Micromobility the up and coming urban transport

Increasing urbanisation is seeing the rise of micromobility transport forms such as electric scooters and e-bikes.

And an expert in the field who coined the “micromobility” term, Horace Dediu of Finland, told the Intelligent Transport Systems New Zealand (ITS NZ) T-Tech19 two-day conference in Christchurch that micro vehicles (less than 500kg) will in five years have a trillion rides and be used by 10-15% of the population as their primary transport mode.

Dediu, a world-renowned business analyst and Micromobility Industries chief executive officer, is committed to researching and finding alternative modes of transportation.

The T-Tech event saw Dediu in New Zealand for the first time to speak about what micromobility means in a transformative global setting.

Dediu says in developing countries about 80% of people live in urban areas, but by 2021 he expects most countries will be urbanised.

The United Nations predicts the world’s urban population will go from 4.7 billion today to almost seven billion.

“The problem we have is these billions of people will all be needing transportation,” says Dediu.

“If they were to rely on today’s transport means, then we would need another billion cars.”

Dediu says almost 80% of urban people are motorised, and the growing urban population means we would need to double the global fleet.

“We don’t have the land for them to ride on or be parked on,” Dediu says. “The cost of housing cars are hundreds of trillions of dollars. What’s the alternative?”

Dediu finds the most common distance travelled in an Uber in the US is less than 8.04km.

“Why do we use cars to make these trips?” Dediu says. “Uber says 47% to 50% of Uber’s trips are below 4.8km.”

Micromobility allows people to hire the product for the distance that makes sense, he says.

“We will see new emerging spaces for micromobility as forms of social interaction and behaviour change.”

Dediu says he anticipates autonomous micromobility in the future.

Safety is a concern but just another challenge that can be addressed through business ideas, he says.

“Helmets will be intelligent and fashionable.”