‘Micromobility’ Will Rise Again, Even After Blow Dealt To Trend By Covid

Just as the “micromobility” movement was rising, with e-bikes proliferating and helmet-less urban denizens whizzing through downtowns on scooters, covid dealt the nascent phenomenon a stunning blow. Suddenly city offices were empty, streets were devoid of basically any kind of traffic, and fledgling micromobility providers were stressed to survive.

But Kersten Heineke, one of the world’s foremost students of micromobility, believes the pandemic actually changed this young industry for the good and that it still will be the transformative force in global transportation its pioneers envisioned a few years ago. He’s co-leader of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility at the consulting firm’s office in Frankfurt, Germany.

“The pandemic has done a great deal in shaping the future of micromobility, but in a positive sense,” Heineke told me. “Most of the markets see that when people start traveling again, they change their behavior to a certain extent. Public transit, not yet. Cars, a bit more. But the biggest winner is everything two- and three-wheeled, as indicated by the fact that it was basically impossible to buy a bike. “

Also, with improvements to micromobility and biking infrastructure, demand for shared scooters and e-bikes and other modes has started to pick up again. Growth levels of all of the companies in the space are back to pre-pandemic levels for sure.”

Over the several years before the pandemic, technologies including vehicle electrification, geolocation, the Internet of Things and lidar began nudging micromobility into more and more use cases as urban transportation evolved. The idea was that, within the next decade or so, networks of micromobile microvehicles – ranging from bicycles and e-scooters to mopeds, mini-cars and autonomous robot shuttle vans — could be crucially enmeshed in urban-transportation networks around the globe, carrying commuters, shoppers and travelers “the last mile” to their destinations.

Covid came along just as the industry was accelerating. In 2019, McKinsey consultants predicted that micromobility would comprise a $300-billion to $500-billion market by 2030. The number of journeys made on e-scooters in the United States, for instance, had more than doubled to 86 million in 2019 from the year before. Then the pandemic slashed travel worldwide, especially within and between major cities, crushing some fledgling micromobility providers. At the same time, the crisis in traditional transportation forced cities to adapt to help contain the virus; Milan, for instance, reacted by aggressively promoting the use of e-scooters and bicycles instead of mass transit.

So there’s been “big consolidation” among micromobility providers, Heineke said, “being driven by a couple of companies acquiring each other, a couple of companies reducing their footprint voluntarily by saying they’re opting out of either regulated or unregulated cities, and a couple of providers losing a bit of position in the market because they’re not winning as many tenders, and some cities are limiting the number of providers who can be part of a city tender.

The fate of big cities as commercial hubs — and, therefore, as magnets for micromobility — is still being sorted out as migration patterns that began during the pandemic continue to solidify. Heineke admitted that the covid-era hollowing out of urban cores and office centers in the U.S. and elsewhere, and the spread of remote work, creates a “key and open question” for the future of micromobility.

But, he said, “Unless there is a massive [long-term] move away from cities, or there are a lot of people who only go to the office once a week or so — and we haven’t seen indications that is the case yet – there won’t be a drastic change.” Heineke said that the role of governments will remain crucial in the further development of micromobility.

“Governments have and will continue to play a massive role in actively encouraging and propelling micromobility and also pushing people from other modes of transport into micromobility, and combining it with other modes,” he said. “City governments already have made extensive pushes to become more bike-friendly, and they’ll make it much more difficult to use a large-scale vehicle. There will be emissions-free zones and even car bans on certain days, and they can take away parking spots. And think about the integration of different modes. The fastest way to get from home in the surburbs to downtown would be to take an e-scooter to the subway station or train, which is much faster than a car, and then take another e-scooter for the last mile. For this to work, you would need a solution guaranteeing availability and price that would be integrated into the ticket.

All told, within a decade or so, Heineke foresees a fairly routinized micromobility infrastructure and functioning network within many cities. “Micromobility will see different form factors than today,” he said. “You’re still going to see something like an e-kick scooter or very short rides in warm-weather cities, or a ride where you need to go from A to B and take nothing with you.

“But on the other end of the spectrum, you’ll see something between an e-cargo bike and a car. It could be a mini-car or a bike that has some protective shell around it, and ultimately it will be the vehicle you could use in an urban environment for almost 100% of your mobility needs.

“It will go at a reasonable speed; it will protect you from the weather; you will be able to take something or someone with you. There are many concepts about what this type of vehicle might look like.” And, Heineke added, “There will be geographic diversity. The U.S. will have slightly larger vehicles on average than Europe and Asia. And you’re going to see micromobility much more dominant in urban and heavily populated environments than in rural areas.”