Micro Mobility digitalization: benefits and prospects
Have you ever walked out of your office late in the evening? Feeling more than exhausted and realising that in the next two hours you are going to be stuck in the traffic jam?
I am sure that it is quite a usual thought of a car owner in a big city. According to statistics, an average driver of a car in a big city, such as London, New York, Berlin etc, is spending about eighty hours a year in a traffic jam. That seems to be unbearable.
The number of cars per person is increasing: for example, in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, in only thirty years the amount of cars has risen by 250%. Moreover, the tendency shows that cities are becoming bigger, enlarging their territories which allows people to live in cheaper suburban places. However, it leads to more time spent behind the wheel every morning and every evening. Although routes of public transport are spreading, it is still a big issue how to get to the closest metro station without a traffic jam.
Also, we should never forget about ecological problems, melting glaciers and finally our own health. We can all start using Teslas, as well, however, it is obvious that no country has reached such a level of prosperity and is not going to shortly. So, it is time for us to think about some alternatives to our habitual transportation.
There come micro mobile units, although sounding a bit complicated, these are the things that we are all accustomed to, however in simpler ways: these are e-bikes, bicycles, scooters and other small devices. They have a great potential to resolve a lot of problems in the urban transportation system.
Personal electric transport is on its way to development and improvements to become a main and general transport in the big cities, due to the benefits it brings to people. Let’s observe how the digitalization of purely hardware devices can improve the user experience.
Main issues
Although being a perfectly clear and ingenious decision of all the problems listed above, here we are adding a fly in the ointment. As we are accustomed to saying: safety’s first. At the beginning of the twentieth century when cars were only starting to win people’s hearts and minds, driving a car was never such a big deal: everyone could sit in a car, without even having a single idea of how it functions in the first place. As a result: many accidents and the introduction of unified legislation.
We are now in the 21st century and are facing quite the same problem. Teenagers are driving e-scooters, without knowing basic rules, which leads to unnecessary casualties as from the drivers as from the pedestrians.
Moreover, even when e-bikes and scooters are taken seriously by the owner, it is still an issue where to bring them when they are broken. When it comes to cars, the main issue of their maintenance is the cost, however, special shops are spread all over the city offering all services, starting from changing tyres to changing the colour of a car. The same services are still hard to find even in big cities, which can be easily explained by their unpopularity among citizens.
Then comes a very logical consequence: lack of parking places and storage. If we look at Kyiv now, we will see a couple of storages in the centre of the city and then many lonely scooters and e-bikes standing in barely proper places. It’s not only unsafe for pedestrians but also the owners of these items of transport. Finally, when talking about the lack of something in cities, we can talk about charging stations as they are also distributed mainly in the city centre, however, hard to find in the suburban areas.
Last, but not least, it is important to mention that in big cities, there are few special roads, adapted for e-vehicles with a speed up to 30 km per hour. It is not as uncomfortable as dangerous for all citizens, as e-drivers (let’s call them that way) sometimes choose pavements and can run down pedestrians (which already took place many times) or choose driveways where they can be easily hit by cars.
Although there are some issues, they are not unsolvable. Many years ago there were no roads and parking lots as well. So it is for us to influence its development and now I am going to talk about why we should all do it.
Micro mobility is here to solve your problems
So, how is e-transport going to help people? Apart from all the problems mentioned in the introduction of the article, it is important to mention that e-transport has speed limits. So, no more accidents because of speed exceeding, well, at least the percentage of accidents caused by speed exceeding is going to be much lower.
Then, let’s talk about some simple, up-to-day problems, such as parking. An average parking lot in an underground parking lot in Kyiv costs about $15–30K USD or to be easily said, about 40% per the cost of a small apartment. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Moreover, not all apartments have parking lots or they are strictly limited.
Well, if we are talking about suburban areas where people have their own houses, the issue of parking at night is solved. But then comes another problem: parking during working hours. Rarely do companies (only very big ones) have special parking spaces for their employees. So, an hour of parking a car in the centre of Kyiv costs about $1–1.5 USD. Let’s do the math: the working hours of an average worker are 8 hours per day, we multiply 8 by $1.25 (medium price), which equals around $10 a day. On average a person works 243 days a year, multiplied by $10, equals $2430 USD a year. Rather than taking your car to work every day, you can take your family for a vacation somewhere abroad for a week.
The choice is yours.
If you are still here, thinking about a trip, then here comes a perfectly matched solution of an e-transport that can be taken with you not only in the office and in your apartment, but also on a bus or a train.
Finally, cars cost a lot to be kept, you know. Petrol, bringing your car to ARS at least once a year, paying for insurance, for accidents — there’s a lot I haven’t yet mentioned. Also, they are dangerous as not working brakes, low pressure in the tires and other problems cause accidents on the road. You can argue that e-transport is not without the mentioned flaws. So, here I am again to offer one more solution.
How digitalization could extend benefits of micro mobile devices/vehicles
To control an e-vehicle there needed to be created a one command centre or “brain” of the device that collects, stores, analyzes information, defines things that the owner of the device should know, and communicates those things with it in some way.
Users should know if the device is ready for exploitation and is it safe to use at the moment. The “brain” of the device, or digital module should be able to check device status, scan the device, detect issues and communicate it to the driver. Moreover, the status check should happen automatically. Devices can communicate with the owner via Chat-bot in favourite messenger, voice message out loud, native notification in the owner’s device, or can be connected and synchronized with Siri or Alexa.
To ensure the safety of all the road users the devices should communicate with other participants of the traffic. Smart navigation system (integrated into the brain) should be able to track devices’ position on the road (lane) and compare it towards the position of other devices around (devices that probably should have the same or similar smart systems) to prevent crashes or other accidents on the road. Also, it needed to recommend a faster way to the destination for a driver. It not only helps the driver to get to a point faster but also allows to unload city traffic a bit.
Devices should communicate with the environment, sort of charging stations of parking to propose an available parking slot nearby the office, or quick charge station somewhere around.
One additional offer is included in the communication system. We all know that reading messages while driving is very unsafe, however, communication helps people to understand each other. The system can help drivers to communicate while they are driving. It can be done by using emojis that appear on the surface of the vehicle for example. One of the strongest ways to communicate emotion to other people is colour, devices can be highlighted by different colours depending on the mood of the driver, speed of movement, etc — some type of visual communication. Another way is oral communication. Devices can release specific sounds that reflect some states of driving activity.
The bright future of micro-mobility digital integration.
Let’s imagine a bright, intelligent future, where cars can fly and you take a trip to Mars every weekend. Wait, let’s think about some time when we are young enough to at least walk. Using Artificial intelligence is not something every night Elon Musk dreams of or Ray Bradbury’s stories, it is our reality.
It allows us to work with a huge amount of data, systemize it, analyze, define some patterns and make decisions based on analytic results. We could use it to work with traffic data we collect to guide and distribute micro mobile transport on the streets more smartly and efficiently. Also, it can be used to handle routine with e-bikes, sort of service, or washing, so if your device is in a parking lot and needs some help — it automatically calls the service to be repaired while you are working.
Computer vision technology can be implemented by adding cameras to the device that track device position, movement parameters, and actively affect the driving process, helping for example to break when a device goes too fast towards people or some objects. Another pair of eyes to the driver.
Artificial intelligence and optimize a lot of processes and make them happen rapidly. The learning process of AI allows us to integrate it into more and more functions of an e-bike life cycle. So, why not make our dreams of a bright future, when one shouldn’t waste a life sitting in a traffic jam and spare money for travelling and emotions, come true shortly future?