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Category: energy transition

transportation in line with the energy transition in a small, medium or large city… there are solutions for each one!

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transportation in line with the energy transition in a small, medium or large city… there are solutions for each one!

In the large and complex transportation sector, carbon neutrality is unattainable without joint discussion involving all stakeholders. This is the approach we take in designing solutions for every kind of need. Mobilize supports urban ecology projects by offering transportation solutions tailored to each municipality’s size. Here’s an overview of existing projects and ideas for the future of small, medium-sized and large municipalities.

  • energy transition
  • shared mobility

In the automotive industry, Mobilize is leading the way to a new direction. This task isn’t an easy one, since the “all-car” structure has a lasting legacy with a big impact on inhabitants’ lifestyles. Changing paradigms means entering the unknown, for consumers and manufacturers alike. “Mobilize is convinced that in the future there will be less emphasis on owning a car and more focus on using one. Accepting this idea means shifting to a new reality.

Until recently, this idea was still difficult to talk about in an automotive manufacturing firm like ours. Mobilize is working on a vision that will take some time to achieve. But it’s the path for tomorrow”, says François Pérès, Regional Deployment Director at Mobilize. To implement this approach correctly, municipalities and transportation operators must remain attentive to user needs and work together to provide useful solutions that fit each specific case.

“Milan, Paris and Vienna all have things in common, but each one also has its own very specific characteristics. Lyon and Nice, for example, have a topography that is entirely different from those in Amsterdam or Berlin. That will have a big impact on the operational conditions of the service, and on the ways transportation is used. The demographics won’t be the same in every city either, so we have different user profiles to think about Free-floating, for example, is used more often by consumers with a certain purchasing power. But this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Municipalities can offer support to certain users to promote a more inclusive approach to transportation. This may allow us to invent other business models”, says François Pérès. Observing users’ needs and practices with a view to offering them custom-designed clean solutions is Mobilize’s main goal.

Check 1: large cities at the forefront

As the ecological transition gets underway, the urban planning strategies of cities have become crucial for reinventing transportation in increasingly dense urban areas. What needs to be done to reduce congestion, pollution, energy expenditures and excessively large parking areas? 

Large cities are priorities for this work, since their needs are many and their configurations are already in the process of changing, for example with the introduction of low-emission zones. At Mobilize, the free-floating car-sharing service, Zity by Mobilize, is available in Madrid, Lyon and Milan. 

Check 2: a life-sized experiment for medium-sized cities

But less densely populated areas haven’t been forgotten. The Mobilize Share service, which is based on Renault’s network of dealers, now offers vehicles in a closed-circuit car-sharing system in several cities. On the island of Porto Santo , around 20 ZOEs were made available so inhabitants could try out the customized and particularly virtuous transportation system that was introduced in 2018. It allows the fleets of electric cars to send energy back to the island’s grid. Mobilize was created to take experiments like these further, to discuss ideas with local players in each region, showing them the outlook for success and working with them to see how customized new sustainable solutions could be introduced in various places. It’s a long process, but a necessary one to meet environmental needs.

Check 3: small towns, big goals

Mobilize has a global vision, aiming to reach all regions. Its main mission is to accelerate the ecological transition and achieve Renault Group’s goals: reducing the Group’s carbon footprint by 25% by 2022 per vehicle sold (compared to 2010 figures) and cutting usage emissions in half by 2050.

Mobilize’s other objective for the future is to invent new transportation services for areas where there still isn’t any real alternative to individual cars with combustion engines. In small towns and medium-sized cities, shared transportation is less developed but there is still a need for transportation when not everyone is able to drive. This is the case for example with individuals who do not have a driver’s license, who have a disability or are unwell, or who do not wish to invest in a vehicle or simply cannot. Complementarities with mass transportation services that cannot cover an entire region, or the roll-out of on-demand transportation services, may be considered.

Mobilize could for example introduce mini-fleets of vehicles available for car-sharing that would be the perfect solution for medium-sized cities. “A limited number of vehicles, maybe 10 or 15… that may seem like nothing, but it would go a long way in a small town, and Mobilize is able to meet this kind of demand via its network of dealers. We include our local contacts each time we discuss anything with municipalities”, explains François Pérès.

Changing users’ day-to-day lives is not a goal for large cities only. “Discussions need to be started everywhere possible so we can introduce solutions that are sustainable for municipalities and also for Mobilize, which is to say they must be founded on profitable economic models. These models must be explained to public decision-makers so they can effectively support the introduction of the solutions with incentive regulations (for example in terms of parking conditions and fee amounts) and also with active and positive communications,” concludes François Pérès.

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ecological and accessible mobility? understand it in three minutes flat.

accessible mobility
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ecological and accessible mobility? understand it in three minutes flat

Mobilize, the new Renault Group brand, aims to propose mobility and energy services that meet the needs of users and contribute to reducing pollution in cities. Unprecedented in the sector, these services are designed to meet the expectations of users who want to travel in a decarbonated way, without having to own their vehicle. Three innovative and combined approaches to this goal are summarized here. Take just three minutes to discover them. Ready, set, go!

  • design
  • energy transition
  • shared mobility

★ ☆ ☆
redefining mobility

Mobilize. It’s a name that means something. This new brand from the Renault Group was created to design new ways of travel that are better adapted to our urban society. In the near future, means of transport will be decarbonized, easy to access using a smartphone and flexible. In cities, twenty-first-century residents can use a bike-share service to reach a station, where they then take a tram to the office.

Others, who live in suburban areas, can walk 400 meters to an electric car-sharing station and drive to their company in the city center, where it’s difficult to park, but where they have reserved parking places.

With this in mind, Mobilize designs electric cars that are specially adapted to various mobility services and to travel in urban areas with major constraints. The vehicles proposed “disrupt” the automotive industry. For decades, powerful gas-guzzlers from car plants were meant to cover long distances using fossil energy.

By 2030, cars will no longer be seen as a consumer object but as a link in the chain of mobility solutions. In 2021, young urbanites are looking for the right way to travel, rather than wanting to own a car. With a smartphone, they can quickly check to see which means of transportation to the airport or a suburban park is the closest to home and the fastest.

Mobilize listens to the profound aspirations of this new generation and offers the appropriate services, where a minimalistic car that is connected and pollutes as little as possible is one of many options.

★ ★ ☆
designing a global experience

Mobilize is much more than just a new brand. It’s a laboratory that is inventing the way we’ll travel in 2030, then in 2050. The teams behind this innovative structure design both the technology of these electric, connected vehicles and the software that enables using them with solid reliability. In this way, users won’t be in for unpleasant surprises, such as opening the door and discovering a car that has an uncharged battery. Above all, Mobilize produces cars that are tailored to be part of an ecosystem of car-sharing stations and transversal mobility.

“We offer a unique combination of hardware and software, with dedicated vehicles and cutting-edge services. In the future, when we offer access to a car within one minute from a living area, we will be proposing users an unparalleled, high-quality service. This offer will be adapted to the new needs of mobility, car-sharing and last-mile delivery”, says Clotilde Delbos, Managing Director of Mobilize, in the presentation of Renault’s new strategies.

Patrick Lecharpy, Director of Design for Mobilize, sums up the issues that shaped the way his teams approached the topic: “On the design side, the idea was not only to come up with a new vehicle, but also to think about the issues and problems of travel in urban areas. At Mobilize, we are therefore designing a global experience. Designing services required fully understanding users and their expectations, as well as the needs of operators and cities. Urban areas are faced with problems of parking, congestion and pollution. As for users, they don’t necessarily want to own a car but still need mobility solutions that are easy to access and pleasant to use”, says Patrick Lecharpy.

Mobilize tested all the available means of urban transport for several months; each time, this led to the same conclusion. “What’s the first point of contact for a service? A smartphone. The user experience always starts with an app”, continues Lecharpy. This is a mantra that Mobilize designers are well aware of.

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vehicles designed for services

After this thorough grounding, Mobilize created a first prototype. A totally new mobility object was imagined to respond to the issues of the years 2020 to 2030. This vehicle was designed entirely for car-sharing. “It’s connected, electric, recycled and recyclable. A little vehicle that’s in tune with the times. The goal is to make it sustainable and propose an enjoyable experience of shared mobility. Driving it in a city will go well beyond simply traveling from Point A to Point B”, says Patrick Lecharpy.

In cities where the place of individual cars has been reduced, year after year, this prototype has a real role to play. “The day cities declare that their centers are 20 mph zones, our vehicle dedicated to car-sharing will be perfect because we can put three of them in one parking place. It’s in our interest to work with cities that are trying to avoid congestion, limit pollution and reduce parking space to recover areas for planting greenery”, adds Clotilde Delbos. Effectively, one car-sharing vehicle can replace up to ten private cars, opening up lots of room. The model has been designed with reinforced bumpers to adapt to users who are, in fact, less accustomed to driving than the owners of private vehicles.

Mobilize also wants to reinvent last-mile delivery. This is a crucial issue in metropolitan areas where, with the digital revolution accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, an increasing number of inhabitants are requesting delivery of products ordered online, with the risk of seeing scooters and thermal vans invade the streets. Under experimentation since 2019 by logistics professionals, a prototype that is specially dedicated to last-mile delivery enables Mobilize teams to analyze various types of feedback and adapt the concept or transform it into a standard utility vehicle. Stay tuned.

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the green company goal: how to develop your transportation services with Mobilize

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Green Company Company : How to Evolve Your Mobility?

Utility vehicles for hire, company car-sharing… Mobilize has solutions.

  • connectivity
  • electric vehicle
  • energy transition
  • shared mobility

Mobilize offers companies a range of services to help private-sector players develop sustainable mobility services for their customers and/or employees. 

What role does Mobilize play for companies?

Every day, many companies have to organise the journeys of their employees, customers and users, right through to the transport of products. Mobilize‘s role is to let them know that new shared mobility solutions can change their relationship with transport, facilitate their logistics, optimise their costs and lead them to the status of a green company. This can take the form of a fleet of car-sharing vehicles available to their customers. As Mobilize  is doing with Ikea, through a turnkey digital transportation solution, operated by Renault Group’s network of dealers, in front of their stores to make it easier for customers to bring their purchases home. 

Mobilize also intends to help businesses pool some of their vehicles to provide a transportation solution for all of their employees. A system like this is also an opportunity for them to optimize their overall transportation cost and reduce mileage-related expense claims and taxi use.  

Finally, Mobilize works with the operators of automotive fleets, offering them supervision tools to better manage costs related to fuel and damages or simply to help them “green” their fleet by replacing combustion systems with electric or electrified vehicles. Everything is designed with an eye to simplification, optimization and of course environmental protection, a concern that’s becoming more and more important to citizens in both their private life and professional spheres. 

Can Mobilize encourage  car-sharing in companies? 

Mobilize offers two car-sharing systems.  

First, there’s the option we refer to as “free-floating”. The idea is that you can borrow a vehicle located via a smartphone application, and then leave it on any on-street parking space within the geographic area covered by the service. It has already been launched in Madrid, Lyon and Milan with fleets of Dacia Spring car-sharing vehicles, within the service Zity by Mobilize. Free-Floating is an ideal mode of transportation for brief commutes. 

Mobilize also offers a closed-loop car-sharing solution, with Mobilize Share service. Customers return the vehicle where they originally borrowed it, i.e. at a dedicated on-street or dealer station. This solution is ideal for longer journeys, from one hour to several days. With this system, users reserve their vehicle and can be sure that they will have it when they want it and can return it to a ‘free’ parking space. This is the car-sharing model that Mobilize is proposing to city planners to design shared mobility solutions for future eco-districts or coliving sites. 

These two car-sharing solutions are complementary.

How does Mobilize support companies looking to optimise their vehicle fleets? 

Every business has its own specificities and constraints. This is why Mobilize favours a co-construction approach with its customers. The goal is not to offer a single solution to everyone but to adapt the service to each customer’s needs. Finding solutions is also part of Mobilize’s added value. Introducing fleets of vehicles for car-sharing, recharging solutions for vehicles, energy storage… there are many things that can be optimized. 

What can Mobilize offer to companies and/or retailers looking to provide their customers with mobility solutions? 

Mobilize has been a partner of Ikea for several years, providing customers with utility vehicles based in shop car parks. The aim is to enable Ikea customers to hire a vehicle directly from the checkout, to transport their furniture from the outlet to their home, when their own vehicle is unsuitable.  

Mobilize manages the entire rental via the Renault network of dealers. Mobilize also works with other chains such as Leroy Merlin and Bricorama.

In brief: how Mobilize assists businesses

  • Setting up of car-sharing fleets for employees or customers, like here with Ikea 
  • Supporting car-sharing in company fleets, to optimise the cost of mobility and facilitate use, as well as the switch to electric vehicles 
  • Converting fleets to electric 
  • Pooling automotive fleets between different companies and organizations 
  • Digitizing transportation services 

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electric vehicle batteries
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how used electric vehicle batteries can become a source of green energy

There is this idea that batteries for electric vehicles are bad for the environment, right? Not so fast. There are ways to extend their lifespan while making a positive contribution to the energy transition. In fact, batteries could even become key parts of urban ecology over the next few decades. It’s a complex but fascinating situation. Learn more in this guide tailored to different levels of background knowledge.

  • electric vehicle
  • energy storage
  • energy transition

★ ☆ ☆
beginner level

Today, a lithium-ion battery has the same lifespan as the vehicle in which it is installed. The driver does not care about its charging capacity. But what happens afterwards?

The first option is to recycle the batteries at the end of their life. A seemingly obvious solution! And Renault Group has formed a partnership with Solvay and Veolia for this purpose.

But before recycling them, we can give these batteries a “second life” by using them for something other than powering a car. After all, even when it has reached the end of its useful lifespan for automotive purposes, it is estimated that a battery will still have around 70% of its capacity, or several dozen kWh, so it can still be used for many other purposes.

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intermediate level

Given the volume of electric cars expected to hit the market in coming years, being able to extend their lifespan is essential. In 2020, sales of electric cars in Europe rose nearly 60% compared to the 2019 figures, according to a report by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). As “clean” cars and fleets of electric vehicles available on a carsharing basis become more common, batteries at the end of their lifespan will soon number in the hundreds of thousands.

Mobilize’s teams already have solid experience in managing the entire battery lifespan. They work with partners to design applications offering energy solutions for different needs, while extending the period of time the batteries can be used.

An initial solution is to refurbish them into other forms, with different powers and voltages. In this way, batteries formerly used in electric vehicles can serve as an auxiliary energy source. For example, a parked food truck still needs electricity to power its refrigerators and kitchen equipment. Why not use a separate battery for that? Even at home, a back-up battery can prove useful as a supply of cheap energy to use at peak times or in a place without an electrical outlet. Long before they need to be recycled, batteries that can no longer be used to power a car with sufficient driving range can still be used in many other areas.

★ ★ ★
expert level

According to McKinsey*, over the next few decades, “the strong uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) will result in the availability of terawatt-hours of batteries that no longer meet required specifications for usage in an EV.” But these batteries reaching the end of their lifespan for automotive use isn’t a problem – it’s an opportunity. The firm projects that “the second-life-battery supply [to the grid] could exceed 200 gigawatt-hours per year by 2030.”

One solution for seizing this opportunity on an industrial scale is stationary storage: grouping batteries from EVs in structured systems at dedicated sites to offer massive energy storage. The facility can be linked to the national electricity grid and offer real-time regulation of the gap between the production and consumption of energy in the grid. In this way, after around 10 years of service in a vehicle, the battery gets a new life for a similar period of time but in a stationary place, often in a container equipped and adapted specifically for this purpose.

With the Advanced Battery Storage (ABS), project launched in 2018, Renault Group was one of the first automotive manufacturers to realize the advantages of this solution of the future.

After small-scale experiments in Porto Santo, Portugal, Renault Group installed second-life and first-life batteries (for after-sales use) offering a capacity of 4.9 MWh at Renault Group’s George Besse plant based in Northern France. Later, in 2020, a second stationary storage site was opened in Elverlingsen, Germany, housing 72 Renault ZOE batteries for a capacity of 2.9 MWh. Rolled out in both France and Germany, Advanced Battery Storage is the largest stationary storage system that uses electric vehicle batteries. Eventually, this project – which is now part of the Mobilize ecosystem – is expected to reach a total capacity of 70 MWh.

Another example, Smart Hubs in the United Kingdom, is a large-scale project that demonstrates the clear benefits of this application. Renault Group has supplied it with 1,000 second-life batteries. At this facility, each container houses 24 Renault Kangoo Z.E. batteries and, depending on the demand and placement, can be used to power industrial and commercial sites, social housing or even, in an ironic twist, electric vehicle recharging stations! For that purpose, the container can be outfitted with solar panels for a truly virtuous circuit: old electric car batteries recharging new ones in a sustainable and low-cost energy cycle.

All of this proves the relevance of the model: electric cars will no longer simply reduce air pollution but also indirectly provide the resources to store renewable energy on a small and large scale, thereby making a positive contribution to the energy transition. This is the type of development that Renault Group’s creation of Mobilize promotes. Automotive manufacturers no longer aim simply to design and manufacture vehicles but also to help optimize the energy ecosystem as a whole. In this framework, whether in mobile or stationary use, electric vehicle batteries will have a central role to play over the coming decades.

* Second-life EV batteries: The newest value pool in energy storage

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the energy mix in geographic regions: an overview on 3 levels

mix énergétique mobilize
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the energy mix in geographic regions: an overview on 3 levels

It’s clear: we now have no choice but to decrease our civilization’s dependence on fossil fuels. Fossils fuels currently account for 80% of the world’s ”energy mix”, or the distribution of various sources of primary energy used in a given geographic region. What effects does this have? Air pollution, global warming, natural resource depletion and more – nothing very cheerful. But there’s good news: real solutions are beginning to be developed, especially in the transportation sector. The following is an overview of the solutions at three levels.

  • electric vehicle
  • energy storage
  • energy transition
  • shared mobility

★ ☆ ☆
The energy transition: technology leads the way

Renewable energy is gaining in power: in Europe, its share in the electricity mix rose from 34.6% to 38% over a year (between 2019 and 2020), outstripping fossil fuels (only 37% of the mix) for the very first time. And this slow but steady progress has been achieved which the transport sector has not always helped to accelerate. Even today, it’s one of the sectors that depends the most heavily on fossil fuels, accounting for over half of the world’s oil consumption.

The reason this energy transition has been so hard for the transportation sector to make is that it requires a paradigm shift, starting at a technological level. For example, after decades spent improving internal combustion engines, designers had to come up with all kinds of other engines, naturally including electric ones, an area in which Renault Group was a pioneer in the automotive sector, but also engines that ran on hydrogen and biofuels, or biokerosene for aircraft.

To make a real contribution to meeting these challenges, Renault Group has created a new brand, Mobilize. Its goal is to reinvent the transportation of tomorrow and help achieve the Group’s commitments in terms of becoming carbon neutral by 2040. In 2023, Mobilize will release a 100% electric vehicle designed for shared transportation. The brand will also offer other vehicles intended for specific uses such as merchandise delivery.

★ ★ ☆
Changing practices: the transportation sector joins in the energy transition

But apart from the technological level, the energy transition will take place in our practices. The ideal of owning a car of one’s own, traditionally associated with independence and long held as a value in society, is now losing ground. Many young people in cities are no longer interested in owning individual cars, preferring to use “on demand” transportation services. Car-sharing for example has become very popular, to the point that it has become normal to use self-service transportation solutions.

This is why the Mobilize vehicle designed for car-sharing will not be available for purchase. Its users will pay only for what they use, fees being calculated based on time or distance. And algorithms will make it possible to reposition the vehicles in the right part of the city after maintenance so the next users can find them easily.

Mobilize’s goal is to develop services to reinvent transportation, not to manufacture electric vehicles to sell. Its first order of business is therefore to accelerate the advent of sustainable and inclusive transportation. The brand aims to rethink transportation for decreased emissions and resource use. Mobilize vehicles are therefore being designed not as objects but as services. The transportation of tomorrow, according to Mobilize, needs to be smarter, greener, easier to access and share and to be available to all, everywhere.

★ ★ ★
Toward sustainable cities

In addition to these technological innovations and practices, cities themselves are changing. They’re starting to give more space to vegetation, and a number of large cities have even introduced low-emissions zones that are off-limits to the most polluting vehicles. Tomorrow, sustainable cities will be navigable solely by eco-friendly, clean and shared transportation.

In this sense, Mobilize’s electric vehicles will also be full-fledged players in the energy transition in cities. Places and the connections linking them need to be designed with sustainability in mind. For this reason, fleets using Renault Group models have the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology so they can be connected to both the environment and the grid. Batteries from electric vehicles can therefore be used to store electricity and supply it to the grid as needed, even when still installed in the vehicles (in a sort of “mobile” energy storage system). Mobilize is positioning itself as a contributor to the ecological transition: recharging cars only when electricity is the most available promotes the use of renewable energy rather than fossil fuels.

And the batteries also get a second life after their automotive use. After being retired from use in electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries can be used in “stationary” storage systems in which they store green energy as soon as it’s produced. The Group and its partners have already installed systems of this type in Porto Santo (Portugal), France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

In particular, this mechanism addresses the issue of the intermittence of renewable energies, which leads to discontinuous energy production. Although we have no power over natural elements such as the sun and the wind and therefore cannot guarantee uninterrupted production, we can store this energy – between its production and consumption – to create a reserve to draw from when demand is greater than supply. Although different options are being studied (hydrogen, thermal storage etc.), electric vehicle batteries currently seem to be the most advantageous solution. Mobilize remains open to innovation and research for a more sustainable future mobility, and intends to move the lines quickly.

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stationary storage: batteries at the service of renewable energies

what if we focused on electric vehicle batteries to accelerate the energy transition?