Not all mobilities are equal in Paris… (particularly regarding the environment)
Urban mobility has been evolving rapidly over the years, and new solutions emerge. But are all micro-mobility options equals regarding the environment?
Cities like Amsterdam are role models with their massive usage of bicycles, but many other options exists. Cityscoot was born in Paris and pioneered the micro-mobility revolution introducing the first shared electric scooter in free floating (without charging station). Paris has since become a leader city in Europe in terms of new mobilities and progressive thinking, so how does Cityscoot’s service compare in terms of environment?
Note: We will use the term scooter and moped indifferently. Some people refer to kickscooters as scooter, but in this article we won’t.
Mobility in cities, evolution over the years with the case of Paris
Historically, cities adapted their infrastructure to the use of carriages and horses, but evolved to cars and classic public transportation systems (buses and trains/trams), even the first metros in the early 20th century.
But the explosion of car usage and the consequent pollution and over-occupation of the public space led the city to take drastic measure in the past decades to reduce the number of cars and reduce emissions, promoting alternative means of transportation.
You can take a look at iconic Rivoli street in Paris over the year…
Paris is a living laboratory for mobility and many studies are done every year around this topic. The townhall and Île-de-France Mobilités publish annually incredibly extensive reports on the evolution of the city’s mobility, it this is a topic you fancy, don’t hesitate to take a look, they are usually publicly available.
So exploring the question: do we need alternative means of transportation (i.e. micromobility solutions like Cityscoot) in a city already well covered by public transportation like Paris?
Overall commutes and mobility needs keep rising and new infrastructure like the “Grand Paris” line or new metro extensions (line 14, etc.) are year-long initiatives and mainly focused on mid/long-range commutes.
Micromobility solutions can help alleviate the short/mid-range increase in demand, but not all mobilities are equal…
Not all mobilities are equal
Mopeds, kickscooter, bikes, taxis… From historic means to a full ecosystem of mobility options in Paris in the past years. More movement, more options… Where is the market heading? Are there too many?
Let’s focus on scooters more particularly just to illustrate, the ecosystem has been in constant evolution for the past years.
Even at the time of this article, a lot of controversy still drives this sector. Townhalls and municipalities are more and more inclined to regulate the activity, launching call for tender and reducing the number of licenced operators. The case of kickscooter has been controversial for a long time (first because of the chaotic flooding of the city street overnight when they foirst appeared, then once regulated because of the high number of accidents and reckless usage…). The vote last Sunday in Paris was a clear “no” for the kickscooters...
Is this a trend? No, not all modes of transportation are equal.
What about the security of the scooters/moped users?
From the start scooters have a different approach, unlike a bike or a kickscooter, a moped is an actual registered vehicle, with a plate number and requiring a license to operate (B license for Cityscoot’s moped which are equivalent to 50cc and limited to 45km/h). Helmet and certified gloves have always been compulsory, so basic personal protection equipment has always been there protecting scooter riders.
All this is a great difference from a security point of view, there is a full insurance in place and users have proven they know the driving code and passed the certification to get the permit, they are protected by default, and in case of infraction they will be fined (speeding, bad parking…) like a normal vehicle. Radars will flash overspeeding, new parking verification cars can fine badly parked mopeds automatically, agents can easily bill infractions…
What about the environment?
Compared to cars, scooters emit fewer greenhouse gasses during manufacturing and maintenance. According to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation, electric scooters emit less than half the amount of greenhouse gasses compared to a standard car, this is easy to understand just by looking at the average mass of each vehicle compared to the mass it needs to move (a person). Some could argue that cars can fit up to 5 people, and of course that would change everything! But let’s be honest, the average number of passenger on cars for daily commutes is around 1.2 (Eurostat average from 2013 to 2019), for almost 1 ton of weight for modern cars… Not a great ratio.
Following this logic one could think kickscooters are even more interesting, right? Not really. Kickscooter are fragile, can easily be vandalized or mistreated, and from all the components, batteries are the one emitting the most greenhouse gasses in production and miniaturization means more complex production and thus more emissions…
Sharing a vehicles means higher rotation (more trips for its entire lifespan). A particular person will use a self-owned scooter twice per day, for less than 20 minutes each trip, that means that the vehicle will be idle for 23 hours and 20 minutes every day. The whole logic of the sharing economy is based on the fact that these assets are severely underused and sharing them could improve the usage time drastically and therefore the emissions linked to vehicle production are greatly diluted.
Add to this that there are less vehicles required overall, sharing free floating vehicles allows to reduce the number of vehicles in the city and therefore contributes to freeing the public space inside the City.
A very detailed study was done in 2019 at the Ecole des Ponts using Cityscoot’s data comparing the different means of transportation and they respective CO2e/passenger·kilometer, i.e. the equivalent CO2 emitted in the whole lifespan of the vehicle compared to the number of people it carries and the number of kilometers it can do before its end of life.
Are all shared electric scooters equal?
Carbon footprint is calculated taking into account 3 scopes:
- Scope 1: direct emissions from the operations of the company (for example: heating the buildings, emissions from the vehicles running, etc.)
- Scope 2: energy related emissions that are not on-site (this is linked primarily to your energy supplier)
- Scope 3: this is the tricky part, these are all emissions that are indirectly related to the operations and not controlled by the company (for example: the production of the vehicles that you buy, the proportional emissions produced by the insurance company you use, even the emissions produced by employees to get to work…)
It is virtually impossible to have an exact number particularly for scope 3 and most companies will use approximations based on ADEME’s abacus and estimation guidelines.
Some companies will only focus on scope 1 and 2 (while scope 3 is by far the greatest), or be “creative” saying vehicle production emissions are diluted in 8 to 10 years (vehicle amortization) while they will renew the fleet every 3–4 years… We refuse to do “green-washing” or play with the numbers, at Cityscoot we are electric and shared, our DNA is to have the best impact on the planet, the city and its citizens.
Why is Cityscoot’s footprint unbeatable by competitors in Paris?
There are several reasons for this, and they are pretty easy to grasp:
- Our scooter is 100% produced in Europe, where the energy mix is quite good (specially compared to China or other big manufacturing countries). Production of the vehicle is one of the main sources of emissions.
Note: We might argue that our vehicle is slightly heavier that some of our competitors’ (our model is more “motorbike-like” than “bicycle-like”, providing increased security for the user and robustness, but being heavier means more materials andmore emissions at production) but European production should compensate for that.
- All operations are full electric (all our vehicles are electric vehicles) and our electricity is 100% green (we can debate this in another article, but we do have a “100% green electricity contract” with our supplier).
- Our rotation levels in Paris are around 3.5–4 in low/winter season (usually more around 5–6 in high season) per day, while our competitors are always below 1.5 (most of them even below 1, which means each scooter is used less than once per day, that’s even less that private owned scooters!) (data from Fluctuo — february 2023)
- Unlike many competitors, we still have the same scooters since 7 years that we repair and maintain daily. Most of them have changed their entire fleet once or even twice in the past 5–6 years.
Note: This is a hard choice to bear, specially from a Product and UX point of view because technology has greatly improved and we would love to offer the latest and best models with better technology and possibilities of an improved experience, but just like with our smartphones, we cannot have the latest shiny model and be responsible with the environment… Building a responsible and sustainable experience (not just the best at all costs) is part of the Product Manager’s role today more than ever.
- We act at all the steps of the circular economy: we re-use of scooters (our scooter has been upgraded with a topcase, a smartphone support… instead of buying a new scooter, we upgraded them to extend their lifespan), we remanufacture our scooters (example: TOOCS collaboration with Backmarket), we recondition components from broken scooters to be used for repairs (accidents and non-reparable scooters are disassembled) and of course recycling is the last step but at the heart of our operations.
Scooters/mopeds really are a key asset in the decarbonisation strategy of a big city like Paris. And Cityscoot, with its prolonged lifespan of the vehicle, circular activities and unbeatable rotation leads this effort to reduce to carbon footprint of urban mobility.
Not all mobilities are equal in Paris 😉
Spring is here, warmer days are coming and (I hope!) we will start seeing the sun more often in the city of Light very soon.
Let’s have a positive impact while enjoying our city!
You have never used a scooter before? Don’t worry, our initiation courses will start again very soon. 100% free, you can come and be trained by a certified professional, you will see how easy it is!
