The hidden costs of running a shared mobility business
June 17, 2026
min. read
Shared mobility often looks simple from the outside. A user opens an app, unlocks a vehicle, completes a trip, and moves on with their day. But not everybody knows that the system behind every ride is a bit more complex and can be quite expensive. For many operators, the biggest expenses are not always the most obvious ones.
As shared mobility continues to grow across Europe, operators face increasing pressure to improve efficiency while maintaining service quality. According to the latest European Shared Mobility Index, shared mobility services generated more than 700 million trips across Europe in 2025, reflecting continued demand for alternative transportation options. At the same time, profitability remains one of the industry's biggest challenges.
Across more than 300 shared mobility projects worldwide, one pattern appears consistently: operators often underestimate operational costs during launch planning while focusing primarily on fleet acquisition, permits, and launch activities. The largest challenges often emerge later through day-to-day operations, where downtime, fleet balancing, maintenance, customer support, and compliance costs gradually impact profitability.
Downtime costs more than most operators expect
Every shared vehicle is an asset that only generates revenue when it is available to users. A scooter waiting for repairs, a bike with a flat tire, or a car that has not been inspected after damage generates no revenue at all. For example, a scooter generating an average of two rides per day at €3 per ride produces roughly €2,200 in annual revenue. If recurring maintenance issues keep that vehicle unavailable for two weeks each quarter, the shared mobility operator could lose more than €250 in annual revenue from that vehicle alone. Across hundreds or thousands of vehicles, downtime quickly becomes a significant operational cost.
Yet the costs continue to build up – insurance, depreciation, financing, storage, and operational overhead do not stop simply because a vehicle is unavailable.
This becomes particularly noticeable as fleets grow. A single inactive vehicle may not seem significant but hundreds of inactive vehicles spread across multiple cities quickly become a major financial problem.
That is why many operators invest heavily in fleet visibility and operational tools. Platforms such as ATOM Mobility's vehicle sharing software help operators monitor vehicle status in real time and identify issues before they affect large parts of the fleet.
Fleet balancing becomes a business of its own
One of the least visible costs in shared mobility is fleet redistribution. Users naturally travel between different parts of a city. Over time, vehicles begin clustering in some areas while disappearing from others. The result is familiar to most operators – too many vehicles where demand is low and not enough where demand is highest. Solving this problem requires people, vehicles, planning, and technology. Large operators often maintain dedicated teams responsible for things like fleet redistribution, battery swapping, charging operations, station monitoring and demand forecasting.
Academic studies of bike-sharing systems consistently identify balancing and redistribution as some of the biggest operational challenges because they directly affect both utilisation and customer satisfaction. When users cannot find a vehicle nearby, they often choose another transport option instead. It’s even more difficult during big events, tourist seasons, weather changes, and rush hours when demand patterns shift rapidly.
Charging operations can become a major expense
For operators managing electric scooters, bikes, and mopeds, battery charging creates another layer of operational complexity. Vehicles must be collected, charged, swapped, and returned to high-demand locations. Labour, logistics, warehouse space, charging infrastructure, and electricity costs all contribute to the overall cost of fleet operations.
As fleets grow, charging efficiency becomes increasingly important. Poor battery management can increase downtime, reduce vehicle availability, and create unnecessary operational costs. For operators managing thousands of electric vehicles, charging and battery-swapping operations can require dedicated teams, warehouses, charging infrastructure, and specialised software to coordinate daily tasks efficiently.
Small maintenance issues rarely stay small
Most vehicle problems start as minor issues but then become a bigger problem. A slightly damaged brake, a worn tire, a loose component, or a battery performing below normal levels may not immediately remove a vehicle from service. Left unresolved, however, these issues often become larger repairs that require more time, more money, and more operational effort.
For this reason, maintenance is no longer viewed as a reactive task by many successful operators. Instead, it is becoming an ongoing operational process supported by automation, diagnostics, and task management systems. So it’s important to identify problems before users do.
Many operators are moving toward more structured maintenance workflows, similar to the approaches discussed in ATOM Mobility's fleet management automation insights.
Customer support grows with every vehicle added
Customer support is often not thought enough about during launch planning. Founders typically focus on vehicles, apps, and pricing. Few spend enough time calculating the operational cost of helping users when things go wrong.
Support requests usually involve payment issues, failed unlock attempts, damaged vehicles, parking questions, account verification, trip disputes and other day to day problems. A fleet generating 100,000 monthly rides may receive hundreds or even thousands of support requests related to payments, parking violations, damaged vehicles, or account verification.
The cost of poor support is often higher than the cost of support itself because unresolved issues directly affect retention and reviews.
Regulation creates costs that did not exist five years ago
The shared mobility industry has grown significantly. A decade ago, many cities welcomed operators with relatively few requirements. Today, most cities expect detailed reporting, parking compliance, safety measures, accessibility standards, and operational transparency.
Operators increasingly need to invest in:
- reporting systems
- compliance processes
- city partnerships
- parking management
- operational monitoring
These requirements create additional costs, but they are quickly becoming part of doing business in the sector. At the same time, cities are becoming more selective about which operators receive permits and long-term partnerships, making operational quality an increasingly important competitive advantage.
The strongest operators focus on efficiency, not just growth
Hidden costs rarely appear in business plans or launch announcements. They emerge gradually through downtime, maintenance, balancing, customer support, charging operations, and compliance requirements. Individually, each cost may seem manageable. Together, they often determine whether a mobility business becomes profitable.
Shared mobility businesses often talk about fleet size, market expansion, and trip volume. The operators that build sustainable businesses tend to focus on a different set of metrics, including vehicle utilisation, downtime, maintenance efficiency, and operational automation. Growth still matters, but it becomes expensive quickly when operational control is lacking.
Across the shared mobility industry, operational excellence is increasingly becoming a stronger competitive advantage than fleet size alone.
How technology helps control hidden operational costs
Many of the hidden costs discussed in this article can be reduced through better operational visibility and automation. Modern mobility management platforms help operators monitor fleet health, detect issues before they lead to downtime, automate maintenance workflows, prioritise field operations, optimise redistribution using real-time demand data, coordinate charging and battery-swapping activities, automate refunds for unsuccessful rides, and generate compliance reports with no manual effort.
At ATOM Mobility, we've seen these challenges across more than 300 shared mobility projects worldwide. While every market is different, operators that invest in operational efficiency early are often better positioned to achieve sustainable growth and profitability.
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Who will operate Europe’s robotaxi fleets?
🤖 Who will actually operate Europe’s robotaxi fleets? Autonomous driving may remove the driver, but it doesn’t remove the work behind the car. Robotaxis still need charging, cleaning, maintenance, depots, customer support and someone managing the fleet every day. Early projects in Zagreb, Madrid and London illustrate different stages of deployment and how AV technology providers, fleet operators and booking platforms can work together. Taxi, rental and car-sharing companies already handle many of these tasks. What would it take to turn that experience into an autonomous fleet business?
October 21, 2026
min. read
For a taxi fleet owner, autonomous vehicles may seem to remove the most important part of the current business – the driver. But even without drivers, someone still needs to take care of the cars. They need to be owned or financed, charged, cleaned, inspected and repaired. Someone also needs to manage depots, deal with incidents, help customers and make sure enough cars are available.
The first robotaxi services and tests in Europe are already showing how this could work. The company that develops the autonomous driving technology does not always own or operate the cars. The app where customers book their rides may come from another company too. This could leave an important role for taxi, rental, car-sharing and other fleet companies that already know how to manage vehicles.
What changes when the driver disappears?
A taxi company today manages both cars and drivers. Drivers need to be recruited, scheduled, paid and supported. With a driverless fleet, these tasks would eventually disappear, but most of the work related to the cars would stay.
Autonomous cars still need charging or refuelling, cleaning, tyres, inspections, repairs and insurance. They also need somewhere to park when they are not working. If there is an accident or a technical problem, someone needs to deal with it and get the car back on the road. Customer support is still needed too when there are problems with bookings or payments, or when someone leaves something in the car.
Some of these tasks may even become more important. Robotaxis are expensive, and every hour a car spends charging, being cleaned or waiting for maintenance is an hour when it cannot take passengers. Moove, for example, already provides fleet ownership, depots, charging, maintenance and 24/7 operations for autonomous vehicles.
Drivers also do more than drive: they notice damage, report faults, help passengers and respond when something goes wrong. Without a driver, these responsibilities need clear processes and dedicated support. Existing fleet experience is an advantage, but operators will need to adapt it to vehicles running without someone behind the wheel.
Who actually runs a robotaxi service?
There can be several companies behind one robotaxi ride. One provides autonomous driving technology, another may own the cars, and a local company can take care of the fleet. A platform such as Uber can then connect the cars with passengers. Sometimes one company may do several of these things, but this is not always the case.
Zagreb is one example. Pony.ai provides the autonomous driving system, Verne owns and operates the fleet, and Uber connects it with customers through its app. Autonomous rides became commercially available through Uber in August 2026 with a licensed operator onboard. On 10 September, Pony.ai and Verne also started fully driverless passenger test rides on a 22-kilometre route connecting parts of Zagreb with the airport. These are still limited test rides, not a fully driverless service across the whole city.
A similar model is being tested in Madrid. WeRide, Uber and AVOMO received permission in September 2026 to start testing and mapping under Spain’s ES-AV framework. The first 20 vehicles have an onboard specialist. WeRide provides the autonomous technology, Uber connects the cars with passengers, and AVOMO takes care of fleet operations. Commercial operations are planned for later in 2026, but the current permit is for testing and preparation rather than a general driverless taxi service.
In London, Wayve and Uber launched supervised autonomous passenger rides in September 2026. Customers can be matched with an autonomous vehicle through the Uber app, but there is still a licensed driver in the car.
Europe is preparing for larger robotaxi fleets
The plans for the next few years are already much bigger. Pony.ai and Uber announced in August 2026 that they plan to deploy more than 2,000 robotaxis in Europe, starting with Zagreb and later expanding to four more European cities.
Bolt and Lucid announced another partnership in September, with Bolt aiming to deploy at least 25,000 autonomous Lucid vehicles across European cities. This is a future target, not 25,000 cars already operating today.
How these fleets are owned and operated may also be different from one city to another. Local regulations, available vehicles, charging and depot infrastructure and partnerships will all have an effect on how each service is set up.
What could this mean for taxi companies?
Taxi companies already do many of the things that would still be needed with an autonomous fleet. They maintain cars, deal with insurance and incidents, provide customer support and make sure enough vehicles are available. Some also already have their own depots, charging infrastructure or maintenance partners.
One possible model can already be seen in Zagreb. A local company owns and operates the autonomous fleet, while a larger ride-hailing platform brings customers. In the future, an existing taxi company could potentially have a similar role. Instead of managing cars and drivers, it could manage autonomous cars that receive bookings through a larger platform.
This does not mean platforms such as Uber will always rely on other companies to own the cars. Uber’s 2026 agreement with Rivian includes up to $1.25 billion in milestone-dependent investment and says that Uber or its fleet partners may purchase the autonomous vehicles. Uber is also developing infrastructure for autonomous fleets. Different ownership models are therefore possible.
What about rental and car-sharing companies?
Autonomous vehicles could also become interesting for rental and car-sharing companies, although this is probably further in the future. These businesses already manage vehicles, maintenance, cleaning, charging, bookings, customer accounts and payments, so much of the practical work is similar.
Autonomous driving could also change how rental and sharing cars are moved. Today, an employee may need to drive a car from one location to another. In the future, the vehicle could potentially do this itself within an area where autonomous driving is approved. It could even become possible for a rental car to drive itself to a customer’s pickup point.
How do you measure a robotaxi fleet?
Without drivers, it becomes especially important to understand how much time each vehicle is actually working. Every hour spent charging, being cleaned, waiting for maintenance or simply sitting unused means less time carrying paying passengers.
Some useful KPIs could be available hours per vehicle, paid trips per vehicle each day, revenue per available vehicle/day, empty kilometres, charging and maintenance downtime, cost per trip and incidents that need human help. These are most popular robotaxi industry KPIs of what a company could measure during a pilot.
For example, if cars spend too much time waiting to charge, the charging setup may need to change. A lot of empty kilometres could mean the cars are not in the right places, while too much maintenance downtime could make a vehicle more expensive to operate.
How could local companies enter the market?
For either model, the business case depends on the partnership terms: who finances the vehicles, who carries the risk when demand is low, and how revenue and operating costs are shared. Operators should assess what remains after vehicle financing, insurance, charging, maintenance and partner fees. Depots, local service teams and reliable fleet availability could make an operator a valuable partner, but profitability still needs to be demonstrated.
One option for taxi fleets would be to work with an autonomous driving company and a larger ride-hailing platform. The local company could own or manage the cars and take care of the fleet, while customers book their rides through the larger platform.
Another option could be possible in cities where large ride-hailing platforms are not present or have limited coverage. A local company could work with an approved AV provider while using its own app, bookings, payments, customer support and fleet management.
In both cases, a company cannot simply buy autonomous cars and start offering rides. The technology needs to be approved, and local rules have to allow the service. These rules will also be different across Europe. Great Britain, for example, introduced its Automated Passenger Services permitting framework in 2026. Services similar to taxis or private hire vehicles need consent from the relevant local authority, while responsibility for the autonomous driving technology and the passenger service are treated separately.
What can fleet companies do now?
A company does not need to have autonomous cars today to start preparing. A good first step is understanding the current fleet in detail – what each vehicle costs, how many hours it is available, how much time it spends charging or being repaired, and when cars are used the most.
Charging, cleaning, maintenance and depot processes are also worth looking at because all of these will still be needed with autonomous vehicles. A company interested in an AV pilot can then choose a location and use case, look at the local permit process and start talking to autonomous driving technology providers.
The software will also need some preparation. Customers still need to book and pay for rides, while the company needs fleet information, customer support, reporting and connections between its own systems and the AV technology. Starting with a small pilot makes it possible to test all of this before trying to build a larger service.
Where could ATOM Mobility fit?
ATOM Mobility already provides many of the software functions used by taxi, ride-hailing, rental and sharing companies, including customer apps, bookings, payments, fleet management, maintenance tasks, analytics and APIs. Its ride-hailing software includes passenger and driver apps, dispatch, payments, fleet data, analytics and integrations. The ATOM Mobility API can also exchange data about vehicles, bookings, rides, payments, telemetry and maintenance tasks.
ATOM Mobility does not provide autonomous driving technology. This would come from a specialised AV company, and each project would have its own technical requirements and local approvals. For an AV pilot, ATOM Mobility could work with the fleet company and AV provider on the rider experience, integrations, fleet management and the data needed to measure how the pilot is working.
If you operate a taxi, rental or sharing fleet and want to explore an AV pilot, ATOM Mobility can help plan the booking and fleet-management setup, integrations and metrics you would need to test together with an AV technology partner.
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Navigating the shift: Key takeaways from ATOM Connect Rental 2026 in Riga
ATOM Connect Rental 2026 brought rental operators, aggregators, and technology partners together in Riga on October 8 to discuss the future of vehicle rental. Key topics included margin pressures, customer friction, data-driven fleet decisions, insurance, and keyless operations. The central takeaway: growth depends on improving customer experience and fleet efficiency, with practical steps operators can take today.
October 12, 2026
min. read
On October 8, 2026, we gathered on the panoramic top floor of the AC Hotel by Marriott in Riga for ATOM Connect Rental 2026.
Following the community-first approach of our past mobility summits, our goal for this edition was simple: avoid the noise, generic pitches, and sales booths of conventional trade shows. Instead, we brought together an intimate room of car rental operators, regional franchise managers, aggregators, and technology pioneers to have an open, unfiltered conversation about where vehicle rental is heading and what it actually takes to get there.
The day’s agenda reflected that intent. Rather than treating digitization as a buzzword, the sessions explored the operational realities of the industry: from global macroeconomic forces to the high-stakes friction points at the physical rental desk.
Here is a recap of the key discussions, industry data, and takeaways from the summit.
The macro view: Three forces redefining vehicle rental (Frost & Sullivan)
Opening the morning keynotes, Frost & Sullivan set the strategic foundation by examining how vehicle rental is shifting from an asset-heavy model to a digitally enabled, flexible mobility ecosystem.
Their analysis highlighted three forces currently reshaping the industry:
- Disruptive Technologies: App-based journeys, automated digital identity verification (AI KYC), and keyless access are quickly becoming baseline customer expectations.
- Internal Cost & Margin Pressures: Repair costs, vehicle turnaround times, insurance inflation, and fragmented software are squeezing fleet utilization. Connected operations are now critical to protecting margins.
- Transformative Megatrends: Electrification, changing travel patterns, and sustainability regulations are forcing operators to rethink fleet acquisition and pricing strategies.
The main takeaway from their presentation was clear:
"The winners will not simply manage more vehicles - they will manage the customer, fleet, and ecosystem more intelligently."
Looking ahead, Frost & Sullivan stressed that future value will come from experience-led rental models (low-touch, personalized journeys), commercial and LCV subscriptions, and ecosystem partnerships that maximize revenue per vehicle, customer, and trip.
A front-row reality check: Why car rental is the toughest service in travel (EconomyBookings)
Following lunch, Vitalijs Cvetkovs, Head of Commerce at EconomyBookings.com, delivered a refreshingly candid, data-backed session on why car rental remains the most friction-heavy customer journey in travel.
While booking a flight or hotel is relatively straightforward, car rental forces the customer to decode dozens of brands, ACRISS vehicle codes ("or similar"), deposit rules, insurance tiers, and fuel policies. Drawing on data from over a million annual bookings, Vitalijs pinpointed the four friction points where the industry loses customers:
- Choice Overload: Searches returning 700+ vehicle variations across 70+ brands overwhelm customers. Aggregators must prioritize smart, predictive ranking to surface the 10 most relevant cars rather than an endless list.
- The Broken Pricing Reflex: Unlike flights and hotels, car rental prices often drop in the final weeks before pickup. This trains travelers to book speculatively, monitor prices, cancel, and rebook - driving up cancellation rates across the board.
- The Credit Card Wall: EconomyBookings' audit revealed that less than 30% of European counter offers accept debit cards. With modern travelers increasingly relying on neobanks, turning customers away at the desk because they lack a credit card for the deposit creates major operational friction. Low-deposit and debit-friendly models are the inevitable direction of travel.
- The Counter as the "Emotional Summit": The counter is where booking expectations collide with operational realities. Their review data confirms an uncomfortable pattern: the lower the daily rental rate, the rougher the expected pickup experience.
Vitalijs concluded with a crucial commercial insight: In the era of AI and instant review summaries, poor customer experiences are instantly visible. Customer experience is the only sustainable retention driver, and aggregators and operators must work together to absorb friction rather than pass it on to the traveler.
Ground-level Intelligence: Spatial AI and next-gen insurance
Beyond macro trends and customer journeys, the technical sessions focused on practical tools operators can deploy today:
- Anadue (Urban Mobility at the Speed of Thought): Mike Manchip showcased their SuperFlexMap platform, demonstrating how spatial data drives branch profitability. By combining census statistics, commuting patterns, hotel density, and car ownership data, operators can perform gap analysis to identify affluent, car-free neighborhoods that lack rental desks - replacing intuition with empirical site selection.
- Datafolio (Unlocking Value in Add-On Insurance): Datafolio addressed the headache of unpredictable fleet coverage, showing how AI risk modeling (UBRA) and transparent, app-based micro-insurance can turn fleet insurance from an operational cost burden into an EBITDA generator.
Operationalizing the future: The INVERS fireside chat
Closing out the afternoon, ATOM Mobility hosted a fireside session with INVERS to discuss the nuts and bolts of deploying "digital rental-ready" fleets.
The session focused on practical execution. Using real-world examples, the discussion highlighted how telematics, CAN-bus hardware, and remote immobilizers enable traditional operators to launch virtual stations, service off-airport locations, and automate replacement vehicle workflows without increasing staff overhead.
The key takeaway: modernizing a fleet does not require an immediate, risky transition away from the counter. Hybrid operations allow established rental businesses to introduce 24/7 keyless handovers alongside their standard operations.
The Value of the Closed Room
As presentations concluded and conversations moved into the evening networking mixer overlooking Riga, the feedback mirrored what made previous ATOM Connect events special: the value is entirely in the room.
By capping attendance and curating an audience of active industry operators, conversations went deeper than high-level presentations. A sincere thank you to all our speakers, partners, and guests who joined us in Riga. The vehicle rental sector is evolving quickly, and we are proud to provide the space where the industry comes together to map out what comes next.
Stay tuned for our next ATOM Connect events by following us on LinkedIn!
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