Electric kick scooter and Urban mobility

Recently a new bigboy-toy has appeared in the market, the electric kick scooter. Basically, it is a normal kick scooter with an electric motor which allows to reach a speed of 25 km/h and it has an autonomy up to 45 Km. It was the start gif of the last Christmas.

Not only this gadget is sold, new kick scooter renting companies has emerged recently, some of them are Lime or Bird. This companies operates in almost all European countries and they have adopt the same bussines model of electric cars renting companies.

If you want to rent a kick scooter you only must download the App associated to the service and through the App you can locate a kick scooter in some places of your city. Once you have a kick scoter in front of you, you have to scan a QR stuck on it and automatically the Kick scooter will be unlocked. The cost of the service in Spain is 1€ for unlock the kick scooter and 0,15 € per minute of driving. Lime advice you that you must only go for allowed zones and when you have finished your trip, you must leave the kick scooter in the certain zones. Kick scooters are not always available, Lime takes them from the streets ervery night at 9 and they are recharged during the night and finally, they are brought back to the streets in the morning.

It is thought that kick scooters will substitute cars, but recently studies indicate that this is not happening at all. What Kick scooter is replacing is walking and public transport trips. It could cause even more healthy problems in our society

In case of kick scooter replace the use of cars, in the majority of cases, in bad weather conditions people prefers to take the car instead of kick scooters

In most of European cities, more space for cars is being removed. The electric kick scooter could help to do that if people use kickscooter not only for made trips that they used to do by car. In Fact, there are several uses that could help to improve urban mobility, for example kickscooter could be used as complement to public transport as last trip to home. Other measure will be great is to enable parkings far away from the center of the city and use the kick scooter.

CAR SHARING

The use of carsharing is increasingly widespread in European cities. Car to go and Emove are some of the companies, which operates in Spain. If you want to use a Carsharing car in your city, you need to have a license driving, download the app and sing up (It use to cost around 9€). within the app you can see available cars around and booked it with 20 minutes in advance.

Once you are near the car, you can open it through the app. The keys are inside the car, and at this moment, you can drive whenever (The trip is paid by used time). Having finished your travel, you can leave your car, even in blues and greens zones.

One advantage of use carsharing is the price. The most common uses are sporadic journeys. Carsharing is payed for minutes and it cost around 20-25 cents. Therefore, a journey of 15 minutes cost around 4€. That means that travel using carsharing would be cheaper than a taxi. However, it would be more expensive than public transport.

One of the main advantages of using carsharing is parking is that once User of carsharing have finished the journey, as previously mentioned, they can leave the car in green zones or blue zones without paying anything.

An additional advantage is that Car to go and Emove are using electric vehicles, so you can drive one of these cars in a restricted day for pollution.

You can think that use a carsharing is only advantages, but you have to consider drawbacks of using carsharing. For example, not always you can find an available car. The availability is irregular and based on demand. It could have high demand slots and you can not find any available car around you.

Another this advantage is that if you want to use one of this smart mobility solution, it depend of your mobile device. You need at least your mobile phone to open/close the car and you must maintain your mobile running along the entry journey.

To sum up, Carsharing is a good option for concrete and sporadic journeys. In contrast, daily or regular use of carsharing could be expensive and you can find a surprise if you need the car for going to the work and you don´t have an available car around you.

From Thermal to electric

Between 1932 and 1839 Robert Anderson invented the first crude electric carriage. The carriage was powered by non-rechargeable batteries

The invention of electric starting of Cadilac in 1903 simplified the task of starting the thermal engine. Before, the task of starting a thermal engine resulted complicated and dangerous. This innovation and the invention of massive  system production in chain that came up with Ford factories in 1908 did electric vehicles got unused.

Nowadays electric vehicles is getting more and more used, overall electric vehicles are having more advantages over other technologies, some of them are:

-Facilities to perform the installation that recharges the car at home
-They are exempt from toll payment
-Electric cars can park in reserve zones and recharges it for free.

Between Thermal  and electric exist several technologies. We have it sump up in the following:

-Mild Hybrid (MHEV)
-Total Hybrid (HEV)
-Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV)

Mild Hybrid MHEV

This type of electric vehicle has a thermal motor and an electric motor. The main motor is the thermal and the electric motor is mounted over the crank. The electric motor is not be able to move the car and only is used under hard acceleration. Mild Hybrid vehicles can provides up to 10% of fuel savings.

Mild Hybrid vehicles used to come with automatic start-stop function which allow to stop the thermal engine when the car is stopped (ie. when the car is stopped at a traffic light) apart of that the electric engine is able to recharge the batteries when the car is slowing down (regenerative brake)

The main characteristic is that Mild Hybrid depend in every moment of the thermal engine, since Mild Hybrid is not capable at any time of working only with the electric motor.

Total Hybrid HEV

Hybrid are named to the vehicles which uses a combination of one electric engine and a thermal engine to make move the vehicle. unlike pure electric, Hybrid car don´t need a plug to recharge the batteries, the engine motor (generator) and a system of regenerative brakes manages to keep charged the batteries.

The operation of a Total Hybrid vehicle is the following

• Start from stationary

In general, at the beginning the electric engine moves the car, without the help of the thermal engine. Starting is the point where thermal engines are less efficient. For that reason, once the car have reached a certain speed using the electric engine, the thermal engine start and begin to deliver energy to the vehicle.

• Cruise speed

When the car is at the cruise speed and the driver is not accelerating, the thermal engine is at its optimal point working, it can move the vehicle and charge the batteries at the same time.

• Decelerate or brake

When the hybrid vehicle decelerate or brake, the thermal engine stop and use the regenerative brake to recharge the batteries

In short, the key to the operation lies in the fact that the battery acts as an electric energy store. It accumulates when left over and returns it when the driver starts, demands great acceleration or for slow circulation

Plug-in Hybrid PHEV

This type of hybrid vehicle allows to plug the car to the electric network to recharge the batteries.

The batteries can be recharged when the vehicle is stopped or using the regenerative brake.

The main difference is that a larger battery is mounted, with much more capacity than the total hybrid.

A total hybrid car usually has a battery of 1 to 2 kWh capacity, while a plug-in hybrid car usually has a battery, from 5 to 12 kWh capacity, again approximately, and in general terms, because it can vary depending on the model what we consider.

If we compare a  Plug-in Hybrid against a Total hybrid, Plug in Hybrid used to be more efficient in consumption terms. Plug in Hybrid has a bigger battery, which allows them store more energy in the braking.

If approximately a Total Hybrid Car consumes 30% less than an equivalent conventional internal combustion car, a Plug-in Hybrid consumes about 45% less than conventional combustion.