INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Anyone who has tried to ride an electric scooter knows the likelihood of finding one with a charged battery is quite low
Swiftmile, which just landed a contract with the city of Austin, supplies cities and private operators with docks equipped to park and
charge both scooters and e-bikes.
What Swiftmile offers serves as a win for operators, riders and cities alike
Operators can provide a better (charged) product to their customers, the likelihood of finding a charged scooter increases and cities can
better control sidewalk clutter and issues pertaining to improper parking
Unfortunately, the downside falls on those relying on charging scooters to make extra income.
When Swiftmile deploys in Austin, the plan is
to start with 10 stations, which comes out to about 80 parking slips
The company hopes to do this by the end of the year
Austin has become a major micromobility hub, with seven providers operating a total of 17,600 vehicles in the city
In fact, it become known as a place that many other cities look to for regulation.
&What we do with cities is we get permission from them,
we get an encroachment permit and then it up to us to monetize off the scooter providers,& Swiftmile co-founder and CEO Colin Roche told
&What we do is put our system down and, you can think of it like a gas station in the middle of where all the scooters are
You don&t want a lot of people having to drive in to pick all these scooters up
I think that going to diminish more
If the asset is in the field right there, then you incentivize a rider to ride to the station with credit.&
From there, Swiftmile charges
the operators by the minute, but not to exceed a certain amount, depending on the market
Initially, the docking system will be open to all operators in order to show them how it works and how beneficial it can be
After a certain period of time, Swiftmile will only charge its customers& scooters.
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&Here the key
&Our system is really intelligent, so we have the ability to detect whose scooter it is
When it gets plugged in, we pulse the system and it tells us what kind of scooter it is.&
That makes it so a rider could still park any
scooter there, but only Swiftmile customers will get their scooters charged.
In addition to Austin, Swiftmile has also launched a mobility
hub in Berlin, and plans to deploy more
On the operator side, Swiftmile has partnered with Spin to create branded charging hubs exclusively for Spin scooters
In the U.S., Swiftmile has deployed more than 50 stations
In Austin, however, the charging hubs are vehicle agnostic and will mark Swiftmile first public system.
The same will go for Pittsburgh,
where Swiftmile will deploy about 50 stations in early 2020
That all part of the Pittsburgh Micromobility Collective, which includes Spin, Zipcar, Ford Mobility, Waze and Swiftmile.
Swiftmile got its
start as a bike-share operator for private companies, including Tesla and Google
To date, the company has raised a little more than $5 million from Sinai Ventures, Verizon Ventures and others
Additionally, Swiftmile just received a term sheet for a $12 million Series A round.
*Verizon owns TechCrunch, but has no influence on our
coverage.
The uncertain future of shared electric scooters
