Day: April 16, 2018

In the last five years, Lyft, Uber, OLA and many other bikesharing services–Citibike, LimeBike, Mobike, Motivate, Spin, Ofo and many others–have given city dwellers several options to move around the city. It is not just metropolises that benefit from ridesharing, according to a report from Shared-Use Mobility Center. Small cities also gain advantages like linking up nearby cities, helping low-income neighbors and alleviating congestions and pollution as it significantly cuts down car ownership.

The city of Hangzhou, China, for instance, has the world’s largest bikeshare program and no other bike share comes close to its estimated 66,500 to 78,000 bikes dispersed in 2,700 stations. Other places that have a huge bikeshare programs are Spain, France, Canada and other parts of China.

According to experts, both schemes became two of the most used and innovative services around the globe, which is why combining them would allow the industry of shared mobility to create a bold impact not just on businesses but on how people are able to cost effectively navigate cities.

Two companies that are leading the way in linking the popular systems are Uber and Lyft.

Uber is a well-known company that has a mobile and web-based application. It lets people explore, locate, and book cabs. Uber caters a peer-to-peer ridesharing system.

In a recent report, Uber is going to partner up with a startup company called JUMP in order to launch a bikesharing service. The joint venture will see 250 electric bikes to roam around the streets of San Francisco. These e-bikes do not require any docking stations.

A rider will get the chance to book an Uber Bike using the company’s very own application. Users who wish to ride the e-bikes must proceed to the exact location of the bicycles.

Ryan Rzepecki, the CEO of JUMP, said, “This partnership is a great way to get a much larger audience on bikes and help them understand their transportation options. Our ultimate goal is to better connect all the neighborhoods within San Francisco and provide affordable, greener transportation.”

The Head of Transportation Policy and Research of Uber, Andrew Salzberg believed that they made a wise decision of connecting with JUMP, especially now that the startup bikesharing company has locked in $10 million for its service.

Another corporation that wants to innovate the industry of shared mobility is Lyft. The California-based transportation network company is famous for allowing people to share rides with their family and peers, but it is now gearing up for a bigger role.

Just like Uber, Lyft is going to collaborate with a bicycle sharing system called Baltimore Bike Share. They will present bike sharing hubs and hybrid pickup points throughout the city of Maryland.

The purpose of the partnership is to give commuters a free will to switch transportation methods. It is also expected that the applications of both Lyft and Baltimore bikeshare will be unified.

In a statement by Mike Heslin, the Market Manager at Lyft Baltimore, “Whether someone is taking a Lyft ride from the suburbs to the city and hopping on a bike around downtown, or taking a bike to one of these hubs and meeting a Lyft driver for a trip to the other side of town, the multimodal transportation future is very bright for Baltimore.”

The following are other ridesharing companies joining forces with bikesharing firms:

Ola – Ola is a ridesharing company in Bengaluru, Karnataka that has a mobile and web-based application, allowing users to search and book for cab rides. Bhavish Aggarwal is the Co-Founder and CEO of the company. It was established in 2011 and now has a projected revenue of $150 million.

The ridesharing startup ventured into the world of bikesharing and developed the service called Ola Pedal.

Grab – Headed by Anthony Tan, the renowned Singapore-based company also has a mobile and web-based application that lets people search and book for cab rides. The startup company has a projected revenue of $222.5 million.

Grab has recently invested in a bikesharing company called oBike.

A Medium That Bridges The Gap

The partnership among the companies in the shared mobility industry would not be able to make a connection without their respective applications. These applications are very important to the services of both ridesharing and biking, which is why an innovative application that features all ridesharing and bikesharing companies, might come in handy.

Whipster is one of the newest third-party application that is going to level the playing field for all the transportation services. Russel Olinger, the Founder, and CEO of Whipster said the application has the ability to compare prices and rates for shared mobility such as bikeshares and rideshares across 400 cities in North America.

He added that “The bold idea behind Whipster is to bring consumer services to the rideshare industry, to be able to compare rideshares like a hotel, an airline, or a car rental services like in Expedia or Trivago, and bring that to the consumer. The idea is that the rideshare industry is young and growing. Several years ago, there were just two vendors – Uber and Lyft, but today there are 41 vendors in the industry. That kind of growth in the ride share is going to demand aggregation for consumers so they are able to price and compare their options just like you would an airline industry.”

The third-party application could be like the commuter’s one stop shop for booking either a rideshare or a bikeshare.

GoA2B is also an all-in-one application that caters the growing industry of ridesharing. The newly developed application has the ability to compare the ride prices and monitors the driver’s ETA. It gathers the information from well-known ride providers such as Lyft, Gett, Fasten, Uber and many more.

Another one is RideGuru, a Massachusetts-based company that is becoming famous for a lot of people who want a ride-sharing, ride-hailing, or a limousine service. It also has a comparison tool for prices.

With innovation and technology just around the corner, people are now starting to see ridesharing companies collaborating with bikesharing firms. This act will surely disrupt the society’s way of living and it will bring the industry of shared mobility to its prime.

 

 

The automobile industry is going through drastic changes, with countless bold ideas disrupting it every day. Since time immemorial, big names like Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, and Maserati all have their own lines of astonishing engines and in many cases, it is these engines that encouraged car enthusiasts to pick a certain brand.

However, electric motors will likely not be made by these same car manufacturers. So, what will define the brands in the future? Will any consumer really care who is manufacturing the electric motor like they do the combustible engine?

Ciao, Combustible!

Countries like India, the United Kingdom, Norway, and France are just a few countries that already decided on getting rid of gas and diesel cars in favor of vehicles using clean energy. The UK, for example, is banning sales of new cars using gasoline or diesel starting in 2040, with a target of having zero emissions by 2050.

France is doing the same, ending sales of gasoline and diesel cars by 2040. India has a more challenging target, as they want all vehicles to be electric-powered by 2030. Norway is on a similar path, as all new passenger vehicles sold starting 2025 are zero-emission. They have been leading the electric motor disruption – 40% of cars sold last year in Norway were either electric or hybrid vehicles.

At least 10 other countries are already going through similar changes, based on data released by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

There are already official targets for electric car sales for Austria, China, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. While the United States does not have a federal policy in place yet, there are at least eight states forging their own goals.

Interestingly, China is the largest electric car market. They have more cars than any other country in the world, and today account for over 40% of electric cars. According to additional information from the IEA, China has more than double the number of electric cars sold compared to that of the US.

What are the advantages of an electric motor?

In 2017, a Tesla Model S P100 went from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 2.27 seconds, the first time a production car tested by Motor Trend has ever cracked the 2.3 second mark—and faster than super cars with price tags nearly eight times higher. This pushed the Tesla ahead of the 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S, which was previously the quickest vehicle.

It also should be noted that the Tesla had a base price of $135,700 ahead of the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder, which have base prices of $1.5M and $845K respectively.

So how does a heavy passenger sedan capable of seating seven people blow away all but the most exotic of modern sports cars? As long as an electric motor is turning, it’s producing all of the torque it can. That means electric cars generally accelerate away from a stop more quickly than comparable gasoline cars, which have to rev up to reach their power curves.

This also means electric cars don’t need multi-gear transmissions, because all of the power is available all of the time. This makes for greater efficiency, because transmissions act as a drag on the drivetrain, etc.. However, gas engines do still perform better at very high speeds.

What Does It Mean for Engine Makers?

For years, combustion engines ruled, defining vehicle brands as what they are today. People, especially car lovers, covet certain brands of vehicles based on what is under the hood. Most automakers own the engines their cars use, for good reason.

Chrysler’s Dodge has the Hemi and Viper engines, Porsche has the eponymous Porsche engines, Ferrari has their own engines including the Ferrari-Maserati family of petrol engines they coproduced with Maserati, BMW created its “Ultimate Driving Machine,” the classic Ford Mustang has its own engines as well, just to name a few.

Just think about it: what if a Lamborghini ran using a Honda engine? Or what if a BMW used a Toyota engine? Most likely, they’ll work, but not as well as they were envisioned to. But now, with many countries taking the bold step of switching to electric (or at least, hybrid), what does this mean for the automobile industry?

The electric engine will most likely be made by original manufacturers (also known as original equipment manufacturers or OEMs). Regardless of their power source, these OEM’d electric engines will most likely have similar performance compared to their combustible counterparts.

So, if what’s under the hood is no longer the defining element of a vehicle, what then? Do car manufacturers focus more on the interiors and the exterior designs? Do they switch from manufacturers to mobility providers? And if so, it can create a bold impact for car lovers everywhere – the transition from gas to electricity means a reevaluation of what to love or look forward to in a car.

For instance, certain people who love cars also love the sound a vehicle makes when it runs on a combustible engine. The whirr is a great and necessary noise for these people, and many would agree that an engine that’s too quiet isn’t really attractive (in the same way harsh noises turn them off).

Brett Smith, an assistant director of manufacturing, engineering, and technology at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), has a theory about it. “It’s no longer sound or the [makeup of the] valve train,” he said. “It’s a very different principle,” Smith continued, saying that instead of the physical engine, an electric system’s software is the new area automakers can focus on to define a vehicle’s uniqueness and character.

Although majority of electric cars are sold in only 10 countries today (Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands the UK, the US, and Sweden), it may take a while but the road to electric is clear and the Bold Impact of this technology is just starting to unfold.