Mobilize, draw me an experience

Story

Mobilize, draw me an experience

  • connectivity
  • design
  • shared mobility
  • transport on demand

Responding to the challenges and problems of travel in urban areas, designing a comprehensive experience, starting – not from the drawing board – but from the smartphone… This is how the EZ-1 Prototype was born: the realization of a mobility experience designed for the new needs of consumers, cities and operators. Patrick Lecharpy, Mobilize’s Design Director, looks back on this unprecedented ‘creative exploit’.

“It was the first time we were asked to imagine a mobility solution that would perfectly meet the new needs of users, cities and operators. A real challenge!”
Patrick Lecharpy
Mobilize’s Design Director

A challenge that Patrick Lecharpy took up with more enthusiasm since the Mobilize Design entity that he heads was specially created to ‘think comprehensively’ and take into account the mobility ecosystem as a whole.

The basis of this approach is that everyone’s expectations must be considered.

Operators and municipalities have many needs: parking, congestion, multimodality, reduction of environmental impact, energy savings and the circular economy.

Users, both urban and suburban, are looking for travel solutions adapted to their professional needs, as well as their personal needs… without having to invest in a vehicle.

In any case, a mobility experience cannot be conceived without a smartphone application. It’s where users start their experience, it’s their first point of contact with the service. In this approach, it is also the application that must allow users to recognize the vehicle remotely, to unlock it or even take a virtual tour of its interior.

smartphone_experience_mobilite
The smartphone at the centre of the Mobilize mobility experience

An unprecedented request, an unprecedented response

“Once we had all these elements, our mission was very clear,” says a smiling Patrick Lecharpy, “we had to create a vehicle that would provide a service that would meet all the needs of all customers for all possible uses. And, of course, it needed to look good!”

So we had to invent a new creative approach!

emmanuelle-dauboin
Emmanuelle Dauboin, Design Project Manager for Mobilize

The Mobilize Design team boasts a major advantage: it is structured like a startup, made-up of creatives who use the city on a daily basis, tuned into the expectations of future customers and capable of expressing them in terms of experience and design.

Although local authorities and operators provided a lot of food for thought, Patrick Lecharpy wanted to go further and capture the new cultural and emotional forces of today.

“The best approach was to send my team directly to the source, to get the most accurate information, on the ground.”

eduardo-lana-y-costa
Eduardo Lana-Y-Costa, Designer for Mobilize

The whole team got involved: some tested the existing offers while others experimented for a few months with all the different modes of shared transport.

Everyone then shared their feelings and observed uses with Eduardo, Interaction Designer, who then sketched the first storyboards. Little by little, the EZ-1 Prototype began to take shape…

A new experience in shared mobility

“This new approach allowed us to capitalize on all these experiences and, to our great surprise, move forward much faster in a very responsive and interactive way,” recalls Patrick Lecharpy.

For the Design team, it was the first time that so many experiences were pooled around a single project. And all of them proved to be essential to design the most relevant experience around a connected, electric, recycled, recyclable vehicle, dedicated to car-sharing. More than just a means of transportation, the EZ-1 Prototype will be a new experience in shared mobility.

mobilize-ez-1-prototype
Mobilize EZ-1 Prototype

“We want to offer as many people as possible the chance to access a means of transportation that is easy to use, fun and even playful, without the need to purchase the object,” explains Patrick Lecharpy. “In terms of mobility, we are truly in the process of writing ‘the next story’.”

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Petites-moyennes-grandes-villes-mobilité
CHECK POINT

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, thefree-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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shared mobility
CHECK POINT

where do we stand on shared mobility?

Around the world, and particularly in Europe, mobility software is being updated to adapt to the changes in ways of using and the demands of the ecological transition. Beyond cars, shared and multimodal mobility is becoming established as the solution of the future for our cities and involves profound transformations.

But how far along is this revolution? What are the major phases and key concepts along the road to better urban mobility?

  • electric vehicle
  • shared mobility

2016 – the basis: car-sharing in a closed loop

Through its network of dealerships present in territories across Europe, Renault Group implements a car-sharing service within a closed loop. Vehicles are available 24/7, starting with one-hour rentals, and are reserved using mobile apps. 

Car-sharing in a closed loop involves picking up a vehicle at a station or agency and returning it to the same place. Represented as a direct line, it enables a user to travel from Point A to Point B and then return the vehicle there. This service is often provided through a subscription, and the operator charges a fixed rate according to time used or distance covered. For a company, car-sharing in a closed loop is an advantageous solution that enables employees to use the company fleet for professional or personal travel, thus optimizing use. 

2017 – watch out for “free-floating” cars!

No more terminals! The Zity by Mobilize service was one of the first free-floating car-sharing services in Europe, when it was launched in Madrid (under the name Zity). 
 
The principle of “free-floating” rental enables users to borrow and return a vehicle to any of the on-street parking places found inside the perimeter covered by the service. Using a dedicated smartphone app, users geolocate the nearest vehicle. 
Reservation, vehicle opening and locking, payment: everything is done using a mobile app, and vehicles are never tied to a particular station or terminal. The principal of free-floating rental concerns all means of mobility: vehicles, scooters, bikes, mopeds Having appeared simultaneously in several countries, often with great success, these services will continue to grow. 

2021– 13 million journeys, or 5 journeys per second

Mobilize signs the “Free-Floating Vehicle, Cycle and Equipment Charter” in February. This charter was adopted after the 2019 promulgation of the Mobility Orientation Law (LOM) in France.

The charter specifies the respective obligations of local authorities and service operators and puts particular emphasis on respecting the environment and following traffic and parking regulations.

This commitment is in line with the Group’s choices. At the end of March, Fluctuo counted 235,000 shared vehicles in 16 major European cities*. In spite of restrictions tied to the Covid-19 pandemic, 13 million journeys, or 5 journeys per second, were made in one month using car-sharing in Europe.

 

*Flucto, the shared mobility barometer

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accessible mobility
LEVEL UP

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.

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

mix énergétique mobilize
LEVEL UP

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.

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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.

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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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