Ilya Sinelnikov leads our product and design teams to deliver the ultimate user experience through the design of our scooter, mobile app and internal tools. Originally from Moscow, Ilya and his wife moved to the United States in 2013. He’s been working at Superpedestrian since 2018. In this blog post, which is very different from our usual content, Ilya provides his perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how he (and we) can support Ukrainians.

A real-life nightmare

The title of this post “2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine” is a copy of a Wikipedia page created on the first day of the war. It’s a phrase I could only imagine to be true in my wildest nightmares. For more than a month, the Russian army following Supreme Commander Putin has been invading Ukraine and holds the blockade of Mariupol, destroying humanitarian convoys. Ukrainians are facing a shortage of food, water, and medicine.

I haven’t lived in Russia for the past 9 years, but it is my motherland. As a Russian, I understand my part of the responsibility for the current political situation. If Russia ended up starting a war and threatening a nuclear war to the whole world, it means we all didn’t do enough to prevent it.

I have mixed feelings now — fear, anger, despair, powerlessness, bitterness, and uncertainty about the future.

Growing up in Russia, summering in Ukraine

I grew up in Moscow in a typical post-Soviet environment that started with very limited resources in the nineties but then turned out to get better at the beginning of the 2000s despite the corruption on all levels — police, courts, universities, medical institutions, business — everything. Everyone was so used to it, so it seemed to me like the way the world works.

Every summer since I was 2 years old, my family spent the summer in Berdyansk, Ukraine. Many Russians went to Ukraine for the summer to meet friends and relatives and for its two seas, beaches, fruits, and sun. We stayed in a house a 3-minute walk away from the port.

A week ago, a Russian warship with tanks and ammunition onboard was destroyed and two other ships were damaged at the Berdyansk port.

Thanks to the new financial freedom of 2000s, I had some great career opportunities and founded my first startup when I was 21. I thought it was a natural way of things and didn’t care much about politics believing it didn’t really affect me. But, Putin’s rise to power and his third unconstitutional term and rigged election in 2012 made it clear that politics were more important than I’d thought.

Putin’s Russia

I’ve never supported Putin or voted for him as I thought a man from the KGB (Soviet Security Service) could never be the right choice for the country. But I believed he was a legitimate president elected by the majority.

Putin became president in 2000, quickly starting with the war in Chechnya and shutting down the biggest independent TV channel NTV. In 2004, Mikhail Khodorkovsky showed political ambitions and Putin immediately dropped him in prison for 10 years and nationalized his company (the biggest company in Russia).

In 2008, Putin invaded Georgia. For me and for many others, that was another warning sign that Putin was dangerous. Then starting from 2010, Putin started to push on opposition movements, civic activists, and the independent media. He started to kill independent journalists, human rights activists, political opponents — Anna Politkovskaya, Yury Shchekochikhin, Stanislav Markelov, Natalia Estimirova, Boris Nemtsov– and many more.

For the last 15 years, there were a lot of new repressive laws adopted in Russia: a ban on many websites with free information, a ban on children adoption by foreigners, a ban on LGBTQ propaganda, and more. In 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the annexation, adopting a resolution affirming the “territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”

Following that, Russia artificially created separatist movements in Eastern Ukraine. The separatists’ leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk are not natives to those regions. They were actively supported by Kremlin with one aim — destabilization of Ukraine.

I was one of many Russians who believed that through peaceful demonstrations we could force Putin to establish honest democratic elections and save the future of our country.

In February, 2012, more than 150,000 of us gathered in Bolotnaya Square protesting against rigged elections and unconstitutional third presidential term for Putin.

All our beliefs were dashed in the crackdown after the Bolotnaya Square case when 37 peaceful participants of the demonstration were arrested and sentenced to years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights issued numerous verdicts wherein it ruled that the case is politically motivated and recognized the defendants as prisoners of conscience.

As more and more people were protesting, Putin felt an increasing threat to the regime, so he continued arresting and sentencing activists and further destroying basic democratic institutions — independent media, independent court, independent election. He started to introduce more suppressive laws banning anyone and anything that disagreed with his governing ideology. Alexei Navalny, the leader of the opposition movement, was poisoned by the Security agency, spent 16 days in a coma, and then was thrown in jail when he bravely returned to Russia after a long health recovery in Germany.

Leaving Russia

After witnessing people suffering for simply speaking their views, seeing injustice, aggression, and propaganda it became increasingly clear to me that I have to leave. It was not an easy decision for me as I was leaving not only the country but my hometown, my parents, my friends, my colleagues.

In 2013 I arrived in Boston as a master’s student at Northeastern University. After graduation in 2015, I co-founded a startup in car rental sharing space, and after that I joined Superpedestrian in 2018. My wife and I also started our family here, and we are raising two beautiful children.

Now in 2022, I understand that I left the country when it was still safe to do so. But many Russians who continued to live in the country and who are against the war are in a much worse position now. People in Russia can’t protest, can’t share information, can’t even say the word war when talking about current events in Ukraine. And by new Russian law, if a person decides, for example, to share this post or any post about current events in Russia that does not support the Kremlin’s point of view, on social media Russian people risk being sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for misinformation and fake news.

But even today, when the regime is much more cruel to the opposition, people keep protesting and keep speaking out the truth. I want to express my respect to them as to brave men and women who keep fighting even under the threat of losing their job, freedom and sometimes life. This is a beautiful side of Russia which I hope the world can recognize and appreciate as I do.

#stopthewar

Unfortunately, the hard truth is that many people in Russia support the government’s aggression and it is not rare that in one family, one person may support the war while the other protests against it and gets caught by the police. The propaganda in Russia now is stronger than ever and some political scientists compare it to what was happening in Germany right before WWII.

I believe Russia can’t win this war even if Putin fully occupies Ukraine. The Ukrainian people proudly fight for their land and freedom and the entire independent world supports them.

I do not agree with the idea of “the collective guilt of all Russians” that I read and hear about a lot these days — one doesn’t choose where and when to be born, but one chooses his/her actions.

Right now is a time to speak out loudly. Above all, we can’t get used to the war. We must do all we can to call on Russia to immediately #stopthewar.

One way to support Ukrainians right now is to donate to the True Russia Fund, which helps Ukrainian refugees.

Superpedestrian is not the largest or the most recognizable micromobility company in the world. In fact, we’ve only been operating e-scooter fleets for about two years. So it took some by surprise when last week it was announced that we were among only a handful of transportation companies– and the only micromobility company– singled out by Fast Company to receive their prestigious “Most Innovative” award.

What makes us worthy?

Since folks are now asking, we thought we’d explain, in our own words, the three innovations that we think we’ve brought to the micromobility sector. (And to keep ourselves honest, we also present what we’re still working on.) But before we delve, first a little backstory about why we set out to change the micromobility sector in the first place.

Straight outta Cambridge

In 2017, we watched from our lab on Hamilton Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the early days of e-scooter sharing unfolded. What we saw was downright cringeworthy to our company rooted in urban planning and engineering. Scooters were literally catching on fire, and flimsy scooters with snapped-off necks littered sidewalks. Companies asking for forgiveness, not permission as they aggressively arrived in cities unannounced and often left just as abruptly.

So, we did what we do, and set out to create a smarter, stronger shared e-scooter from scratch. While other companies were using city streets as their testing ground, we were designing and redesigning, putting our prototype scooters through a litany of tests so intense the Boston Globe referred to our lab as a “torture chamber” for scooters. What we built looked like a scooter, but nothing like the scooters in cities at the time that could easily pass for toys. Add to that the onboard technology we’d spent eight years developing (we call it Vehicle Intelligence), and we were confident we had a shared vehicle that was truly fit for cities.

Feeling triumphant, we introduced our new scooter, which we called LINK, in a handful of US cities. But, rolling out in early 2020 soon felt less like a triumph and more like a jinx as cities entered COVID lockdowns. Leaders were not focused on micromobility, but on keeping people at home and healthy. It appeared that our big debut would fall flat.

Yet we pressed on, encouraged by what we were hearing from our new city partners: the scooter was a hit. It was, they said, clearly more stable, more safe and without the problems they saw on other models. Later that year, in September, we touched down in Europe. While other operators scaled back and laid off massive amounts of their staff in the face of COVID, we never stopped service, rolled out in new cities each month, and staffed up.

Now, two years later, we operate fleets in 60 cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Madrid and Stockholm. Yes, we have grown our business and attracted top investors like Citi and Sony. But even more than this, we have succeeded in setting a good example for the industry: proving the value of sustainable scooters over disposable ones; the value of full-time employment over gig labor; and the simple act of asking cities for permission first instead of begging for forgiveness later.

As we reflect on our two-year anniversary of operating shared fleets, we’ve done more than just set a good example; we have played a key role in fundamentally transforming how the industry, cities, and the transportation engineering and urban planning professions define best-practice micromobility.

1. Safety over domination

Prior to 2020, shared micromobility operators prioritized hyper growth above all else, routinely boasting about their intent to “dominate” urban transportation and “own all trips under five miles.” Then, we started proving the value of a different approach. As we arrived in city after city, we let our safety technology speak for itself at a number of in-person and virtual demonstrations.

After we beat several major incumbents to win a few highly coveted operating permits (including a big one in Seattle, Washington) leading operators began to change the description of their values, vehicles and product offerings in their public communications and permit applications to cities. Suddenly, safety was king.

Companies began talking more about reliable sidewalk geofencing, robust mechanical design, and safety monitoring and maintenance. While not all operators were actually delivering on this rhetoric, our impact was clear: safety was now trumping size as the main selling point to consumers and cities alike. Fast Company and Tech Crunch articles, for example, reported on this new ‘race to the top’ on safety.

Today, after millions of safe rides and millions of safe miles, our multi-year investment in safety R&D has given us the pole position in the safety race. At the heart of our safety technology is our patented Vehicle Intelligence system that autonomously identifies, fixes and flags tiny anomalies inside the scooter long before they become safety issues.

Raising industry safety standards results in more people and more cities enjoying the benefits of scooter life. By pushing competitors to build hardware and software that reduce incidents, crashes, and irresponsible behavior, we are fostering widespread trust and acceptance of the scooter industry. That’s real innovation.

2. Safety means safety for everybody

Preventing battery fires and vehicle malfunctions are only a fraction of our responsibility as a micromobilty company operating in the public realm. That’s why we invested millions in our new Pedestrian Defense platform that is proving a new standard in micromobility safety. More than bolster GPS to detect sidewalk boundaries, Pedestrian Defense uses this information to interact, in real time, with the rider and the scooter itself to prevent pedestrian conflicts. Moreover, the system detects and corrects a wider array of unsafe riding behavior, including wrong way riding and erratic riding associated with trick riding and intoxication. It also enables precision parking.

Just as Vehicle Intelligence keeps riders safe by preventing vehicle malfunctions, Pedestrian Defense keeps riders and pedestrians safe, and in so doing has already ushered in another key shift in the micromobilty industry.

The patented technology behind Pedestrian Defense combines several sources of real-time dynamic scooter data to reveal not just where a scooter is located with a high degree of accuracy, but also how it is being ridden. Sidewalk riding, wrong-way riding, dangerous swerving, stop sign violations and other unsafe behaviors are detected, then can be immediately corrected by slowing or safely stopping the scooter, as appropriate.

Through alerts and safety ratings, riders are given specific feedback that helps them understand how to ride more safely. What’s more, cities can access aggregated safety information to track overall safety progress, and inform geofence parameters, safety investments, and policy changes.

3. Deeds, Not Words, Matter to Cities

Is city cooperation and compliance really an “innovation”? Isn’t it obvious? You would think so. But the way we have approached our partnership with cities has indeed proven revolutionary in an industry that was a short time ago synonymous with brash, bad behavior.

In two years, 10 countries and 60 cities, we’ve:

• always begun service in close partnership with our city partners
• never been asked to leave a city
• not been censured or fined for being out of compliance.

How many shared e-scooter operators can claim that? We’ve shown that we can make cities and investors happy, showing that growth and compliance are not mutually exclusive. In fact it is precisely our good standing with cities that supported our recent $125 million series C funding round, which included the likes of Citi Impact Fund, Sony Innovation Fund and Antara Capital.

Long Overdue Innovations We are Still Working On

There are many best-practice micromobility lessons that have yet to be realized. One is how to standardize Life Cycle Analysis across our nascent industry, so that we can better and more accurately calculate and benchmark carbon. We are currently working with key industry and city partners on a new standard that will help ensure veracity, transparency and evolution as we move past carbon neutrality to climate positivity, removing much more C02 than we produce in the manufacturing and operation of our vehicle fleets.

Another vital work in progress is how to close the gender gap. Across the board, cities and operators are still trying to make micromobility services more attractive to underrepresented groups, particularly women, who surveys show are more likely to demand higher levels of safety, security and reliability before they embrace shared e-scooters and bicycles. You don’t have to be a daredevil to ride one of our scooters, which is progress. But we still have a long way to go, especially as we strive to play a more meaningful role in remaking streets so that they have high-quality, protected lanes, the presence of which has been shown to boost women’s bike ridership by 40%.

We won’t be resting on our laurels

The oldest shared micromobility companies are now five years old. While we’ve only been operating in cities for two years, we have been developing and refining shared vehicle safety technologies since 2013, the year we spun out of the Senseable Cities lab within the MIT Urban Planning Department. It is primarily this foundation of city understanding and engineering know-how that has enabled our expansion, and, more importantly, our impact on a still nascent micromobilty industry. As we pause to reflect on the innovations we have achieved– and those we are still working on– we remain grateful to the cities and local partners. Onward!

By Paul Steely White

London, San Francisco, New York City, Bremen and Auckland have all had highly publicized brushes with e-bike and/or e-scooter battery fires of late. While there is no evidence that battery fires occur any more frequently than old-fashioned internal combustion engine fires, all it takes is one bad incident to shake a city’s faith in micromobility. E-scooters are now banned from all public transport in London over recent e-scooter battery fires, and Scotland is considering a similar move. If battery fires continue, further restrictions are likely.

How can battery fires be prevented?

In the most fundamental way, engineering a safe battery system is similar to designing a safe street. The safest streets are those that are designed to account for the random things that can happen, so that when they do, the results are not catastrophic. Superpedestrian’s LINK e-scooter, for example, has three independent brakes — two mechanical and one electronic — just in case one fails. We design our battery systems with the same approach, with multiple layers of redundancy, to keep riders safe.

Superpedestrian’s approach to battery design and battery management software– unique in the sector– has been proven over tens of millions of trips across millions of miles. While battery fires aren’t what most riders are thinking about when they get on a scooter, cities should be asking shared e-scooter and e-bike operators what they are doing to protect riders. For anyone responsible for choosing the safest micromobility system, this is the most important question to ask a potential vehicle or service provider: What is your battery track record? How many fires have your vehicles experienced?

Why batteries deserve special attention

Cities view battery fires as serious public safety hazards for good reason. Lithium-ion batteries, now standard on all types of small electric vehicles, house highly flammable liquid electrolytes. When these fluids ignite by overheating or a short circuit, they can lead to major fires that are not just hard to extinguish, but also emit hydrofluoric acid and other toxins.

Before joining the Superpedestrian team in 2020, I thought occasional “thermal incidents’’ were just an unfortunate but unavoidable part of the micromobility business. But after an education from Superpedestrian’s lead electrical engineering team, I now understand that Superpedestrian’s unique approach to managing battery risk comes down to a few distinct things that we do differently compared to standard industry practice.

Patented Safety Systems and Battery Management

Superpedestrian holds over 40 unique patents, by far, the most patents of any other operator in the micromobility sector. About half of these pertain to Vehicle Intelligence, our one-of-a-kind system that performs autonomous management functions critical to battery safety.

Vehicle Intelligence enables our battery management to autonomously detect electrical anomalies that could lead to a safety issue down the road. It can also detect water ingress, which can lead to short circuits. While a scooter is on-trip, our unique operations system continuously tests over 100 battery-specific parameters. Then, Vehicle Intelligence can take the scooter out of service if it detects something abnormal around the battery and its casing.

Investment in Safe Design

Batteries are the most expensive — and potentially dangerous — component of an e-bike or e-scooter. At Superpedestrian, we realized that by designing our own, the battery would be safer with better quality components, all while costing just slightly more than industry-standard off-the-shelf options. What’s more, by designing in-house and directly overseeing the production we’re able to incorporate redundant layers of battery encasement to protect it from weather, vandalism and regular wear and tear.

Vision Zero for Batteries

Our approach to battery design is similar to how today’s leading urban planning and transportation engineers approach street design: design for safety first, taking human error into account. A well-designed battery, like a well-designed street, keeps people safe even in extreme conditions. This fail-safe approach, a hallmark of “Vision Zero” programs, has been a part of Superpedestrian’s DNA since our inception at MIT in 2013. And like safe streets, the most important criterion is performance: how well does a particular design actually perform in real world conditions?

Our track record speaks for itself. Our steadfast commitment to safety is why previously skeptical city officials are now embracing micromobility. With the recent additions in Nottingham, UK; the south of France; and Turkey Superpedestrian now operates fleets of LINK scooters in 60 cities and 10 countries. By the end of 2022, it’s my hope that we can earn the right to serve many more. And as we do, it will be because we truly put safety first.

To learn more about Superpedestrian’s unique approach to safety, and how it’s changing how cities embrace micromobility, please visit superpedestrian.com.

• “Zero is the only acceptable number of deaths on our highways, roads, and streets.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg released a nationwide plan to reduce and eventually eliminate traffic deaths. The goal is to reverse the alarming increase of U.S. traffic deaths, which disproportionately impacts BIPOC communities, as well as pedestrians and bicyclists.
• As with most things, women’s transportation needs differ from men. Women tend to travel less, for shorter trips, and involve children or others. Their perceived sense of safety plays into their mode choice. This Italian study analyzes the differences, concluding that micromobility providers must acknowledge and adjust services to address the gender gap to help more women feel comfortable on shared vehicles.
• The average human attention span is eight seconds. If you’re still reading this, congratulations! This is why Superpedestrian uses mobile microlearning to improve safety. Our text-based and in-app lessons chunk rider education into smaller units, which take five minutes or less to complete. This paper explains why interesting, short, and helpful education is so effective.
• What leads a person to try out a shared e-scooter? It may be that a scooter is in the right place at the right time, it’s a decent alternative to walking, or there’s enough for a pack of friends to explore. But underlying factors, such as gender, education level, and age also play a part. Learn about attitudes and externalities that inspire a person to try a scooter — or not.
• A favorite find from the annual TRB meeting is this poster analyzing near-misses for pedestrians, bicyclists, and e-scooter riders. Clearly, policies and infrastructure to keep riders safe is a priority. But a scooter with a brain can reduce near-misses, too. Pedestrian Defense detects and provides real-time correction, and indicates specific areas where unsafe behavior, such as hard braking or swerving, are common. This feedback can help cities identify and address potential trouble areas before they present more serious safety concerns. Look out for the published research paper at www.safestreetsresearch.com!

The City of Chicago’s 2021 pilot scooter program evaluation included a startling failure:

…scooter vendors committed to bringing sidewalk riding detection technology to demonstrate in the city. However, no vendors ultimately deployed this technology.

Now, with its pilot poised to become permanent, Chicago is putting potential operators to the test.

Finding a proven solution for big cities

It’s no surprise that big cities with high pedestrian traffic are leading the way in holding micromobility operators accountable for prioritizing pedestrian safety. What’s interesting is that big cities are also the most challenging setting to make sidewalk detection technology work due to the “urban canyon effect” of tall buildings blocking the GPS signals that scooters typically rely on to know their position.

In 2021, Superpedestrian unveiled a proprietary on-board safety platform called Pedestrian Defense. Unlike other sidewalk detection technologies that use small cameras retrofitted to the scooter, Pedestrian Defense is deeply integrated into the scooter itself. This deep integration enables not just the detection of sidewalk riding, but real time correction and prevention of sidewalk riding– slowing and bringing the scooter to a safe stop. Further distinguishing Pedestrian Defense is its ability to recognize and redress a much wider array of unsafe behaviors like aggressive swerving, hard braking, and riding the wrong way on a one-way street.

Proving Pedestrian Defense on Chicago streets

In December, Superpedestrian invited an audience of city officials and local elected and community leaders to join us in Chicago Loop for a demonstration of Pedestrian Defense. The Loop was chosen as an ideal proving ground because it poses the greatest challenges with skyscraper lined streets and dense pedestrian traffic.

Our test rider came up the street on our integrated Pedestrian Defense scooter and pulled up onto the sidewalk. As the scooter crossed onto the sidewalk, the LED indicator on the handlebar turned from green to flashing red, the scooter started beeping, and within a few feet the scooter automatically came to a stop. Our test rider demonstrated how the scooter would only become rideable again after walking the scooter back to the street.

Ben Segal, Superpedestrian’s Director of Research and Development was pleased with the demonstration, saying, “Not only did we prove that our scooter can detect if it crosses onto a sidewalk, but we proved that the system automatically does something about it, bringing the scooter to a slow stop in real time.”

Flexibility, Data-Driven Safety and The Street Ahead

Not all cities want strict enforcement. Some cities with lighter pedestrian volumes and underdeveloped bike lane networks merely want to slow scooters on the sidewalk, or to give riders a warning. Others are opting for a hybrid approach, asking for more stringent interventions in their downtown cores, with only rider alerts and education for outlying areas. The beauty of Pedestrian Defense is its ability to accommodate different urban contexts, providing solutions that match local conditions and politics.

Across cities, we’re finding a common interest in Pedestrian Defense’s ability to furnish data that improves rider education and infrastructure engineering. Our post-ride Safety Rating, for example, where riders receive specific feedback and custom incentives informed by their actual ride history, represents a huge improvement over generic safety messaging. We’ll also be able to see in the data areas on city streets where otherwise rule-abiding riders behave in ways that suggest the need for infrastructure improvements or street management. For example, we may detect a series of hard brakes or swerves at an intersection that would benefit from daylighting.

As Superpedestrian rolls out Pedestrian Defense to the first cohort of cities, we will announce more features that further aid efforts to improve the impact of rider education and engineering. Until then, all eyes are on enforcement capabilities as cities put the sector to the test. Is any operator capable of meeting the sidewalk challenge? For Superpedestrian, the answer is a resounding yes.

If you represent a city interested in learning more about Pedestrian Defense and how it can be deployed to further your safety and sustainability goals, please contact info@superpedestrian.com

By: Ross Ringham

Read more: Boston Globe, TechCrunch, The Telegraph, Silicon Republic, Webrazzi

More than a decade ago, Assaf Biderman had a vision — to create the world’s safest, smartest micro-electric vehicles. Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT in 2013 to make his dream a reality. Today, we’ve taken a giant leap forward.

“Over the past nine years, we have developed a unique software platform that addresses the core challenges of electric vehicle fleets,” says Assaf, founder and CEO of Superpedestrian.

Many of our patented technologies are well-documented. Among them is Vehicle Intelligence, our “onboard mechanic” that runs 1,000 vehicle health checks every second and autonomously adjusts vehicle performance to prevent component failures. We first revealed VI in 2013, and we’ve been improving it ever since.

We designed and built the LINK shared e-scooter around the brain that VI provided, taking two years to get it right. For LINK, we created the first onboard city map storage and geofence enforcement to improve consistency and speed of reaction. Our system allows us to store commands for no-go, go-slow and parking zones onboard every e-scooter, cutting reaction times from an industry average of 30s to just 0.7s.

These technologies are proven at scale, with our scooters operating safely in 57 cities in 10 countries.

But our mission to improve the safety, sustainability and efficiency of micro-electric vehicles is not over. Last summer we announced Pedestrian Defense, which solves the hurdle presented by the inherent inaccuracy of standard GPS. By combining hyper-accurate positioning with AI, we can understand exactly where a vehicle is and how it’s moving. Pedestrian Defense will allow us to counter a wide array of poor rider behavior, including — for the first time — ending sidewalk riding in real-time.

We have been testing Pedestrian Defense for the past few months and we are now ready to introduce the system to the world stage. We’re very pleased that our investors see the value of this work and have stepped up to help in the roll-out. The Sony Innovation Fund, Jefferies, Antara Capital and FM Capital have joined us, alongside existing backers such as Spark Capital, General Catalyst and Citi Ventures.

“From predictive-maintenance and repair automation, to fine-grain locationing and curb management, our platform is rich with advanced capabilities that enable safer and more reliable transportation solutions,” Assaf goes on. “With this latest funding round, we are boosting our investment in R&D and scaling up our deployments in micromobility and beyond.”

Talking Scooters Over Coffee

I arrived at my parent’s house on a bright December morning. They live around the block, so we see each other regularly. My mom is a retired reading teacher. She fills her days writing her first novel, spending time with her five grandchildren, socializing with friends, and organizing fundraising events and cultural outings. Carving out Teri Michaud’s time is essential.

I’d scheduled this interview to follow up on our recent field trip to Cambridge, MA. My mom was Superpedestrian’s first senior scooter model, and I wanted to debrief.

As we sat down over our second cups of coffee at the kitchen island, her shirt caught my eye.

“I got it at Goodwill, and it has a pattern of motorized scooters, and there are little helmets!” she laughed. “I wore it for you, but I’ve always been in love with two-wheeled transportation.”

Teri’s Early Love for Two-Wheels

Well before this active 65-year old rode a seated LINK scooter, she learned to bike with her brothers in suburban Connecticut. She’s explored every permutation of two-wheels since.

“Growing up, my brothers made mini-bikes, and I wanted to ride them. We rode through town together. We eventually graduated to off-road dirt bikes, which was a big part of our adolescence.” She says they always wore helmets. “Initially, I was the only girl, but I taught my girlfriends how to ride, how to fall properly, and how to get up.”

How does a teenage girl in the early 1970s get interested in this hobby? “We were from the poorer side of town. We were opportunists. Our parents didn’t have summer homes, but a friend’s father owned a big plot of land in Rhode Island, and we’d spend weekends camping and riding.”

I asked if she could recall how it felt back then, as her dog Shiloh sniffed around our feet. “I was really self-conscious riding as a young woman in the 1970s.” She occasionally commuted to college outside of Boston, as her motorbike was properly licensed and insured. Since she was a minor, her mom had to co-sign the paperwork.

“My mother was all for it. But I was her fourth teenager. She was a feminist, and in her eyes, this was one way I could be on the same level as my brothers.”

Superpedestrian Rolls Out a Seated Scooter

Even though she collects Social Security now, my mom’s no delicate flower. She rides a kick scooter with my and my sister’s kids about once a year, is a passenger on my dad’s Harley Davidson, and wants to fulfill her dream of owning a Vespa (turquoise, pink, or yellow are preferred). I tell her she sounds like a fun grandma. “I’m a way fun grandma!” she agrees, taking a sip of her coffee.

This may explain why she agreed to be a model for our photoshoot, displaying Superpedestrian’s new seated e-scooter. LINK scooters are robust little machines, built to withstand even the toughest roadways and accommodate a range of riders. Our team works hard to meet the needs of all, including those who are older, experience physical limitations, or simply prefer a seated ride for comfort. We proudly rolled out seated scooters in Baltimore, MD just last month, with more markets to follow.

A Cold Day in Cambridge

While sitting in her kitchen, I asked her to describe the experience, starting with her gut reaction to my modeling request. She doesn’t miss a beat. “Excited!”

Two weeks prior, we’d driven from West Hartford, CT to Superpedestrian Headquarters in Cambridge, MA. (My 8-year old daughter happened to be with us, home from school that day; it was a multi-generational outing). We met up with our Marketing Manager Andrew Hall and Senior Industrial Designer Horatio Han, as well as our photographer Ashley Herrick. My mom put on her helmet and gloves, and was ready to try out the seated scooter while Ashley snapped pictures.

“At first, the throttle felt a little fast. I tend to put my leg down to steady myself, from my motorcycle experience. I rode the seated scooter, but I would’ve liked to try the standard scooter. It was freezing! Otherwise I would’ve ridden that one, too.”

“Once I got the gist of it, I felt comfortable. The seat felt great. I didn’t think twice about it.”

We talked about scooter amenities. “I liked the basket. I always carry my bag, and I could fit it in there. Or I could go shopping and have a place to put my purchases. Well, small purchases.” She continued thinking of the utility of the basket, “I liked that my helmet fit inside.”

During our photoshoot, my mom had suggested that the basket have a finer grate, so items wouldn’t fall through. Horatio helpfully explained that each design balances intended and unintended uses. The widely-spaced wires prevent the basket from serving as a garbage can. “I get that”, my mom replied.

Lastly, we discussed her sense of safety, as a suburbanite riding in a city with narrow, active streets. “I liked the bike lanes, especially with the other riders on bikes and scooters. I’m a defensive rider, and I’m cautious about car doors opening. I felt safer where there were bike lanes that delineated us riders from the cars, trucks, and buses.”

But Don’t Go Too Slow

As we finish our coffee, I show her the digital photos. Would she ride again? “Yes. And I can envision some of my friends riding, especially with exposure and encouragement.” She also talked about taking scooters on a date night with my dad. They’d park the car and rent LINK scooters to explore Hartford. Perhaps she can help normalize e-scooters with her generation, I suggest.

However, she has a confession, and asks if it’s ok to say it on record. I encourage her. “The scooter had a bit of a fast start. I wasn’t white knuckling it, but it made me think — ” She pauses and raises her eyebrows, “Woah!”

I explain our Slow First Ride feature, which is active in select markets, including Hartford. This reduces the speed from 15 to 8 mph, for the first ride after a new user downloads the app. She likes it, but her adventurer spirit shines through. “But I wouldn’t want it to go too slow!”

By Paul Steely White

I love the micromobility sector. It’s full of bright, idealistic people excited to usher in a post-car world. At the same time, I see many scooter executives making the same wrong turns that car companies made, like marketing their vehicles as if they were race cars. We should be about safety and city-friendly mobility, not trying to be the next Ferrari.

Another pet peeve I have is when companies blame city governments for their own problems. At industry forums and conferences I have often overheard some version of this lament:

City departments of transportation care more about community complaints than they care about solving climate change. Instead of kowtowing to car-loving NIMBYs, city planners should build more bike lanes, put limits on car use, and allow companies to run larger fleets of shared e-scooters and bikes.

This criticism, most often lobbed at city DOTs, arose again a few weeks ago in my LinkedIn feed in the form of this comment from a micromobility executive: “Global warming is more important than a misparked scooter.”

To industry insiders struggling to make a profit in what has proven a hard business, this is a seductive narrative.

If we’re honest, however, we know that there are much more fundamental limitations on micromobility’s growth than city regulators. These constraints are entirely the industry’s problem, and they have to do with companies’ continuing failure to manage the high monetary and political costs of fleet operation.

The fact is that most city regulators would like nothing more than to grow micromobility. But, their hands are tied until industry develops the technologies to solve its high cost problem. Until then, shared micromobility services will continue to be a small and unprofitable piece of the overall transportation pie. That’s not to say that this is impossible — it’s actually quite possible, and Superpedestrian is leading the way.

Why Costs are Too High

The purchase and maintenance of the vehicles is by far the biggest cost of doing business. For shared scooter operators like Superpedestrian to cover depreciation, spare parts and labor, each scooter must perform an average minimum number of trips per vehicle per day (TVD).

TVD is the golden metric in this business. If your company holds a coveted operating permit in a dense, affluent, high population area like Paris or downtown Chicago where TVD is high, then you are probably making a profit. But if you are operating in a lower density town or neighborhood where each scooter is seeing only 1 TVD, then you are probably losing money.

(The economics for shared bikes and e-bikes, which typically get fewer rides but cost more than scooters to purchase and maintain, are even more daunting. This is why the leading bike share providers charge cities $100k or more per station plus ongoing operating subsidies for the privilege of their service.)

This inability to operate profitably in lower TVD areas is a big problem for an industry that sells itself as a first and last mile solution, because the first and last mile challenge is biggest in lower density neighborhoods.

A good chunk of the $.5 Trillion total addressable micromobility market will be earned in the Parises and Chicagos of the world. But most of it resides in 10,000+ moderately dense cities, towns, neighborhoods and suburbs. Not only are there more potential customers in these areas, but this is where we can do the most good, replacing car trips and emissions while saving households time and money. Less dense areas, however, are also where demand is well below the current TVD profitability threshold.

Thanks to patented internal systems that extend vehicle life, autonomously maintain the vehicle and prevent costly repairs, for Superpedestrian the minimum TVD we need to reach in a given city is significantly less than 1, but for most companies it is around 2 or more. This reality of urban geography and population is not going to change anytime soon. What can change, however, with the right technology and labor practices, is the cost of maintaining a fleet.

If shared micromobility is not capable of serving the whole city, but only the more affluent and denser areas, that is not just a business problem. It’s a political problem, and a moral one. Cities are right to demand that in exchange for operating in the public right of way, companies must serve the public. There is some evidence that companies are getting the message. In Chicago, after the city cited their failure to serve equity zones, operators began increasing their operations in low income areas. Whether or not this is economically sustainable in the long term remains to be seen.

Superpedestrian’s Approach

Here at Superpedestrian, we tackled the cost problem by developing new ways to autonomously protect the scooter’s internal systems, especially the electrical components that are most expensive, and most prone to failure. These patented technologies, which we call Vehicle Intelligence, dramatically lower our costs, enabling us to sustainably serve a much wider array of urban and suburban geographies.

Vehicle Intelligence, in giving us higher profit margins, also helps us lead the industry when it comes to non-gig labor practices; lasting, sustainable scooters; and our demonstrated commitment to invest in underserved areas. I believe that in doing so, we have already made a difference in shifting the micromobility industry’s priorities from growth-at-all-costs to safety and city compliance first.

As we, and I hope other companies successfully tackle these challenges, then we are in a much stronger position to begin shifting policy in partnership with the cities we serve. For one, we will have earned the trust of the city regulators and elected officials whom we seek to influence. More importantly, we will have the vital political support of a large and growing ridership that is truly representative of the cities we serve.

“What links us?” — our short film featuring LINK e-scooters — is not a typical micromobility commercial. Then again, Superpedestrian isn’t a typical micromobility company.

Oli Brotherhood had an unconventional entry to film-making: Minecraft tutorials.

Minecraft, launched in 2011, is a “sandbox” game, meaning players build their own virtual worlds and experiences. Oli began creating Minecraft tutorial videos the following year, at age 15, and posting them on YouTube. He now has some 8 million YouTube subscribers, and around 250,000 followers on Instagram.

As his Minecraft world expanded, game walkthroughs became Oli’s livelihood. This created the opportunity for the British gamer to explore other forms of film-making. “My heart has always been in working with moving images so, as my YouTube channel grew, I was able to invest more time into learning about lighting, cinematography, composition, camera equipment and other fundamentals of making films,” he explains.

Oli began making films about a range of subjects — a 70-year-old surfer, a Jui Jitsu practitioner, a ceramicist, a classic car restorer. “I realised quickly that I wanted to make films about people, about their lives and their stories,” he says.

Oli had earlier caught the attention of Superpedestrian’s Director of Communications (EMEA), Ross Ringham, who was executive producer for What links us?

“I’ve been following Oli’s work for quite some time,” Ross comments. “When we began scoping out this project — our first ever shared mobility commercial — we knew we wanted it to be centred around human stories, around people. We wanted to hone in on the lifestyle we aspire to help create — one that is kind to the planet, connects communities and opens up streets. And we wanted to create the sort of aesthetic that top European brands, such as Volvo, achieve.”

After setting out some key parameters, including the theme and total run time, Ross worked closely with Oli and producer Victoria Mantua to develop the storyline and aesthetic. Cinematography and color grading were carefully chosen to present a contemporary yet timeless look, and one that emphasises Superpedestrian’s commitment to quality.

“We chose a stylised natural look, one that was organic and free-flowing,” Oli explains. “This was to help the piece feel warm and personal. We also wanted the camera to feel like a character in the film, which is why we chose single, hand-held camera perspectives.”

“We shot the main elements of the commercial in a single day, which is a very tight turnaround for a project such as this,” says Victoria, who also designed many of the set dressings, including the “memories box.”

“It meant we needed to be extremely efficient in our scheduling, while making sure everyone had time to eat!”

The storyline for What links us? is designed to be universally accessible, following a young person through the highs and lows of life. “The film contains many subtle references to the COVID-19 pandemic but we didn’t want to focus overly on that,” Victoria says. “We aimed to keep the tone positive, with a sense of progression and optimism that fits the mission of Superpedestrian. That’s what informed our whimsical music choice and concluding family sequence.”

It was also important to include small details in the film that might not be noticed at first watch, to mirror the precision that characterises Superpedestrian’s approach to designing and engineering every single element of the LINK scooter. These details include a face mask in the background of one shot, a Polaroid photograph captioned “Best sisters”, and the super-widescreen format that helps express the idea of travelling from point to point.

The commercial was shot on location in the UK, where it remains illegal to ride e-scooters on public roads outside a small number of trial areas in England. The production team solved this hurdle by finding private land to film the riding sequences — but there was another unexpected challenge.

“Our actor had to learn to ride a scooter for the shoot,” Oli explained. “However, this proved straightforward, because the LINK scooter is so easy to ride for a beginner. In fact, the whole crew was very impressed with the LINK scooter. It is robust, sleek and comfortable. It’s evident that it has been designed and manufactured to the highest standards and that it’s very safe. It really suited the style of the film we wanted to make.”

What links us? was released on YouTube and Instagram on Tuesday 7 September 2021. In its first week, the film attracted more than 200,000 views, more than a thousand likes and hundreds of comments.

“It’s my hope that this film elegantly expresses the human-centered vision that is core to Superpedestrian’s mission, and emphasises the thoughtful way we approach everything we do,” says Ross. “If the initial response is anything to go by, we’ll be making many more of these emotional films.”

“I’m so happy with how the film turned out,” Oli concludes. “I still love making Minecraft videos, but this type of film-making reaches a different audience. It has been an artistically and emotionally fulfilling project.”

I remember the first time my wife and I rode one of Superpedestrian’s prototype scooters in 2018, for a short ride around the MIT campus. It was an exhilarating experience, combining the on-demand independence of bicycling with the ease and civic engagement of a great public transit journey.

Since the spring of 2020, when we launched our first LINK fleets, more than a million people in 50 cities have enjoyed a safe, reliable shared e-scooter journey. Many of these people used our LINK scooters to travel to their jobs as frontline healthcare workers. Others used LINK to get to their COVID vaccination appointments, check in on friends, or just enjoy some fun and fresh air.

In our first year of operation, we helped cities move through COVID, and now we are helping them recover. Recovery is not just from the impacts of COVID — we’re also helping cities overcome decades of overdependence on automobiles. Instead of encouraging people to linger and interact, our city streets are currently built to move cars — inefficient self-contained pods that isolate people from one another. This stifles the city’s natural superpower as an engine of human connection and creativity. When people are free to move, free to make connections, and free to pursue their potential, the City is at its best.

This is our dream: Cities where everyone can move freely between their chosen destinations. Cities that absorb more carbon than they emit. Cities where density is desirable because the space between buildings is no longer merely glorified car storage. Cities with high-quality, affordable transportation offering people easy, flexible access to their local parks, schools or jobs. This is the world I want for my daughter, and for the 6.7 billion people who will inhabit cities by 2050.

Small electric vehicles are key to realizing this dream, but only if we, the operators, get it right. This means honoring our contracts with cities, and our unwritten — but just as binding — social contracts with every other street user, especially pedestrians.

Over the past year, in partnership with the cities we serve, we strove to get it right. The evidence, presented in this report, indicates that we are succeeding in showing what micromobility can do when it is powered by high-quality engineering, a dedicated labor force, and a genuine spirit of cities-first collaboration.

Now, with COVID in retreat, many more people are taking their first scooter trips on streets bustling with more pedestrians than ever. What kind of experience will they have? Will they have a transformative, safe experience that leads them to do it again and again? Will other people on the street see that trip positively? If the answers are yes, then we’re well on our way to fulfilling the promise of micromobility and the promise of cities as places where everyone can reach their full potential. I hope you’ll hop on a LINK and join me on that journey.

Sincerely,

Assaf Biderman
CEO & Founder
Superpedestrian