The Start-ups that Revolutionize Mobility
Money people spend on cars is increasing every year: vehicle purchase, fuel, auto insurance, parking…So, how do you do better by spending less money? The digital world offers new possibilities and some start-ups have already found answers.
Free parking to stimulate carsharing
Sharing your car when you’re not using it is still a drag on many homeowners. Because the real pleasure is to be able to use it when one wishes it. TravelCar lifts this first brake and offers to rent your car when you are sure not to use it. When travelling by train or plane for example and your vehicle remains immobilized on a parking lot. The TravelCar system reduces or even reimburses parking fees during your absence.
Win-win exchange
In exchange for these parking savings, your vehicle is rented to individuals. It will cost them 15 to 20% less than in a traditional renter. The start-up boasts 500,000 users in 30 countries and 400 partner car parks located in airports and train stations.
The young push continues its international expansion and should bring its coverage to 50 countries with a development towards Northern Europe, Latin America and Oceania.
Use the available parking spaces in the city
As we all have similar experience, we are very often delayed because of the difficulty of finding a parking space. 3
Yet, a lot of parking spaces in city centers are unused. During the day, the car parks of residential buildings or hotels are very little occupied. At night, it is the turn of the car parks of companies or shopping centers to empty.
Zenpark has decided to rationalize the available seats at every moment of the day and night by offering a kind of Airbnb parking.
How it works
You reserve your place on time or by subscription via the site or the application. Then you access the car park with your smartphone.
Limit the number of applications
Start-ups are bursting with ideas to make life easier. However it is difficult not to get lost in this profusion of services.
To find its way around, the start-up Free2Move, driven by the European car manufacturer Groupe PSA, aims to become “the app of apps”. This gives access to nearly 30 mobility services in 10 countries.
Carsharing, parking, bike rental, car or scooter self-service, the main mobility services like TravelCar, Emov, Communauto, are accessible through a single application and a single customer account. The offering also extends to services operated by other manufacturers such as Daimler’s Car2Go and BMW’s Drive Now.
For Brigitte Courtehoux, Director of PSA Group’s Mobility and Connectivity Services, the ambition is clear: to make the Group “a major player in mobility services on an international scale” .
Launched just over a year ago, the Free2Move application already has 600,000 users in Europe and the United States where deployment continues.
The transition between ownership of a vehicle and mobility as a service takes place before our eyes, with startups at the forefront of the phenomenon.
