The four operators chosen now have to at all times coordinate to ensure appropriate parking city wide and provide additional service to ensure the safety of riders and inhabitants. The aim with the tender for electric scooters was to help achieve Copenhagen's goal of being the world's first CO2-neutral capital by 2025.
In the last two years, Voi e-Scooters have replaced 230,000 private car trips and 105,000 taxi rides in Copenhagen, thus reducing pollution of both CO2 and particles in the city. Almost every third ride on an electric scooter is combined with public transport, and Voi plans continue to work closely with public transport providers to increase this level of integration. Hence, electric scooters were a great example of a green form of transport that made it clearly easier to live a green everyday life.
The Right Parking is Key
Voi has added double support legs to the e-scooter and introduced incentives in the app to nudge users to park properly. The mobility startup will use parking guards to monitor for fallen e-scooters and right them and work tirelessly to make sure the vehicles are legally parked across Copenhagen.
Road Safety Through Training and Prevention
Voi will distribute thousands of helmets free of charge next year and host in-person traffic schools for new users of electric scooters throughout Copenhagen.
Additionally the company will prevent drunk riding. Voi has implemented reactions test for users to complete before the ride starts. This feature will be live and mandatory in-app Friday and Saturday evenings between 10 pm and midnight, after which the e-scooters are put into sleep mode until 5 am the following morning. Users who fail the reaction test will be redirected to and encouraged to use Viggo, a Danish climate-friendly taxi service. When booking Viggo through the Voi app, users will get a 20 percent discount on their taxi trip. Voi is the first e-scooter operator in the industry to integrate a reaction test with a taxi service in its app.
“Voi is thrilled to be returning to Copenhagen, one of the world’s most climate-friendly capitals. As an operator with a presence in more than 70 European cities we have learned a great deal about making micro-mobility work. Above all, we know that every city is unique and has its own soul,” says Eric André, Voi’s General Manager for Denmark and Sweden.
Voi's operation in Copenhagen itself is completely CO2 neutral. The electric wheelers will be driven by 100 percent green power from Ørsted's offshore wind turbines, battery changes on the electric scooters will be made on electric cargo bikes, and the rest of Voi's service cars and vans are electrically powered.
Although the operators such as Voi are happy to offer e-Scooters in the Danish city again, they are somewhat disappointed with some elements of the tender. A major point of criticism is the inability to park in the city-center of Copenhagen, where the majority of Copenhageners and visitors to the city would love to find e-Scooters. The current restrictions will ultimately limit the full benefit of micromobility that the city’s residents and visitors can experience. That said, Voi and its competitors are now clearly happy to have been chosen for this next phase of micromobility solutions in Copenhagen. We will continue to monitor their success, for sure.
Photos courtesy of Voi.
