“At least what we’re investing in cars,” remarked Sean Flood, founder of Today, a mobi-tech operating company focused on Europe and North America, and a former managing member of EFO Ventures, an investing company targeting early-stage startups in Ireland.
“Not just in the businesses, but the infrastructure,” said Flood, during a panel at Micromobility America 2023 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The micromobility industry, which includes shareable bikes and scooters, yes, but has been expanding to other “form factors” like electric cargo bikes outfitted as delivery vans, has been evolving across the last decade, and is poised to become a major player in urban mobility.
The sector is particularly attractive to cities wanting to reduce car congestion, greenhouse gases and re-imagine streets as more dynamic people-friendly spaces.
The maturity of micromobility — Flood liked to call today’s era “2.0” — is attracting more “smart money,” in other words, the kind of funding with a particular aim of addressing the climate crisis or smart cities.
“We’ve de-risked a lot of business models,” said Flood, adding, “it’s now smarter money.”
“And then you get all of these public moneys to then lay on top of that. So to me, it’s a wildly exciting time to invest,” he added.
Michigan, a state with a deep connection to the car industry, has been expanding its transportation focus to include significant public investment in transportation electrification, reaching beyond cars and trucking to maritime as well. The state is also poised to expand investment into micromobility, said Janine Ward, program manager for the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification in Michigan.
“There is a small percentage that is micromobility focused. And we need to change that. And we need to fix that,” said Ward.
“We really need to dispel [the myth that] that’s all we care about,” she added, referring to the auto industry.
And if cities really want to take the lead on developing shared micromobility as a serious urban transportation option, they need to pay for it — all of it, said Fredrik Hanell, impact ventures director of EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
“I do believe shared micromobility as a public transport makes a lot of sense,” said Hanell, in some of his comments on the panel, stressing micromobility should be publicly funded and regulated. “If we can make governments and cities actually take local responsibility of it, that’s when it works.”
