09
and private sharing services. Car sharing communities such as SnappCar,
Drivy or Turo today offer private individuals a portal to offer and find vehicles.
E-scooters, legal in Germany since June 2019, have now also joined the
mix of public and private transport options in cities 3 . Finally, people in urban
areas are rediscovering the bicycle, either in the traditional form, or
as e-bikes or cargo bikes, which are even on the verge of being subsidized
by some cities in Germany.
TRANSFORMATION AHEAD…
However, the potential of digitization is not fully exploited, and profit margins
can hardly be realized with capsuled solutions. New market players
are therefore currently using individual solutions more as an entry point
to position themselves for future offerings.
Truly game-changing solutions are those that take a big-picture view on
urban mobility – and interconnect infrastructure, vehicles, operations,
and additional services. Rather than tweaking one aspect of the mosaic,
they focus on concepts that optimize the overall urban mobility system.
Solutions are emerging, for example, around active traffic management
technology, with sensors and variable traffic signals, to optimize traffic
flow and prevent congestion. And providers like Wololo in the UK have
launched city travel subscriptions that include access to e-bikes, scooters,
public transport, car sharing, and more. Likewise, the city of Vienna also
plans to offer multimodal urban travel subscriptions via the app Whim,
which was already successfully launched in Finland’s capital Helsinki by
3) E-scooters get the green light on Germany's roads, The Local 2019:
https://www.thelocal.de/20190517/e-scooters-get-the-green-light-on-germanys-roads