Electrified ultralight vehicles as a key element for door-to-door solutions in urban areas

Abstract

Finding sustainable and adaptive urban transportation solutions has the potential to shape the quality of life in cities. However, one major challenge involves reducing motorised private transportation in urban areas, which is largely responsible for noise and air pollution as well as increasingly long waiting times in congestion. To this end, innovative door-to-door solutions are essential to meet these challenges and offer incentives for alternatives to motorised private transportation. Electrified, ultralight, foldable scooters could offer a solution, as they could function as a practical connection between public transportation and the last mile. Particularly with regard to covering the last mile, e-scooters with the aforementioned characteristics represent a missing link for closing the mobility chain. Moreover, they serve as a climate- and health-friendly option for innovative mobility concepts in cities, since they are-compared to most other vehicles-quiet and do not emit direct gaseous emissions. The conducted study provides an overview of various use cases for e-scooters. It summarises the conclusions drawn from fleet tests and presents the evaluation of traffic experts regarding e-scooters’ potential. The fleet tests and the expert evaluation revealed that e-scooters-like bicycles-represent an additional mode of transportation, but are not expected to become a mass phenomenon. Since June 2019, Germany has officially permitted e-scooters to use bicycle lanes or, in case these are not available, the road. This increasingly raises the question of equitable street and space distribution in metropolitan areas and represents an additional interdisciplinary field of research worth exploring.