Startups in the transports industry: the new models for passenger transportation

The transports industry is one of the 10 tractor axles of the Spain’s Strategy Entrepreneur Nation of the Spanish Government: “The transports industry affects directly or indirectly the vast majority of the citizenship. From the personal vehicle to the urban and interurban transports, the freight transport and delivery, logistics and infrastructures, the field is facing great changes in economic, social, environmental and public health matters—areas covered in the Secure Mobility, Sustainable and Connected Strategy-. It is a field with a wide range of posible enhancement in the technical and normative fields, and citizen and consumer habits, and its impact does not stick to these spheres, but it makes a direct impact in urbanism and territory framing”.

In the Spain’s Strategy Entrepreneur Nation of the Spanish Government, the transports industry is an entrepeneur field with many opportunities for innovation. “In regards to logistics and freight transport and delivery, there are great opportunities for innovation in fronts, such as the use of autonomous and electric vehicles, the automatization of processes through robotics, and through the analysis and use of great data volumes to enhance the load management and promote the efficiency in the use of fuel and in the amount of trips and their routes; the use of blockchain to increase the freight traceability, the use of drones for certain light-weight deliveries, and the seeking of delivery efficiency through intelligence applied to the routes and the delivery schedules, as well as the increasingly popular use of automated terminals for package shipping and collection”.

Some lines of innovation in this industry—some of them already developing-are the popularization of the electric engines and the technologies related to smart cities, such as the implementation of the internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data and the aforementioned 5G to the urban transports field, as well as new infrastructures, such as the supersonic railroad or vacuum interrupter trains.

Regarding the actors, some of the ones called for action in the transformation of this industry in Spain are the platforms that transform the mobility within the cities. Among the many examples, we find platforms to share a car ride with otherpeople, the renting of cars with driver (or VTC), the renting of cars for minutes, the renting of motorcycles, or even platforms to rent light electric vehicles, such as bicycles, scooters, and others“.  

Mobility as a service (MaaS)

 The solutions that are actually on top of the mobility market have presented global challenges. More specifically, the mass car owning has led to the traffic congestión, the lack of parking spaces and of sustainability.          

There have been presented mobility solutions powered by technological progress to cover these problems through a more efficient and sustainable use of resources. However, the broad range of offers has led to a disperse mobility market, and the oversight is hard to understand for the travellers.

The platforms that offer mobility as a service (MaaS) have as an objective to cover this problem by integrating all mobility services within a single platform. Nevertheless, MaaS providers (operators) struggle to find sustainable commercial models. What is more, the research on vehicle sharing and mobility commercial models is limited, and there is lack of monitoring in the commercial model disperse picture.

Bike-sharing: the current bike-sharing solutions are considered 4th generation, and are characterised by the integration of advanced information systems and by the integration within other transport forms. There can be identified four main means of functioning of the modern shared bicycles: two-way station based (2WSB), one-way station based (1WSB), point-to-point (P2P) or free floating (FF). Each mode has its own key features, and the preferred operating mode is different depending on the place in the world. For example, the 2WSB system is mainly operated by public transports providers, and serves as a last-mile solution for their public transport network.

Alternatively, private companies operate mainly within the 1WSB system in Europe, while the nonprofit organizations operate mainly in the North-american equivalents. Despite the P2P bike sharing market is relatively small and is focused on market niches, the popularity of FF bike sharing systems has significantly increased in the last few years. The big companies with meaningful investments and with the objective of capitalizing in the market are characterised by the FF shared bike system. This system is growing fast, particularly in less-regulated áreas, such as South-east Asia. Taking into account all of the rapid expansión strategies, the significant investments and the low prices, the shared bike providers are supposed to be trying to get the largest market participation that is possible, and they will focus on monetizing the business further on. The ultimate goal of bike sharing is to expand and integrate cycling in the transports system, so that it can become a daily means of transport.

Scooter-sharing: scooter sharing is a means of shared mobility already introduced in 2012. The market studies indicate that the number of shared scooters reached the number of 104,000 in 2020 with more tan 8.7 million users. Moreover, the amount of operators is increasing rapidly, and it is expected that this evolution will keep on growing. Almost all operators are embracing the FF (free-floating) model for scooter-sharing. In spite of the fact that the operators offer a similar or identical service, we can spot certain tendencias in the market. For instance, the operators are testing innovative income models and are covering security problems with new measures. Furthermore, the operators are becoming more and more multimodal.

This tendency supports the scooter-sharing operators’ strategy to expand rapidly and get a large market participation. Because of this strategy, major investments are required to fund the growth, while the scooter-sharing operators currrently operate at a loss. The market is growing, and thus the government agencies recently started to pay more attention to shared-scooter service regulation to promote the advantages and avoid scams.

Car-sharing: just like the shared use of bicycles, car-sharing has advanced since the mid-twentieth century, driven mainly by the technological progress ever since. Nowadays, the operating systems can be classified into three main categories: station-based (SB), free-floating (FF), and peer-to-peer (P2P). The SB system is a more advanced version of traditional car-renting: the cars are located around urban áreas in designated parking spaces where the customers can pick and leave the vehicle. The FF system basically works the same way, with the sole difference that the vehicles do not have a designated parking space, but they can be parked anywhere in a service area. Differently to other car-sharing methods, the P2P works as a two-side platform where the car owners are the providers and the travellers are the customers.

The shared vehicles market is growing and several actors, such as car manufacturers and traditional car hirers are entering the market. The studies that have researched on the potential benefits of car-sharing highlight the environmental and social benefits that derive from this type of initiative. Just like bike-sharing and scooter-sharing, car-sharing is not meant to be a profitable business yet. The car-sharing operators struggle to acquire a customer base large enough to reach the shared vehicle use rate required to operate with benefits. Additionally, it is a highly capital intensive business and the operations are complex. To reduce operation costs, the operators are participating in different strategic associations. The examples include associations with car manufacturers, local governments and the travellers themselves.

E-hailing: E-hailing is a taxi service that connects drivers and customers through a mobile app. The introduction of e-hailing in 2009 has radically revolutionized the taxi market. Its business model based on a platform allowed a rapid expansion through the world, which caused conventional taxi server operatos and regulatory bodies’ responses. As problems get solved, e-hailing is expected to become the dominant system in the taxi industry. In comparison with traditional taxi services, the main competitive advantage of platform-based taxi services is that they are 1) better adapted to the fluctuating demand due to flexible Manpower, 2) cheaper teams, 3) faster and more economical service, and 4) the service optimization with algorythms is more efficient than the handmade. Moreover, two new types of e-hailing platform were found: private platforms that only offer their services (for instance, Uber), and integrating platforms that include several taxi service providers within a single platform (e.g. Cabify).

MaaS Providers: the role of MaaS in the mobility market has been identified using five different MaaS stages with different levels of integrated services. These stages go from Stage 0, where MaaS does not exist and the mobility operators provide their service in separate groups, until Stage 4, which integrates multiple arrangements, complementary services, service offers and social objectives. The main advantage for travellers is that MaaS can provide a smooth travel experience that inherits social benefits like reduced transport costs, less car ownership, less congestión and a more efficient use of resources. MaaS has two main advantages for mobility operators: 1) additional exposure to customers, and 2) greatest attraction in comparison to operating as a single service. Moreover, in the more advanced MaaS stages, mobility operators potentially benefit from a minor operating complexity and a major economic viability.

Despite the potential of MaaS, there are still many challenges to overcome. One of the main difficulties that MaaS is facing is to find a viable business model. At present, two main comercial models for MaaS can be distinguished: the re-selling and the integrating models. The re-sellers (Stage 1 and 2) operate as mobility markets, since they add information and re-sell services, while the integrating ones (Stage 3 and 4) group services of different providers and offer the trip as a single product for the customer. The main sources of income are the brokerage and traveller membership taxes for re-seller and integrating operators. The ultimate goal of the MaaS development is to reach Stage 4, offering mobility as social objectives are met. 

 Translated by Andrea Expósito Santana