The operations of scooter sharing

Fleet availability is not as simple as having a fleet that is available

While the last article in our publication strongly focused on the technology needed for scooter sharing, we want to now have a look at what it actually means to run such a scheme on a daily base. As an operator, you really want to optimise for fleet availability and this is an economic game that is won and lost at the margins. Fleet availability really means finding the supply-demand sweet spot. This article will dive into the centralised functions of a fleet manager as well as the more decentralised functions and tasks of field staff. While field staff are responsible for charging & swapping, repairs & spare parts, as well as finding and relocating scooters, the HQ is responsible for fleet management, i.e. coordinating the aforementioned tasks and colleagues.

The fleet manager must distribute tasks like an operational maestro

It all starts with coordination. Be it one person or several, they must have an overview of the fleet. Tasks of this management function include:

• looking at the most important statistics (e.g. average rental time, total rentals per day)
• focusing on non-available scooters
• arranging staff in the field
• prioritising tasks
• and potentially jumping in when the task load is too high for the team to handle

The most important work tool for executing this coordination is the fleet management software, which enables you to extract all data and details needed to create, distribute and manage your tasks.

Following coordination is collaboration. The fleet manager is in constant communication with the customer support team, as they often flag potential issues and are the bridge downstream to the customers in the field. Toward the upstream end of the operations, the fleet manager is in continuous contact with the field staff. This group of colleagues can be divided into three workstreams: chargers, mechanics, and relocators. Ideally, no member of the field staff team is pigeonholed, but is flexible and able to assume any of these three roles when needed. If the fleet manager successfully enables collaboration then it will be as if the field staff are responding directly to requests of the customer support team, without ever having to talk to them. Next, we dive into each of the workstreams.

Charging & swapping: keeping scooters alive and ready to drive

Charged batteries are the prized possessions of employees in the field. They work in shifts either covering specific areas of a city or have certain routes pre-defined by the fleet manager or predictive software. Most of the time, charging the portable batteries is done at a centralised hub in the city of operations, or in some cases at various decentralised hubs spread across the city. These hubs do not need a lot of manual labour as batteries do not require extensive supervision once they are plugged in and charge.

At the start of their shift, a swapper goes into the hub, fills up their vehicle (car, cargo-bike, van, etc.) with the legally allowed amount of batteries, and goes out into the field. The immediate goal is to swap the batteries of scooters with the most critical state of charge, in order to get them back online. Such a swap should usually take around 3 minutes, as long as the scooter is actually made for swappable batteries. Next to swapping the batteries, the swapper does a brief safety check, by ensuring there’s the helmet(s) and potentially cleans over some of the surfaces making the scooter presentable for the rider.

In larger sharing schemes, this is usually it for the swapper, as tasks can be strictly differentiated between different roles. If you happen to run a smaller sharing scheme with up to 150 scooters however, you might have further tasks such as intense clean-ups and minor repairs or relocations done by the same person.

Repairs & spare parts in case of accidents or failures

If a scooter had a major accident or stopped working, it needs to be diagnosed and taken into repair. When talking about repairs, you have to take one major decision: outsourcing vs. performing them yourselves. Both have advantages as well as disadvantages.

While outsourcing repairs to an external service garage can save you fixed cost in the first place, it might not get you the priority you need in order to get your scooter back onto the road as soon as possible. The external service partner will also have other customers to look out for. The upsides and downsides are very individual for your company and need to be evaluated looking at many aspects, two important ones being long-term strategic orientation and financing.

Independent of the decision to do it yourself or not, a separate, but equally important issue is the need for spare parts.

For inspiration, you can look at any motorcycle service centre, in order to gauge the amount of spare parts needed. However, it is worth pointing out that in comparison to an internal combustion engine, electric motors do not need as many spare parts as they are easier to maintain. Regardless of this difference, all relevant spare parts should still be kept in stock in order to bring the scooters back on to the streets as quickly as possible. Doing this brings us to the last section of this article: finding and relocating scooters.

Finding and relocating scooters: the supply-demand sweet spot

First of all, it is important to choose the location of your service centre wisely by weighing up the costs incurred in different scenarios. Essentially, it is a trade-off between the cost in transporting the scooter to and from the service centre and the fixed cost for renting the property. Other needs for relocation include dealing with the scooters in areas with little or no demand, usually a bit outside of the city centre. While gamification tactics like discounted rides may incentivise customers to naturally bring them back into high-demand-zones, it still sometimes happens that a scooter needs to be manually transported into a high-demand zone. This can either be done by someone driving a scooter themselves or with a truck in order to collect multiple scooters simultaneously. However, if the fleet management is taken care of successfully, this sort of laborious task would only need to be undertaken in exceptional circumstances.

As you can see, the operations of running a scooter sharing scheme are neither trivial nor rocket science. However, no matter how you approach it, it is a game of processes and process optimisation. Being very meticulous and precise about processes from the beginning will lead you to long-term success.

As always, we’re happy to keep the discussion going through any critiques or additions you may have, so please do not hesitate to get in touch. We believe our insights should be like the future of mobility: shared!

This article is published by unu. Find out more about what we offer by visiting share.unumotors.com