How technology is shaping the future of mobility
February 3, 2020
min. read
Technology is helping transform the future of urban transportation by influencing what mobility will look like, and how it will impact the modern city-scape. A recent article by Forbes Technology Council explained that there is a shared consensus around the four key features of future mobility: shared, hybrid, autonomous and electric. The next question becomes, what will mobility services will be available in the coming years? We have done some research to help breakdown the different perspectives on shared mobility as a mode of transportation in the future.
Why electric?
By 2040, electric cars will outsell gasoline-powered cars
Recently consumers have shifted their interest towards electric vehicles as a more sustainable and environmentally conscious option for long-distance travel. Predictions expect electric vehicles to surpass traditional combustion cars within the next 20 years, with 57% of passenger vehicles and more than 30% of global passenger vehicle fleet sales being electric by 2040. With this growth also comes a need for additional charging infrastructure to allow the vehicles to travel further over long distances. Currently there are about 13,000 electric vehicle fast charging stations across the US, compared to roughly 332,000 gas stations. Companies such as Volkswagon, GM and Tesla, have announced they are working on creating charging that will help drive sales in the future. Successful expansion into the market will require cities to develop smart plans that accommodate the needs of electric mobility.
Why shared?
Shared mobility has grown extensively since Uber (2009) and Lyft (2012) first entered the market. More and more operators continue to emerge worldwide, offering at least one ridesharing service to people in over 700 cities. These services are expected to expand even further in the future as a result of increased urbanization, as well as growing concerns around sustainability, economic stability and emissions. A report by the Internet of Things’ analyst firm, Berg Insights, found the number of car-sharing service users will grow from 50.4 million people in 2018 to 227.1 million people in 2023. Offering mobility as a service is helping reduce the number of single-use vehicles on the road, lending itself to a more functional form of travel.
Why autonomous?
A major challenge facing urban drivers is the issue of congestion and traffic jams. In some metropolitan cities, such as London, the problem lead to the enforcement of congestion charges in their most heavily populated neighbourhoods. In effect since 2003, these charges have helped reduce traffic by 30%, will simultaneously generating funds for the city. But is that enough? Autonomous vehicles are believed to be the next step in reducing congestion. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge found that when a fleet of autonomous vehicles are effectively communicating, keeping traffic moving smoothly, congestion rates could be reduced by 35%.
Why hybrid?
Micro-mobility is the use of small mobility devices, designed to carry one or two people, or ‘last-mile’ deliveries. This goes hand-in-hand with the rising interest in e-scooters and e-bikes that have seen exceptional sales growth in recent years. The combination of electric with single-use, lightweight vehicles is expected to surpass traditional modes of transportation. In their annual technology, media and telecommunications predictions, Deloitte predicted more than 130 million e-bikes will be sold between 2020 and 2023. Compared to the 1.8 million sold in Europe and 185,000 in the US during 2013, this significant increase suggests that e-bikes and other technology like it are the future of mobility.
How are city’s supporting?
Cities across the world have begun adapting strategies to assist with the future of urban mobility. Being the leader in reducing traffic, Singapore introduced Area licencing Scheme in 1975, enforcing a daily toll charge of $3 or $60 monthly for cars entering a central zone area during peak hours. The city experienced success resulting in fewer cars entering the zone during peak hours, a 35 percent increase in carpools and a minimum of $500 million saved by the city that could be used towards infrastructure improvements. The system has since been updated to an Electrical Road Pricing system in order to match the changing demands of the city’s core.
San Francisco has yet to enforce congestion pricing for its traffic heavy neighbourhoods, however, research is being conducted to determine the best solutions for the city. The Emerging Mobility Evaluation Report by the San Francisco Transportation Authority found 90 percent of all motor vehicle collisions are caused by human error, with approximately 80 percent involving some level of inattention. This has lead to a shift towards alternative modes of mobility and potential pilot projects within the city core. San Francisco has become known for its low income bike share programs. Launching in 2013 the Bay Area Bike Share Pilot requires at least 20% of stations be located in low-income communities, with an estimated 320 stations and 4,500 in 2017. Data collected by the Bike-sharing Blog estimates there are twice as many bike-sharing programs in the world as there were in 2014, with nearly 20 times more bikes available for public use.
The doors have opened for industry leaders to start making innovations within auto-mobility, influencing the modern city-scape. In addition to placing restrictions on heavily congested areas, the city of Helsinki has focused its efforts on improving the existing infrastructure and transportation options to encourage people to utilize other modes of mobility. A leader in mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms, the city plans to replace 2.3 billion urban private car journeys annually by 2023. One of the ways it’s begun to accomplish this is through the app Whim. An app developed specifically for Helsinki, Whim provides access to all of the city’s mobility options through a monthly subscription. The future of mobility is at people’s fingertips.
What’s next?
Cities around the world are beginning to explore the possibilities of e-scooters as a means to travel short distances too far to comfortably walk, as well as a potential solution towards reducing the reliance on cars. The city of Tallahassee launched a pilot program in partnership with five major e-scooter companies: Bird, Lime, VeoRide, Spin and Gotch. The purpose is to determine solutions for the major problems being faced, but to also help develop good ridership habits. The companies deployed 200 e-scooters, each capable of travelling 15 mph, under new legislation that allows them to be treated the same as bicycles. With the success of programs such as this, and companies making pledging to maintain social responsibility for user safety, e-scooters as a primary mode of mobility are on the rise.
Nuro, a self-driving start-up, is one of the few companies to currently have a fleet of fully driverless vehicles operating on public roads. In February 2019, the company secured roughly $1 billion in additional funding from SoftBank allowing them to partner with the grocery-store chain Kroeger’s for a pilot project. The pilot service has been delivering groceries in Houston, Texas since March 2019, with expansions to include other goods like Domino's Pizza and Walmart products. As of right now the fleet stands at about 75 vehicles, with plans to go public in 2020. By introducing fully automated vehicles into the market, the number of people on the road will be reduced, optimizing efficiency and offering greater protection from potential collisions or incidents.
Nuro self-driving vehicle
In addition to reducing traffic in major cities, mobility companies are also focusing their resources on addressing concerns of energy consumption and emissions. The smart scooter mobility company, Gogoro, aims to leverage the power of technology in order to change the way technology is consumed and transform how cities operate to improve sustainability. Their first fleet of smart scooters launched in 2015, delivering a high performance electric riding experience to uses in Taiwan. The company also established a network known as the Gogoro Energy Network in Taipei offers more than 1,581 battery swap stations and supports over 199,478 battery exchanges every day. In Europe, a fleet of 3,500 emissionless smart scooters were released across three major countries in 2018, helping reduce CO2 emissions by 123,655 tons and displacing more than 58,731,863 liters of gasoline. By leveraging technological progress and innovations in modern infrastructure, Gogoro is becoming a leader in transportation solutions.
Electric scooter Gogoro with swappable batteries
Companies, like Tortoise, are looking to expand the capabilities of scooters even further by introducing fleets that can move autonomously across a city and reposition themselves, without a rider. The goal is to tackle the biggest challenge currently facing operators: relocating scooters. Tortoise plans to use autonomous technology combined with teleoperation to reposition and rebalance dockless, shared e-scooters in cities. The initial deployment will include between 50 to 100 scooters per operator in each market with the intention to equip every fleet with the ability to autonomously reposition themselves. Autonomous micro-mobility like e-scooters and e-bikes are believed to be the start for creating smarter, more technologically advanced cities.
How can we help?
As both industry leaders and cities around the world are finding new ways to support the rising trend of micro-mobility, we at ATOM Mobility want to help entrepreneurs looking to enter the market. We believe that shared mobility is the future of transportation, offering assistance with integrating industry-leading vehicles ready for shared mobility, including kick scooters, scooters, bikes, mopeds, cars and more. Our customers have an excellent grasp on the current needs of local markets, and we allow them to focus on marketing and operations, while taking care of the technology.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33183031
https://www.corporateknights.com/channels/transportation/sharing-road-canadian-cities-driving-progress-shared-mobility-15593076/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/11/22/four-keys-to-future-mobility-shared-hybrid-integrated-and-electric/#3feea979339d
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/18/cars/electric-car-market-sales/index.html
https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/
https://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-history#june-2016-kalanick-proclaims-that-uber-was-profitable-in-hundreds-of-cities-globally-but-that-the-money-was-being-reinvested-in-its-war-against-chinese-rival-didi-the-company-said-at-the-time-that-it-was-losing-1-billion-each-year-in-its-fight-against-didi-34
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/top-ride-sharing-apps-in-europe-asia-south-america-africa-and-usa.html
https://iotbusinessnews.com/2019/11/14/60333-the-public-carsharing-fleet-reached-332000-vehicles-worldwide-in-2018/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47874725
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190519191641.htm
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/846593/future-of-mobility-strategy.pdf
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/722835_tmt-predictions-2020/DI_TMT-Prediction-2020.pdf
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_777_2004-12-13.html
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_832__2009-01-05.html
http://sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Emerging%20Mobility%20Studies_11.pdf
https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/bike/bike-share
https://www.businessinsider.com/bike-sharing-programs-doubled-since-2014-public-bikes-charts-2018-7?IR=T
https://www.smartcitiesworld.net/news/news/helsinki-leads-in-mobility-as-a-service-3308
https://whimapp.com/
https://eu.tallahassee.com/story/news/2019/07/15/electric-scooters-tallahassee-florida-bird-scooters-rental-gotcha-lime-spin-veoride-escooters/1708270001/
https://www.wctv.tv/content/news/Five-companies-launch-e-scooters-in-Tallahassee-during-pilot-program-512748851.html
https://nuro.ai/product
https://www.wired.com/story/softbank-nuro-self-driving-investment/
https://qz.com/1644476/nuro-will-deliver-dominos-pizza-with-its-robots-in-houston/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/10/21004678/nuros-driverless-delivery-robots-walmart-houston
https://medium.com/nuro/new-rules-of-the-road-for-california-and-autonomous-vehicles-2fa26a1159cb
https://www.gogoro.com/about/
https://www.tortoise.dev/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20910083/tortoise-autonomous-electric-scooters-self-driving-robotics
https://www.fastcompany.com/90417611/it-was-inevitable-the-scooters-are-now-driving-themselves
Ask AI for an article overview
Let AI explain why entrepreneurs choose ATOM Mobility
Interested in launching your own mobility platform?
Blog
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.
Blog
New feature: Task manager - Shifts & Operator performance tracking
👷📊 ATOM Task Manager now goes beyond task distribution with new Shifts and Operator Performance functionality. Track shift routes, distance, completed tasks, time per task and individual operator performance - giving fleet managers a much clearer picture of field operations and efficiency.
August 21, 2026
min. read
Managing a large shared mobility or rental fleet isn't only about knowing which tasks were completed. It's also about understanding how efficiently field teams are working. We've significantly expanded ATOM Mobility Task Manager with new Shifts and Performance functionality, giving fleet managers much better visibility into operator activity, workload, routes and performance.
👷 Shifts: See the full picture behind every shift
The new Shifts tab gives managers a centralized overview of all operator shifts, including:
- Shift duration and status
- Distance driven during the shift
- Number of tasks completed
- Average time spent per task
Managers can open any individual shift to see the complete operational picture. For every task, you can see the vehicle, task type, planned start and deadline, actual start and completion times, status and total task duration.
Each shift also includes a map showing the operator's complete movement during the shift and where individual tasks were performed. For shifts currently in progress, managers can also see the operator's current location.
This makes it much easier to understand the actual route, workload and decisions behind each shift — and identify opportunities to improve how field teams manage fleet maintenance and operations.
📊 Performance: Compare operator efficiency over time
The new Performance tab aggregates operational results for every operator over a selected period.
Managers can track:
- Tasks completed
- Distance covered
- Total time worked
- Average time per task
- Performance trends over time
Instead of reviewing hundreds of individual tasks, managers can quickly compare operators, identify top performers and spot areas where additional training or operational improvements may be needed.
📱 Improved Operator app workflow
To make performance data accurate and useful, we've also introduced a new shift and task workflow in the ATOM Operator app. Operators now start and end their shifts directly in the app, while individual task start and completion times are recorded automatically.
We've also added:
- Personal performance statistics with date filtering
- Live shift statistics showing time worked, completed tasks and open tasks
- Mandatory shift start before an operator can begin working on tasks
- Automatic return of unfinished tasks to the available task pool when a shift ends
- Multi-task selection, start and completion for faster task management
🚀 From task distribution to field operations intelligence
Together, these updates turn ATOM Task Manager from a task distribution tool into a much more complete field operations performance and optimization system. Operators get a clearer workflow and visibility into their own performance, while managers get the data they need to understand how their field operations actually work and where they can become more efficient.
The new functionality is available for ATOM Mobility's Vehicle sharing and Digital rental modules.
👉 Read more about our latest platform updates:
https://www.atommobility.com/atomupdates
Try out ATOM demo app
Use test credentials to log in - Phone number: +1 123123123, Code: 777777
Driver App demo credentials - Email: test@atom.com, Password: driver
