How to find profitability in the e-scooter sharing industry – a conversation with Bullride
September 8, 2022
min. read
When it comes to the future of e-scooter sharing, there are some pretty conflicting opinions out there. Some say it's the future of micromobility, others are less optimistic.
Ultimately, the success of scooter operators all depends on their ability to find profitability.
Let's be honest – this industry has higher-than-average overhead costs. The hardware itself is a major investment, and profits are further seeped by the maintenance workforce, storage, relocation costs, and new regulatory requirements that are regularly introduced.
But profitability is possible.
We spoke to Heiko Hildebrandt, co-founder of Bullride, which helps mobility companies offload their assets from their balance sheet to keep them in the black.
The state of the scooter industry – hopeful
The economy is just starting to stabilize as we exit the Covid slump and enter the new normal. How did Covid affect the micromobility sphere?
A study published in Bloomberg found that monthly ridership fell drastically in 2021, but made a comeback in 2022 when people returned to office.
Source: Bloomberg
Now, that's using US-based brands as a model.
Heiko Hildebrandt shares that the scooter operators he's worked with have experienced a similar effect:
“Corona was the greatest fuel you could pour onto the micromobility fire. During Corona times, people hardly used public transport, and most people switched to scooters. We saw two of the biggest micromobility brands in Europe, Bolt and Tier, raise record-setting VC investment at the end of 2021 – totaling 1.4B EUR – a clear sign of traction. And since Covid has ended, we've seen a 30%-40% slump in demand. So was Covid bad for business? Not according to my perspective.”
However, according to Heiko, the real challenge is to make the unit economics work. Because the question is not about whether the product is in demand. The question is does it make sense from a business perspective.
The challenges the scooter industry faces
The scooter industry, while in demand, must face challenges that directly impact their unit economics. For some businesses, it pushes them over the edge and drives them into insolvency.
By knowing what those challenges are, scooter businesses can better set up their business models to protect their profitability.
Rising hardware costs
In order for a scooter's lifetime to be profitable, it has to be in use for at least 2 seasons – some even say, for 4 years. That means that the scooter has to be durable, easily maintained, with cost-efficient replacement parts.
“Scooters are usually imported from abroad (mostly China), and shipping costs are now 8x higher than they were two years ago. The costs of electronics components are ever increasing.”
Jürgen Sahtel, Manager of the ATOM Vehicle Marketplace, agrees that the prices have gone up over the past two years.
“For example, hardware prices for the new Segway models have increased more than 40% over the last 16 months. And this trend is across all manufacturers – new scooters could be obtained starting from 650EUR and up, while more advanced models readily available in EU are priced at around 1000EUR per unit.”
The hardware is one of the biggest up-front investments that a scooter operator faces. But it's also critical to balance cost with quality, as you need to be so resilient that it can withstand public use over the course of 2-4 years.
Expanding regulation
When the e-scooter sharing industry took off, the industry was so fresh that there wasn't any regulation in place to keep it in check. It was the wild west, and operators were able to take advantage of the regulatory grey area.
Now, municipalities are starting to crack down on the industry and putting laws into place. Regulation, overall, is a good thing. However, the way it's done now shows a lack of understanding about the unit economics and its regulation that is being enacted.
“Most municipalities are limiting the size of a fleet that one scooter competitor can have. Their goal is to reduce the amount of scooter clutter on the streets. But that number is often too low to ensure what we call “natural floating” – the process of humans moving the scooters around the city. This puts a larger strain on relocation and charging teams.”
Other burdens placed on scooter brands is the stricter demarcation of allowable parking zones. This is a factor that impacts relocation teams – those responsible for bringing scooters from less popular zones back to city centers and transport hubs. Additionally, mandatory tenders with the municipality are usually offered only for one year, making planning rather difficult.
A new trend that Heiko mentions seeing from a regulatory perspective is the emergence of mandatory insurance.
“Scooters used to be classified as bikes, and thus, similarly regulated. Now, they're being reclassified as motored vehicles, which have different regulatory requirements, including mandatory insurance.”
This further skews the unit economics of each ride.
On the other hand, regulation can also play an enabling factor. Heiko shares that if tenders could be extended for, say, 3 years, it could provide scooter brands with planning stability. If municipalities limited only 2 competitors in a city, this would ensure enough demand to make the unit economics work.
Finding profitability in unlikely places – Bullride's unique business model
Heiko believes that the future lies in the shared economy. He's among the 4 co-founders of Bullride, an investment platform that shoulders the burden of the hardware investment and splits the scooter rent with the operating brand.
How does it work?
- The Bullride platform crowdfunds the costs of the initial scooter investment. These people become your investors. Instead of giving away equity (ownership) of your company, they end up “owning” one of your scooters (1 scooter = 1,000 EUR).
- The order is made into one of the top scooter manufacturers that have the best longevity – Bullride does this for you.
- You split the rental income – 55% for you, 30% for investors, 15% for Bullride.
The idea works for a number of reasons.
- You'll need money. A bank is unlikely to fund a scooter venture (because of historically low profitability), and a VC will ask for equity. This way, you get the investment, while retaining full control.
- Bullride has very specific requirements. They know what works, and what doesn't. They only work together with entrepreneurs that meet their very strict requirements. That includes entering a city that has no more than 2 competitors, and a city that has no more than 100,000 inhabitants. 30,000 is the ideal sweetspot. You also only have one employee – and that's you.
The operating brand then may use a leading vehicle-sharing platform ATOM Mobility, to fast-track their time to market. ATOM takes profitability even further with its unique pricing model. Instead of the common model of cost-per-vehicle, ATOM uses a cost-per-ride model. That means that if you have less demand (and as a result, less income) in a certain month, then you pay less for use of the ATOM platform.
But scooter sharing is just the beginning. This same model, Heiko believes, can be applied to e-bikes, e-scooters, carsharing, even wind turbines and major investments like that. Why shouldn't a community be able to jointly invest in and co-own the infrastructure that they need to live?
This is a unique model that hasn't been commonly seen elsewhere. It's more than just scooters – Bullride believes that at the heart of it, what they're doing is democratizing asset ownership.
If you're looking to launch or scale your own vehicle-sharing business, contact the ATOM Mobility team to learn more abut this opportunity.
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How to choose car sharing software: an operator’s checklist
🚗 Choosing car sharing software? Look beyond the rider app. Our checklist covers what to test in a demo, from keyless access and fleet operations to costs and support for both car sharing and digital rental.
September 23, 2026
min. read
Choosing car sharing software is more than choosing an app where customers can find and unlock a car. The same system has to verify drivers, take payments, communicate with vehicles, handle problems during a trip, and give your team the tools to keep cars available. The difference between two platforms often becomes clear only when something goes wrong: a customer cannot unlock a car, a payment fails, a vehicle needs to be taken out of service, or an operator wants to introduce advance bookings alongside short trips.
If you are comparing providers, ask them to show how these situations work in the actual product. Here is what to check.
Start with the operating model
“Car sharing” can mean several different things. A free-floating service lets customers find a nearby car and end a trip within an allowed area. A station-based service may require them to return the car to a specific location. Corporate fleets, peer-to-peer services, and self-service rentals have different booking, access, and approval rules.
Write down how your service will work before requesting demos:
- Can customers start a trip immediately, reserve a car for later, or both?
- Do they book a specific vehicle or a vehicle category?
- Where can they pick up and return the car?
- Will you charge by the minute, hour, day, distance, or a combination?
- Do you need deposits, subscriptions, corporate accounts, or different prices by location?
Ask the provider to configure these rules in a demo. A platform that supports “car sharing” in general may still require development to support your exact model.
Check the complete customer journey
The app needs to do more than display vehicles on a map. Follow one booking from the first app open to the final receipt. Check registration, ID and driver's licence verification, vehicle discovery, booking, payment authorisation, keyless access, trip extension, damage reporting, and trip completion.
For advance rentals, check whether customers can book from your website as well as the app. Ask to see the complete web-to-app journey: selecting a vehicle and dates, confirming the reservation, and continuing to payment, licence verification, and vehicle access. Find out whether the website can complete the entire rental or whether customers must install the app after booking. ATOM Mobility's web-booker, for example, lets customers reserve on the web and then complete payment, and ID verification in the app.
Then test the exceptions. What does the customer see if verification fails, the car does not unlock, the vehicle is no longer available, or the payment cannot be collected? Can your support team see what happened and resolve it without contacting a developer?
This matters because customers judge the entire journey, including how quickly they can recover when a step fails.
Make vehicle connectivity a separate decision
Car sharing depends on reliable communication between the platform and the vehicle. Depending on the vehicle and hardware, this may include location, lock and unlock commands, mileage, fuel or battery level, and other status data. Ask for a list of supported telematics providers, rather than accepting a general statement that the platform is “hardware agnostic.” For your proposed fleet, establish:
- Which functions already work, and which require a new integration?
- Is hardware installation required? Who supplies and supports it?
- What happens when the vehicle temporarily loses connectivity?
- Who investigates a failed command: the software provider, hardware supplier, or operator?
- What are the hardware, installation, connectivity, and integration costs?
Hardware flexibility is valuable when you expand or change suppliers, but the integration for the vehicles you plan to buy now is the first thing to verify.
Look closely at day-to-day fleet operations
The customer app gets the attention, but your team will spend much of its time in the management dashboard and operator tools. Ask a provider to show how staff:
- Take a vehicle out of service and make it bookable again.
- Find vehicles that need cleaning, charging, refuelling, or maintenance.
- Review a trip, customer issue, charge, or reported damage.
- Change prices, service areas, parking rules, and availability.
- Assign tasks and check what the field team has completed.
- Track utilisation, vehicle availability, revenue, and trips over time.
Try these tasks with the roles your own team would use. The question is not only whether a feature exists, but how many manual steps it takes to run your fleet every day.
Consider digital rental if it is part of your plans
Car sharing and digital rental increasingly overlap. An operator might offer cars for short city trips and also accept bookings for a weekend. A rental business may begin with advance reservations and later add app-based, keyless access for shorter trips.
The technology shares many components, but the booking rules can differ. A rental may require advance pickup and return times, vehicle or category allocation, availability calendars, deposits, extensions, and different customer handover processes.
If you may operate both models, ask for a demonstration of both: an immediate hourly trip and an advance weekend booking. Check how the system prevents overlapping reservations, applies the correct pricing and deposit rules, and gives your team a clear view of availability. Also establish whether both models can use the same customer account and management setup, or whether additional products and fees are required.
ATOM Mobility supports vehicle sharing and digital rental on its platform. The useful question for any provider, including us, is how your exact combination of models would be configured and operated.
Compare the full cost, not just the software fee
A low monthly licence fee can be attractive, but it may be only one part of the cost. Request a proposal that separates:
Launch, Setup, branding, app publication, migration, and training
Monthly minimums, fees per vehicle or booking, and included modules
Payment processing, refunds, deposits, and any additional transaction fees
Telematics hardware, installation, data plans, and new integrations
Ongoing work such as support level, custom development, and third-party services
Compare the likely cost at your launch fleet size and at a realistic larger fleet. Ask what happens if the fleet is seasonal or grows more slowly than planned.
Build, buy, or combine the two?
Building in-house can make sense when a company has the engineering capacity and needs a customer experience or operating model that available platforms cannot support. It also means taking responsibility for project management, app updates, payments, vehicle integrations, security, monitoring, and support long after launch.
A white-label platform can shorten the route to market and spread that technical work across an established product. In return, you depend on the provider's supported features, integrations, development priorities, and service levels.
Slovenian car-sharing operator GreenGo initially spent two years developing its own app before switching to ATOM Mobility. Its experience shows why it is worth comparing the time and resources required to build with what an existing platform can already deliver. Read GreenGo's story: https://www.atommobility.com/blog/greengo-chooses-atom-mobility-to-power-its-electric-car-sharing-business
There is also a middle option: use a platform for core bookings, fleet management, and vehicle connectivity while building selected experiences or integrations yourself through APIs. If this is your plan, review the API documentation and confirm what your team can actually read, change, and automate.
5 things to request in a provider demo
Before signing, ask each shortlisted provider to demonstrate the same scenarios:
- Register and verify a new rider, then make a booking and unlock the proposed vehicle.
- Extend a trip, report damage, end the booking, and see the final charge.
- Resolve a failed unlock or payment from both the customer's and support team's perspectives.
- Remove a car for maintenance, assign the task, and return it to availability.
- Configure your actual pricing and parking rules without developer assistance.
Use your intended vehicle models, payment markets, and operating rules in the discussion. For anything that cannot be shown, ask whether it is already available, needs configuration, requires paid development, or is only planned.
The best car sharing software is the one that supports your model reliably, gives your team control over daily operations, and leaves room for the business you intend to build next. A practical demo and a complete cost proposal will tell you more than a long feature list.
If you are evaluating car sharing alongside self-service rental, talk to ATOM Mobility about your fleet and operating model. We can show you how both models work on the platform and help you plan migration and scaling.
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Unlock more mobility opportunities with the ATOM Mobility and Umob partnership
🌍 Reach more riders with ATOM Mobility and Umob. The integration gives shared mobility operators an additional distribution channel, helping attract new customers, generate more bookings and improve fleet utilization.
September 1, 2026
min. read
The future of mobility is not just about operating vehicles. It is about creating convenient journeys that bring different transportation options together in one simple customer experience.
That is why we are excited to highlight our partnership with Umob, helping mobility operators expand their reach and become part of a growing multimodal mobility ecosystem.
Whether you operate shared cars, scooters, bikes or mopeds through the ATOM Mobility platform, integrating with Umob allows your service to become accessible to thousands of Umob users looking for a convenient way to travel.
Why this partnership matters
Today's users expect flexibility. They don't think in terms of individual mobility providers, they simply want the fastest, easiest, and most convenient route from A to B.
Umob brings different mobility providers and transport options together in one app. Users can find, compare, book and pay for different mobility options without having to download a separate app or create a new account for every provider.
By connecting your fleet to Umob, operators can:
- Reach new customers through an established MaaS (Mobility as a Service) platform.
- Increase vehicle utilization by attracting additional demand.
- Become part of multimodal journeys that combine public transport, shared mobility, taxis, and other transportation options.
- Grow without investing in additional customer acquisition channels.
For ATOM Mobility customers, the integration is designed to provide a straightforward way to unlock new distribution opportunities while continuing to manage their core operations through the ATOM Mobility platform.
How the integration works
Through the ATOM Mobility platform, participating operators can connect their fleets with Umob, enabling users to discover and use available vehicles directly through the Umob app.
Once connected, vehicles from participating operators can appear in Umob alongside other available mobility options, giving users one clear overview of the different ways they can get from A to B.
Users can discover an available vehicle, reserve and unlock it, start and end their ride, and pay directly through Umob.
The integration is designed to support:
- Real-time vehicle availability.
- A seamless booking and ride experience for users.
- Secure communication between platforms.
- Consistent operational control for fleet operators.
Operators continue to manage their fleet, pricing, service areas and day-to-day operations through the ATOM Mobility platform, while Umob provides an additional channel through which users can discover and access their vehicles.
Business impact
For mobility operators, connecting with Umob creates an additional distribution channel without changing the way they manage their day-to-day operations through ATOM Mobility.
By making vehicles available to thousands of Umob users, operators can increase their visibility at the moment people are actively looking for a ride. This creates the potential to attract new users, generate additional bookings and improve fleet utilization over time.
Every market is different, but many operators see MaaS partnerships as an important part of their long-term growth strategy.
Launch partner spotlight: ZEUS Mobility
One of the first ATOM Mobility operators to launch through the Umob integration is ZEUS Mobility, an ambitious European e-scooter sharing provider with a strong focus on innovation, a dynamic approach and challenging the established players in the market.
Fittingly, the partnership itself started through the ATOM Mobility network.
ZEUS and Umob first met at an ATOM Mobility event in Riga. While the initial introduction happened during the event, it was over drinks later that evening that the conversation really started.
ZEUS had already come across the Umob brand on mobility vehicles while travelling and had been impressed by the professional approach the company was taking. That recognition quickly turned into a conversation about how both companies could strengthen their propositions by working together.
From there, the integration moved forward quickly. ZEUS describes the preparation and integration process so far as “clean, professional and smooth.”
For ZEUS, the partnership creates an opportunity to strengthen the visibility of its brand, reach new customers and support its wider European growth ambitions.
Following its acquisition of Superpedestrian in May 2026, ZEUS is looking to accelerate its growth throughout 2026 and 2027, with the Umob partnership forming part of that ambition.
“ZEUS is thrilled to be partnering with Umob in European markets. Following our acquisition of Superpedestrian in May 2026, ZEUS is seeking to rapidly grow through 2026 and 2027. This partnership can help to drive this growth and reach new customers in new markets. We look forward to a rewarding partnership.” - Damian Young, ZEUS Mobility
About Umob
One app to ride them all. Umob is an all-in-one mobility platform that brings different mobility providers and transport options together in one app.
Users can find, compare, book and pay for shared bikes, e-bikes, scooters, mopeds, public transport, taxis and other available mobility options through one account and one payment experience. Instead of downloading and registering with a separate app for every provider or every new city, users can open Umob and see the available mobility options around them.
Today, Umob is available in 28+ countries and 300+ cities, giving thousands of users an easier way to access different forms of mobility both at home and while travelling.
Key facts
- One app for different mobility options.
- Find, compare, book and pay in one app.
- Available in 28+ countries and 300+ cities.
- Thousands of users already use the Umob platform.
- Multiple local mobility providers within one user experience.
- The same ride, for the same price as with the local provider.
Ready to expand your reach?
If you're already operating your shared mobility service on the ATOM Mobility platform, connecting with Umob could be the next step toward reaching more users and becoming part of a truly connected mobility ecosystem.
If you're interested in enabling the integration or learning more about how it works, get in touch with our team. We look forward to helping more operators connect, collaborate, and make sustainable mobility easier for everyone.
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