Micromobility was the idea of the year, a solution and a way of life really started to settle in.
Increased shared mobility and public transit made small electric vehicles mainstream enough for people to buy their own. The year of the e-bike was 2021, with a growth rate of 240% over the previous year. The new normal resulted in cities adopting infrastructure plans that would have been amazing a decade ago.
The impact of micromobility on emissions reduction is more important than the advent of the electric car, which was the year that people began talking openly about it.
This year, we saw shared micromobility companies take advantage of the shift in mindset towards the humble e-scooter and e-bike, using their dominant market positions to become more operationally efficient and get their hardware on point.
With all of this behind us, let's take a look at the top predictions for the micromobility space in 2022.
Everyone can own an e-bike.
The e-bike trend is expected to continue into the future as countries like the U.S. offer subsidies worth up to $900 off a new e-bike's purchase price. The craze will not stop with private consumers. Tony Ho, vice president of Segway's global business development, says the company is seeing a big jump in demand for e-bikes from micromobility companies. Lime and Bird are two of the giants of shared micromobility, and Segway has supplied them with e-scooters and e- bikes.
Lime was a bike-sharing company, but it didn't go anywhere until they started to do scooters, partly because the scooter is cheaper and also it's easier to deploy. The mix is starting to even out and we are seeing more orders on the e-bike side for sharing. The cities have bicycle sharing programs to begin with.
The fresh VC money is drying up.
The industry has generally consolidated under a few big names, and some of the big players have gone public, something Lime has promised to do next year. We are likely to see the current market mature instead of getting more money from new entrants.
Bird had its first public earnings and they showed a slight miss in revenue.
After the Bird and Lime craze, I think investors have moved onto something different, like the Coco sidewalk robot delivery guys. It still takes a bit of capital to get into this business, and the smaller guys, I think it's going to be harder for them because they have to pay for the license, buy insurance. It isn't a game for the small startup anymore. The person who survived the last wave will probably stay.
Those who are staying are doing everything they can to drive down costs, become more efficient and sustainable, and be more compliant with city regulations.
The ride-share companies might be coming back.
Micro mobility is becoming a priority for companies as people come out of the Pandemic, according to Ho. The big names like the ride-share guys are coming back.
During the summer of 2020, micromobility was in bad shape. Jump to Lime was sold off by the company that was later subsumed by the company that was later subsumed by the company that was later subsumed by the company that was later subsumed by the company that was later subsumed by the company that was later subsumed by the company that If Ho is to be believed, the two companies might try to get back in the game before they lose all their market share.
Expect to see more intelligent vehicles.
Scooterists ride and park on the sidewalk in cities. They hate it so much that they have caused many companies to create smart scooters. The ability to stop a ride in real time and detect when a rider is riding on a sidewalk or about to hit a pedestrian is one of the things that companies like Spin, Helbiz and Voi are testing out. Bird and Superpedestrian are using a location-based approach to implement advanced rider assistance systems. Once companies figure out how to keep costs down and cities around the globe get a whiff of this fun-killing tech, the trend will only become more commonplace.
The politics of micromobility spawned advanced rider assistance systems.
Beyond the shared market, Mircromobility ADAS systems will extend. Companies like Streetlogic and Terranet are working to develop computer vision-based systems that can help e-bike riders in the consumer market ride more safely by detecting potential danger and providing collision warnings. These types of systems give peace of mind and add safety for the average person who wants to replace their car trips with e-bike rides.
According to an industry analyst, having more sensors on micromobility vehicles opens up the door to data monetization.
Dediu said that there will be more sense and dash cams will be a lot of the things happening. I know this is coming into cars, but everything that happens in cars happens on micro and often happens faster because you can roll out 100 million vehicles without that much investment.
Dediu said that companies can image entire cities the way dash cams do today by placing cameras in the front and rear of micromobility vehicles. If those systems can detect sidewalks and pedestrian lanes, they will be able to detect road surface conditions that could inform cities through a shared database on road maintenance issues. Micromobility companies could sell that information to mapping companies, which in turn could improve the world's image.
Dediu predicts that companies will come out with all kinds of "Peloton-like services" that attach to Wearables, as well, if you think about what else micromobility vehicles can do today.
The metaverse and mobility.
Billions of dollars have been invested by Meta, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple to figure out how to interact with someone who is wearing something on their head. If you are going to wear a helmet, why not make a smart helmet? If you are going to wear a smart helmet, why not make it exciting and interesting?
Dediu says that a helmet with a smart visor that enhances reality as you sail around a city could not only make riders more aware of their surroundings and potentially safer, but it can alsounlock experiences and get people outside and moving.
He said that mobility and the metaverse are made for each other. It is about looking up. Augmentation of a car experience is nothing more than looking down. Would you rather look up or down?
Dediu is pretty sure that this union will happen over the next few years, even though it won't happen in 2022.
Form factors are new.
The only problem with riding a scooter or e-bike to work is that it rains. Oliver Bruce, a strategic adviser, angel investor and co-host of the Micromobility Podcast, said that there could be new, heavier-duty, closed-roof form factors in the consumer and shared markets.
Bruce says that companies like Arcimoto, which recently acquired Tilting Motor Works, and Nimbus are working on electric three-wheeled vehicles that should be ready or close to going to market in 2022.
If we are serious about hitting our climate goals, new electric vehicles are going to need to come out and scale quickly. We are struggling to ramp up electric vehicles as they currently stand. We do not have the ability to do it.
Micro mobility is integrated into the transit mix.
Bruce thinks that in the year 2022, the application of rides into public transport credit will start. If you hop off the subway and onto an e-bike, it will be a cross-subsidized trip.
Bruce says this will be a side effect of all the infrastructure plays we are seeing with cities around the world, but mainly in Europe. Micromobility companies will get the per mile cost of servicing vehicles down substantially.
The economics of it start stacking up for operators to be able to sell in bulk kilometers to transport agencies, and then those transport agencies will say, cool you can do an unlocks on the scooter on your metro card or via your app. Some cities around the world will include this with their public transport.
Better integrations with Maps.
Dediu said that the year of software would be in 2022.
Micro mobility options are offered in transit planning and mapping apps like Moovit and Google Maps. Maps acts as a search engine, and should be beefed up to allow you to see the top transport hits within seconds.
Dediu said that they were saying that they wanted to go from A to B, and that no one was bidding on their ride. I want to see 15 people. I want to see an auction when I request a ride. It is obvious that it is almost 2022, but it doesn't exist yet.
A lot of that is because the glue is not there. There should be a lot of opportunities for shared operators to make money from micromobility once the interaction of the APIs is on the shared side. Micromobility will be monetized through discovery.
Software is Micromobility's next big business.
