Feb 11, 2022

Reading Time: 4 minutes Wunder Mobility was launched back in 2014 as the first European ride-hailing service in Germany. However, it soon changed its business model. Instead of facilitating rides, it now builds the technology to enable vehicle sharing. Specifically, it provides mobility operators, whether start-ups, enterprises, or cities, with the software to monitor, manage, and finance shared vehicle fleets of all kinds. “Our solution is complemented by a catalogue of IoT-connected hardware that we build in partnership with leading manufacturers,” says Gunnar Froh, Wunder Mobility’s Founder and CEO. On this week’s Mobility Moments, Froh discusses changing mobility business models, and a new partnership with the UK’s HumanForest. How fast is Wunder Mobility growing? We want to accelerate the global transition to sustainable mobility by helping our customers to launch and scale new mobility solutions. We’re proud to be active in 900 cities with over 50k vehicles on our platform. In 2021, we grew the number of vehicles hosted on our platform by about 60% and we expect that number to grow 10X in the next five years. How has shared mobility bounced back from the pandemic? Private transportation has always been the preferred means of mobility for many people around the world. This trend remains unbroken today, even though shared modes of transport have steadily gained market share. The pandemic has actually accelerated the adoption and increased uptake of city shared mobility services. People have looked for a safe way to travel with the desire to keep some social distance, which has had a more adverse impact on public transportation and ride-hailing services. Users increasingly opted for individual means of transport rather than taking the bus or train. Vehicle-sharing is booming with the arrival of new and better vehicles and more flexible business models. This combined with a larger and more engaged consumer base, many of whom will have tried shared mobility services in the past two years, bodes well for the future. How are mobility business models changing? Shared mobility business models will evolve to offer more flexibility to consumers, and an easy transition and upsell into more premium and longer-term products. Consumers demand choice and flexibility but are willing to pay a premium for brand and convenience. Operators need to capture this premium to earn the margins that justify their capital investments as they move from driving revenue growth to driving profitability. The other, less scalable, way to do that is through public-private partnerships. It is increasingly evident that the boundaries between public transit and shared mobility are becoming blurred. Cities will set clearer targets and we might even see cities subsidise new mobility services as part of their public transport offering. Describe how Wunder Mobility helped HumanForest HumanForest made a strategic decision to choose our platform to launch shared micromobility in London. This makes sense for several reasons. Not only is it complex to build your own fleet management platform in-house or with an agency, but it is also a huge investment upfront which takes months or even years. For a new operator, deciding on the right software partner is one of the most critical decisions. HumanForest not only selected our software solution with no lead-time and no upfront investment, but also chose reliable and fully-integrated e-bikes and e-mopeds from our hardware portfolio. At every step of the way they have been supported by our highly experienced customer success team. What are your ambitions for 2022? We intend to be the clear category leader in software for vehicle sharing and we are aiming to grow the number of vehicles hosted on our platform by at least 60% this year. For our customers, we are the one-stop store for their mobility business. We not only provide the necessary software, the backbone of their operation, but also the required first-class hardware from a single source. Already this saves the operators a huge amount of work. Moreover, we develop our solution entirely in Germany with experts from nearly 40 nations and contractually guarantee our customers 99.99% availability, so their users never miss a ride and never miss any revenue. What our customers particularly value is the personal support from our Business and Technical Account Management Team. They are committed every day to helping our customers become even better and to using our features to optimise their daily operations and serve their customer’s needs in the best way. What will urban mobility look like by 2030? Consumers will have access to just the right vehicle for the occasion without any long-term commitment. All shared vehicles will be electrified and the bigger ones will be self-driving. The majority of trips will be on foot, mechanical bike or light-electric vehicles. Using a mix of public and private options, cities will spend less while providing greener, safer, and more affordable mobility than today by collecting and acting on data, and following clear policy goals. TAGS