The trend for eco-consciousness, optimizing resource utilization, and saving time/money/space is becoming mainstream and is likely here to stay in our overcrowded, overconsuming, and overpolluted world. Attempts to reduce carbon footprint, minimize waste, fight congestions, simplify commuting, and alleviate everyday stress solidify globally.
E-scooters fit into such a view of the world perfectly. They are flooding the streets of metropolitan areas across the globe. And do so for a reason. Quite a few reasons actually:
They are fast enough to replace bikes and will not make you sweat.
They are compact enough to be taken to the office in an elevator or stored in the corner of your apartment.
The charge is enough to take you anywhere within the city with no traffic.
They are an environmentally friendly alternative to cars (unless it’s an e-car).
There are plenty of sharing options out there.
The commercial potential of scooter-powered businesses is huge — the market is still very immature with a lot of possible niches: from usual scooter sharing to giving scooters to car dealership customers while their car is being serviced to using them for small goods deliveries.
Popular uses
Here are some common or trending uses of e-cooters and e-kickscooters split into categories:
free-float sharing — becomes ubiquitous in most middle-sized to big cities. Most of the time city dwellers will rent scooters for commuting, occasional trips, and last-mile trips from public transport stops. Some other cases may include guided city tours and transportation on huge events (e.g. exhibitions).
food delivery — e-scooters can help avoid traffic and bring you the food while it’s still hot.
corporate sharing — this one refers not only to companies occupying several buildings but also to university campuses, hospital campuses, large production facilities, and the like.
You might be the one to see another niche where e-scooters may come in handy and make a nice business around it.
Ways to start a mobility business
A number of mobility platforms (like WunderFleet, Helbiz, SharingOS, JoyRide, Samokato to name a few) have popped up on the market offering a turn-key solution for your sharing business. Some may tie you to the scooter models they support, others may be more open in terms of hardware. The platform pricing model might not give you enough freedom with yours. This is neither good nor bad — it’s a reality which you either accept and go with it or turn down and create your own. So check the perks and restrictions carefully.
If you are a DIY enthusiast and want to take full control of your solution, there’s some good news — you can craft your own mobility sharing platform. It will take a little more efforts to immerse into all aspects of software and hardware technologies involved, but in the end, you will know your product inside and out, you will build the product following your vision of the market and your position in it, and you will be able to customize the product anytime and in any direction.
A variety of GPS trackers (e.g. a tiny Neomatica ADM007) can be attached to an e-scooter to read its data and send it to the specialized software platform. However, some trackers may be more suited for this purpose than the others.
Some hardware brands have already sensed the market trend and released specialized e-scooter tracking devices, like Teltonika’s TST100. What is special about it? It’s ready to accept certain make- and model-specific parameters thus giving your more detailed information on the scooter status and giving more management opportunities (e.g. locking, sending alerts, setting speed limit, acceleration speed, and more).
Other companies introduce scooters with a built-in GPS tracking device, like Concox JS40 with its 4G IoT module. This one is designed specifically for sharing purposes and allows configuring geofences, sending alarms, notifying of vandalism attempts, and more.
On the software side, the flespi platform can serve as a single reliable concentration point for data aggregation, storage, and analysis.
The rest of the process is simple — you extract the necessary raw or pre-processed data into your application, run through your business logic and visualize accordingly.
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The concept of e-scooters aligns well with the current social, environmental, and economic initiatives. A number of existing services, as well as the emerging ones, can benefit from the effectiveness, maneuverability, and affordability of micro-mobility transportation. The platforms and toolkits for creating e-scooter-based businesses will grow in number and quality giving you rich options to craft the application you need.
You are always welcome to contact us with your business idea and we can help you design the optimal software architecture to implement it.
P.S. All devices listed in this article are supported in the flespi platform for seamless communication. Check Teltonika TST100, Concox JS40, Neomatica ADM007.