Shared mobility is one of the most resilient solutions to the problems posed by the future in transportation. However, it’s not one of the easiest to navigate. Multiple modes, changing user behavior and emerging technology making yesterday’s innovative solutions dated all of which still are hyper-local in application. As movmi we have been involved in almost every aspect of shared mobility from public transit to carsharing to micromobility. One of the key factors for a successful shared mobility project is the collaboration between all stakeholders. More often than not, technology companies are one of them.
movmi’s partner network taps into experts from across geographies in the fields of IoT, software, artificial intelligence and machine learning, training, EV tech and operational support towards creating accessible, affordable and sustainable mobility options for our cities.
In our #PartnerSpotlight series, we thought of sharing what we have learnt so far about our partners and how they see their solutions solving today’s transportation challenges. This month we got a great technology mix including KUHMUTE – micromobility charging solution, DOWNTOWN.AI – data analytics to predict mobility patterns and TAPKEY – access control as a service.
Keep reading to learn more about each of these companies in movmi’s Partner Network.
Partner Spotlight with Kuhmute, Downtown.AI and Tapkey
KUHMUTE
What’s KUHMUTE? Where does it fit in the urban mobility space?
KUHMUTE is a Flint, MI manufacturer of the universal charging network for micromobility. Our charging hub technology allows for an agnostic & multimodal approach for parking and charging both shared and owned Micromobility. The KUHMUTE vehicle adapter, that is specifically designed for each model of micro EV we support, enables access to our charging network as well as locking through an integrated cable lock & IoT tracking of the vehicle. We partner with rider apps/fleet management software providers to have our network within a rider app for a shared fleet, and handle owned vehicles in our own KUHMUTE charge platform (mobile app coming soon). This platform also serves those who own a hub by allowing them to share access with technicians as well as set per minute rates that owned vehicles pay to the hub owner when parking + charging.
How can a shared mobility operator leverage KUHMUTE to improve their operations and financials?
Our charging hubs lower OPEX costs by charging the scooter/ebike out in the field, rather than relying on others to bring them home or to a warehouse to charge. A scooter on the road means continued revenue generation, and longer life span as you no longer throw it in the back of a truck and/or van during rebalancing. You also now reduce road congestion with on-street parking vs sending a human team to retrieve the vehicle. A win-win!
How does your solution help overcome typical regulatory requirements for micromobility in cities?
We solve regulatory hurdles by selling our infrastructure directly to the location, rather than the operator. This way the city, private property, campus or others buy into the long term success, as well as define exactly where they would like micromobility to park when not in use. This makes cities happy with more organization, and keeps operators happy with on-time reliably charged vehicles.
Downtown.AI
How does Downtown.AI help the mobility space?
Downtown.AI enables mobility planners and operators to accurately forecast the human movement in cities. By doing so, we enable our clients to accurately predict mobility demand, optimize capital placement and generate more revenue. Downtown.AI uses Machine Learning and anonymized mobile location big data, aggregated from over 500 million devices around the world. We integrate the mobile data with additional data sets like weather, census data, events and more. We use our machine learning algorithms to identify past, current, and future human movement patterns. Using a real time cloud Interface and with no hardware installations, our clients can Immediately and constantly, generate analytics, traffic maps and forecasts that otherwise wouldn’t be possible, or would take months of hard work to generate. With the click of a button our clients generate traffic insights for desired geographic areas (in more than 80 countries), specific modes of transportation, or demographics.
How does the Downtown.AI platform work?
We assist mobility ventures to Identify best cities or neighbourhoods to launch or expand to. Especially in a cold start situation. We identify the real world commute patterns and concentration of their targeted crowd in several cities they consider. For example – an electric scooter service interests people with no private cars who commute short distances several times a day. We run a query through our historic data (in most countries the last 3 or 4 years) to identify VKT and commute patterns, and generate concentration maps and statistics that assist to get a decision which city is preferred, how many units to allocate, where to locate home zones, secure parking permits and so on. At the operation stage we assist clients to predict hour by hour customer demand. Our platform helps plan better, data-driven vehicle rebalancing which thereby has a huge impact on cost savings.
Can’t talk about data without addressing privacy and security. How does Downtown.AI address data-privacy?
Some of our clients are cities, MoTs / DoTS, university campuses and public transportation services. We assist them to understand current traffic to optimize operations (e.g. optimize scheduling of buses and trains) and planning, by understanding the impact of past investments and predict future capital placement. We generate our mobile location data from users who clearly provided their consent to use their anonymized location. By doing so we adhere to the toughest privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. We use a wide panel of mobile apps to assure statistical conclusion validity. We then aggregate the data and provide our client with insights of the movement of crowds, never on the movement of individuals. Our real lime analytics dashboard enables clients to run fast queries on billions of data points and generate immediately accurate maps and statistics on the past, current and future multi modal traffic patterns.
TAPKEY
‘Access’-as-a-Feature sounds fairly universal in its application. How does TAPKEY help shared mobility?
Tapkey is an open platform for mobile access control. It offers an API, Mobile and Lock SDK for app providers and hardware manufacturers to easily integrate mobile access control into their products. The offering is the need today for enterprises operating in B2B spaces in select industry verticals, such as bike or car sharing, who are evaluating to leverage digital access into new revenue streams. By offering Access-as-a-Feature, Tapkey enables sharing platforms to complement their services with immediate keyless access to vehicles and offer an outstanding smart mobility aftermarket solution. WITTE, one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers for vehicle locking systems, integrated the Tapkey access software into their car sharing box and their Flinkey app. It’s a plug-and-play solution for distributed, keyless car access.
What could these operational leverages be? And how are they monetized?
The idea behind the integration model is offering mobile access as an additional feature. That enables integrators to offer a holistic solution to their end customers with the best user experience. Besides booking, payment and other functionalities, the end customer is able to instantly unlock the vehicle as well—all within one app. This way, shared mobility providers can identify who is using the vehicle, ensuring that only riders who have paid for the service are able to unlock and operate them. Additionally, solution providers are able to sell complimentary services to existing customers and create new recurring revenue business. This is especially interesting for car sharing, bike sharing or fleet management platforms. For example, a fee may be charged to activate the “access” feature. With such instant access capabilities, companies can also enable third-party services that complement their own offering. Service providers may be granted access to the vehicles, e.g. trunk delivery by logistics firms.
How has TAPKEY evolved reliability in (shared mobility) access control?
In the past, sharing vehicles required a physical handover of keys, which is time-consuming and inconvenient. With mobile access control, vehicles, bicycles or scooters can be shared among several users without having to hand over a physical key on-site. Instead, digital keys can be issued automatically. A digital key increases flexibility, especially for multiple authorised drivers at independent locations. It’s the convenience that end customers love. All you need is a smartphone. No other medium such as an NFC tag or card is required. Ideal when considering how close many people keep their smartphones. This makes the otherwise neglected ‘unlocking’ experience reliable and more user-friendly.
Want to know more about movmi’s partner network program? Check our our partner page here or get in touch with us.
