ELECTRICFEEL BLOG

Welcome to the ElectricFeel blog. ElectricFeel provides intelligent management tools for on-demand mobility industry. Share in our news on electric bike sharing, electric scooter sharing and shared mobility systems.

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Promoting the biking culture starts with the young population. There are great books for educating children about the fun, healthy and practical nature of cycling. The more children cycle today, the healthier our communities will be in the future. Not just healthier for that matter, but also smarter. 

According to a Danish study, biking to school increases concentration throughout the day, not only due to the proven positive effects of exercise on mental health, but also because biking or walking to school increases the sense of responsibility and safety-consciousness, helping children make better decisions on the road.

This is why we are excited about the bike sharing system of Milan, BikeMi, which recently introduced bikes and docks just for kids. Such initiatives are perfectly in line with promoting the biking culture from an early age. At the same time, children learn to appreciate and respect such services, which could lead to lower vandalism rates in the future. Parents no longer have to worry about children outgrowing their bikes, which happens in no time. And they can be relaxed: a recent study suggests that bike-sharing is even safer than private bike use.

 And while parents can be happy and free of worry, from the young ones’ perspective as well, biking offers everything they want. It’s fun, adventurous and comfortably familiar. It also promotes social outdoor interaction, getting kids off their phones and onto fun rides. With more initiatives like BikeMi’s childrens’ docks and bikes it shouldn’t be long before we feel the positive outcome of good behavioural shifts.

It’s time to have more shared bikes for kids!

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ElectricFeel as invited expert panelist at the Mobility in Italy Conference 2016

We are very pleased to be among major industry players at the Mobility in Italy Conference taking place in Milan from 28 - 29 April.

At ElectricFeel, we are passionate supporters of the urban mobility transformation, stripping our cities of fossil fuel dependence, polluting emissions and frustrating city congestion. The way we see it, the future for urban mobility is sharing electric vehicles. We remain focused on providing solutions to the obstacles currently in the way of such systems thriving. 

At the Mobility in Italy Conference, we hope to inspire others as we are inspired ourselves about providing real solutions to real problems in shared mobility. ElectricFeel CEO, Moritz Meenen, will join a panel of experts discussing ‘first and last mile mobility’. Moritz will be sharing his insights on bike sharing, the challenges and opportunities faced and how our expertise can help such systems improve their operations.

Join us at the conference stage in Milan on Friday 29 April at 15:00, or visit our booth any time over the duration of the conference.

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Bike-sharing: Why the worry and inconvenience?

There was a recent comment under an article in autoblog on a new bike sharing app called Donkey Republic, which allows rental shops and private bike owners to rent out their bikes. The comment addressed bike sharing in general, saying “Bike-sharing makes no sense to me. Bikes are cheap to buy and free and easy to park. Why would you not just get and use your own bike? Who needs all the worry and inconvenience of bike-sharing? The only time I would find it useful is if I were visiting a different city.”

To begin with, it’s probably important to make the distinction between peer-to-peer bike sharing and city bike sharing. On the one side, applications such as Spinlister and Spokefly allow bike-owners to rent out their bikes to other users for a certain price. On the other hand, city bike sharing, such as the world famous Paris Velib system or Hubway in Boston, involves checking bikes in and out of existing stations, usually paying a yearly subscription fee and cost per trip to the operator. The two concepts may seem similar, but in my opinion they address very different groups of users. While peer to peer bike sharing is in many cases straightforward, its convenience is limited to that of owning your own bike minus the trouble of having to maintain or store it. It does not offer the benefits of truly on-demand mobility, where you can pick up or drop off a bike anywhere and without a moment’s notice, easily incorporating other means of transport into your journey.

So how can these systems become worrisome and inconvenient, when the whole point of bike sharing is entirely the opposite? Unfortunately, it can be the case. Let’s take city bike sharing in specific; it is most certainly frustrating to go to a station only to find no bikes available there, or to return a bike to a station that doesn’t have a place for it. What would the user do in this case? Depending on the system, there may be an app such as Spotcycle, BikeShare!, Bicyclette or All Bikes Now, among others, allowing the user to locate nearby alternative stations. Other systems have come up with innovative techniques, such as New York’s bike sharing system Citi Bike, which recently introduced valets, who are available at full or almost full stations to take incoming bikes to stations with fewer bikes. These are both reactive approaches to the problem. In order to truly prevent the problem from occurring in the first place, operators need the right tools to conduct careful logistics planning not only in advance but real time, during operations. This will not only ensure smoother operation and increase customer satisfaction, but also lower the cost of operations. Our goal at ElectricFeel is to help every bike sharing system around the world to implement these tools and benefit from the results.

To conclude, I totally agree with the final comment. Bike share is indeed the ideal choice for exploring a new city.

Effie Theodorou, ElectricFeel Business Development

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ElectricFeel presents at CeBIT 2016

We exhibited the future of mobility at CeBIT 2016 in Hannover, March 14-18. Watch ElectricFeel CEO, Moritz Meenen’s talk about improving on-demand mobility systems. VIDEO

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ElectricFeel speaking at WorldWebForum 2016

ElectricFeel CEO, Moritz Meenen has been invited to speak at the World Web Forum 2016, taking place in Zurich on January 28th and 29th. ElectricFeel joins an impressive roster of local and international speakers from NASA, Google, Uber and Hyperloop. The WorldWebForum is the leading Swiss Platform for Digital Transformation and seeks to empower agents of change, facilitating leadership in the digital transformation.

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Beyond eBikes... We're also doing Electric Scooters in Barcelona.

We’ve been secretly working on a fantastically exciting project in one of our all-time favourite cities in the world, Barcelona.

Cooltra is Europe’s biggest scooter rental company and they have partnered with ElectricFeel in pioneering eco-friendly Electric Scooter Sharing. Not only are these Scooters beautiful to look at and to ride, but they leave neither noise nor fumes. We are proud to be working with Cooltra in bringing both the citizens and tourists in Barcelona a cleaner, more sustainable choice in transit.

We'll be bringing you more details soon.

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How will you get to work in 10 years?

“I will be subscribed to several mobility services such as public transport, vehicle sharing, car pooling, taxi etc. I will no more decide HOW to reach a destination, but I will just follow the directions of my mobile device indicating the best combination of such services to get there on time. This is already partly available today, but, in the next years, the integration and connectivity of the mobility systems will grow exponentially.” — Marco Santoni - Data Scientist at ElectricFeel

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Why bike sharing is a challenge for the mobility industry

As demand for bike sharing increases around the world, new challenges arise for service providers. Making bikes available when and where people need them is vital, but not easy. Once solutions are found, shared mobility can grow up to become mainstream transportation.

Bike sharing is the fastest growing type of transportation system in history. As of April 2015, there are a thousand bike-sharing cities around the world, with a total of one million bikes available for hire. When bike-sharing services were rolled out in Paris, Barcelona, London and New York, people quickly grasped that these systems were more than just a way to get tourists around: a new form of public transportation was born, and it is set to shift how people move around their cities.

Why is bike sharing so popular? Numerous research studies show that users enjoy the flexible access to healthy and quick rides that they can fit into their daily life on demand, as it makes sense for them.

Users can find available rides with their smartphone, collect their bike at one of many stations around the city, and then drop it off at another station when done. It is a perfect system, in theory.

THE REALITY: COMPLEX LOGISTICS

Achieving this user experience calls for cities and bike-sharing operators to overcome some real and daunting challenges. The biggest of these is getting the bikes where they need to be at all times. For the system to work without frustrating users, there needs to be a bike available when they collect, and a bike parking spot available when they drop off.

Coordinating this, however, has often been problematic. The system can get out of balance quickly and repeatedly: some stations run empty and others fill up. This may not be a big problem for recreational users, but for those who want to make it their default mobility option and rely on it, it is a real barrier.

Trying to solve the issue by forcing users to reserve a bike or penalizing them for disbalancing the fleet are not viable solutions as they undermine the benefits of convenience, flexibility and simplicity.

NEW CHALLENGES CALL FOR NEW SOLUTIONS

Operators try to work against the imbalances by redistributing bikes by truck from areas of low demand to areas of high demand. Unfortunately, operators cannot predict where people will need bikes, which makes this method heavily inefficient: for most systems, redistribution causes the largest portion of the operating expenses and makes the project less viable.

As a result, bike sharing remains highly dependent on sponsors or public subsidies, and even if demand goes through the roof, systems cannot be scaled up.

Artificial intelligence technologies are entering various industry sectors, and will be instrumental in solving issues in shared mobility systems (be it with bikes, e-scooters, or e-cars).

Cities and industries realize that although bike sharing is booming, it is still in its early stage. They need to extend their commitment to developing this revolutionary form of public transportation, just like any other public transit system has needed continuous development.

The good news is that the thousand cities already offering bike sharing are developing a repository of shared experience and a joint vision. If they unite, learnings can be made and costs can be reduced.

Once the technical challenges are solved, bike sharing and similar systems with new, light urban electric vehicles can become mainstream transportation in cities across the world.

Originally written by ElectricFeel CEO, Moritz Meenen for Move-Forward.com

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Surpassing all major shared-mobility milestones 

ElectricFeel has measured how artificial intelligence can improve bike-sharing.

ElectricFeel is a team of data scientists and software development specialists who are passionate about riding bikes, writing code and changing the world. Their products may sound like science fiction. Artificially intelligent software that understands exactly how clean mobility systems are operating, and more importantly, just exactly what needs to be done to streamline efficiency and increase profitability.

A recent benchmarking analysis of their software at work in Mainz Germany, revealed a remarkable 68% increase in rebalancing efficiency. This is unparalleled.

This translates to more rides and more revenue, and a lot of saved time. At MVGmeinRad, the bike sharing transit system run in Mainz, as with the vehicle sharing industry as a whole, the greatest challenge is ensuring vehicle and parking availability. With thousands of rides each day, the only solution to satisfying this demand is to deliver vehicles from where they aren’t being used, to where they’ll be needed. This is called ‘Rebalancing’, and it is the largest challenge in shared mobility. This is where the predictive management software changes the game.

Through understandingand predicting user behaviour in advance, MVGmeinRad is given the edge they need to grow their system, keeping customers and stakeholders satisfied. With unparalleled global investment in clean transportation, urban design and sustainable cities, ElectricFeel is quickly establishing itself as a serious pioneer for a young but rapidly booming industry.

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We’re Hiring

Join our team in beautiful Zurich and work on the cutting edge of new mobility technologies.

Open Positions

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND DEVELOPMENT

FRONTEND DEVELOPER

DATA SCIENTIST

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Back to the Future: Flying cars and shared mobility

The film Back to the Future Part II predicted flying cars in 2015, but it also predicted that fax machines would still be important. It overestimated progress in certain technology (the car), but also underestimated others (the internet). When internet technology is combined with long-existing vehicles like bikes, cars and scooters, new transportation systems can be built that solve real-world problems.

On October 21st 2015, the world celebrated that fateful date when Doc Brown and Marty McFly arrived from the year 1985 in their DeLorean time machine. In the 1989-released film, Back to the Future Part II, the year 2015 had some surprises to offer, including holograms, hover boards, and a very particular sense of fashion. But the thing about the future that always stood out was flying cars.

FLYING CARS: A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

Early in the film, a giant advertisement appears in the town center stating:

“You know, when my Grandpa was Mayor of Hill Valley, he had to worry about traffic problems. But now, you don’t have to worry about traffic. I’ll hover convert your old road car into a skyway flyer!”

So in the future, traffic would be solved with flying cars! It sounded pretty amazing, but it is now the end of the real 2015, and where does progress on flying car technology stand?

A Slovakian-based company introduced an initial flying car concept in 1990. The company has developed various prototypes over the last 20 years and the latest version is a propeller driven aircraft with retractable wings. With a range of 700 kilometers, the vehicle is interesting for inter-city trips, but at this stage, it is not intended for urban commuting.

Another interesting project funded by the European Union is aiming to make progress in areas of research that enable technologies for a Personal Aerial Transportation System (PATS). The project focuses on human-machine interfaces, automation (including research into Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)), and also evaluating the effect of such a transportation system on society (including open concerns with airspace regulation). As exciting as the project and research is, it does not seem to make any promises of manned prototypes.

The truth is, the world is still far from having accessible passenger vehicles that can fly around within cities.

LEVERAGING INTERNET TECHNOLOGY

So, we overestimated our ability to fly in cars, but at the same time, maybe underestimated something else.

In another scene of Back to the Future Part II, the future Marty McFly finds himself being fired from his job via a video call, yet the final statement from his boss is:

“Read my fax!”

It is probably difficult to remember a time when there wasn’t an Internet like we know it today. Although the internet already existed in some form in 1989, there is no way that the creators of the film could have predicted how powerful, and entwined in our everyday lives, it would become.

The internet and computers have done a lot to connect people in different parts of the world and share knowledge, but they have also allowed long-existing technologies to be lifted to a new level of intelligence and efficiency without changing their fundamental design or purpose.

Shared mobility is a prime example of this. Some form of bikes, scooters, and cars have been around for over 100 years, but in the last 10 years, more than a thousand cities around the world have been able to combine regular vehicles with internet technology to create a new wave of public transport.

Instead of having 1 car for 1 person, there are now systems where the ratio is rather 1 car for 50 people, and in some cities, one can now combine the health benefits of riding a bike with the range and weather protection of an electric car - all without owning a vehicle.

So, maybe transportation has come far in the last 30 years. Traffic and pollution are still a problem, but through new concepts like shared mobility, cities and individuals are starting to shift gears and find better solutions.

30 YEARS FROM NOW: A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION

What will the world be like 30 years from now? What will transportation be like?

With ideas like the Hyperloop already beginning to be implemented, citizens may see amazing advances in connecting cities. With many car manufacturers working on self-driving cars, there is a good chance that the ideas of shared mobility and self-driving vehicles will merge into one form of transportation (that is, self-driving on-demand vehicles), bringing new levels of efficiency and convenience to city transport.

This great video from the Swedish pension management company asks what the world will be like in 2045. In the negative future, we see packed highways, flying advertisements, and pollution. In the utopian future, the scene is painted with hover-trains, elegant airships and quiet, green cities.

Either way, it seems clear that even without flying cars, novel ideas like shared mobility could play a strong role in shaping urban mobility towards the best outcome, and that transportation in general will heavily influence the future of the world.

Originally written for Move-Forward.com

Source: https://www.move-forward.com/news/details/back-to-the-future-flying-cars-and-shared-mobility/

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We are CTI Certified!

On the 15th November 2015, ElectricFeel received the CTI Start-Up Label by the Swiss National Commission for Technology and Innovation. The Start-up Label is a seal of quality, a certificate of achievement, and a sign of credibility and readiness for sustainable growth.

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World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions. Change is inevitable & necessary, ClimateChange is not.

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FullStackFest in beautiful Barcelona!

ElectricFeel’s development team had the pleasure of going to code conference, Full Stack Festival 2015. Aside from the inspiring talks, networking and getting some work done in Barca, we got to hang out with tech-celeb, Ruby creator, Yukihiro Matsumoto. ‘Till next year!

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Moritz on stage in Munich

Munich Start-Up & Technology Conference @Bits&Pretzels brought together global technologists and entrepreneurs for inspiration and networking. ElectricFeel was there, on stage, sharing insights on Shared Mobility and more.