A Close Look at 8 Influential Micromobility Companies

What Is Micromobility?

In the previous article “Keeping Up with the Growing E-bike Trend: Elements Selection Guide”, TECHDesign has explained micromobility as “transportation covering short distances with lighter vehicles such as bikes or scooters”, and the “short” usually refers to a distance less than 5 miles.

Recently micromobility has become a hot topic as public transportation may not reach every corner of the cities and car driving is sometimes inconvenient and time-consuming. Here, we introduced 8 famous international micromobility companies for readers to understand this business more.

An Overview of Top 8 Micromobility Companies

Bird (US-based)

Bird is one of the most famous micromobility companies in the world. It offers only one vehicle type compared to other companies. Starting with Xiaomi M365 in 2017, Bird currently provides BirdThree for users to rent from. Users can use Bird Pay to pay the fees, and they can also enjoy several Global Ride Pass options. The service of Bird is available in around 200 cities.

Lime (US-based)

Different from Bird, Lime provides various types of vehicles and services for different scenarios, such as e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds, normal bikes, and car-sharing systems. To be environmentally friendly, Lime uses wind, solar, and other renewable energy to run its vehicles, and it also uses recycled materials to manufacture the vehicles. As of 2019, more than 120 cities had Lime running. In 2021, Lime initiated Lime Prime for its riders to subscribe with a monthly fee, and the riders can also use a mobile app of Lime to unlock their vehicles.

Tier Mobility (Germany-based)

Tier Mobility, a subsidiary of Pushme Inc., is the largest micromobility company (after acquiring Nextbike, a bike-sharing firm) in Europe, which has already operated in more than 160 cities. In 2020, Tier presented in the UK and offered its service in London, and soon after that, it got positive feedback from Londoners and decided to enlarge the scale.

By raising USD 200 million funding, Tier claims itself to be “the best-funded micromobility provider in Europe”. It dedicates to building partnerships in this industry, and among all the micromobility companies, Tier is the first to realize climate neutrality.

Bolt Mobility (US-based)

After being negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolt Mobility has gradually recovered and bought Last Mile Holdings to expand its market. Coming from Florida, Bolt has run its business in 33 cities across the US. In order to differentiate from other micromobility companies, the new generation of Bolt’s scooter “Bolt Two” is equipped with a smartphone mount with a charging function. In the meantime, a navigation app system “MobilityOS” has been launched in Miami and will be launched soon in other cities next year.

Helbiz (US-based)

Headquartered in New York City, Helbiz was founded by an Italian entrepreneur, Salvatore Palella. It is the first micromobility company to go public on NASDAQ and is also the first to enter Italy in 2018. Helbiz serves e-scooters, e-bikes, and e-mopeds in over 20 cities in the US and Europe. In 2021, Helbiz partnered with Drover AI to apply its AI technology to Helbiz’s vehicles for safety concerns. PathPilot module from Drover AI can help riders get more useful information from their surroundings. Helbiz is now expanding its business to other services, such as Helbiz Kitchen for food delivery, Helbiz Live for live streaming service, and others.

Voi Technology (Sweden-based)

Voi is another micromobility company that is willing to integrate AI and computer vision technology into its vehicles by cooperating with Luna. With the advanced technology, Voi is hoping that parking and pedestrian avoidance will not be issues anymore soon. Focusing on the ease of parking for riders, on the other hand, Voi has already installed more than 300 parking racks in the UK. Currently, it serves e-scooters in 70 cities across Europe.

Wind Mobility (Germany-based)

Cooperating closely with local governments to obey the laws and follow the rules is the business strategy of Wind Mobility. For instance, Wind is the first micromobility company that gets the e-scooter running permission from the authorities in Barcelona and it even participates in designing city parking spaces by working with a local university. Culture integration is the business philosophy of Wind. It now operates in 20 cities worldwide, and the third generation of its e-scooters are equipped with swappable batteries that have a longer lifetime and better safety features.

Dott (The Netherlands-based)

Any e-scooter from Dott is with large wheels and a double brake system, and the safety features differentiate Dott’s e-scooters from others. Dott emphasizes being eco-friendly by lowering the CO2 emission and repairing/recycling its e-scooters or e-bikes. Moreover, the repairing and charging services are provided by itself instead of a third party. Dott currently operates in 17 cities across Europe. Along with Lime and Tier, it is one of the three micromobility companies that are authorized to have a trial run in London.

Besides the micromobility companies that have been addressed above, there are many more companies out there, such as Uber, Lyft, Felyx, and Niu, etc. For micromobility to largely improve people’s lives, it still needs some time. Planning the parking areas, building the ecosystems, collaborating with other public transportation…, all take time to ferment. As a whole, people are optimistic about the future of micromobility since the positive changes have started to happen and more city dwellers are getting used to using e-scooters and e-bikes around them.

Find Micromobility Related Solutions at TECHDesign

To support e-bike display dashboard design, Nuvoton provides commonly used microcontrollers N76E616, N76E003, MS51, NU131, and M480 that have built-in segment code LCD drivers and high conversion rate ADCs.

Besides, you can find multiple micromobility related solutions at TECHDesign, including Memory ICs from Winbond, microcontrollers, microprocessors, and battery management system solutions from Nuvoton. Come visit TECHDesign immediately to find the micromobiltiy related solutions you need!