I asked a wise friend his opinion on why the burgeoning micro mobility sector is composed of so many stakeholders, but few connected ideas. The reply related to perception and positioning. We’ve already looked at this topic from a few divergent angles. This post is not rooted in safety, docking stations, batteries or last mile delivery; it is about core competencies.
When we look at bike makers, they are historically hardware focused. Meanwhile, the day to day business of running urban fleets is rooted in user access, payment gateways and real-time analytics. When we look at the software offerings on the market, very few originate from the manufacturer’s end.
Manufacturers are concerned with strong, reliable, efficient bikes and scooters, while data management revolves around long term remote data collection, analysis and application. Here is where you see a cluster of prominent bike data management applications; like bike folder (a combined shop module and user interface), bikonnect (rental, app, data manager) and bike matrix (helping streamline parts and inventory). These are “bike data management” companies.
Now, the breakdown is that car and logistics companies have a bounty of abundance when it comes to applications (GPS based tools, global part sourcing, supply overviews, knowledgeable brand specific mechanics). Those functionalities have not trickled down to the wider bike or E-bikes sector. Yet, fleets and “industrial users” make up a significant part of bike sales. Think of your local food delivery, postal worker, or beachside hotel complex.
Many customers do not want the capital lock-in of having their own bike fleets. What they want is a convenient mobility option for their end users. The time sink of minor repairs, punctures and flat batteries, is happily left for someone else to fill. This is the core concept of MaaS, or mobility as a service. MaaS embraces a platform and user-centric concept, veering away from vendor lock-in.
App vendors will say they provide the apps that fill that niche, but the scope is wider than a traditional mobility app. Bikes and e-bikes generate a lot of diverse data—location, battery health, usage stats, maintenance alerts. Aggregating, storing, and analyzing this data requires a well built backend that most manufacturers or apps aren’t set up to manage effectively.
In shared mobility and fleet ownership, who owns the data? The manufacturer? The fleet operator? The municipality? A lack of clarity leads to data silos, where each party holds partial, disconnected, datasets that can’t be effectively merged or leveraged. Even when manufacturers do acknowledge data’s importance, they often outsource connectivity solutions. Many prefer an upsell option, or bolt-on, rather than integrating features into product design.
Successful connected mobility solutions come from companies that think of their vehicles as nodes in a larger data network, not as standalone engineering products. They understand that value lies not just in the hardware, but in how the usage of that mobility tool feeds into a broader eco-system, driving fleet management, user behavior and customization, maintenance forecasting, urban planning and circular economies.
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- Logistics, E-Cargo & Rental: Show me the Green!
- Battery power: How to make a longer lasting e-bike battery?
- Speed: Balancing usability with Mobility
- Micro mobility: Center of Gravity, Height & Risk
- Docking Stations: No man’s land of micro mobility
- Why is there a difference in e-bikes and e-motorbikes?
