Conversations in the Park
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Conversations in the Park
Are bikes and scooters outrunning cars and buses?
Are bikes and e-scooters outrunning cars and buses? This is what host Brittany Atkins ponders with experts and micromobility-enthusiasts Lukas Neckermann and Morten Rynning. In this episode, we discuss the micromobility model and what its potential future could be - one that could change the way we interact with mobility as we know it, or just another pit stop on the way to car ownership. There's 38 minutes of passionate debate, discussion, and perspective; sit with us and enjoy the conversation.
This podcast is powered by Y-Mobility.
Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the podcast Conversations in the Park, a place for meaningful discussions about mobility, created by Y-Mobility. I'm Brittany Atkins, your new host, and I'm very excited to be leading the podcast this year. Today we are chatting about micro mobility, where we think it's going and where we'd like it to head, grab a drink. And let's see if bikes and scooters will outrun cars and buses once and for all. My first guest today is Morten Rynning, CEO and founder of City Q and chairman of Sharebike. You also may remember Morton from the very first episode of conversations in the park. Hi, Morten, thank you so much for joining us again.
Morten:Hi Brittany. Good to be here.
Brittany:Fabulous. Could you give us a brief summary of City Q and Sharebike for anyone who is unfamiliar with these things? Please?
Morten:Yes, absolutely. So Sharebike is an E-bike sharing company that started in Scandinavia and now just recently launched in UK to get with, with big issue, we bringing in cycling for good, starting in Bristol and bringing in 400 bikes there to see how we can enable e-bike sharing for the whole city there and then bring it to the rest of the cities in UK. Fantastic to have it in Bristol, then CityQ is a totally different part. It's a new type of vehicle, bike like you've never seen before. We actually call it downsizing a car into a bike, bringing in weather protection, the ability to bring Passenger Cargo in a four wheeler small ebike, 80 kilo that could do a lot of what you otherwise would find in a car as of technology and comfort. And that one is as well coming to UK.
Brittany:I was gonna say and hugely reducing co2 emissions as well. Both very purposeful missions. Thank you for sharing. And our second guest today is Lukas Neckermann. Lukas is COO of Splyt, author of four books on mobility and advisor to numerous companies across the ecosystem. Hi, Lukas, it's a pleasure to have you here.
Lukas:Well, it's a pleasure to be here.
Brittany:Oh, lovely. So similarly, Lucas, could you tell our listeners a little about Splyt and your background in mobility, please.
Lukas:I'll start with my background. My background in mobility goes back over 20 years when I started my career at BMW. More recently, though, it's the focus I've had on what I called the three zeros; zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero ownership, which I defined in my first book eight years ago. And I support through my work with corporates and startups across the spectrum. As you mentioned, I'm the CEO of Splyt and Splyt addresses, in particular, that third piece of the puzzle. Zero ownership. Splyt is a super app enabler. What that means is we integrate bike sharing, Scooter sharing, ride hailing, food delivery and other services. Also public transport, by the way, directly into those apps directly used by billions of users already. So that's Alipay, booking.com trip.com, and an Asia grab and an even WeChat. So we'd like to consider it the next generation of mobility as a service, or, frankly, anything as a service. And the reason it's next generation is because it doesn't require a separate or new app account or login. It happens via those apps that you already use.
Brittany:Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Great to have you both with us today. So starting with my first question to you both. How do we define micro mobility? I think we're very lucky today to have guests both on the more product side and SAS side in answering this. Morten, I'm going to ask you first, perhaps we traditionally thought about micro mobility as bikes and scooters. But what other innovations are you seeing? And why should we be excited about them?
Morten:Yes, so we've seen traditionally like micro mobility being same as bikes, which I guess has created a lot of surprises when new vehicles coming in. So micro mobility is anything, is like super light, super small, maximum speed made for urban environments. And I think that's when we had bike sharing coming from China, that embrace kind of the sharing structure in in bike sharing, then you got E scooters with E scooters, sharings being small micro mobility parts. And now we're seeing a range of new vehicles, which will be defined as micro mobility. They're all like small wheels, number of different number of wheels, fitting into the cities and being either owned, shared, or just for rental.
Brittany:Thank you so much. And Lukas, I think we also traditionally think about micro mobility as transporting people. What are some of the other examples of micro mobility that you are helping link cities and companies and consumers to and what do you see as the potential impact that expect as a society?
Lukas:Well, if you if you sit aside the street in London, and you just watch what cars go or what vehicles go by and an average day or in an hour or something like that, you'll find out that a roughly between a quarter and a third of the vehicles or thereabouts are commercial vehicles, they're transporting goods. So when we talk about the whole mobility mix, we really need to and must be thinking about logistics delivery services as well. So just as Micromobility, and of all shapes and sizes, including the ones that that Morten is building has a much greater variability now for passengers. So anything from one passenger to many more, we can use the term micro mobility to talk about different form factors for logistics as well. So talking about autonomous delivery robots and pods, we have 1000s, even millions of deliveries already being delivered by autonomous delivery robots. We have cargo bikes in various sizes, from small medium, to large, even carrying an entire pallet, electrically assisted, of course, we have delivery scooters, which are such a key part of the, you know, 10 minute delivery puzzle, we have many delivery vehicles, either with or without a driver, perhaps even delivery drones. So we do need to think about Micromobility not just from a passenger perspective, but also from a delivery perspective. And, and I know that the the logistics companies, they're on that
Morten:They need to actually have a big change happening there. Because traditionally, they've been like one truck getting into the cities riding around the city all day, delivering back now they had to define in micro hubs, which fitting for micro mobility as well. So this issue changed much more than vehicle or software or what you seeing from just the escooters, it is as Lukas is saying quite a big change in the whole urban transport.
Lukas:I mean, the logistics companies, you know, they they operate on razor thin margins to begin with. So they are constantly driving innovation here. They're constantly reinventing their business model. And really, to my mind, they're among the drivers in particular, of the goods, transport and moving that to different, you know, shapes, sizes, form factors.
Brittany:Thanks so much. It's good to hear more impacts to society than just thinking about food delivery. I know before we started the podcast, at least two of us have relied on Micromobility transported lunch, lunch options, but it's such a bigger world than that. And it's touching on so many more parts of society than that to then just on our stomachs. So a second thing that I wanted us to talk about was I think micro mobility is often a topic we're very excited to discuss maybe that's just myself, it's cool, it's techie. I think the first place our imagination goes to when we think about the future of mobility is having individuals transported from A to B in these driverless flying pods. But can micro mobility and the future of micro mobility ever really replace cars and buses.
Lukas:I would ask do we want Micromobility to replace or the other mode to my mind Micromobility complements the the entire modal mix the way the mix of ways people and goods get around. So look, in most cities of the world. Indeed, the car holds around 90% of the model share. So quite naturally, if another mode of transport comes in, it's going to take away from the car. And I think certainly if it takes away from the privately owned car that's to the benefit of cities, it's to the benefit of society, it's certainly to the benefit of air quality. So yes, I think that the possibility is there for micro mobility in particular, because so many trips that are taken in particular in cities are, you know, under three miles under five miles, you know, under eight kilometers in length. So that's, that's really a sweet spot for Micromobility whether it's a scooter, a bike or an E bike, of course, with the ebike you have even more range, you know, you could comfortably do 10 kilometers. And that's in many cases, the bulk of what cars will do. So you know, if we take out let's say the Netherlands and Copenhagen where you have different modes to begin with, but across central Southern and Eastern Europe and certainly around to North America, you can really impact them on split by just adding different types of micro mobility.
Morten:I think that's the right I mean, we're not getting rid of cars for long distance. But for short distance. More than 50% of car trips in inner cities is less than a two kilometer; you don't need a car. You don't need to turn to transport you like five kilometer and there's no way we can embrace having car traffic and congestion. It's like the dominating of cities. If you look in US, most of the cities have been a built around car traffic. But Europe hasn't been that Europe was built within cities before car traffic. And I think micro mobility brings the ability to take away cars for the area where it's mostly in a city and then the high density and bring the ability of freedom to travel without having to use a car. So cars are dinosaurs in inner city when it's short distance, but it's not about getting rid of cars as a vehicle. But getting rid of it in the short trips where it's not needing and like what he did, and also where I'm coming from taking away car tract and car parking was quite a big change. You got all the complaints, but then you got the E scooters and and the mobility opportunities and it feels good when it's short distance.
Lukas:Morten, what Morten is talking about, there is the infrastructural shift that is kind of supporting all of this. Parking is such a big driver, parking and also Bike lanes are creating, you know, infrastructure for bikes, scooters, deliveries, etc, etc. Even pickup and drop off zones for ride hailing and parking, for car sharing. These are little things that cities are doing, which are making an enormous impact on the adoption of shared mobility, and also micro mobility.
Brittany:I thought I was gonna have to bleep you out Lukas on how you was going to describe trying to park and remember haha, this is a family friendly podcast, Lukas speak. Be mindful of your words. Now you were safe, you were safe, haha. I just thought you might use explicit language for talking about parking. Definitely an easy route to follow. But I think this brings us on to a good question. Even though cars don't seem to make the most sense with some of these other kinds of travel requirements, cars still seem to be leading in terms of convenience. So Morten, I want to pose this question to you what do we think is going to change that?
Morten:That's an incredible good question. Because it doesn't help to say that everybody has to cycle and I think for quite some years politician has said, let's stop using car let's cycle. And they don't, it doesn't help, you can't just tell them to you have to make it convenient. And one of the big issues in regular cycling is weather, the other is like bringing children or bringing your groceries or package, you don't go to IKEA and pick up your furniture and then cycle home. So you need to have the convenience, you need to have this flexibility. And car still has quite some benefits on that part. So I think part of what we have to do is, as Lukas was mentioning, as well, you need to have it as supplementary. So bringing back your your home furnitures, you still need a vehicle that can transport that one. But you need flexibility availability on it. And I think that's what is so fantastic. We've seen the change of new services coming in new ownership models, new ways of getting access to it to make it convenient, what is lacking and what is still progressing is a new type of vehicle that that enables also the flexibility. So what we see with family bikes and cargo bikes and and what we are doing as well with this kind of weather protection as well, it pinpoints the areas where it needs to to make it safer, more convenient to actually be accepted. You can't just say cycle. And that's it.
Lukas:Well, you know, for most people owning a car is a sunk cost. And you know, they already have a car and operating it then becomes a variable cost, you only think about the fuel, maybe the congestion charge or the parking cost. You don't think about it in the way that a fleet manager might or a logistics companies might logistics company might. And that's on a cost per mile basis. If it's shared, I guess cost per passenger mile. Or if it's freight, then it's you know, cost per cubic meter carried over a mile or kilometer. If you do rid yourself of the emotion of owning a car. And if you do have a significant change in your life, this is where people reevaluate their mobility options, right? When people move from A to B,move to a new home move to a new city, or they have a significant change in their life or lifestyle. Maybe they got married, maybe they had kids, maybe the kids moved out of the house or whatever the case may be. That's when they reevaluate mobility options. I mean, that's kind of what it was, in my case as well. I gave up my car about 10 years ago, because I took a look at it and it was gathering dust. And I realized that my cost per mile of the vehicle that was parked outside of my home was you know well over a euro per per mile traveled or per kilometer. So I said for that amount of money, I can use a whole lot of car sharing, I could use a whole lot of ride hailing, public transport, taxis, whatever, before I ever recoup, you know, or reach the cost of actually owning that vehicle. And if people actually again, remove the emotionality out of owning a car and realize that is that it's much more than the variable cost, then I think people can embrace the alternative to car ownership.
Morten:Cost of ownership. People don't know too much about it, they don't calculate the cost of ownership.
Lukas:And this is what we said earlier, right. This is where fleet managers and in particular logistics companies are very, very different. They have to reinvent themselves year on year on year because they're looking at this, and they have the competition from all of the other companies around them, same thing is going to apply, by the way to the 10 Minute delivery companies, you know, the first one who comes out with a scooter then moves to an electric scooter that moves to an electric bike or whatever the case may be, each one of those is an increase in efficiency, which they're going to need because, well, frankly, we're going to be asked to show some profits sooner or later. So the one who has the lowest variable costs is going to win.
Brittany:Fabulous, you've pretty much answered the question that was going to ask you though, on the quickest way to see like, really accelerate the adoption of change, right is when we don't just look at the individuals and the consumers, we look at businesses. And if you really want to see the adoption of change, you know, when we see that is when there's financial gain or other rewards to businesses, and maybe it's just to thrive and survive. Is there any other benefits of businesses that you think is important to highlight in replacing, you know, an ownership model, or even, you know, swapping out cars and vans for other micro mobility models.
Morten:I think it's important to say as the options that exists, meaning like, as I said, if you take away car parking, you take away some of the option that makes convenience with a car more attractive. The other thing is, if you don't have a driving license, you don't compare the cost of owning a car, because you don't have the access to a car. So there's a lot of these drivingeffects that really makes the shift happening. Some of them are slower, some are quick, but you don't really look upon one that is a really engaged car driver, a grumpy old man plus 50, he won't be changing. It's not like the one you're looking forward to see where the changes in habit is going you go for those that currently doesn't have really good alternatives take on the shift, you look for the big cities, you don't start in rural area to see where the urban transport is going to change.
Lukas:Maybe one more thing for companies as well to drive adoption of alternatives to kind of the usual petrol, van or car. And that's just ESG considerations, sustainability considerations, a lot of companies are very, very much pushing towards, you know, lowering their carbon footprint, and embracing environmental and social and governance goals, embracing their sustainability, a little bit more. So creating alternatives, and implementing alternatives in their daily flow helps them in that, in that regard.
Brittany:I think we're all very much in agreement that a greater adoption of micro mobility is only going to mean good things. And Morten to your point on perhaps focusing on the like the lower hanging fruit those that are looking for that change to come in. What do we still feel is the biggest challenge to its adoption by cities, companies, or consumers that are willing for it and can see the benefit in it, but what perhaps, is getting in the way for them? And the flip side of that, which cities do we see really successfully embracing micro mobility or creating the conditions for Micromobility to thrive? And and what can we learn from that? I think the good thing is, Europe is really on the drive on doing the change. So the Green Deal, the shift towards Micromobility is quite positive in Europe compared to other places. So we really in the in the right area, and COVID has been kind of fueling that shift as well. So we've been in in in How about yourself, Lukas, any challenges that you think are two different things. I think we're going to see enormous, continuously shift on increasing speed of the shift in this decade. So I think we're looking for a lot of things. But the infrastructure of the city is definitely an issue. I mean, when you look upon Netherlands, and you look upon Copenhagen and say, Oh, that's great, we just need to get that kind of important to raise that we see at a city infrastructure level or, or any cities that you see doing a particularly good job? infrastructure that's going to take decades. It's not like you
Morten:Yeah, but you were also mentioning cities. So I think what we have seen is like biggest cities has actually been quite open minded. So they actually been more innovation in that one in the larger cities and in the smaller cities. But can just change the infrastructure of a city. So the we have seen a few cities being quite eager to embrace also being one of them. But 2016, saying, private car traffic is not going to be allowed in inner city, they had to back it a speed of innovation, you don't look for infrastructure, you little bit, it wasn't possible to totally close it down. Madrid tried to do it, Paris had embraced it. We've seen the whole of Germany being quite eager in getting Micromobility working is if you look for cargo bikes, there is no one as mature look for what can you do with current infrastructure, rather than in in Germany, and Lucas was mentioning the big cargo bikes, they go quite big in Germany, you will be scared than having to change the infrastructure. Good building about some of the cargo bikes becoming that big. But it's all about this kind of testing out new parts. And one of the elements we're seeing in Germany and some places else is reducing and painting bike lanes, but you have to do something else on speed limits. So instead of building totally new infrastructure, you say, why don't we take the speed limit in the city down to a level where micro mobility and cars and buses can work alongside rather than different planes. So you that. And the other is like, what can you bring of offerings can't make a bike lane, an E scooter lane, a truck lane, a car lane, you have to make them work together. And it's one of the big challenges.
Brittany:Morten I'm gonna bring you back to something you that enables it? So the fact that E scooter was not invited touched on just a moment ago, because it resonated with me living in the UK, seeing scooters not well looked after outside my tube station, which is unfortunate to say, I think by the cities, it was the E scooters coming and posting that it'd be I don't want to touch on this topic for too long. But the struggle with vandalism culture, I think is an important topic for us to discuss when we talk about micro mobility. You kind of services that was driving the change? If you did mentioned some cities that you feel like are doing good examples of, you know, introducing micro mobility services. I think when we think about failures in introducing micro mobility services, the kind of vandalism of scooters is that, go for a survey and say, Do you need an E scooter in one that comes front of mind, have you got any ideas or thoughts on how we can better manage this in the future or any other learnings from the introductions of different micro order to start letting your car being parked? That's not the way mobility models and services?
Morten:I think that's a very difficult issue and a very important issue. So first of all, I think it's been a little bit scary how much vandalism has been kind of introduced by the to go? You just have to bring new services and offer that one sharing part and how much that has been representing our costs and a problem. I think, generally we're seeing that smaller city has less vandalism, smaller community where it's more transparent, has less vandalism, I'm a little bit as an alternative. And that means City's job is not to afraid. Also, it might be city culture or subculture within the cities. So what we might see in the future is that where there's change the whole infrastructure, but it's embracing innovation. high share of vandalism, the number of service has been reduced, they can't afford it to take it away. And then you might see that areas where there's less vandalism, you get better services, which would be a pity, because probably, they would You need municipalities that actually says we don't know all need it as much in the other areas as well. But it's a matter of fleet management, you see where you have the vandalism, you see what's happening. And you see, for instance, the tendency of E scooters, being thrown into rivers makes the the legal issues we don't know all the safety but we need to free rider systems try to avoid these kinds of areas. So we have part of that when you have a lot of good technology with geofence. And you have monitoring of it, you can say new innovation in micro mobility is good for society is penalties users, but it's always an issue, if they're able to throw it into the river or try to take it. We've seen tracking is a really important part. And it's quite helpful to track good for the inhabitants. Let's have a go. Let's have a test. UK where it's happened, when it's happened and know where you have bad areas. And I hopefully think that will continue, the bigger the vehicle is the less is going to be thrown away. So to some quite slow on implementing e scooters; might be good, but it extent you don't have like car rentals being thrown into cities, and sorry, rivers, but you will have that with escooters. So I think there's there's something with attitude, there's something with penalties, but hopefully they'll doesn't need to be very slow. You need to be able to say let's also understanding how important it is that somebody is not destroying the good for everybody, just because somebody's not thinking through. And we've seen that with Sharebike in Bristol, that people are calling us saying test it, there might be some pitfalls and might be some like, hey, there's somebody actually now trying to cutting off, trying to steal the batteries or trying to take it away. And they feel awful about it because they're destroying a service for the rest of us. areas, but we need to at least let it have a go.
Brittany:That's interesting. I think also, that's quite a fun solution you've created maybe if we just make scooters, too heavy to pick up. We won't find them in rivers. Put a challenge in there. But I think it's also an interesting point that you raised that it might just be a city cultural problem. And we see there's like perhaps far less litter in communities with you know, smaller populations than we have on Londons streets, where we have far greater population density. Lukas, do you have aany more thoughts on that, on the struggle with vandalism culture and you know perhaps ways we might be able to help improve that or what we can learn from it?
Lukas:Well, I would suggest that it's not just limited to micro mobility, we do know that from car sharing companies and providers that vehicles have been used for well, various listed purposes, sometimes also as a place to stay or a place to do other things. And car sharing, I've heard from car sharing providers that have had wheels stolen off the vehicles have had engines stolen out of the vehicle. So it's not something that's just, you know, limited to micro mobility, nor is it something that's limited, frankly, to shared mobility either because, you know, there were crimes a little bit more rampant or as you suggest, Brittnay, there were perhaps the the respect for you know, social norms is slightly lower, you know, if someone is throwing their coffee cups out of their window, perhaps they hurdle to vandalism in other ways for shared mobility might not be as high either. It's unfortunate, but it's something that cameras and GPS are making great strides towards addressing.
Brittany:And Morten, I think I really like your optimistic answer. And that if we prove the value of these services, maybe we build communities of people that try to protect them where they are, so that they can continue enjoying them. So I think that's nice. To bring us on to a more positive kind of conversation around different ownership models. Lukas, I know, you're very passionate about zero ownership. I think this is interesting. With the many discussions about the cost of living crisis, I think it's just very hard to imagine that younger generations would even consider purchasing a vehicle in the first place. Do you think we'll see a greater adoption of micro mobility from younger generations? And what are the you know, if you do? What are the impacts you feel like that may make?
Lukas:Yes, I coined this term zero ownership, as mentioned from my from my first book, and it was written in the context of the general trend towards shared ownership, short term rental, or what we now know as subscriptions. Today, of course, we realize that owning DVDs or CDs, that's a thing of the past, in an age of Netflix and Spotify, why would you buy a DVD or a CD, and as sentimental as I and others might be about books, I know that I own vastly fewer books today than I did 10 years ago, simply because I've, you know, a Kindle. So this idea of shared ownership is prevalent across so many different parts of our lives, even you know, does anyone even dream of owning a vacation home anymore when Airbnb allows you to fulfill your wildest vacation dreams on a daily or weekly basis? And there are startups that are addressing this for kitchen goods for appliances, drills and saws? I mean, unless you're a carpenter, who needs a drill more than once a month? So why wouldn't you, you know, have a community of shared users of that drill. And there are startups that are facilitating that. So shared ownership, though, it's not new. I mean, this has been practiced in rural areas. For decades, I grew up in a rural area, you know, farmers would be, you know, sharing their, their, their combines their harvesters, and even tractors, because they don't use them all the time. So shared ownership is just a concept that's being spread to more and more parts of our lives. But the key issue, the absolute key issue is to make it accessible and easy to use. And that's frankly, what what Splyt does. Splyt integrates on demand, mobility, food delivery, public transport, micromobility, all of these things into those apps that people already have on their phones, and use every single day. We're coming to know these apps now as super apps. And what Splyt does is it enables those super apps to thrive.
Brittany:Thank you, Lucas. And Morten, how about other ownership models? What potential gains are there and challenges to consider? I think it's as Lukas was saying, that change in attitude is bringing us to look for other alternatives. But I like to look upon it a flexible ownership rather than several ownership because there is not like one size fit all I mean, I have a lot of things I own, I'd still want to own. But I also have a lot of things I'd rather lease or I would like to rent or subscribe or I could just go with a sharing. So it's a little bit about how do you actually make feel it fit, fit. So the
Lukas:So what Morten was addressing earlier was really, flexibility ownership, I think it's really important and if we're not addressing that, it's not making sense. Take an example of what what City Q is looking at. If we build a high quality vehicle, a transactional owner model would make us make practically a lower cost value, low value, just fitting for the warranty of it because we have to sell as many times as possible if we want to be cynical. If you have a rental model you want to have something that lasts as long as possible because the profit of it goes over the lifecycle of the of the vehicle. So you get a better vehicle from a model that is actually offering something over time than you do for something that's transactional. And this is not just like City Q really important around there, the critical mass of users for shared mobility, shared Micromobility, or shared thinking, you can see a lot of producers in the last decades, anything for that matter, whether it's a scooter or a drill bit. Now, if you have 5%, of a city using shared actually producing lower quality because there's a transactional Micromobility, or 50, or 100%, of a small community using it, you come up with pretty much the same critical mass. It's the model. So I think it's incredibly important to go from reason that, for example, car sharing does so well, in smaller college towns in the US, you know, we're perhaps you wouldn't this kind of model where not only from a user point of view, immediately assume, by the numbers that shared anything would do very well. But the shared demographics and the but also from a sustainability point of view, we want something shared psychographics of that community means that you have a lot of users, and therefore a greater success than similarly to last that could be used by many over a long time, but you sized non academic communities.
Morten:To make a good discussion, you don't want to have police using shared services, you don't want to get out to on an urgency service or fireman, and there's no fire car need the flexibility, and you need the availability to it. And available. So they had to wait for the next one. So you also have different level of urgency. So somebody wants to pay to have it's easy to put up sharing services in in small city sorry, their own, knowing that is available all the time not having to wait for it. And other says, If I can get it for a lower cost, I rather pay as little as possible. So again, in big cities, it's more difficult sometimes to do it in it's not one size fits all, it's about getting these kinds of different opportunities, different services at different rural areas. If if Lukas wants a drill and have to drive for half levels.
Lukas:And that's where it's things like subscriptions come in, you know, where if I know that I'm a regular user, maybe not, you know, once or twice a week, but maybe once or twice a an hour to get it, that's not making it practical anymore. So day, then you can have different models. But then we're already talking about, you know, high adoption rates of sharing. again, it's about finding this kind of balance, what fits me
Brittany:I think you've raised a nice point, again, on the importance of community for the success of micro mobility as well. It's the community that we're serving, and perhaps it's what's gonna fit. And I think that's really important. At the the community that helps micro mobility models really thrive as well. Finally, we love to end here at the Y-Mobility team on end, I think it's our job as offering services, not to look an optimistic note and a question looking into the future. So I'd love to ask the ask you both what are your hopes and predictions for the future of micro mobility? Morten, I'm upon making a product, but making the way we can offer it going to start with you please for that one.
Morten:Yes, thanks. First of all, I think we're living in so in the best model. Getting back to the cycling of innovation, interesting time, I think that the decade we're in is going to be fantastic decade for micro mobility. It's going to have a infrastructure set, cycling of innovation, it's really old. lot of innovations, a lot of innovation for vehicle services, all this ability, and you have this policy of doing better with Business models is the quickest innovation cycle you can have. sustainability. So all the drivers that are going to do changes now is going to make micro mobility, so flourishing So that is super innovation. So the fact that you can change and influencing and increasing. And we can have that with the support of municipalities. And that's getting back to what I innovate and the services in a day, that enables you to quickly really want; municipalities embracing innovation and saying we'd like to see this shift. And we're not looking for bureaucracy to make it difficult. But saying, let's offering new services, that is where our job is, if you just embrace it, it's really important to to see new things coming in rather than seeing it has to be according to all the you sit kids just making a vehicle, we don't know what regulations that's been there. Regulation is the biggest barrier for innovation.
Lukas:But it can also be one of the biggest drivers of we're doing, we have to make the service that offer that in the innovation. If communities, if municipalities regulate in the right way if they regulate the space that they use in cities, right way for the right customers. if they remove parking for privately owned vehicles, implement parking, and pickup drop off zones, car sharing, bike lanes, scooter lanes, scooter parking, and all of these things, regulation can be a real big driver. So my view of the future is cities embracing that much, much more in the interest of quality of life, quality of air, quality of getting around, being able to get around an uncongested city, being able to, you know, be safe in the city that you live in without the risk of being run over by cars, the way that that can be done is, again, through positive regulation, but also through making these things accessible. So my dream, I suppose, would be that, you know, not five or 10% of people are comfortable with giving up their privately owned vehicle, but 50 and 70 and 80% of the people in a city being comfortable with that idea, because it's easy for them to use, it's accessible, and they have it available via the apps that they already use.
Brittany:Thank you, Lucas, I'd like to say well, I'd like to say a huge thank you to both of you for your time today in a really insightful conversation. I've just been jotting down some key summaries for me, which I don't know if is of interest to anyone. But and some are less surprising. I think we've covered that success for micromobility services and models really depends on the flexibility and ensure that you're providing something that works for the needs of everyone. I also like that I feel like we came to the conclusion that provide the service and the people will come, and perhaps the respect and appreciation for the service comes with that whether you are building a service for a community or building a community from a service, which is something I hope to see perhaps who knows from escooters around Peckham. Maybe scooters can bring people back together again. So yeah, thank you so much, Morten and Lukas. Morten, how can our guests reach you? Should they wish to get in touch with you after listening to today's podcast?
Morten:Yeah, please send me an email morten@cityq.biz or go to our website, cityq.biz or.com and reach us up there.
Brittany:Lovely. And Lukas, same question. You too, please. How can we find you?
Lukas:Well, I would welcome anyone to reach out you can certainly find me on LinkedIn. Also Twitter, you can find Splyt at splyt.com. And if I may get in one final plug. And that's for an organization that I've helped get off the ground. And that's Pave Europe, the partners for automated vehicle education, is a project I've been working on to help educate on autonomous vehicles. Maybe that's a subject for another podcast. But along with everything that we talked about today, happy to hear from people on the subject as well.
Brittany:Lovely, sounds that we'll be having you back Lukas for all things autonomous. So watch this space. Once again. Thank you very much to our listeners for tuning in. And thank you to the production team at Y-Mobility for making today's podcast possible. We wish you a great rest of the day. We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and look forward to your comments and further questions.
