on a specific e-shop. It is kind of a surprise, as after the launch of Limebike and Spin’s E-bikes, we are only waiting for the launch date of its concurrents from the Asian companies Mobike, ofo… and …

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19 April, 2018

Business, Technology

HOPR will try to revolutionize dockless E-bikeshare!

Cyclehop, the US operator in charge of Orlando, Santa Monica, Vancouver… station-based programs chose to change its strategy by offering a dockless E-bike-sharing solution!   I was raising the issue of operation cost in different articles about Jump Bicycles or Zehus’ Bitride, and here is the big news with Cyclehop’s HOPR solution: they decided not …

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23 March, 2018

Technology

Zehus to challenge chinese operators in Milan

Zehus is a well renowned company created by a team of engineers and PHDs from Politecnico di Milano. They merged in 2014 with Flykly, in order to compete with Superpedestrian’s Copenhagen wheel in the market of “smart-wheels”: autonomous bicycle wheels with integrated battery, electronics and motor that can transform any bike into an E-bike just by …

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21 March, 2018

Business, Technology

How cryptocurrencies can change bike-sharing

Two dockless companies recently announced a future release of their own cryptocurrencies:   while riding a oBike, you’ll be able to earn oCoins! oBike partnered with the Singaporean non-profit organisation Tron, who is operating the eponymous blockchain-based decentralized protocol TRON. Their cryptocurrency, the Tronix (TRX) is ranked 14th worldwide. The more they ride, the more users …

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2 February, 2018

Technology

Happy new E-year!!

2018 will be electric, at least in the field of bike-sharing! On january 9th, 3 companies unveiled their E-bike models that will hit the streets in the beginning of the year, during CES Las Vegas.   Motivate, the station-based solution provider, will launch in april a one year/250 bikes pilot in the streets of San …

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10 January, 2018

Technology

SmartHalo & Blaze Smartlights: integration of general use products on shared bikes

What a surprise for me when I saw this photo on the PBSC Urban Solutions’ website: Yes, the well-known Montreal-based provider added an option of a smart equipment from the customer market to its bikes! That’s one of the most intelligent and ambitious integration on a shared bike to my knowledge.   SmartHalo is a …

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10 November, 2017

Cities, Technology

JUMP bikes, first ever dockless system with e-bikes!

Jump Mobility is the new trend in bike-sharing in the US. With its e-bikes, the brand from Social Bicycles uses the same technology as its many schemes in the US, UK, Czech Republic and Poland, a dockless geo-fenced system. If the idea is good, it raises a main problematic compared to similar systems with mechanical …

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2 November, 2017

Cities, Technology

The new Velib’ unveiled!

Today was held in Paris the presentation of the new Velib’, that will launch on january 1st, 2018. The press conference happened along the Bassin de la Villette, and gathered Anne HIDALGO (mayor of Paris), Patrick OLLIER (president of Métropole du Grand Paris) and Catherine BARRATI-ELBAZ (president of Autolib-Velib syndicate). The project will spread next …

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25 October, 2017

Technology

Transit, the future of… transit apps

With bike sharing programs popping all accross cities, how does the user manage its 10 apps on his smartphone? Between public transport, car sharing, scooter sharing and bike sharing, you can have more than 10 apps and services to deal with. Some cities already understand the major priority in aggregating all the systems in one …

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12 October, 2017

Cities, General, Technology

How is Singapour dealing with dockless bike sharing

As every city confronted with dockless bike sharing, Singapore faced major troubles with parking. And as you may know, Singapore government likes order and cleanliness… So they didn’t wait for anarchy, but instead invited all parties around the table:   The public authorities: Land Transport Authorities (LTA), the National Parks Board (NParks) and all 16 …

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9 October, 2017

Cities, Technology

Lock failure for Bewegen

Bad publicity for Bewegen, one of the pionners in ebike-sharing… Less than a year after the launch in october 2016, Baltimore Bike Share has been shutted down from september 12th until october 15th this year, after decision of the city officials. The program was suffering a huge wave of bike run-aways theft and vandalism, in …

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4 October, 2017

Business, General, Technology

Yellow (and red) peril in bike sharing…

An unprecedented wave… Well, don’t be afraid, we are only talking about bike sharing… But since spring 2017, the occidental world is more and more frightened by two words coming from China: Mobike and Ofo! In fact these two chinese companies have globally shaking up the bike sharing world in only a couple of months, …

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2 October, 2017